 Did you know that the early Church suppressed reports of Jesus’s marriage to Mary Magdaline? That a massive cover-up hid Francis Bacon’s authorship of Shakespeare’s plays? That the moon landing of 1969 was a hoax orchestrated by NASA? Conspiracy theories circulated long before the Internet, though social media spreads them farther and faster than ever.
Hard evidence refutes some rumors. The D.C. pizza joint alleged to house a pedophilia ring in its basement, in the Pizzagate scandal of 2016, has no basement. Others are merely unlikely. Real conspiracies do exist. But most conspiracy theories fail the test of Occam’s razor: Of two competing explanations, the simpler one is more likely. Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar. With true believers, a conspiracy theory is nearly impossible to debunk. Anyone who denies it is part of the conspiracy. What’s the attraction? We humans are wired to see patterns. How else could we expect the sun to rise daily or spring to follow winter? Life would be chaos. Seeing patterns, the more intricate the better, allows a sense of control when events feel all too random. We’re also wired to crave belonging, self-esteem, and purpose. Being privy to secret knowledge brings membership in a select, superior circle. The circle may share an intent to bring down the deep state, the pharmaceutical industry, or a cabal of global elites. The harder you push a conspiracy theorist, the more their defenses go up. What’s to do? Forget about logic. Tell them your stories and listen to theirs. Acknowledge their feelings. To offer connection and respect has value in itself, whether or not anyone changes their mind. Image: Photo by Aleksandr Popov on Unsplash.
4 Comments
Dennis Doren
8/25/2025 07:44:40 am
You said, "Being privy to secret knowledge brings membership..." I strongly agree, I believe that is the main reason that hard evidence is regularly ignored by those believing in a conspiracy. Trying to get them to change their minds is essentially the same as telling them they cannot keep their friends anymore. What logic would it take for any of us to give up our sense of belonging to our circle of friends and our family? Dare I say the process is quite analogous to trying to change someone's religious views when the person's strongest social affiliations are through a church, synagogue, or mosque. We are hardwired to be social, not to believe in logic, science, or hard evidence. It is why the concept of "alternative facts" took hold, a concept that defined the ingroup versus everyone else far more than anything related to facts. Conspiracies offer the same thing, nearly instantaneously. And the stronger the belief is held, the greater is the sense of membership. Almost makes me want to become a conspiracy theorist. Almost.
Matt
8/25/2025 05:20:43 pm
Yes, I think this is what convinced me to believe in various theories. (Of course to me they are not conspiracy theories, they are just theories.) For example, I believe that space and time are actually curved! The great prophets of my religion (even Einstein) have decreed that this is so. I can't test this myself -- I can barely even understand it. I just have faith that the wise ones in my church have thought more deeply about these matters than I ever will, and so I simply take their word for what I should believe to be true. I also believe that we live on a giant round ball that is spinning and hurtling through space. I admit this one is almost too conspiratorial for me, since I can see for myself that the Earth is flat, and of course I feel no spinning or hurtling at all. But the wise ones have written tomes on why it looks that way and feels that way, and why I should ignore this hard evidence. I have even been forced by the government to attend indoctrination classes that drill these reasons into you. So now I just take it on faith that these tomes are correct, mainly because that's what everyone around me thinks, and even everyone I respect in my chosen internet bubble. Some lofty members of my church have devoted their lives to understanding these tomes, sometimes even writing more of them. It must be true. It must. What would my friends say if I would stop believing it? No, I must be strong and continue to believe! 8/28/2025 03:36:50 pm
Ha ha! Good for a grin and also oh, so true. My chosen group membership is not the writers of the tomes themselves, but the multitudes that tell me those writers are credible. My values too, are strongly influenced by those around me with whom I feel the closest relationship. And for the things I figure out for myself, a major guide is their consistency with other things I already believe, which may go back to similar influences. That makes it hard for me even to sort out what I concluded from my own reasoning and what arose from peer group or parental influence. 8/28/2025 03:24:32 pm
Thank you for this, Dennis. It's good to have confirmation from someone who knows far more about psychology than I do, and to get more detail and examples. Leave a Reply. |
AuthorI'm a historian who writes novels and literary nonfiction. My home base is Madison, Wisconsin.
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