{"id":44689,"date":"2022-02-21T15:25:01","date_gmt":"2022-02-21T23:25:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.clairewolfe.com\/blog\/?p=44689"},"modified":"2022-02-21T16:39:57","modified_gmt":"2022-02-22T00:39:57","slug":"a-great-big-mea-culpa-to-almost-all-conspiracy-theorists-everywhere","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.clairewolfe.com\/blog\/2022\/02\/21\/a-great-big-mea-culpa-to-almost-all-conspiracy-theorists-everywhere\/","title":{"rendered":"A great big mea culpa to (almost) all conspiracy theorists everywhere"},"content":{"rendered":"

Older readers may remember the Illuminatus!<\/em> trilogy<\/a> by Robert Shea and Robert Anton Wilson. First published in 1975, but clearly a product of the wild 1960s, it’s a mad, non-linear romp through political conspiracy theories, drugs, sex, and pretty much anything else you want to read into it.<\/p>\n

It begins with the assumption that every single conspiracy theory<\/em> about the assassination of President Kennedy is absolutely true, then goes on to encompass the birth of the Illuminati in 1776, ancient Egyptians, John Dillinger, the American Medical Association, and the thoughts of a squirrel in New York City. Among other weirdness.<\/p>\n

Its plot (to whatever extent it has one) involves one vast, global conspiracy to “immanentize the eschaton” — that is, to bring about the end of the world.<\/p>\n

At the time I read it, I thought it was all in good fun and a terrific challenge to conventional thinking.<\/p>\n

—–<\/p>\n

I now wish to apologize to the late Mssrs. Shea and Wilson and (almost) all other conspiracy theorists who have ever set my brain spinning with their ironclad, though often thinly sourced, convictions that “somebodies” up there at the top and hidden among us were conspiring against the rest of us.<\/p>\n

You were (almost) all right and I was wrong.<\/p>\n

The reasons for my rejection of conspiracy theories were sound, even though I turned out to be tragically mistaken. <\/p>\n

The most credible theories always revolved around elite organizations like The Bilderberg Group, The Council on Foreign Relations, The Trilateral Commission, The Rockefeller Foundation, The World Bank, and more recently The World Economic Forum (aka the Davos gang).<\/p>\n

My answer to the conspiracy theorists was always twofold:<\/p>\n

1) Sure, these people all went to the same (or similar) schools. Sure they belong to the same clubs and travel in the same social circles. Sure they all want to run the world. I grant you they share a similar mindset and may do us similar harm. But I’ve encountered a few of these people in my life and they are all way too egotistical, brutally competitive, and fixated on their own goals to conspire successfully with their equally obnoxious peers<\/em>. Any conspiracy among them would break apart before it got started, as they all tried to stab each other in the back. <\/p>\n

2) Even if there’s some truth to what you say, conspiracy theories are mostly an excuse to do nothing<\/em>. They’re a way of endlessly chasing your own tail when you should, instead, be taking active steps to get free. Focusing on obscure conspiracies that you can’t stop induces the mindset, “There’s nothing we can do! With such giant forces against us, we’re helpless!” And that’s a bad, bad way to approach freedom.<\/p>\n

Based on decades of watching conspiracy theorists operate, point 2 is still valid. But it doesn’t matter. Because (almost) all the conspiracy theorists are right. About everything.<\/p>\n

—–<\/p>\n

At this point, I must add a caveat to my mea culpa. <\/p>\n

There are some<\/em> conspiracies I’m absolutely not going for. <\/p>\n

QAnon and Pizzagate are\/were made-up nonsense for the gullible. (Yes, elite males and their elite female acolytes are<\/em> often child-molesting perverts, but they’re not running their operations out of pizza parlors.)<\/p>\n

I still can’t conceive that David Icke’s bizarre theories about elites being descended from lizard-brained aliens continue to receive serious hearings 30 years after he first promulgated his nonsense.<\/p>\n

And no, the world is not being run by “the Jews.” Sure, there are Jews among the evil elite, but there are also WASPy Episcopalians, agnostics, Muslims, atheists, Jesuit-trained Catholics, and bunches of “humanists,” whatever that is.<\/p>\n

Frankly the religion most involved in globalist conspiracies is Ego. Or Power. And Worship of Mammon.<\/p>\n

To sum: I’m not apologizing to QAnon, Icke, or Jew-bashers anywhere. But to the rest of you, mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa<\/em>.<\/p>\n

The last two years has proved (almost) every accusation of conspiratorial evil to be Capital-T True.<\/p>\n

But the question remains: What are you (and I and everybody else who value freedom) going to do about it?<\/p>\n

—–<\/p>\n

We still speak of “left” and “right,” though the terms have never been more than marginally useful.<\/p>\n

Lately and sadly, people who once believed anyone could succeed, speak of the elite vs the working classes. Or the peasants. <\/p>\n

Ironic, isn’t it? We recognize the elite as mostly “left” though they are the big corporate moneymen and their minions. And we accept that the working class is mostly “right,” despite being the famous Marxian “workers of the world” who are now busily uniting. The world turned upside down!<\/p>\n

N.S. Lyons, in a Substack piece about Trudeau and the truckers, proposes more accurate description of our cultural Great Divide: Physicals and Virtuals<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Physicals:<\/p>\n

The first is a class that has been a part of human civilization for a really long time. These are the people who work primarily in the real, physical world. Maybe they work directly with their hands, like a carpenter, or a mechanic, or a farmer. Or maybe they are only a step away: they own or manage a business where they organize and direct employees who work with their hands, and buy or sell or move things around in the real world. Like a transport logistics company, maybe. This class necessarily works in a physical location, or they own or operate physical assets that are central to their trade.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Virtuals:<\/p>\n

The second class is different. It is, relatively speaking, a new civilizational innovation (at least in numbering more than a handful of people). … They don\u2019t interact much with the physical world directly; they are handlers of knowledge. They work with information, which might be digital or analog, numerical or narrative. But in all cases it exists at a level of abstraction from the real world. Manipulation and distribution of this information can influence the real world, but only through informational chains that pass directives to agents that can themselves act in the physical world \u2013 a bit like a software program that sends commands to a robot arm on an assembly line. To facilitate this, they build and manage abstract institutions and systems of organizational communication as a means of control. <\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I would add that Physicals can also be people who live in and around places and people who live by the physical world and are aware of their importance. For instance, nearly all people who live in communities that rely on farming, fishing, or logging would be Physicals under this definition.<\/p>\n

Whether or not you agree with Lyons’ distinction, the linked article is worth a read. And the bottom line if you accept the Physicals\/Virtuals divide is this:<\/p>\n