Do We Need to Believe in Conspiracies?

Ok I did say in my introduction that some of you might hate me. It seems since i have started to write on here all I have done is criticise but can you blame me. So far we have had all this rubbish about Operation Blackjack, and nothing happened. We have also become obsessed with some conspiracy surrounding the oil spill, so much so it now has its very own forum. Frankly I think there may be some substance to the conspiracy claims however I am becoming very bored by it all. It seems that we need to make a conspiracy out of every major word event, and the bigger the event the bigger the conspiracy but why?

I have a idea that has been inspired by my reading on other threads I think we conspiracy theorists have to believe in them just in the same way as religious people (including my slef) have to believe in a God. Think about it all off what we believe in, is in most of it is based on faith. Take 9/11 for example, I do not believe the official story however none of the conspiracies have me convinced so I have faith that the official story is wrong, but i cannot prove it, if i could i would be one of the most famous faces on earth. The conspiracies don’t prove anything they just provide a more convincing story than the official version, and even at that none have ever shown evidence that says categorically that the official version is wrong.

Then we have the other people on ATS who make “prophecies” this annoys me, these people fall into 2 camps, people who are mentally ill and liars. But the question is why, why do we have people on ATS who make these claims and why do we have people who blindly believe them. Well i think deep down the people who make these predictions make them not for a sinister motive but to give them a sense of worth. It makes them feel good about themselves, this feeling is multiplied by everyone who believes in their claim. It gives the profit another emotion, one of superiority, a feeling that say’s “i’ am special” in other words it’s a sense of needing to be admired. The same could be said for those among us who claim to have contacts in the intelligence agencies, be somehow involved in a conspiracy or those who claim to have had an encounter of the 3rd kind.

I do not think these people are lying like this for any sinister motive but because their lies provide them with the psychological need they have for acceptance and self-worth. On ATS they have a massive audience who they can shear their lies or fantasies if you prefer. However ATS also provides the something unique; people that will believe them because of the conspiracy theorists need to believe like a nun needs to believe in God. We all have this need to greater and lesser extends and for some people ATS meets this need, for others it could be sport, love or excelling at work.


We all know in the end that most of these people are disproven but for other more moderate conspiracy theorists like myself it causes a problem. First of all we are ridiculed by other people for “debunking” which can discredit us, it also means that we are distracting ourselves from real conspiracies.

As we see belief in "traditional" religious and government institutions dwindle, we see a corresponding rise in "alternative" beliefs. People want to, and must believe in something it seems.
Look at the language cT'ers use. "The Truth", "believers"," those that know", etc, it's all over the posts here. THAT is is religious language, even if the posters don't realize it. If you substitute the word "God" for aliens, or whatever in many posts, they are nearly identical to fundamentalist christian posts. The CT'er is also stuck on the struggle of good vs evil theme, expressed by the evil PTB, the Illuminatti, the Government etc, vs THE Truth, the average guy, (good). The fantasy of being a messiah or martyr also is very clear in the constant dramatic theme of "resistance" and sacrifice for "Truth".
That's a nutshell description, and I'm sure it will be unpopular here.
CT'ers are just as dogmatic and stuck in their ways as anybody else, they just have their special delusion that they are not!

I couldn’t agree with you more, actually that is a perfect summary of what I was trying to say conspiracy theories are a modern religion. I do believe in some conspiracy theories but I am what you might call a “moderate” conspiracy theorist, I hate all this NWO, alien, 2012 and prophecy stuff. Nice to see I am not the only.

A star for you my friend!

reply to post by kevinunknown


What to be burned at the stake as a Heritic?
Go to the UFO or 9/11 threads and.....disagree!! They will go absolutly nuts, it will become personal right away. You will be treated as an inferior person with outright contempt on the 9/11 boards!
There is a lot of BS thats dogmaticly accepted in "New Age" crap, modern mythology explains 99% of conspiracy theory.
Here is one of my threads that might interest you.

Why Must We Believe?

People aren;'t interested in "truth", they are interested in drama and dramatizing their ordinary lives with delusions of transcendence.
Just like religion.

I dont believe in any conspiracy or any official story, I just take them all into consideration but I'm not going to conclude if any story is right or not because I wasnt there. I think discussing all possible conspiracies is a good thing, but we should be looking for both supporting evidence and counter evidence when we research instead of picking sides and only considering one possibility.

reply to post by OldDragger


Thanks found that quite interesting. Just wondering have you been accused of being a “disinformation agent”, “psyc opps agent”, “working for the elites” or just being plain ignorant. Also I am interested in what conspiracies you are interested in?

reply to post by CREAM


Look at my signature! That comes from a YouTube video identifying myself, and some other ATS posters as various agents of evil and skullduggery!! I'm accused of being the Devil, er, uh, a disinfo agent on a regular basis.
I'm mostly interested in the aircraft, science and politics boards.


[edit on 24-6-2010 by OldDragger]

reply to post by kevinunknown


I hear what you are saying. You just have to learn to ignore the stuff you don't like, I know it can be hard but just skip over the junk you don't like.

So what kind of stuff are you into?

As for this,

Take 9/11 for example, I do not believe the official story however none of the conspiracies have me convinced so I have faith that the official story is wrong, but i cannot prove it, if i could i would be one of the most famous faces on earth.

That might be a little too dangerous, if you could prove anything, your story would never surface, some parts of it may leak out, but you wouldn't become famous unless you had some serious protection. I think you would be left with 2 options, a nice pay day or a long sleep.


