Alien overlords. The Illuminati. Kevin James is funny. 5G causes exceptionally fast download speeds in urban areas. The Moon Landing was faked. The Earth is a flat, crisp, delicious, lightly-salted wafer.
Oh, those rascally conspiracy theories. They seem to be all the rage with youngsters these days.
And by “youngsters”, I really mean “boomers.”
I’m kidding, of course. It’s an established fact that boomers have the true nature of reality nailed down pretty accurately./s
For the rest of us lost at sea, I figured I would share one of the key take-aways from my very own time mentally lost at sea.
From my Surfboard Sessions in Search for Truth, let me paraphrase Rule #1: “whatever I think I know is probably at least partially incorrect.”
This thought almost single-handedly wiped out my entire belief structure that I had held up to that point in my life in my early 30s.
To quote French Garfield, “Oof, le OOF.”
Without having 100% confidence in my understanding of some greater truth,1Note that it is my understanding that is lacking, not the almighty deity or whatever the truly correct answer may be. I had to find a way to navigate through life in good-faith. I mean, I still had to function somehow, right?
Enter conspiracy theories. Every. Last. ----- One. Of. Them.
All of a sudden, I found myself unable to so easily eliminate most, if not all, of those pesky suckers. My mind was fertile ground, ready to thoughtfully consider almost anything. This couldn’t be good for business. This couldn’t be good for anybody.2Seinfeld/Kenny Rogers mash-up of a pop-culture reference.
I could wax long about how I came to my conclusions, but let me try to cut to the chase: as a rule of thumb, most likely that conspiracy theory be bullshit.
Which one, you ask? Whichever one you’re thinking of right now. The one right in front of me, piquing my curiosity. The one that you wish your loved one wasn’t buying into. It doesn’t matter–it’s most likely a load of male bovine excrement.
First off, they can’t all be true.3Again, see my post from last week Surfboard Waxes Philosophical. That alone should disqualify a majority of them.
But–and this is a fairly notable ‘but’ here–some of them are most definitely true. The odds that all things slapped with a Conspiracy Theory label are all false? That would have to be astoundingly small.
Given these two almost near-absolute truths, how does one decide which ones are the real ones? The ones worth believing in? The ones worth sounding crazy for? The ones that will save us from becoming alien hamburgers?
In layman’s terms, I like to approach it as if I were a gambling man: how much of my hard-earned money would I wager on the veracity of a randomly-selected Theory?
And the answer is…
Three percent. That’s my best–and rather generous–guess at how many Theories are largely true.4I’m simplifying things and assuming the remaining 97% is largely false. Even then, that would be what? Roughly 32-to-1 odds?5I had to look it up myself to be sure: https://www.investopedia.com/articles/investing/042115/betting-basics-fractional-decimal-american-moneyline-odds.asp
If I owed a bookie an insurmountable sum of money, and was desperately in need of getting rich quick, then I might consider taking those odds.
But I’m not. I’m just trying to live my life here, man.
Taking those odds would be insanely unwise. I would become one broke-ass mofo real quick. I don’t care even if the payoff is that extra-fuzzy sensation of being “in the know,” that feeling of specialness for being enlightened and not just another brainwashed sheep.
And y’all know me by now: I stand at the ready to not be bougie, so often the Forbidden Fruit offered by a Theory can be a rather tempting proposition for me.
But I gotta stay focused: the more improbable hoops of logic I need to jump through in order to believe some fantastical tale someone is trying to sell me, the more unwise buying what they’re selling would be.
There’s also one more possibility that should be considered: a given Theory’s purpose might very well be to misdirect us from what really is happening. You could easily run the risk of believing in something incorrect and rather improbable, meanwhile you’re dismissing the much more likely and perhaps obvious truth staring you in the face.
…and it’s at this point that I have to confess something to you: I got mad respect for the concept of Conspiracy Theories. You gotta hand it to ’em, it’s absolute genius.
True, it’s evil genius, but genius nonetheless.
It’s actually pretty beautiful in a twisted way: you wanna conspire to do some crazy shit? Well, don’t hold back on the ‘crazy’ part.
In fact, the more outlandish, the better. The key here is to make anyone who tries to get the truth out to the world sound crazy af. That should be your goal.
Then, on top of that, take a bunch of other partial-truths, turn up the fantastical factor a notch or two, and release them into the wild.
All you have to do after that is sit back with your mint julep and watch all the Truthers tumble down one rabbit hole after another, tuckering themselves plumb out playing some twisted game of Wacko Whack-A-Mole.6No relation to Woke Whack-A-Mole.
Alas, given that I will probably never find myself on the fun and cheeky side of a conspiracy theory, this is all a rather disheartening realization.
Not to go too nihilistic on you, but The Truth isn’t always going to win.
The stunning conclusion to this thought rampage of mine was: you want the truth? YOU WANT THE TRUTH?!? You can’t handle the exhausting burden of thoughtfully considering and extensively researching every last one of them to figure out which 97 of them are red herrings and which few you should be rightfully scared shitless of.7I didn’t want to say this out loud, but we are SO f*cked.
In other words, given the assumption that at least one of these crazy-ass theories explains more about the on-goings here on Earth than is comfortable for our small minds, even with the most earnest, open-yet-skeptical effort is almost assuredly fail.
Well, that’s just depressing.
Nevertheless, the path forward in a life lived in good-faith remains.
The point of the story is that being wrong on occasion is inevitable. Accept that and move on. Otherwise, you’re might find yourself unwisely betting on every ----- improbable claim that comes along out of fear of being made a fool.
Oh, the sad irony of it all8By this I mean, how sadly ironic it would be that, ones desperate attempts not to be made a fool directly resulted in them being a ----- fool.…
A quick note: It just so happened that in the midst of planning out this blog post, HBO’s Emmy-Award Winning humor/news show Last Week Tonight did a much more thoughtful deep dive on the topic barely a week ago. I highly recommend checking it out, because, as you can imagine, they did an infinitely better and more thorough job than I ever could have. Plus, they actually have created a practical resource for constructively talking to your friends and family about questionable theories.
Other interesting articles on the topic (from a Christian perspective this time):
On Christians Spreading Coronavirus Conspiracy Theories–Christianity Today
Why Your Christian Friends and Family Members are so Easily Fooled By Conspiracy Theories
Content created on: 23/24/25 July 2020 (Thurs/Fri/Sat)
Footnotes & References:
Leave a Reply