Novum Organum Mundi

An important part of being rational is that you hold (or at least strive to hold) consistent sets of belief about the world. Of course none of us achieves this fully. We are always, at every moment deceiving ourselves about the world and our place in it, usually to preserve our ego or to maintain the level of optimism required to prevent ourselves being paralysed into depressive inaction and death.

The conspiracy theorist presents an extreme example of this. His is a life of contradiction. His sermons very often begin or end with a plea to the audience to “think for themselves” or “not believe what they hear in the mainstream media”, which are certainly useful maxims for any sceptical person to bear in mind. But what he will go on to propose completely and bizarrely violates one or both of these maxims at any one time.

First let us consider the ‘mainstream media’. This usually covers every medium the ordinary person will have heard of. These cannot be trusted because they are complicit with whichever conspiratorial group the theorist believes is secretly in control. This means that anything written in a newspaper or aired on the television can be dismissed out of hand, since the executives and editors are in the pay of their sinister masters. And so are the journalists, who often see things first-hand and speak to people affected by events – meaning all of them must be constantly fabricating these experiences. This operation is certainly impressive in its scale. Those who think we are heading towards the New World Order are obviously too late – with power to manipulate all information like this then we are clearly already there.

Yet all this distrust of the mainstream media and its reporting never prevents the theorist from using one of these very sources if it tenuously and indirectly supports his narrative. This is perfectly safe because it can always be dismissed later. And how could the theorist determine which stories are false and which are to be believed? Well, obviously those that support the narrative are correct, and those that don’t are not. The conspiracy theorist can never be surprised by the news because it only ever confirms what he already knew.

Of course everyone is guilty of this to a greater or lesser extent. Perhaps the conspiracy theorist is just exercising an excellently pure level of scepticism in the face of unsubstantiated claims. Except of course that he is not a man of suspended judgement. On the contrary, his view are some of the strongest and most sincerely, fervently held. There are foundational beliefs we all have which colour the very way in which we experience the world around us. For some people these are religious beliefs – beliefs in a personal deity or form of cosmic justice – for others they are a belief in brute mechanism, a belief in a future classless society, mere depression, mere joviality. The conspiracy theorist does not hold back and cast a sceptical gaze on everything, like an intellectual paragon, rather he dismisses one set of sources (albeit selectively) and draws on another set to construct his own narrative.

The most that can be said for this other set of sources is that they have grown ever-more self-supporting as secondary and tertiary literature has emerged. It’s easy to find the all-important patterns if they have been put there to find. The orbit of Saturn, the height of the Great Pyramids and the date of a terrorist attack may have something in common, if you look hard enough. But why not the rotation of Saturn, or the orbit of another planet? Why that Pyramid of all of them, and why the height and not the mass? And why put your terrorist attack on the day that fits the pattern?

The last is the strangest one of all. If the New World Order are all-powerful (or nearly so) then why should they leave all these clues of their presence everywhere in plain sight? If the date of 9/11 gives such clear proof to people on the internet that it was an inside job, shouldn’t the NWO have carried it out a day earlier to put us off the scent? If they control the world banking system (somewhat more plausible, if you leave out the Knights Templar stuff) then why would they leave sly nods and winks to fact that they are Masons on the design of the dollar bill? Surely all of their allies are also Masons and are aware of what is going on already. Of course, some of these symbols are so generic that they inevitably turn up everywhere. I learnt recently that a triangle of dots is apparently a Masonic symbol. I shudder to think what that very pattern of holes in the ball means about ten-pin bowling, or what sort of unspeakable ritual I have unknowingly been participating in when I routinely achieve those strings of effortless strikes.

I set myself a deliberate aim at the beginning of this piece not to ascend into mockery. Since I can feel myself doing that right now, I’ll call this one closed for now. Most of the stuff that I post on the internet in any domain is unedited and this is no exception. It is for that reason that I stop here rather than going back to change any of it. Either that or it’s the fact that I’ve just opened my post and am eager to try the free sample of talcum powder that has arrived from Mr Rothschild.

Keep the faith.