Why do so many people believe in conspiracy theories?

[Brivido]

With all that is going on in the world right now, always more people are starting to believe in conspiracy theories. Just have a look at the comments that people are leaving on the Facebook page of Bill Gates, scary and hilarious at the same time. I have been trying to understand the psychological motivation that leads people to believe in some far fetched story. I think the main reason is ego. All these theories create more separation between self and other, and therefore give a false sense of importance and identity. I think it would be a great topic for a video @Leo Gura

Please don't share any conspiracy theory on this post, or it might get locked. I wanted to create this post to start a conversation to try to understand why people believe in conspiracy theories. 

[legendary]

Isn't human society itself a conspiracy?

Egos coming together to create an illusion of physical material reality.

[Roy]

Because they sound cool and mysterious and make you feel like you have things figured out.

Like most things people believe in them because it makes them feel good.

[Parththakkar12]

A lot of times conspiracy theorists have gotten their hands on some big shadow of mainstream society/mainstream leadership. Even if the content is debatable, generally the structure makes sense. The problem here is that they create an 'us vs them' and get hyper-identified with one side of the coin. This skews their view and doesn't let them really see the solutions to these systemic issues.

For example blaming Bill Gates - It really could've been some other billionaire doing it instead of him. The problem isn't Bill Gates, the problem is that we live in an unconscious society which isn't conscious enough to intuitively sense the effects of vaccines. Now I'm not taking an anti-vax position, hell you may find that vaccines are good when you intuitively sense into them! The thing here is that people rely on mainstream science as opposed to their intuition, which doesn't really allow people to deeply consider the anti-vax position.

[GeorgeLawson]

The word 'conspiracy' comes from the latin 'conspirare' which means 'to breathe together.' So all the word itself means is people working together towards a common purpose, whether you interpret that as evil or good. You could conspire with others to do something seen as good, like plant trees, or something seen as bad, like murder people. So I agree with the point made earlier that society itself is a conspiracy; it's people realising that it's better to conspire than to work things out on our own. There's nothing mysterious about that. 

Why do people believe in theories, be they true or false, about groups of people working towards a shared goal (in other words, conspiracy theories) ? The same reason people believe anything, I suppose; it supports their ego's survival. 

A more interesting question for me to contemplate, though is; "how can we as a society conspire towards greater consciousness?" 

[Guest Tobia]

Picture this.

If in 2002 I came to you and told you that blaming Iraq for 9/11 is a LIE and Saddam Hussein does not have weapons of mass destruction. 

What would you have called me?

You probably would've called me a conspiracy theorist because the entire mainstream media, politicians and corporations would all promote the same "true" narrative.

What if I also had told you that the US public should not believe Washington's lies and start countless wars that will later kill hundreds of thousands of people?

You would've called me, not only a conspiracy theorist, but also one that sides with terrorists.

We have to start this war, for the SAFETY of the american people...

Safety can be used in any occasion to justify anything.

So now, if I encourage you to look deeper into the way covid19 deaths are counted, the way it is portrayed in the media, how the universal "cure" is promoted, the censorship, the abuses of power and all the aspects of corruption and fear mongering...

Then, I am immediately labeled a conspiracy theorist. 

At this point, I almost believe people deserve to have their rights taken away for years. People deserve to go bankrupt and beg government for money.

Because they choose to not question. They choose to be complicit and attack those who express concerns

 

 

 

 

 

[DrewNows]

@Tobia “you’re beautiful, it’s true!!!”

@GeorgeLawson Right on the money, backing that up! 

[DivineSoda]

5 hours ago, Tobia said:

Picture this.

If in 2002 I came to you and told you that blaming Iraq for 9/11 is a LIE and Saddam Hussein does not have weapons of mass destruction. 

What would you have called me?

You probably would've called me a conspiracy theorist because the entire mainstream media, politicians and corporations would all promote the same "true" narrative.

What if I also had told you that the US public should not believe Washington's lies and start countless wars that will later kill hundreds of thousands of people?

You would've called me, not only a conspiracy theorist, but also one that sides with terrorists.

We have to start this war, for the SAFETY of the american people...

Safety can be used in any occasion to justify anything.

So now, if I encourage you to look deeper into the way covid19 deaths are counted, the way it is portrayed in the media, how the universal "cure" is promoted, the censorship, the abuses of power and all the aspects of corruption and fear mongering...

Then, I am immediately labeled a conspiracy theorist. 

At this point, I almost believe people deserve to have their rights taken away for years. People deserve to go bankrupt and beg government for money.

Because they choose to not question. They choose to be complicit and attack those who express concerns

 

 

 

 

 

Well said. There's so much nuance to this subject, the question should be "Why are people so easily manipulated into close-mindedness?"

Answer is, because they were programmed that way. 

[Zanoni]

Even "conspiracy theorists" need too practice open mindedness of the possobility of being wrong in some areas. 

I know a guy who worked in the immigration board and read about children being tortured. That struck him so deep that he does everything he can to stop it and hasnt slowed down since he found out. 

There are not many people reporting on it, so he made it his Job to do it. The wholeness of the theories can be right but many details not. Too much of a heart and more discerment could be needed. I understand and wont judge as he is off the leash  for the rest of his life on this. 

I hope the child/human trafficking comes to an end and we all will finally be at peace. 

Edited May 3, 2020 by Zanoni

[gswva]

@legendary It's not only human society. It's everything. We create layers upon layers of lies to experience living through anything. Even spirituality is a lie, just supposedly undermining itself and as well as others. Conspiracy theorists are right in the sense that dualism is always playing against them, but they undertake the opposite path to truth by trying to catch themselves.

