Tag: conspirituality

In defense of the conspiracy believers!

In defense of the conspiracy believers!

It is often said that if you are going to argue for your own perspective, you should show a little good will also to try to understand the other party’s view. So I will try to do that then!

“Why are there crazy conspiracy theories?”

1.
If you are a little “meta-conspiratorial”, you could think that there may actually be some ongoing shady business that benefit from the focus of the debate being on the most crazy k-theories instead. Because then these people can continue in peace and quiet with their cartels, unholy alliances, hidden agendas, etc – the real conspiracies – without anyone caring.

And if focus of the debate is on the crazy k-theories, it can even have the effect that you almost feel sorry for the “men of power”, solidifying with them. You go blind to or miss what they do that are actually stupid, weird, unethical.

That is, the conspiracy theories may be planted to hide something at least as big and sinister, but not as crazy. The crazy k-theories are a kind of fog curtain that is shared in good faith, or completely consciously, to dribble away the public.

2.
And if you are to think more psychologically, why the more crazy theories (for I stand by the fact that there are som pretty weird ones circulating out there!) have arisen, it could be as with those who become “symptom bearers” in their familiy… There are stuff you’re not allowed to mention or even think about. Unexplained, unseen, unreflected tensions. But in some cases such tensions brake thru, into the open, not seldom in a dramatic and perhaps excessive way.

The psychotic’s story may be worth listening to. What can be seen in the wild images is themes that tell a truth (a moody, frightening father becomes “Satan” in a psychotic story, i.ex).

In the case of the conspiracy thories: Something bad is going on in the world, but people is unwilling to hear about it or aknowledge it thrmselves. The most sensitive, sensitive individuals become a kind of whistleblowers. They just have to get it away from their chest. It then can present itself in partially a distorted form. Even though the essence is true.

Yes, there were some thoughts.

(Picture: “Turning the coat after the wind,” from an old Dutch painting. It would be me then, in this text, trying to advocate an opposite view 🙂 )

(Here is “Part 2“)

Conspiracy Spirituality (Conspirituality)

Conspiracy Spirituality (Conspirituality)

Is it Covid-19 that raised the temperature and finally made everything break, for people you thought you knew? And that lowered the threshold for all sorts of conspiratorial one is prepared to accept as true or at least “interesting”…

Jules Evans on “conspirituality”:

There are two mood one finds in the history of spirituality, going back to Gnosticism and running through Romanticism. On the one hand, there is the euphoric mood — the universe is conspiring in your favor, you can fulfil your divine potential, you can change the world simply by changing your thoughts. If enough people raise their consciousness, a new age of love will dawn on the planet. This is Oprah’s inspiring gospel.

But then the new age of love doesn’t happen, adversity strikes, the economy tanks, shit goes wrong. And the dreamers start to ask, why hasn’t the age of love dawned? What or who is blocking us? That’s when paranoid conspiracies can arise.

As Isaiah Berlin puts it in his lectures on romanticism:

“There is another, more pessimistic, version [of Romanticism]… Although we individuals seek to liberate ourselves, yet the universe is not to be tamed in this easy fashion. There is something behind, something in the dark depths of the unconscious, or of history, there is something not seized by us which frustrates our dearest wishes…

This paranoia [can] take the form of looking for all kinds of conspiracies in history… Perhaps history is formed by forces over which we have no control. Someone is at the back of it all: perhaps the Jesuits, perhaps the Jews, perhaps the Freemasons… We the enlightened, we the virtuous, we the wise and the kind seek to do this or that, but somehow all our efforts end in nothing, and therefore there must be some fearful hostile fore lying in wait for us.”

Why didn’t the age of love dawn? Because of Them. Why did my business fail? Because of Them. This is the paranoid version of the New Age dream. This is how spirituality curdles into conspirituality.

I want to write more about this conspirituality. For me, it’s mostly a name that fits in with your own observations and feelings. Not so much study. But it’s certainly a concept that seems to be “trending” right now. What a sign of freshness! Podcasts, blogs, books… In the text above, by Jules Evans (who came by e-mail, o therefore could not be linked to) he mentions, among other things, what appears to be the birth of the term.

It was an article in the Journal of Contemporary Religion that came ten years ago: “The Emergence of Conspirituality” (2011), by Charlotte Ward &amp. David Voas.

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/13537903.2011.539846?scroll=top&needAccess=true

“The female-dominated New Age (with its positive focus on self) and the male-dominated realm of conspiracy theory (with its negative focus on global politics) may seem antithetical. There is a synthesis of the two, however, that we call ‘conspirituality’. We define, describe, and analyse this hybrid system of belief; it has been noticed before without receiving much scholarly attention. Conspirituality is a rapidly growing web movement expressing an ideology fuelled by political disillusionment and the popularity of alternative worldviews. It has international celebrities, bestsellers, radio and TV stations. It offers a broad politico-spiritual philosophy based on two core convictions, the first traditional to conspiracy theory, the second rooted in the New Age: 1) a secret group covertly controls, or is trying to control, the political and social order, and 2) humanity is undergoing a ‘paradigm shift’ in consciousness. Proponents believe that the best strategy for dealing with the threat of a totalitarian ‘new world order’ is to act in accordance with an awakened ‘new paradigm’ worldview.”

