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Why Rational People Believe Conspiracies
by Doniphan Blair
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The Hindu goddess of prosperity and love, Lakshmi, AKA Maya, also the name of the Buddha's mother. image: 15th C Hindu artistIN THE BEGINNING WAS 'MAYA.'
Not the Hindu goddess Maya but the Sanskrit word for “illusion” or “magic.” Three millennia ago, Indian philosophers recognized that our understanding of the world is essentially maya, an illusion we construct from our culture, life, dreams and even language.
A Japanese bookkeeper once sent my check in an envelope addressed “2200 Aderine Street, Oakrand, California.” She was probably tired, but for whatever reason my address’s two “l”s, a sound which doesn’t exist in Japanese, didn’t translate from her reading it off my invoice to her fingers.
We interpret reality through what we know or can recall, at any given moment.
No one questions why the French call their neighbor’s capital “Londres,” adding an “r” sound, while the English say “Paris,” vocalizing their ancient frenemy’s unspoken “s.” Such variations in interpretation of reality are common, everyday maya.
But there is also radical maya. While mystics and artists always have always used prayer, abstinence and vision to customize their consciousness, an 11th century Persian scholar, Hassan ibn Sabbah, took it a step further.
“Everything is permitted and nothing is real,” he concluded.
To defend his fellow Shi’a Muslims from the oppressive Sunni Muslim shahs, Sabbah used his discovery to create a cult of adept suicide attackers, called Hashasheen, from where we get the word “assassin.”
First he convinced his followers they would go straight to heaven when they died; second, he used sophisticated disguise and subterfuge to sneak them into his enemies' palaces or camps; finally, he mastered rumor and conspiracy theory.
The Hashasheen lasted for a few centuries, assassinated hundreds of soldiers, statesmen and religious figures and even fought the Crusaders with their Lebanese franchise.
Sabbah proved that with proper doctrine and brainwashing humans were capable of astounding feats of belief and action. His supercharging of how we use maya so impressed as well as frightened his fellow Persians, they documented it (his own writings don’t survive), and the assassin story eventually reached Europe, where it became a metaphor for passion.
A Hashasheen (3nd fr lft) stabs the Persian Vizier, Nazim al-Mulk, in the 11th C.illo: 14th C Persian miniatureThere have been many revolutionary thinkers since Sabbah, but only a handful have equally rejiggered our gilded cages of maya.
The 17th century René Descartes identified something similar in his pronouncement, “I think therefore I am,” which helped usher in the Enlightenment’s freedom, intellectualism and science.
But the Enlightenment only completed the Renaissance’s resurrection of classicism. The big revolution in Western thinking came with Romanticism, according to the philosophers Ayn Rand and Isaiah Berlin, an arch-conservative and Ur-liberal, respectively.
Romanticism grabbed the art of making and improving ones own maya back from the academy and ancients and placed it firmly in the minds of the individual, where it has always resided and who is ultimately responsible, but can now be identified as such philosophically.
Romanticism produced great poetry but also the Declaration of the Independence, the back-to-nature movement, sexual freedom, women’s rights, art, emotional exploration and political revolutions. But it also had a downside, a tendency to degenerate into fantasy, obsession, nihilism and addiction, while blaming others for your problems, the easy emotional solution.
Balanced romantics like Mary Shelley, Henry David Thoreau and Charles Darwin used it to empower invention, exploration and even science. Even though mystics, artists and many regular folk have fantastic inner lives, they still maintained a balance with rationalism and community values.
Indeed, this marriage—between flighty, independent imagination and solid, shared culture—have been central to human existence since the invention of language. Once we agreed on the meaning of made-up words, we could create agreements, relationships, culture and science.
Isaac Newton, the father of modern physics, was also an avid alchemist and mystic, proving the truism: We humans are both fantastic fabulists and pragmatic realists, stars and shit.
Science had a good run, from the 18th through the 20th century, when religion, mysticism and magic was obliged to retreat to a private, spiritual or abstract, non-physical, domain.
But science became domineering and helped foster the "isms" that plagued the 20th century: communism, fascism and modernism. As our reality gets more fact based, mechanical and artificially-intelligence driven, we naturally turn to greater romance and illusion.
Ironically, the biggest blow to our collective civil consciousness came from science itself, in the 1960s: pharmaceuticals and philosophies.
