Why Conspiracy Theories?

Why Conspiracy Theories?

A Sermon to Countryside Church, Unitarian Universalist

January 28, 2024 for Community Ministry Sunday

The Rev. Dr. C. Scot Giles

I find conspiracy theories entertaining. You shouldn’t take them too seriously, but entertaining the idea of some completely different explanation for events is sort of fun.

But these things do sort of nag at the brain. That’s why by the time I’m finished with this sermon this morning, some of you will be worried. And that’s a good thing.

What’s showing here is my training as a philosopher (my first two degrees are in philosophy - pray for me).

Philosophers routinely run thought experiments to look for unexpected ideas and nuances. So we’re always asking if there is a different way to consider something, or if there might be some other explanation that accounts for what has transpired.

Perhaps like me you were a fan of the show The X-Files created by Chris Carter, and which aired over eleven seasons from 1993 to 2016. Some of the slogans from the show because memes: “The truth is out there;” “Trust no one;” “I want to believe.”

The plot of the series was that what people believed to be true about history was fake. Kennedy was assassinated by Men In Black. Aliens from outer space invaded long ago and control people all the time. Magic is real. The world is actually governed by a hidden shadow government.

The writers actually had more fun putting that show together than it ought to be legal to have, because they hit pretty much all the conspiracy theories that were common at the time.

Yet is gives me pause to realize that the theme from the show - that the country is actually run by a secret cabal; that there are aliens among us with their own agenda, and that the government is keeping all that secret, is not too different from what a lot of people believe in contemporary politics.

The Air Force keeps reassuring lawmakers in Washington that there is not in fact a secret fleet of crashed alien spacecraft stored at Area 51 in the Nevada dessert. The problem they keep having is that a lot of lawmakers do not believe them, preferring to believe that there is a military conspiracy to hide the truth.

The Deep State. A hidden base at Area 51. A worldwide network developing age-reversing drugs by torturing children. An unlikely messiah who will put it all to rights using a secret army - all of this can actually be found in contemporary politics right now.

Why do people keep creating farfetched tales that others are in control? Such things are corrosive to the love and connection that is supposed to tie us together. I will try to explain that, and how a loving and generous spirit can be a remedy.

What Are Conspiracy Theories

Conspiracy Theories are claims that deny the consensus opinion of events. Things are said to be different from how they appear.

Conspiracy Theories are not falsifiable. That it, it’s not possible to disprove them, because they employ what philosophers of Science call Grande Theory. That is, they are circular and keep referring back to themselves.

An example would be the claim that a secret corporation controls all of the media, and so attempts to expose their manipulations cannot happen because the secret corporation controls the media one would have to use to expose them.

There are lot of Conspiracy Theories, both great and small.

Black helicopters was a theory that was popular during my boyhood. It was a creation of a political group called the John Birch Society and predicted an attempt by the United Nations to take over the world. It comes back every so often.

There is the classic (and completely fake) book titled the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, proven a forgery created in Imperial Russian in 1903. It tells of a supposed international Jewish conspiracy to dominate the world. Hitler was fond of it. Neo-Nazi websites give away free copies in electronic format. You can download a copy this morning if you know where to look.

Then there are the claims about chemtrails. Those linear clouds you see in the sky caused by water vapor from jet engines, are really are chemical or biological agents released under a secret government policy and make people into unquestioning sheep.

When I was serving the First Universalist Church of Southold, Long Island, there were people in the congregation who sincerely believed that there was a governmental installation called the HAARP (which stood for High-frequency Active Auroral Research) at Brookhaven National Labortory that used electromagnetic energy to make people believe what the government wanted.

They had plans to make devices called Holy Hand Grenades that you could throw at cell-phone towers to block the evil governmental signals. The plans to make those things can still be found all over the internet, and these days you can order them ready-made from Etsy. They are not explosive. They are said to work by means of “etheric vibrations” - whatever that is.

And on, and on, and on. The current Q-Anon Conspiracy Theory is only the latest instantiation of the human tendency to entertain conspiracy theories, and is recycling a list of old conspiracies in modern dress - from anti-Semitic blood liable to the claim that the world economy is being manipulated by Hungarian-American investor George Soros. Not to mention satanic pizza parlors.

And those are just some of the big ones. There are lots of little conspiracy theories too.

In fact, religious congregations are hotbeds of such things, and I don’t mean just about political causes.

“Did you hear what the Board decided at a secret meeting they had last month!”

“I hear the Finance Committee has a plot to make everyone give more! They have found a way to take money directly from your bank account”

“If you knew what they are really teaching our children in that church school you’d object!”

