From the Editor’s Desk: Conspiracy Theory ⭐️

Humans are hardwired to see conspiracy. I wish I could find the original article, but I vividly recall reading 20 years ago or more that this all dates back to prehistoric times when some early humans would see a tiger or other predator hiding in the tall grass while some would not; those who did survived, and those who did not were killed, assuming there really was a tiger. And that latter detail didn't matter, because those who thought they saw something dangerous were the ones who bred and multiplied.

This is why some believe today in Sasquatch, UFOs, or the Loch Ness Monster, that JFK couldn't possibly have been killed by a single gunman, that the moon landings were fake, the earth is flat, vaccines don't save lives, or the U.S. government for some reason caused or allowed the 9/11 attacks. Pick your favorite conspiracy theory, and point fingers and laugh if you're so inclined. But the truth this, we're the evolutionary result of history, and that history makes it very difficult not to see patterns everywhere and to ascribe purpose to what is almost always just chance. This quality is among several things–like faith and hope–that make humans unique, I think.

But here's what I know: Like most people, I have to work to suppress these feelings sometimes. I like to think of myself as logical and analytical, of choosing evidence and facts over feelings. But I see patterns everywhere, too, and I see purpose in events or things that are just happenstance. I am not unique in that regard at all. And like everything else in life, all I can do is try. I fret when I see friends and other loved ones falling for the stupidity of conspiracy theories, but I also get it.

You may have seen the 1980s sci-fi action movie They Live, starring former professional wrestler "Rowdy" Roddy Piper. It's most well-known for the iconic line, "I have come here to chew bubble gum and kick ass, and I'm all out of bubble gum," which was later reused in the Duke Nukem videogame series. That's hilarious and, God help me, even iconic. But I best recall being taken by the sunglasses that Piper's character finds in the movie that let him see which humans were really aliens and alerted him to the subliminal messages the aliens were using to ensure mankind was docile and compliant.

There are elements of Invasion of the Bodysnatchers in They Live, of course, but to me this is really about conspiracy theories and how they can be true, just as that tiger lurking in the tall grass was sometimes really there. And if you think about the history of mankind, you can see that many conspiracy theories, including the invented one in They Live, are rooted in the distrust that the common folk have in the ruling class. This was true in feudal Europe, it was true in the Vietnam/Watergate era of the early 1970s, and it's true today. In fact, the Internet and now AI have only amplified this problem. Which is interesting because the only thing worse than blindly distrusting everything...