What is missing from the minds of conspiracy theorists?
I believe it was President Warren Harding who coined the term “normalcy” in a sentence that otherwise made no sense. Nor should “normal” be confused with “average,” given the connotation to conformity of the former.
When I was young and having read the entire corpus of Sherlock Holmes stories, I became fascinated by the criminal mind. Surely, I thought, someone with sufficient abstract theory and goodwill could sit down with your average criminal and explain why their actions were ultimately self-defeating? Of course this is a rather naive form of criminal reform and many a prison psychologist will tell you what a terrible grind it is to convince the recalcitrant about the error of his ways.
Years ago I read the mother of all conspiracy theory books by a woman named Nestra Webster. Albeit small the book had a tremendous impact on me — until the final page, which identified the current head of the Illuminati as H.L. Mencken. Being something of an aficionado of the life and work of Mr. Mencken, I knew he was the last person on earth to volunteer for such a position.
This got me thinking about a possible explanation and this is my theory: A conspiracy theorist is a man confined to the average spectrum of intelligence. He is smart enough to accept abstract theory but not contextually able to apply consistently principles to concrete reality. It is my contention further that no normal man could accept the hodgepodge of confused rationalizing that passes for a process of reason to conspiracy buffs. Nor could any normal person vote for Donald Trump.
It is fashionable I supposed to accept the egalitarian belief that “normal” is an outdated concept. But I believe the difference between normal and average people is simply a greater ability to determine the truth. I have always wondered how some people can believe something that to me is patently absurd. Recently a white supremacist group in America called the Proud Boys have been in the news. They champion Western materialism and by virtue of skin colour claim a collectivist responsibility for all progress. It is unpopular to point out that all achievement is based on individual merit and talent. Collective achievement is therefore a myth. So is any racial theory of progress. When Europe entered the Dark Ages, the Arab world preserved the works of Aristotle. Without this, industrialization would not have been possible. The contributions of non-whites are too numerous to list.
No newspaper in the world would ever consider omitting from its pages horoscopes. The fact that it is a bunch of bunkum is irrelevant. The average person likes to read it; the normal person probably skips it. Disinformation has no place in a free society; it may be useful for dictatorships, but only harms democracies. The Earth is not flat, we did not fake the moon landings and Americans did not plan 9/11.
Is it then possible to turn an average person into a normal person? In order to be well-adjusted and happy a man needs a comprehensive view of existence. Conformity as such may not be a virtue but conformity to reality, reason and decency certainly is. The criminal and conspiracy theorist it seems to me is motivated by hatred, essentially self-hatred. They are not rebelling against society, but are rebelling against their inadequacies. Both types are cynical about life.
With today’s emphasis on mental health it might be instructive to ask: What is the root of normalcy? What is lacking in the criminal, the conspiracist and the white supremacist? The consistent use of reason and the responsibility of judgment permits no compromise. Any concession to the irrational invalidates one’s mental processes and creates average people who endorse nonsense as the truth.