[LaucherJunge]

@gswva
And yet we can work on evolving the ego within the realms of this lie. We can work on improving our love. But if our system is in the way, it needs to be changed, plain and simple.
If you want to go meditate 24/7 in a cave and take some 5-MEO every now an then, do that. But this path is not for everyone. Some realize that this duality is here for a reason and participating in it is awesome. The lesson some people have a hard time to get still is that duality is included in non-duality, it has to be. Everything is a lie is one way to say it, the other way to say it is, everything is true. In infinity everything is true, this is a fact, it can't be otherwise, everything being true includes everything being false to point back to that lesson.

[gswva]

@LaucherJunge Just because I disagree with you about a couple of things doesn't mean my mindset is diametrically opposed to yours. I'm not saying anyone should live in isolation to seek truth or that the system can not be improved. To clarify where we disagree my point is, there is no such thing as evil. You can't chase evil because it simply doesn't exist. In fact not even the ego is, it's just a construct of love drowning in the abyss of lies that are the experiences we share between ourselves. There is no need to ever keep track of anyone nor anything outside of you in order to improve the system. You are wasting time building mental models of the devils around you. Evil is an unavoidable backlash of love. Focus on creating and sharing ideas and arts.

[abundance]

People seek answers for a world they do not understand. And they exclusively seek answers that validate their own biases. 

The problem with too many conspiracy theorists is that in an attempt to be open minded, they close their minds to worldviews that do not fit their narrative of the world. And many of these conspiracies are fear based and too extreme. Usually the truth is more complex and somewhere in the middle. They tend to view the world in black and white without appreciating the complexity of the world. 

Edited May 3, 2020 by abundance

[LaucherJunge]

45 minutes ago, gswva said:

@LaucherJunge Just because I disagree with you about a couple of things doesn't mean my mindset is diametrically opposed to yours. I'm not saying anyone should live in isolation to seek truth or that the system can not be improved. To clarify where we disagree my point is, there is no such thing as evil. You can't chase evil because it simply doesn't exist. In fact not even the ego is, it's just a construct of love drowning in the abyss of lies that are the experiences we share between ourselves. There is no need to ever keep track of anyone nor anything outside of you in order to improve the system. You are wasting time building mental models of the devils around you. Evil is an unavoidable backlash of love. Focus on creating and sharing ideas and arts.

I can give exactly the same sentence back to you in reference to evil. Nowhere did I claim anything about evil. I'm always talking about improvement and evolution.
There is no need to keep track of the outside world, but it's more efficient, it's more effective and it's faster.
There is no need for 5-MEO or yoga either, these are also tools outside of your inner world in a way and yet they are very helpful.

Just answer one question. If there were children being molested in front of you, would you help them or would you just let it be and focus on how happy you are with them being molested?
If you choose the first then you are simply being a hypocrite and if you choose the second I don't have anything further to tell you.

Edited May 3, 2020 by LaucherJunge

[Scholar]

Loss of Faith in institutions/authority and loss of community is one of the main reasons in my opinion. This is what happens where there is no functional and healthy Stage Blue foundation within a society.

 

As far as I can see this will only get worse, the internet amplifies these effects by a degree never seen before in history.

 

Fundamentally people do not realize that stories are what holds together civilization. This is why stories were so important for constructing and upholding societies, whether it be religion, nation, race, tribe, family or anything else. Now came a time in which we have abandoned a unified story in the face of freedom of speech and freedom from consequence.

 

The furhter and further apart the stories get, the more divided we will become. Because there is no outside pressure to keep us unified anymore. There is no threat to survival which is so urgent as to make community a necessity. And because noone thought it to be important to take this into their own hands, we now have more radically shifting world views, world stories.

 

 

People are lost because they do not have the epistemic tools to navigate a world without indoctrination and authority. People are susceptible to any story, because they derive the validification of a story by means of emotion and ego. This is a clear regression, and I know nobody who knows how to solve this issue.

Edited May 3, 2020 by Scholar

[LaucherJunge]

@Scholar
A unified story is also called fascism. 

[Scholar]

Somehow it reminds me very much of the Witch-hunts tha happened, although I did not do enough historical research on this:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Witch-hunt

Quote

A witch-hunt or a witch purge is a search for people who have been labelled "witches" or a search for evidence of witchcraft, and it often involves a moral panic[1] or mass hysteria.[2] The classical period of witch-hunts in Early Modern Europe and Colonial America took place in the Early Modern period or about 1450 to 1750, spanning the upheavals of the Reformation and the Thirty Years' War, resulting in an estimated 35,000 to 100,000 executions, with the most recent estimate at 40,000.[a][3] The last executions of people convicted as witches in Europe took place in the 18th century. In other regions, like Africa and Asia, contemporary witch-hunts have been reported from Sub-Saharan Africa and Papua New Guinea, and official legislation against witchcraft is still found in Saudi Arabia and Cameroon today.

It would not surprise me if something similar would happen as a result of this loss of foundation. The loss of authority during that time in history seems to be a big reason for why people fell into this kind of completey irrationality.

[LaucherJunge]

@Scholar

There is this fine difference, there is something called the law and if you don't follow it, you might get sentenced. Following the law I wouldn't really call irrational, irrational is letting some people stand above it and others not.

Edited May 3, 2020 by LaucherJunge

[gswva]

@LaucherJunge If someone asleep close to you were having a nightmare, would you stop it?

[Scholar]

It's also problematic because of how much effort it takes to disprove a conspiracy theory. It doesn't take much time to create one, because most claims are made up from thin air and are not verfied at all, yet for the one who wants to disprove such a theory it can be enormous effort.

 

Don't forget that this is an oppurtinity cost. The more non-sense there is, the more non-sense we will have to dismiss, and the less time we will be able to focus on progress.

 

 

The amount of time, effort and attention that is lost on a global scale is just absurd.

Edited May 3, 2020 by Scholar