https://youtubetranscript.com/?v=FNgXmypi-Yc
Hello and welcome to Navigating Patterns. What I’d like to talk about today in my sense-making series is conspiracy theories. So again, when you’re watching these videos, take your time with them. Some of these concepts seem quick and easy, but if you roll them around in your mind, apply a little critical thinking, I think they’ll really gel for you. So when we’re talking about conspiracy theories, what are we talking about? What are these things? So I think I have an answer to that. But maybe a better question to ask is, when we’re on about conspiracy theories, why do we care? Like, crazy people have conspiracy theories, just dismiss them. But I don’t think that’s the right way to think about it. I think the right way to think about it, the way I like to think about it is, what need is being fulfilled by a conspiracy theory? So what I’d like to propose, and again, my definitions, if you don’t like them, throw them out. If you want to adopt them, dead on. Better yet, adapt them to your own needs. What role are they filling? I think that basically there are two main types of conspiracy theories. So one type of conspiracy theory is one where we know what’s going on and there’s a way to change it. So if we could just lock up all the people in the ring of bad people, then we’d be fine. Once we get the government on board, once we get the evidence that we need, boom, it’s going to unwind that whole thing, whatever it is. With that, what I’m getting at is a sense of control. So certain types of conspiracy theories imply if event A or event B happens, we then have control or we can take back control or the control of whatever system we’re rallying against will be broken. Fair enough. But there’s another type of conspiracy theory and that type of conspiracy theory is wrapped up in something completely different. It’s wrapped up in intelligibility. And you may say, why are you using long fancy words, Mark? And I would say it because that’s what I do. But more importantly, intelligibility is the sense that we know what’s going on, not necessarily that we have control over it, but we know something’s acting to a plan. And you may say, well, if you don’t have control of it, who cares? What difference does it make? But it does make a difference because if we think we know what the plan is, we can have plans around it to counteract it or we’ll know how it affects our lives and which parts of our lives aren’t affected. So that’s enough for us to gain agency and control. And an example of this second type of conspiracy theory would be something like, and it’s not really a conspiracy theory. I mean, everybody knows that lizard people run the White House, that if you took off their masks, they’d be lizards. Well known fact. Totally proven. And if we just accept that the lizard people are in charge and that they’re in touch with their home planet all the time because aliens, duh, then we know how that affects our lives and we can adjust accordingly. Yeah, the government’s going to be crazy and do things that benefit the aliens. Of course they are. So we can, you know, we can deal with that. Now we understand what’s going on. This is why the stuff the government does doesn’t make any sense at all to us because aliens and we don’t know what the aliens need, but we see what they’re doing. And then when they do something that doesn’t benefit us, we know it benefits them. Maybe we don’t know how, but we don’t care. We know it benefits them. So at least now I can run my life in safety, knowing that I understand how the government works. It’s really the lizard people. Duh. This is very satisfying to us, mainly because it’s good to know once you have a theory for something, you don’t have to worry about it anymore. Like, okay, well, I have a theory for that, so now I have to worry about it. And that’s something like ginning up a narrative pattern that explains the story, right? The story is they passed this bill, they’re giving away $17 trillion to homeless people on the streets in cash. That makes no sense. Oh, but it does if you’re a lizard person. If you’re lizard people, I totally know what they’re up to, right? So at least now you don’t have to worry about not knowing what they’re up to or not understanding what they’re up to, because you’ve got some way to explain it. And this is interesting, right? And then that’s all people need sometimes, is just comfort in understanding, in being able to make sense of the situation in any way they can. Because look, the government is big and complex, and it does strange things all the time. And it’s not apparent, because sometimes the strange things make perfect sense from a certain perspective that we don’t hold, because we’re not there. It’s hard to understand why, to address the homeless problem, they just don’t buy everybody houses. Well, it turns out they do. It happens a lot, the experiment that’s been done many times, New York City did it for a while. It doesn’t work. It just turns out it doesn’t work, because homelessness isn’t one thing. It’s one symptom with many causes. And so you can look at what the government does and go, well, they could just do this. And then why don’t they? It doesn’t make any sense. So we make up a reason for it to make sense, because lizard people want more homeless people, because it helps the lizard home world. Whatever excuse you use, it doesn’t really matter. It just allows you to collapse the world into something that’s a little bit easier for you to swallow. Because we all have