In August, 2020, QAnoners on in Los Angeles, protested child slavery but also more outrageous accusations. photo: Kyle GrillotLSD, invented by chemists and originally distributed by doctors, proved the mind was malleable, with all sorts of previously unimaginable elements and abilities.
Around the same time, philosophers of deconstruction and post-modernism proposed that everything—all books, art, culture, even science—was in fact what the ancient Hindus called "maya." Based more on culture and biases than "hard facts," it was open to interpretation.
Interestingly, these philosophies were in keeping what physics went through thirty years earlier with the Uncertainty Principle and particle/wave controversy of quantum physics.
Psychedelic drugs triggered an immediate earthquake across society, but the second adjustment to our understanding of reality was a slow burn. It seeped into academia, avant authors and finally college kids, manifesting as the multicultural revolution of the ‘80s.
And now science has hammer yet another shattering blow to our shared social maya.
By converting everything to pixals, digits and data, deliciously displayed, it has enabled communication at a distance and access to fantastic amounts of fact, art, culture and commerce. Along with such empowerment, however, it aggravates our emotions and fantasies.
Although the Facebook, Twitter and YouTube algorithms fanned the flames, humans were already going through an existential revolution from computers, a reality only three decades old.
Given digitization and mechanization also accelerated globalism, corporate control and government surveillance, they would naturally rebel, either by voting out the old or inventing stories, in attempts to retake control of their lives.
Add to this a global pandemic and economic collapse.
People need a fantasy quest , a "Game of Thrones" come to life, an alternate reality game (ARG), which is the technical name for games which use regular life as its platform, and what could be more perfect than QAnon, dedicated to stopping Satanist cannibals.
Having to be rationalists most of the day, people in need of visionary relief. Those who have suffered setbacks or injuries, can let their imaginations finally run wild. And they can join a privileged community, where they can feel camaraderie and support, providing understandable emotional benefit, even as a conspiracy theory is being cynically exploited by the Sabbahs of our day.
We all live in our own maya. Hence, shame, ridicule and even exposing the lies of leaders will have little effect. Recognizing their injuries, understanding their maya and making available a convenient bridge to a more functional interpretation of reality, may work better.
Doniphan Blair is a writer, film magazine publisher, designer, musician and filmmaker ('Our Holocaust Vacation'), who can be reached .
Posted on Oct 07, 2020 - 08:36 AM
by Doniphan Blair
Please support our stories by liking articles—thanks!
The Hindu goddess of prosperity and love, Lakshmi, AKA Maya, also the name of the Buddha's mother. image: 15th C Hindu artistNot the Hindu goddess Maya but the Sanskrit word for “illusion” or “magic.” Three millennia ago, Indian philosophers recognized that our understanding of the world is essentially maya, an illusion we construct from our culture, life, dreams and even language.
A Japanese bookkeeper once sent my check in an envelope addressed “2200 Aderine Street, Oakrand, California.” She was probably tired, but for whatever reason my address’s two “l”s, a sound which doesn’t exist in Japanese, didn’t translate from her reading it off my invoice to her fingers.
We interpret reality through what we know or can recall, at any given moment.
No one questions why the French call their neighbor’s capital “Londres,” adding an “r” sound, while the English say “Paris,” vocalizing their ancient frenemy’s unspoken “s.” Such variations in interpretation of reality are common, everyday maya.
But there is also radical maya. While mystics and artists always have always used prayer, abstinence and vision to customize their consciousness, an 11th century Persian scholar, Hassan ibn Sabbah, took it a step further.
“Everything is permitted and nothing is real,” he concluded.
To defend his fellow Shi’a Muslims from the oppressive Sunni Muslim shahs, Sabbah used his discovery to create a cult of adept suicide attackers, called Hashasheen, from where we get the word “assassin.”
First he convinced his followers they would go straight to heaven when they died; second, he used sophisticated disguise and subterfuge to sneak them into his enemies' palaces or camps; finally, he mastered rumor and conspiracy theory.
The Hashasheen lasted for a few centuries, assassinated hundreds of soldiers, statesmen and religious figures and even fought the Crusaders with their Lebanese franchise.
Sabbah proved that with proper doctrine and brainwashing humans were capable of astounding feats of belief and action. His supercharging of how we use maya so impressed as well as frightened his fellow Persians, they documented it (his own writings don’t survive), and the assassin story eventually reached Europe, where it became a metaphor for passion.