Let me say clear, I just made those up. But that sort of rumor mongering is so common in congregations that I bet church leaders in this congregation today were clenching their abdominal muscles when I said all that. They know that in every congregation there are always some people dumb enough to believe that sort of thing. And who will continue to think it might be true, even though I just said I made the whole thing up.

But of course I’m a minister. So naturally I’d say that. But you know…”where there’s smoke. There’s fire.”

Let me repeat. I made all of those things up. There is no truth to any of them. But the ideas nag at you don’t they? And there is a reason for that.

The Negative Brain

One of my baseline principles in my professional work is to remind people that your brain evolved to keep you safe, not to make you happy. The way your brain tries to keep you safe is to exaggerate anything that might be a threat. Because that will make you cautious and cautious creatures survive better than those that are not cautious.

Conspiracy Theories play directly into this biological trait we all have.

If you encounter an idea that sounds threatening, deep structures in your brain that are part of your information processing system activate, just in case the idea is correct and a danger is approaching. It is far better for your evolutionary prospects to make any mistake in the direction of over-reacting than in the direction of under-reaction.

The trouble is that, in our interconnected and unfiltered world, this is no longer true.

As far as we can tell by examining skeletal remains, the human body has not evolved much since the Late Stone Age when we harnessed fire and invented clothing. Therefore, our brain structures evolved to help us with the social complexities of a Neolithic tribal campsite.

Our cognitive mechanisms are now being overwhelmed by inputs from cable television, the internet, streaming videos, the 24-hour news cycle where every bad or worrisome thing is punched up to encourage clicks, ratings, likes, or social engagement.

What has happened is that we have lost the ability to effectively filter signal from noise. We no longer can easily determine what is valid from what is manipulative clamor, intended to grab our attention but which lacks real meaning.

That’s what Conspiracy Theories are. Clamor.

They are popular because they grab our attention because that is how the brain is wired. The witch hysteria, claims of plots by Freemasons, Stolen Elections for which no evidence can be found. Voting machines influenced by the family of the late Hugo Chavez, and on and on.

There Is More

But wait. There’s more. Yes, Conspiracy Theories get a lot of their power because they unintentionally trigger the brain’s arousal mechanism. But they do something else, even more worrisome.

We live in a time of high social anxiety. Much of that results from the overstimulation our society inputs into our nervous systems. I suspect some of it results from our technology outpacing our emotional and psychological ability to cope with the stress of our civilization.

When you visit a mental health professional and they administer any of the standard psychological tests, those tests are usually sent to centralized computer scoring services. Because of that it is possible to de-identify the data and extract what is called “meta-data” from the mass of information submitted. This data tells us what is happening in the psychology of the population in general.

People are far, far more anxious today than they used to be. If you don’t believe me, talk to your kids.

Back in my day when I was a young man we were all worried about a nuclear war but took comfort from the claim that a professional and trained military were on the job.

We did worry anyway, but we did not have to worry we would be shot by a random person while at school, or while attending a concert. We did not have to worry that our food was full of microplastics. Yeah, there were drugs, but they were no where near as powerful as what is on the street now. Sex couldn’t make you sick for life like it can now.

We knew that higher education always paid off. Well, people today are not sure. Back then we knew that a hospital stay might cost you a couple of week’s pay, but it would not create debt that would wipe you out. There used to be serious job security and a meaningful social safety net. Talk to your kids. They don’t see those things anymore.

The result is that people live with a toxic baseline of worry in a way people have not lived with before. Conspiracy Theories help people cope.

Alan Moore

There is a 70ish year old graphic artist in Great Britain by the name of Alan Moore. He’s a colorful and interesting guy. You may never have heard of him but he is the creator of the stores Watchman, V for Vendetta, Swamp Thing, and The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen.

Conspiracy Theories play a role in his graphic fiction so Moore has done some serious thinking about the hold such things have on the human mind. He has come up with an idea that I believe is spot on.

One of the reasons why people are attracted to Conspiracy Theories is that they lower anxiety.

That may seem counter-intuitive. How could an idea that there are secret plotters running the world do anything except may us more worried! Moore’s point is that they do the opposite.

You see, if you believe in a Conspiracy Theory, by definition, you believe that someone has a plan. You may not like the plan you think someone has, but the essence of a Conspiracy Theory is that someone is in charge. They have a plan. There is an order to things, and life is unfolding according to a program run by powerbrokers.

Believing that lowers your anxiety. There is not chaos. There is order. The secret cabal in charge as a plan.

The reality, argues Alan Moore, is actually much more frightening than a secret cabal with a plan. The reality is that actually no one is in charge. No one actually has a plan. Things are just happening. That is infinitely more stressful than believing in a Conspiracy.

