dogma
35 years ago, humans landed on the moon.
Supposedly.
One of the first flamewar I had the misfortune of witnessing and being caught in the ashfall was a discussion about how NASA faked the Apollo 11 landing, which was instigated by a high school batchmate in our alumni mailing list. It was pretty intense, and a total waste of greymatter. sagarmin, do you remember this battle royale of the ubergeeks in our batch?
Extremely bizzarre assertions notwithstanding, there is a certain attraction to being able to explain world-changing and life-altering events as the end result of some diabolocal plot cooked up by a secret cabal. Conspiracy theorists are commonly perceived as a paranoid lot. However, I've long suspected that at the center of being of all firm believers of conspiracies is a dead calm, a certain certitude about how the Universe works. The Lone Gunmen are frighteningly dogmatic, but not more or less intransigent than your die-hard Catholic, Maoist, Marxist, Religious Fundamentalist, Supremacist, or any other "ist" that irks your liberal bourgeoise sensibility, which is also another form of "ist." All dogmas are alike in that it guarantees all believers a "zero blame in case of failure." To paraphase one of the characters in Eco's Foucalt's Pendulum: You can not fail since there is a Plan, and you may be defeated but it's not your fault. There is no shame in accepting the Plan, and doing so makes you a martyr and not a coward at all.
It's very assuring, isn't it?
Supposedly.
One of the first flamewar I had the misfortune of witnessing and being caught in the ashfall was a discussion about how NASA faked the Apollo 11 landing, which was instigated by a high school batchmate in our alumni mailing list. It was pretty intense, and a total waste of greymatter. sagarmin, do you remember this battle royale of the ubergeeks in our batch?
Extremely bizzarre assertions notwithstanding, there is a certain attraction to being able to explain world-changing and life-altering events as the end result of some diabolocal plot cooked up by a secret cabal. Conspiracy theorists are commonly perceived as a paranoid lot. However, I've long suspected that at the center of being of all firm believers of conspiracies is a dead calm, a certain certitude about how the Universe works. The Lone Gunmen are frighteningly dogmatic, but not more or less intransigent than your die-hard Catholic, Maoist, Marxist, Religious Fundamentalist, Supremacist, or any other "ist" that irks your liberal bourgeoise sensibility, which is also another form of "ist." All dogmas are alike in that it guarantees all believers a "zero blame in case of failure." To paraphase one of the characters in Eco's Foucalt's Pendulum: You can not fail since there is a Plan, and you may be defeated but it's not your fault. There is no shame in accepting the Plan, and doing so makes you a martyr and not a coward at all.
It's very assuring, isn't it?