The Reality Illiteracy of those who Mock Conspiracy Theorists
January 29, 2012 1 Comment
by Anthony Wile
Daily Bell
January 29, 2012
From Social Psychological and Personality Science (SPPS), a journal from the independent publisher Sage Publications, comes an article that has predictably seen wide distribution on the Internet. It implies that those who believe in globalist conspiracy theories are illogical – even downright nutty.
The article is entitled ”Dead and Alive: Beliefs in Contradictory Conspiracy Theories” and the thesis of the article is that people who believe in conspiracy theories eventually become so immersed in them and so mesmerized that they do not realize they are holding contradictory beliefs.
“Conspiracy theories can form a monological belief system: A self-sustaining worldview comprised of a network of mutually supportive beliefs. The present research shows that even mutually incompatible conspiracy theories are positively correlated in endorsement.” (SPPS Abstract)
“Conspiratorialists” become so distrustful of “government” and “authority” that they will impute any and every kind of malevolence to them.
Thus it is that people can claim, on the one hand, that Osama bin Laden is “dead” and died years ago, while simultaneously claiming that bin Laden remains alive and that US and Pakistan government authorities are not being truthful about him and his physical state.
Of course, I’ve never run into anyone, who claims that bin Laden is ALIVE. But it’s true that here at the Daily Bell we’ve run articles explaining that bin Laden probably died years ago. See, for instance, “Osama bin Laden is Dead Again?”
The SPPS article would likely have you believe this is an outrageous conspiracy theory. But given that FOX news ran a report on bin Laden’s death in 2001, and given that Pakistan’s former president Benazir Bhutto herself claimed that bin Laden died in the early 2000s (supposedly as the result of an assassination), it doesn’t seem so far-fetched to speculate that bin Laden didn’t die as the result of a US raid in 2011.
But that’s almost minor stuff. Articles like this, despite their scientific patina, are deeply illiterate. Why so? Because invariably such articles won’t deal with the bedrock financial illiteracy of current economic and political paradigms.
Imagine if the world were based on lies. Well, unfortunately, that’s the truth. The lies go far beyond “who shot JFK” or whether the US government was directly or indirectly involved in 9/11.
When one uses the logical framework of Austrian, free-market analysis to analyze the Way the World Works in the modern age, one inevitably comes to the conclusion that modern society is built around fundamental untruths.
The first one is economic: It is the idea that central bankers can efficiently and effectively set the price of money. They cannot.
Every time central bankers decide on how much money to print or where short interest rates should be, the decisions are “fixing” prices – and price-fixing never works. Price-fixing distorts economies and causes a wealth shift from those who create it to those who don’t and may not know what to do with it. Over time, aggressively mis-priced money causes first recessions and then depressions.
The second lie is that laws and regulations are necessary and that they can save society from “anarchy.” In fact, anarchy is only the absence of government. That’s the real definition. And absence of government does not necessarily imply “chaos.” Just as setting interest rates fixes the price of money, so every law and regulation is a price fix as well, preventing someone from doing something within the context of the marketplace. This also constitutes a wealth transfer.
One can have a perfectly adequate and satisfying society without formal government, certainly without the kinds of intrusive and murderous governments we’ve got today. History is full of examples of societies that flourished with at least minimal government, especially societies where power truly flowed from the bottom up.
The third lie is that government is essential for purposes of defense and defending its citizens. But a quick survey of modern wars shows a disturbing tendency of governments – especially certain Western governments – to foment the very wars that citizens believe they’re being protected from.
War is the “health of the state” – the way that those in power consolidate their hold while punishing their enemies using phony pretexts having to do with “treason” and “leaking classified information.” Sound familiar?
It is what we call the Internet Reformation that has gradually shed light on the fundamental untruths permeating modern society in both the developed and developing world.
The Internet, like the Gutenberg Press before it, is a revolutionary device that has allowed people access to information that was hitherto denied or covered up, especially in the 20th century when the power elite‘s control over society was perhaps at its apex.
A conspiracy likely DOES exist. The Internet easily reveals not just facts that illuminate it, but also PATTERNS that show the same command-and-control strategies implemented throughout history, over and over.
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