by Giles on Sun Jul 26, 2020 2:50 pm
The mention of Lex Luthor actually set me thinking. So, how real-life ‘conspiracies’ or similar bad actions bred a major trope in fiction, which in turn seems to ‘educate’ us towards a general distrust of authority and/or large organizations and smooths the way for belief in conspiracy narratives. A form of belief that takes on qualities of religious faith. I think this has as least some relevance to 'Crazy shit about Covid-19'. Here goes:
1. Over recent generations, we’ve seen many real-life examples of businesses, businessmen, politicians, political parties, powerful organizations etc. that abused their power/resources for immoral and/or illegal purposes. And with specific reference to the ‘Western’ world, we’ve also seen plots and conspiracies perpetrated by governments and business organizations. Operation Northwoods as a prime example (luckily JFK was having none of it), then maybe (!!) the Kennedy assassination, the attempted Watergate cover-up, the Iran-Contra affair, possibly the nuclear power industry’s response to Karen Silkwood, Edward Snowden’s exposure of NSA activities ; in the business sphere for example, the strategic misinformation and cover-up attempts by the tobacco industry, or the recent discovery of fuel consumption test-deceiving software in many modern cars.
And surely other things we have still not heard of. But that is NOT intended to justify general paranoia or cynicism, see below.
2. Stimulated by stuff like this, the American and later also European entertainment industries (films, comics, novels, TV series) began producing many stories that, in various ways, were predicated on the idea of powerful organizations, either (elements of) the state or big business - or even aliens, or computer intelligences – acting in secret, deceiving us, manipulating us, harming us. For understandable reasons, there was much scepticism and distrust felt among people of more liberal attitudes (or libertarian attitudes, not the same thing), and this drove aspects of entertainment/art production. And many of these people were influential as authors, scriptwriters, directors, producers. Certainly, there was enough real shit from above, now being revealed through the late 60s, the 70s, the 80s, to make this scepticism and distrust of ‘power’ an understandable and even necessary response. At least up to a certain point. And after a while, this approach in art developed into a clear trope or even genre. You can easily find many examples of this produced more recently, too.
Lots of good stories/art emerged here. And also, increasingly, lots of formulaic “brave and good individual or small group struggles against evil, oppressive organization that (at least initially) remains hidden in the shadows” stories. One common meme or sub-trope is the powerful or rich figure who seems to be benevolent but is later revealed to be an evil and manipulative monster engaged in bad deeds. (The motivation for these bad deeds can vary from pure greed or megalomania through to ideology).
In a way I think this also ‘educated’ us, collectively speaking, into an attitude to the world and to ‘organizations’ that sometimes moves beyond a healthy and necessary scepticism into something like cynicism and even paranoia. Always tricky with those dividing lines, huh?
3. So there is a tendency to believe or assume that a rich and/or powerful person (or organization) will always be more of a force for bad than for good. That something nasty and stinky is surely going on in the background. Even if – or especially if – this person or organization is actually doing good deeds, working to improve conditions for people in some way, giving to charity or whatever. As said, a certain degree of scepticism, not immediately swallowing all PR uncritically, is healthy. But that’s not what I mean here. What I mean is the attitude, clearly formulated or more implicit, of “If it looks good, that there MUST be something bad going on under the surface! They’re probably doing just the opposite!” After all, we’ve all seen so many films and suchlike with this story, so there.
Although of course there is absolutely no lack of rich and powerful people and organizations that quite obviously don't behave altruistically, or that even behave corruptly, destructively, egotistically, +/- sociopathically etc. Harming people, the environment, democracy, public health or what have you. In a manner for all to see. But it's as if such entities, while maybe not being on your Christmas card list, are felt by some still not to be as negative, as despicable and dangerous, as evil, as persons or organizations that carry out large-scale philanthropy. Because, as described above, "if they seem to be working for good, then it's a sure bet they're actually working for evil. Which is EVEN WORSE than doing bad things, not being ashamed of this and saying f*** you, I won't stop."
4. This is, I believe, a major driver of conspiracy narratives/myths. They are always bubbling in the background, but in times of great stress and uncertainty (like now of course), they receive a huge boost. This has been observed for a hundred years and more, but now with the Internet they get even more rocket fuel. The narrative I mentioned above is familiar to us from a 1000 iterations (the great majority of them fictional, however!), and at the same time it fulfils a deep need we feel to restore a sense of order and meaning to a chaotic and unsettling situation. Even if this ‘order and meaning’ involves a belief in dark forces with great powers working in the background to steer us in negative ways, while these forces can sometimes appear to us in a more positive and benevolent guise. Just to deceive us all the better. Basically, once we get to the full-blown conspiracy narratives it’s belief in the Devil. Just by another name. And it really does resemble a religious belief, because no amount of logical arguments or facts to the contrary (e.g. from fact checker websites or viewing videos of what an 'evil' person actually did say, as opposed to distortions and misquotes) will change the believer’s viewpoint. Water off a duck’s back, as they say.
5. The above factors mean that if a rich and (more or less) powerful person uses their financial and other resources to actually do good things in the world, to help humanity, then this activity will be regarded pretty much automatically as not being genuine, as actually being bad (evil). Once again, a healthy element of scepticism is always okay – but this is not about scepticism, it’s about the “Devil belief” (i.e. a faith-based attitude) described above. Then untruths, distortions and conspiracy narratives about such a person will, for the ‘believers’, will become articles of faith immune to argument or logic.
As is the case with Bill Gates. I’m not a huge fan of BG, in the sense that he originally made his fortune (at least partly) by means of some very questionable business practices on the part of Microsoft. And I don’t assume that he gets everything 100% right today, either. But in the present day, I concur with Everything’s comments about Bill Gates’ general aims, practices and communication skills. The total rejection of Gates and his current work, due to the putative “evil” nature of the man and his projects, and often following on from this, a rejection or at least overwhelming suspicion of vaccination programs in general, is an “act of faith”, on the same level as believing in the Devil and his/its destructive effects on human events, or believing in God and his/its benevolent effecs on human events.
Which is a pity, because at the moment we can really benefit from the resources and efforts of intelligent philanthropists, who can sometimes get good things happening in a way that governments, as well as established orgs like the WHO and the UN, don't manage so well.
Last edited by
Giles on Sun Jul 26, 2020 2:51 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Do not make the mistake of giving up the near in order to seek the far.