A Hashasheen (3nd fr lft) stabs the Persian Vizier, Nazim al-Mulk, in the 11th C.illo: 14th C Persian miniatureThe 17th century René Descartes identified something similar in his pronouncement, “I think therefore I am,” which helped usher in the Enlightenment’s freedom, intellectualism and science.
But the Enlightenment only completed the Renaissance’s resurrection of classicism. The big revolution in Western thinking came with Romanticism, according to the philosophers Ayn Rand and Isaiah Berlin, an arch-conservative and Ur-liberal, respectively.
Romanticism grabbed the art of making and improving ones own maya back from the academy and ancients and placed it firmly in the minds of the individual, where it has always resided and who is ultimately responsible, but can now be identified as such philosophically.
Romanticism produced great poetry but also the Declaration of the Independence, the back-to-nature movement, sexual freedom, women’s rights, art, emotional exploration and political revolutions. But it also had a downside, a tendency to degenerate into fantasy, obsession, nihilism and addiction, while blaming others for your problems, the easy emotional solution.
Balanced romantics like Mary Shelley, Henry David Thoreau and Charles Darwin used it to empower invention, exploration and even science. Even though mystics, artists and many regular folk have fantastic inner lives, they still maintained a balance with rationalism and community values.
Indeed, this marriage—between flighty, independent imagination and solid, shared culture—have been central to human existence since the invention of language. Once we agreed on the meaning of made-up words, we could create agreements, relationships, culture and science.
Isaac Newton, the father of modern physics, was also an avid alchemist and mystic, proving the truism: We humans are both fantastic fabulists and pragmatic realists, stars and shit.
Science had a good run, from the 18th through the 20th century, when religion, mysticism and magic was obliged to retreat to a private, spiritual or abstract, non-physical, domain.
But science became domineering and helped foster the "isms" that plagued the 20th century: communism, fascism and modernism. As our reality gets more fact based, mechanical and artificially-intelligence driven, we naturally turn to greater romance and illusion.
Ironically, the biggest blow to our collective civil consciousness came from science itself, in the 1960s: pharmaceuticals and philosophies.
In August, 2020, QAnoners on in Los Angeles, protested child slavery but also more outrageous accusations. photo: Kyle GrillotAround the same time, philosophers of deconstruction and post-modernism proposed that everything—all books, art, culture, even science—was in fact what the ancient Hindus called "maya." Based more on culture and biases than "hard facts," it was open to interpretation.
Interestingly, these philosophies were in keeping what physics went through thirty years earlier with the Uncertainty Principle and particle/wave controversy of quantum physics.
Psychedelic drugs triggered an immediate earthquake across society, but the second adjustment to our understanding of reality was a slow burn. It seeped into academia, avant authors and finally college kids, manifesting as the multicultural revolution of the ‘80s.
And now science has hammer yet another shattering blow to our shared social maya.
By converting everything to pixals, digits and data, deliciously displayed, it has enabled communication at a distance and access to fantastic amounts of fact, art, culture and commerce. Along with such empowerment, however, it aggravates our emotions and fantasies.
Although the Facebook, Twitter and YouTube algorithms fanned the flames, humans were already going through an existential revolution from computers, a reality only three decades old.
Given digitization and mechanization also accelerated globalism, corporate control and government surveillance, they would naturally rebel, either by voting out the old or inventing stories, in attempts to retake control of their lives.
Add to this a global pandemic and economic collapse.
People need a fantasy quest , a "Game of Thrones" come to life, an alternate reality game (ARG), which is the technical name for games which use regular life as its platform, and what could be more perfect than QAnon, dedicated to stopping Satanist cannibals.
Having to be rationalists most of the day, people in need of visionary relief. Those who have suffered setbacks or injuries, can let their imaginations finally run wild. And they can join a privileged community, where they can feel camaraderie and support, providing understandable emotional benefit, even as a conspiracy theory is being cynically exploited by the Sabbahs of our day.
We all live in our own maya. Hence, shame, ridicule and even exposing the lies of leaders will have little effect. Recognizing their injuries, understanding their maya and making available a convenient bridge to a more functional interpretation of reality, may work better.
Doniphan Blair is a writer, film magazine publisher, designer, musician and filmmaker ('Our Holocaust Vacation'), who can be reached .
Posted on Oct 07, 2020 - 08:36 AM