Because, something happened… This thing with circles in cornfields, UFOs (possibly darkened by governments), etc… This has been in “new circles” for a long time. After 9/11? Trump? and now Covid-19?, it has become so aggressive, person-bound… (And, yes, I’m aware I’m not that nice when I get into this topic)…

There are, for example, those who claim that Elvis just faked his death and lives on, still going on in the discounts on Graceland. I don’t have a lot of trouble with that. I give him all the happiness and send grateful thoughts every time I hear (about) him 🙂 I’m more concerned about this whole QAnon-David Icke&Co.-Jewish conspiracy-9/11-Trump cult and all its tentacles. To me, it seems like a single out-of-the-union hallucinatory mumbojumbo, pardon my French.

A very deep rabbit hole

A very deep rabbit hole

The world is not a pleasant place. But here it is night black. A deep rabbit hole…

A little background… I have an FB acquaintance, now retired, but in every way a trained, critically drilled human. She has repeatedly shared a rumor that Bill Gates was recently convicted in a secret military court for various abominations and executed by hanging. All right.

But then I saw that Gates was interviewed in real time yesterday at a major climate conference in London.

https://twitter.com/economistimpact/status/1445389622486388737?t=2KQIR41Sn3-rdzAhvLOTuA&s=19

At least that contradicts the rumor that he’s dead. I pointed out this and that it would be nice to share this with your followers as well.

Today she had linked a post by a Yrsa Häggström, where you can read:

I can understand that everything seems so confusing when you can see the same person on TV, but read here that he/she is dead. But don’t forget that these people have doppelgangers/clones and then there’s CGi technology (like PhotoShop but for TV). That’s all the Deep State does to hide its own shortcomings and to manipulate us viewers into thinking these people are still in our midst.

Till mina ifrÃ¥gasättande läsare…

In this post I commented

I just don’t want to get into this rabbit hole, sorry, NN… Is it because I’m ignorant, lethargic, gullible… Sure, I saw Bill Gates being interviewed at some super-climate event just the day before yesterday… Maybe just a clone, doppelgänger, as I saw, or maybe fake television, advanced data manipulation… But no, I really don’t think so. She’s skeptical that Vilks died in a car accident, too. Phew… She sees patterns… I see a pattern, a tendency, me with…

My acquaintance replied that she too, like this Häggström, may also feel wondering if the artist Lars Vilks’ death was really just a normal car accident. And that she hopes that “there are some serious investigators who dare to come up with some truth”…

To which I answered like this

NN, through your channels you will receive “revelations” that he a) was killed by the Deep State, b) beamed into space by an extraterrestrial civilization, c) taken to a remote research station to be deprogrammed there by the Shadow Califate, d) recruited by the White Hats & brought by submarine to D Trump’s residence to be his secret adviser, or perhaps e) himself staged his death, The policemen bit him to death during the journey, but he himself quickly crawled out of the wreckage & into the bushes, pulled off his skin suit and then crawled back into a swamp like the lizard he had always been. Just wait and see

(Sorry, NN, that’s not bad, but I can go crazy about this kind of nonsense…)

Lars Vilks has lived with a death sentence over him for many years. One theory, my acquaintance points out, is that someone new managed to execute it. To that I answered

Those who thought the fatwa was well deserved are of course satisfied. Even though Vilks died in a completely trivial, tragic car accident.

I feel like the explanation with which you’re leaning has something to do with “cognitive style”… Heard about that experiment where people – Christians, atheists and alternative spirituals – were put in front of a computer screen where 100 dots shifted randomly, but told them to signal when a motive appeared? The latter saw significantly more such meaningful patterns… Angels, animals, etc.

Ps. The study can be read about in an article by Farias, Claridge &lalljee (2005). Ds.

When the embers have fallen

When the embers have fallen

And what’s the difference between a inspired, alternative minded person, with a sunny outlook on life, and a grumpy, petty paranoid misanthropist, then?

About 30, 40 years 😉

Here’s an example of really bad science. A quote I put in my pocket many years ago. And which I’ve picked up many times since then. Written by (hold on!) an anonymous writer on a blog who referred personal communication with an unnamed researcher. But what does it matter! When the content itself is like gold. In the field where psychology and (new) spirituality overlap.

“I suspect that what’s going on is that New Age, now entering its third generation, has developed a theodicy. Now, this is a theological term, but it essentially means an explanation of the existence of evil – why bad things happen to good people.

For some of those in the New Age milieu – Foster Gamble, David Icke, Whitley Strieber, Duncan Rhodes and others, all incidentally in middle age and with a long term involvement in the New Age milieu – an explanation is needed as why, if we’ve entered the Age of Aquarius, is the world less peaceful, equal and progressive than ever? Conspiracy theories offer such a theodicy – the New Age hasn’t happened because evil people prevented it from happening.”

Muertos, 2012

A quote on the same subject. Here it is about such psychology that talks about “elevated” states to strive for or to achieve. Paul Vitz, from his book Psychology as Religion, 1977:

“Second, as people aged, they realized that many of the things thought necessary for self-actualization would not be attainable in their lives. Besides interpersonal disasters, there were career failures, serious health problems, and many other disappointments. The discrepancy between the promised ‘high’ of the Maslovian self-actualization or Jungian individuation and the reality of their lives created a vast disappointment and ‘credibility gap.’ The belief that psychology could make you happy, that it was the answer, began to fade.”