cognitive limitations, cognitive load is a big deal to us. We’re trying to conserve energy, we can’t think about everything in every level of detail, we got to be careful. Conspiracy theories allow us to do that. Now I want to jump back to the first type of conspiracy theory. The one where we think we might have control. So look, if there’s a group of wealthy people that meet in the woods somewhere on the West Coast and determine the fate of the world in secret while doing ancient rituals from the past and sex and nakedness in the woods and Lord knows what else, then if we all get together, we can take control of that situation and then they won’t control us anymore. So that’s less about intelligibility and more about potential control. Another example of this, storm area 51, we’re going to finally figure out those aliens, because there’s going to be so many of us, that when we get to area 51, we’re going to take over the base and then we’re going to reveal the truth and then we’ll find the lizard aliens that are actually posing as presidents and other officials. So that’s more control. That’s like, ah, we can take control of the situation and then we can know something about it. And those are two different, very different, in my opinion, types of conspiracy theories. But it’s important to know why they matter, because in one case, one matters for control, the other one matters for just intelligibility or being able to not have to worry about something anymore, being able to explain weird behavior that you don’t have a perspective to understand. There’s just no way to understand certain things without being there. So conspiracy theory can fill that void. There’s other ways to fill the void too. One of them is don’t worry about things you can’t control. And another one might be trust in something higher than the government. The government doesn’t necessarily run things the way you think they do. People do illegal things all day long. There are these funny signs by the side of the road with numbers on them. I don’t pay attention to those. They’re not going to slow me down. They’re also not going to speed me up in some cases. So the government has less control than you think, which is a good thing, but you do need something to trust in. You still need a container that you can feel safe in, in whatever context that is. And that’s where conspiracy theories come in really handy. So to some extent, the people who engage in apparent conspiracy theories, and I’m not saying all conspiracy theories are wrong or all of them serve this purpose. I mean, look, you get a monkey in front of a typewriter long enough and eventually Shakespeare. And some people actually know things. Some conspiracies are real conspiracies. And you can play with the definition all day long. It’s a conspiracy. If everybody knows about it, you know, these are philosophical questions to some extent. What we really care about is intelligibility in terms of sense making. Can we understand the world? Can we understand a world that allows us to control it or at least to get around whatever limitations it’s giving us? The limitation might just be it acts strange and scares us. If we can get around the fright, that’s good enough. So we need to approach people who believe in conspiracy theories with a little more empathy or sympathy and realize that they’re struggling to understand the world. And there’s something about the world they’re not able to understand. And for some reason, their attention has been pointed at it. And now it’s important to them. And so this is their coping mechanism. And everyone’s got different coping mechanisms for everything. So maybe extending a little grace, maybe helping those people out. Like you’re probably not going to talk them out of it. You might be able to talk them through it. Maybe that’s something we’ll cover in a future video is how to talk through an issue. It’s a good sense making tool, good for critical thinking. But, nah, leave them to their devices to some extent. I mean, try to be healthy about it, right? Try to get them in a healthy frame. Yep, understand you might be right. That’s possible. But as long as you have an understanding of it, you should focus on something else, right? And conspiracy theories really don’t become dangerous unless you focus on them, like most things. Then they can become very addictive, reciprocal and narrowing, very dangerous stuff. So keep in mind when dealing with conspiracy theorists in general, a little bit of grace. These people are going through something. They need something out of that. And we have to help them through it because we’re all in this mess together. It’s a crazy messed up world. None of us know what’s going on to some extent. And maybe that’s because much of what’s going on is not rational anymore. Maybe we’re living in a world of mostly chaos, where order has broken down at the highest level. And we’re all a little confused. And we’re all a little conspiratorial because we all need to feel like we know more about the world than we’re actually able to. Just something to think about, ruminate on, hopefully more tools in the toolbox for making sense of what’s going on around you in terms of why people are acting the way they’re acting. And maybe why you’re acting the way you’re acting because we all believe in conspiracy theories to some extent. I hope you guys find this helpful and use it wisely. Use it to help understand your fellow person so that you can communicate with them better. And I thank you very much for your time and attention.