Conspiracy theories: a sign of rampant neuroticism

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First, some good news:
Alex Jones told to pay $965m damages to Sandy Hook victims' families

And this now brings me to the broader question. Why do people believe in conspiracy theories so easily?

See, I'm sure you've met that person, the one claiming to possess the ultimate knowledge about all the secret doings of the secret cabals of the world, someone who can explain to you the truth about everything from Russia to the CIA, reptilians, vaccines and the global plan to castrate humanity in order to reach the "golden billion" coveted by a handful of rich people.

That person could be the handyman who came to scrape the tiles in your bathroom, the taxi driver who takes you downtown in the morning or the hairdresser who does your haircut monthly. But it can also be your kid's teacher at school too. Or a colleague you've known for 20 years, and who you thought of highly. Or an old childhood friend. Or one of your own parents, as it happens so often.

The person who knows everything will come and explain it all to you so you can have your eyes opened: how vaccines are chipping us, how one day someone could set everyone vaccinated against Covid-19 and the next day they'll suddenly become mindless suicidal drones killing lots of folks for no reason just because the Illuminati said so, how the US orchestrated the war in Ukraine to protect themselves from the Ukrainian army, how by 2030 all people will be custom-made children, and how the Covid virus grows extra axons and people start to forget so they can then buy eyeglasses and headphones with which their memory can be restored - all for sales, you know. Eyeglasses and headphones that track their every movement, of course. Secret eyes and ears that are always fixed on everyone. Because - reasons.

You'll also find out how the vaccines in question turn people into living antennas and how they, the "man who knows the Truth", can see the vaccinated via Bluetooth on a phone, but only if the phone is a Xiaomi, not if it's an iPhone. And how "they", of course, "spray" us with "chemtrails" because they want us to have no emotions and everything, everything, all our life and our entire existence, everything is planned, controlled and directed, and we are just defenseless mice in a monstrous experiment.

Nothing new, right? Conspiracy theories and the paranoid delusions that accompany them are as old as the world, and over the years we've heard all sorts of crazy stuff: Elvis and Michael Jackson are alive, 2PAC is still releasing albums, the Earth is flat, antibiotics are chemical weapons, the US itself brought down the World Trade Center, no one ever landed on the Moon, it was all a Hollywood movie, the mumps vaccine causes autism, and on and on.

In the last 3 years however, since the Covid pandemic became a part of our lives, conspiracy theories have undergone a peculiar metamorphosis. They've creeped out of the closed circles and groups of anti-vaxxers, flat earthers and fighters against the global Jewish conspiracy and have joined the ranks of "our people". They've joined the mainstream, in other words. They've rid themselves of the label "symbol of stupidity" and have now proudly mingled with some far less "dumb" circles.

If you don't believe me, ask yourself if not a single friend, acquaintance or relative of yours has mentioned that they have concerns about the composition of Covid vaccines. Not a single friend, acquaintance or relative of yours has mentioned, maybe a little embarrassed and hushed, maybe not, that "those tracks in the sky weren't like that before"? And not a single friend, acquaintance, or relative of yours has ever expressed the opinion that the United States started the war in Ukraine to... (choose any sentence that makes no sense).

I seriously doubt it. And if the natural reaction to people who loudly or cautiously defend a conspiracy theory is still to sneer and laugh, maybe it's time to look a little deeper.

World Mental Health Day was earlier this week, perhaps we can use the occasion to reflect on why so many people, and not all of them stupid or poorly educated, have become entangled in the conspiracy machine and have taken their roles in its development with gusto. Maybe because the world around us has become scarier? Or because neither health care, nor culture, nor education provide us with mechanisms to adequately deal with our anxiety in a healthy way? Or because it is much easier for a person to accept that they're a victim of powerful circumstances beyond their control than to take responsibility and try to change something?

There's nothing amusing about watching people fall victim to the information hurricanes of nonsense swirling across our screens every day. Let's face it, no one is immune to the need for faith and reaching out to a fake source that promises to deliver that to them with the alluring smile of a maniacal killer clown.

Years ago, I laughed at a pregnant friend who I brought a little ball of feathers from Brazil. At the time, the Zika virus was rampant there, which caused malformations in the fetus if it infected a pregnant woman. She didn't take the ball because she was afraid that a mosquito carrying the virus might have hidden in the feathers and after a 13-hour and then another 2-hour flight, it could come out fresh and hungry and bite her.

However, a few years later, I was already finding myself washing a piece of green onion with latex gloves, antibacterial soap and a brush, and it wasn't funny at all. True, neither Covid nor Zika were fiction, but fears and the resulting nonsense have wrapped themselves like ivy around reality, and at some point it started getting difficult to see.

Anyone can fall for the latest, trendy conspiracy because they are scared or naive or gullible or under-educated or under-informed. This is not a sin. Blaming someone is a particularly convenient psychological way of projecting the cause for our unhappiness or discomfort somewhere outside of us. Somewhere we can reach it and handle it.

People who suffer from oncological diseases, neurotics who are ruined by the so-called common mental disorders, those who experience loss and those who have experienced trauma, those who have lived under an evil all-controlling state and who have been unknowingly objectified and harmed by it, they are all looking for answers. And a culprit.

Having 38 panic attacks a day? Scared of the missiles that Putin is throwing at Ukraine because of the insidious actions of the United States? Your friend was run over on a crosswalk by a young man in a black BMW and a bag of cocaine in his blood? It's because of Soros. Is your loved one diagnosed with a tumor? It's because of chemtrails. Easy.

Hell, you probably didn't hear about this but we had a recent case here where a small municipality called Vetrino became the first municipality in Europe to impose a complete moratorium on the construction of wind turbines. The reason? This came under pressure from an organization called the Historic Park, who claimed wind turbines can cause cancer.

For the people of that region, a statement thrown arbitrarily into space proved to be enough for the seed of doubt to erupt into protests, petitions and pressure on the municipal council, which ultimately resulted in the shameful precedent.

The reason conspiracy theories flourish so successfully and weave themselves into sinister scenarios that would throw Stephen King, GRR Martin, Tolkien, Rowling, Asimov, Herbert and Bradbury into shame, is not their plausibility. Rather, their success is due to a mass of people who are not necessarily bad or evil or even too stupid, but who have no faith and find no meaning and hope in tomorrow, and no support in reality.

And this is actually far more sinister than the theory of reptilians turning us into living antennas with the help of viruses and vaccines. Food for thought in the week of the World Mental Health Day.