On Conspiracies
Often when I talk about these ideas, theywind up categorized as conspiracy theories and dismiessed: Yes, the governments and corporations are tring to control our minds. Sure. Here’s some aluminium foil; build yourself a hat. However, I feel that either this classification of the use of “conspiracy” to connote lunacy is unfounded. The reason is that the connotation the term carries with it of centralised organization towards some well-defined goal, usuall nefarious: The darkened room, the cigar smoking men, the coordination to plant deceptive evidence. Such phenomena may or may not be real; it is not my intention to argue either way, though I doubt it is the primary driving force. My argument is that the stogie-smokers are not necessary to bring about the structures I am describing any more than they are to account for a highly interconnected and interdependent ecosystem (indeed, the Intelligent Design Movement’s fine tuning and irreducible complexity arguments are premised on this fallacy.) Even canonical conspiracy fodder does not require a conspiracy in this sense: To explain the Waco massacre, we do not need to invoke an overarching plot by the Clinton administration to establish a New World Order via subverting the second Ammendment. A justice department more concerned with punishment than with addressing the causes of crime, ATF officials already embroiled in a public-relations disaster following a department-wide sexual assault scandal, police trained and equipped by the military towards battle instead of negotiation, and a media driven by market forces towards sensation rather than investigation is more than sufficient to account for the carnage.