Therefore, people will adopt the most absurd ideas, the most outrageous chicanery, because that makes the world seem less stressful.

Such theories are dangerous. At the risk of sounding like a Conspiracy Theorist myself, there are political operatives who think that fostering Conspiracy Theories is helpful because the keep people distracted. Distracted people don’t notice what is really going down. While there may not in fact be anyone in charge, and there may not be a plan, there are people who are happy to take advantage of you if you’re not careful.

Anyone who has gotten burned because they didn’t read the fine print can tell you all about that.

The Four Loves

In 1960 a well-known writer by the name of C. S. Lewis published a book called The Four Loves. Some of you may be familiar with Lewis’s work as he is also the author of the popular young adult novels called The Chronicles of Narnia, the best known story of which is The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe.

In this book, drawn from a series of radio talks he gave in 1958, Lewis pointed out that in classical times people recognized that there was more than one word for love. In fact, he argued, that in scripture, there were four different sorts of love and they are marked by four different Greek words. When the New Testament was translated from its original Greek into Latin (and then German and later English) the distinction was lost. His point was that we need it back.

Lewis was writing for a popular audience and so he used English names for the four loves: Affection, Friendship, Eros and Charity. In this sermon I return to the original Greek words because that makes me sound more intelligent.

The first sort of love Lewis identified goes by the Greek name Storge. This is the sort of love one feels when there is an empathy bond. It is the sort of thing a parent may feel for a child or a child for a parent. It is what siblings might feel for each other. It is also what might unite a military unit that works as a team, or a group of physicians in a trauma center. It arises naturally among those who have found themselves bonded together by circumstance.

The second sort of love goes by the Greek name Philia. This is the sort of love you feel toward people who are like you. It’s friendship. Lewis argued this was one of the highest forms of love as it is not based on biology, need or activities. It’s the love you feel for someone you might call your Best Friend, even if they are quite different from you.

The third form of love is called Eros in Greek, and we take our modern word “erotic” from it.

Yes, it denotes that sort of connection that makes adult videos possible - a purely physical attraction. However, Lewis means far more by it than that.

Eros is the basis of romantic love between people. It is also the basis of love of an artist for their creation and a professional for their work (which is why some professions are said to be “callings”). It can have a very dark side too, and some people in its grip will stay together when they would be better off apart. It is one of the most powerful forms of love.

The final form of love takes the Greek word Agape. This is the attachment one might feel for another that is independent of friendship, attraction or blood connection. It’s what you feel toward the suffering homeless person, the orphan, the person displaced by war. It’s the love you feel for someone when there is nothing that is coming back to you for feeling it.

The form of love called Agape is more an act of will than of feeling. It would be easier to look the other way when you see someone in need that you do not know. You have to will yourself to pay attention to that person. It is a decision to think better of someone than external circumstances might suggest.

Agape is an effort of will. You have to decide to respond to it rather than look the other way. Agape is the key to breaking the biologically determined hold on your mind that comes along with conspiratorial thoughts.

As columnist David Brooks said recently in the New York Times:

“I’d argue that we have become so sad, lonely, angry and mean as a society in part because so many people have not been taught or don’t bother practicing to enter sympathetically into the minds of their fellow human beings.”

What he means by that is we take the easy way out of our worries and complexities. It is easier to blame than to give someone a break that doesn’t pay a benefit toward oneself.

Because Conspiracy Theories quickly attract our attention they provide an excuse dismiss other people who have an opinion that is different from our own.

“Well, they’re in the grip of a dumb Conspiracy Theory and therefore we can just laugh at them because they can’t have anything important to say.” Or, we buy into a Conspiracy Theory of our own and don’t take seriously that someone else may be sincere in their disagreement with us

The ancient Greek philosopher Epictetus observed that if you put a piece of lit charcoal next to an unlit piece, one of two things will happen. Either one will ignite the other or one will extinguish the other. He believed we have better lives and a better society if we try to be like the piece that shares it’s energy.

To do that you have to be willing to try. To regard the other person with Agape. You hear them out. You think about what stress they are under that is driving what they say. You don’t just walk away. You try to stay engaged.

This may work and things might improve. You may convince them. They may convince you or, more likely, you agree to disagree, but without anger or disrespect.

In this election year, and in this society, where Conspiracy Theories are everywhere. It will take an effort of will by each of us to not fall for the con. To ignore the biological alarm, or the false sense of order conspiracy theories provide. Instead, we need to respect people who may differ from us profoundly. For only then can we set them alight with Agape. I suspect this is the only way forward.

And that’s my sermon.