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Are You a Conspiracy Theorist? Or a Coincidence Theorist?
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Are you a conspiracy theorist? Or a coincidence theorist? Our world is a mess – but is it by intentional design, or random happenstance?
We all know our world has gone mad, and many of us shake our heads wondering how we got here. Ineffective government, endless resource wars, failing economic and education systems, planetary degradation; very little about our current global circumstances reflects our hopes and dreams and goals; our shared wants for peace, for justice, for technological progress that supports not destroys our planet. It does not reflect our innermost nature, which yearns for peace and abundance. And yet, no matter what we do, no matter who we vote for or what they promise to do, or how many of us also feel humanity is on a slippery slope to its own demise, for some reason, we (collectively) keep marching boldly on in the wrong direction.
Strangely, many even go as far as questioning the sanity of those who believe all this is not by accident but by design, and dismiss “conspiracy theorists” as lunatics and uncritical thinkers. If that sounds like you – if you’ve used the phrase “conspiracy theorist” as a derogatory term – open your mind and consider what I’m about to say, if only for the 3 minutes as it takes to read it.
Let’s start with a history lesson…
- definition: a secret plan by a group to do something unlawful or harmful.
- synonyms: plot, scheme, plan, deception, collusion.
The CIA created the term “conspiracy theorist” in April 1967. It first appeared in a CIA dispatch marked “psych” – for “psychological operations” — and was created for the purpose of disparaging those people who believe that a high-level conspiracy is taking place. The dispatch was acquired under a Freedom of Information Act request in 1976. It states:
The aim of this dispatch is to provide material countering and discrediting the claims of the conspiracy theorists, so as to inhibit the circulation of such claims…
Action: We do not recommend that discussion of the [conspiracy] question be initiated where it is not already taking place. Where discussion is active, addressees are requested:
a. To discuss the publicity problem with and friendly elite contacts (especially politicians and editors)… Urge them to use their influence to discourage speculation…
b. To employ propaganda assets to and refute the attacks of the critics. Book reviews and feature articles are particularly appropriate for this purpose… Our ploy should point out… that the critics are (I) wedded to theories adopted before the evidence was in, (II) politically interested, (III) financially interested, (IV) hasty and inaccurate in their research, or (V) infatuated with their own theories.
Shortly after, articles posted in the New York Times and Time Magazine repeated the phrase “conspiracy theorist” numerous times in a disparaging context, just as the CIA dispatch had recommended, and it has since become widely associated with superstition and paranoia through its ongoing depiction in the mainstream media. Linguistically, the phrase also associates any mention of conspiracy with “theory”, not fact. It was a fine piece of propaganda.
Conspiracy or Coincidence?
Today, conspiracy theorists look at the many recent examples of government corruption and cronyism (eg. the TPP, the privatized Federal Reserve), false flag attacks (eg. 9/11) and endless wars, the media’s censorship of important stories (eg. Fukushima), unprecedented government surveillance and regulation (of its own people!), rigged economic systems (eg. fractional reserve banking), rigged elections (eg. USA 2004), a failed education system (eg. Common CoreConformity), cultural disconnection, and an unsustainable relationship with our environment, and they see a common thread — a conspiracy — that binds these narratives together.
Coincidence theorists, on the other hand, write off these failings of our society as “human nature”; a series of random occurrences that demonstrate just how fundamentally bad human beings actually are, and how incapable we are as a species to live sustainably on this earth. But the most vocal of coincidence theorists don’t stop there; they throw the words “conspiracy theorist” around as a pre-loaded insult – a blanket phrase used to discredit any genuine notion of high-level collusion as the impossible fantasy of paranoid tin-foil hat wearing fools. But perhaps the tin foil hat is on the wrong head…
Source: http://truthisscary.com/2016/05/are-you-a-conspiracy-theorist-or-a-coincidence-theorist/
