tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1485997200234349788.post4336665140071583518..comments2024-03-07T12:48:21.070+00:00Comments on MAGONIA REVIEW: CONSPIRACY QUARTETUnknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger1125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1485997200234349788.post-25504744055094253422014-11-23T06:41:42.164+00:002014-11-23T06:41:42.164+00:00What often looks like a conspiracy is a confluence...What often looks like a conspiracy is a confluence of events that coincide in space and time, but have no correlation. The human brain is hard wired to see patterns, and we see them where in reality none exist (pareidolia is an example of visual pattern seeking). So we link things together to superimpose a pattern in order to explain events that baffle, frighten, or overwhelm us. This is the genesis of conspiracy thinking in the face of the terrifying, strange and inexplicable, events that turn the world upside down seemingly overnight, or even when we would rather believe we have been personally thwarted by sinister forces bigger than ourselves than take responsibility for our own failures.<br /><br />Some governments have made a religion of keeping secrets, far longer than needed and often for purely self-serving reasons (i.e., to cover up ineptitude and waste of taxpayer resources). The US is, I think, a prime offender in this. All of its government secrecy is seen as a conspiracy to cover up things far more sinister than the stupidity or boondoggles it's more often meant to hide (if there's anything about 9/11 being covered up by a government conspiracy, it's the true depth of the ineptitude and failure of the US intelligence community, which gets trillions of dollars in funding annually). So I concede these might be considered conspiracies of a sort, but they're just not the sexy and glamorous ones some want to believe in.<br /><br />Unfortunately, government conspiracy theories have been used as an underpinning for some extreme political views masquerading as libertarianism and patriotism. I believe the current conspiracy bias of the paranormal/anomalist community has thrown added fuel on that fire with its current focus on seeing a conspiracy hiding behind every tree.<br /><br />There's a line between alternative thinking meant to stimulate thought and discussion and an all-encompassing knee-jerk paranoid world view. That line gets crossed more frequently than not in the paranormal community these days.<br />purrlgurrlhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06519835482606629362noreply@blogger.com