Let's talk about conspiracy

Don't have much of a goal in mind, just a ramblin' stream...

The other day I was thinking about conspiracy. Don't ask me why. I recalled that once on the AW forums someone, I can't for the life of me remember who, talked about how entertaining notions of conspiracy was indicative of open-mindedness, that you were questioning and not blindly accepting the establishment. I recall distinctly that I repudiated his argument by telling him he was basically saying that you were either a rational conspiracist or a blind sheep listening to the government. Whatever happened to the people who had rationally evaluated conspiracy claims and believed them to be stupid?

On top of that, I also mentioned that conspiracy theories were by definition illogical (or at least irrational). Trying to push them as rational/logical is about the same as a Theist pushing religion as rational/logical. I pointed out that if, in the future, by some miracle, this particular conspiracy was proven to be correct, that the people of the future would not look back at us and at him in particular and "worship" him or give credence to his insight or call his actions logical.

It was my position, and still is, that logic is not predicated on the result and is rather about the process. In the same way I think about discrimination ... A company that has equal proportions of African Americans and Caucasian is not a non-racist community. In fact, I would wager that if they deliberately worked towards some racial quota then race directly entered into the process and therefore making them racist. As long as a company does all it can to give equal opportunity to all races, then as far as I'm concerned, their primary concern in the process is hiring the people most qualified for the job. Now if it should turn out that no African Americans are qualified for the job, then how can we judge the company? So long as the race wasn't the reason for ineligibility and they had equal opportunity to apply ...

In this same way logic is not about the result but is based on the process. If you asked me whether it would rain tomorrow, I could tell you "yes." In situation A I could look at weather charts and make a prediction based on meteorological models. In situation B I could have flipped a coin and said if heads it would rain. Now if it turns out that it did in fact rain, by this person's thinking, in both situations I would have made the logical decision, which is, of course, quite absurd.

So far nothing I've said is really groundbreaking. I'd've thought it quite obvious, but apparently not so to this individual. I got to thinking, however, about why this kind of retro-active result ever entered into our consciousness. I supposed that it had something to do with the stereotypical modern day Capitalism, where the ends justify the means. This kind of thinking became entrenched and, perhaps not coincidentally, the conspiracy theories started to develop at the same time.

In my philosophy course last semester, my lecturer mentioned as an aside one philosopher (again, can't remember) whose major tenet was that conspiracy was based on our own fear that the world does not make sense. That it places an ease on our cognitive load to have a responsible being in charge.

Which of course brought me to God. I don't think it too far of a stretch to put my previous ideas of logic back onto ideas of God. In that if in the future God does come down to Earth and smites Richard Dawkins, I do not believe the people of the future would look back at modern day Christians and call them rational. Atheists in particular aren't going to look back and call our contemporary non-believers (ie, everyone who doesn't spend their lives masturbating over The God Delusion) illogical. Christians aren't going to look back and think our Christians any more or less intelligent than they already did. Surely, the Christians in particular, would look back and acknowledge the unyielding faith of these people?

Reminds me of another philosopher I read in that same course, but this time I remember his name. Foucault. He described the qualitative change in experience over something like an 80 year gap in which public displays of power and authority were supplanted by the panopticon, an ethereal crude 'Big Brother' where people internalised the power of the external world. I remember quite distinctly asking in one of our tutorials about whether this development either was because of or caused a shift away from God as external to God as internal. The move away from the Bible as literal to metaphorical.

He had no answer for me.

And I haver no answer for you.