Conspiracy Theories

My post about 9/11 conspiracy theories, and the subsequent discussion, got me thinking about conspiracy theories in broader terms. If it isn't obvious already, I have very little respect for conspiracy theories in general. They tend to operate on exactly the same principle as intelligent design: you don't have to advance a plausible theory of your own; you just have to make the standard version seem implausible.

And let's be clear: you can do this with any storyline, any theory, any set of facts. Let's say you write, from memory, a detailed account of the previous day--what you did, where you went, whom you met, etc. Let's say you did nothing, absolutely nothing, out of the ordinary. Let's say you post your account on this interweb thingy they have now. Let's say a million dedicated truth-seekers forming a loose-knit community subject it to intense scrutiny in order to determine what the real story is.

They will find witnesses who say they saw you across town from where you claim you were at the time. They will fixate on the missing 13 minutes between 11:35 and 11:48 am, when you claim you don't recall exactly what you were doing. Their detailed analyses of public transportation schedules will prove that you couldn't have been where you said you were. They will find a grocery store clerk who denies that you ever set foot in the store that day...but who recorded over the security video, and what are they trying to hide? (Yes, they will say it's their policy to recycle security videotapes...but isn't that just a little too convenient?) They will discover that someone with your name (or a name very similar to yours) works for a company believed to be a front for the CIA, or Mossad, or the Russian Mafia. They will find astonishing 'coincidences' throughout your day. They will talk to each other and link up these 'coincidences' into a pattern, and the pattern will become an alternate narrative that will forever cast doubt on your own version.

That's what could be done with the most mundane and innocuous storyline. Imagine how much easier it is, how much more potential there is in a vast public trauma like 9/11. All it takes is a little ingenuity and a whole lot of intellectual dishonesty.

Now, this is the point at which the True Believer asks: how do you know it didn't happen that way? The answer, of course, is that I don't know...but I don't need to know absolutely that a theory is false in order to evaluate it as implausible and unsupported by the facts.

Nor, in most cases, is it really necessary to argue the facts (which in practical terms nearly always means getting bogged down in a blizzard of pseudo-factual detail). For any given conspiracy theory, the real question to ask is what accounts for the existence of this theory? Does the theory exist because it accurately reflects reality--because the conspiracy exists? Or does it exist because it satisfies some psychological need? The latter is nearly always the simpler solution: humans like to believe in order, even a malignant order, and are deeply disturbed at the idea of chaos; the more chaotic the times, the more appealing the notion of order (conspiratorial, religious, or otherwise). The ultimate comment on conspiracy theories is the poster in Mulder's office: I want to believe.

Yes, there are real conspiracies. They're generally limited in scope, often ad hoc, and rarely long-lived (anyone who plays Diplomacy knows that alliances among self-interested parties are inherently unstable). Real conspiracies are more Don DeLillo and less Oliver Stone. These conspiracies, the real ones, are (as Jon Carroll says) the ones we need to focus on--not the grand sweeping arch-conspiracies we want to believe.

[That's all, folks]