[edit on 24-6-2010 by InvisibleObserver]

reply to post by OldDragger


HAHA that’s funny as a word I am not allowed to say on ATS, i think this thread would be much more interesting if we has some of the more hardcore conspiracy theorists in the discussion.

reply to post by InvisibleObserver



Do you think if i told the ATS people on the 9/11 forum that i had received just such a pay off they might believe it?

reply to post by kevinunknown


Don't worry, I'm pretty hated around here. I don't take the time to actually argue intelligently most of the time because most of the conspiracies (ie. I'm an Alien, time traveler, etc. etc.) aren't worth the time or effort to try to refute such rubbish.

It's nice to know there are some people posting on this site that have a good dose of common sense.

[edit on 24-6-2010 by KILL_DOGG]

Funny you should menction the “i am a alien threads” have you seen this one some guy who thinks he is friends with a alien:

www.abovetopsecret.com...

Originally posted by kevinunknown
reply to post by OldDragger

 

HAHA that’s funny as a word I am not allowed to say on ATS, i think this thread would be much more interesting if we has some of the more hardcore conspiracy theorists in the discussion.

reply to post by InvisibleObserver

 

Do you think if i told the ATS people on the 9/11 forum that i had received just such a pay off they might believe it?

You know the rules,

pictures or it never happened.

No, you don't have to believe in conspiracies.


Course you don't have to believe in God either.

Your belief or disbelief has no bearing on whether they exist or not.

reply to post by LazyGuy


Your belief or disbelief has no bearing on whether they exist or not.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
We don't know that for certain to we?
Quantum mechanics seem to suggest otherwise, but that's pure wild speculation.
Speaking of wild, this topic is really catching on like wildfire isn't it?

reply to post by OldDragger


Once again I totally agree with you, our belief or disbelief has no bearing on whether it is true or not, it’s only the facts that matter. I think that what LazyGuy worte further proves that conspiracies are a form on religion.

What you are discussing here is quite similar to the issues on Memetics and Marketing that i have been reading about recently.

No-one designed these great faiths with all their clever tricks. rather, they evolved gradually by memetic selection. But nowadays, people deliberately use memetic tricks to spread religions and make money. Their techniques of memetic engineering are derived from long experience and research, and are similar to those used in propaganda, and marketing; with radio, television, and the Internet, their memes can spread far further and faster than ever before. Billy Graham's style of tele- evangelism is a good example. he starts by evoking fear, reminding people of all the terrible things happening in the world and of their own impotence and mortality. He presents science as having no answers and as a cause of the world's ills, and then persuades people to surrender to the all-powerful God who is their only hope of salvation. the experience of surrender raises powerful emotions and people turn to god in huge numbers.

The Meme Machine - Susan Blackmore, Pg 193

In that quote the word religion can be swapped for any particular theory you wish, as Billy Graham could be changed to any counter culture conspiracy theory peddler as well. The idea holds the same. While conspiracies, and alternative ideas are usually not pushing people to god, they are, for some of them, inviting people into an alternative belief system complete with higher beings all unto themselves to replace the Orthodox God at any rate.

One then needs to look at the recent 'Fad' in marketing known as "Tribal Marketing" that is now entering the main stream to replace the old VALS system. This tribal system is based entirely on memetic evolutionary precepts, and is designed to use the consumer as an unwitting part of the marketing system. Once one looks at the system it is easy, to me, to see how the same system can be used to advance the memes of religious/esoteric/conspiracy ideas through the layers till the person looking into the meme gets more and more immersed into the memes/ideology till they are completely part of the mechanism to perpetuate the propagation of the meme itself.

Tribal marketing n. A marketing strategy that attempts to create social groups or communities that are centered around a product or service. The credo of tribal marketing is that postmodern people are looking for products and services that not only enable them to be freer, but can also link them to others, to a community, to a tribe.

Faith Popcorn - 2004

An extremely in depth piece on tribal marketing (offline at time of posting)
venus.unive.it...

this video is a more succinct explanation


Here's the pretty face of the concept. For those that want to see the other side of the coin



Or maybe i'm just crazy....


[Edit for spelling]
[Edit to add video]

[edit on 25-6-2010 by And Why]

[edit on 25-6-2010 by And Why]

[edit on 25-6-2010 by And Why]

reply to post by And Why


Not really to sure what mathematics and marketing have to do with religion perhaps if i had read about it as much as you have i might understand what your saying, then again maybe you are crazy....

Just wondering if your saying that you agree with us or if you are disagreeing?

con·spir·a·cy (kn-spîr-s)
n. pl. con·spir·a·cies
1. An agreement to perform together an illegal, wrongful, or subversive act.
2. A group of conspirators.
3. Law An agreement between two or more persons to commit a crime or accomplish a legal purpose through illegal action.
4. A joining or acting together, as if by sinister design:


Funny that people say they don't believe in conspiracy yet have no clue what the definition of the word is!

If you make an agreement between two or more people YOU ARE CONSPIRING!

Every single thing human beings do is a conspiracy.

A joining or acting together, well under that definition the USA is a conspiracy!

Wake up people you live in a country founded on the basic premise!

Originally posted by theability

Funny that people say they don't believe in conspiracy yet have no clue what the definition of the word is!

Yup and it’s equally funny that you had to Google to words “conspiracy definition”, and have no understanding of colloquial language. If you bothered to read further down the page were you got that very limited definition you would also have found this:

conspiracy [kənˈspɪrəsɪ]
n pl -cies
1. a secret plan or agreement to carry out an illegal or harmful act, esp with political motivation; plot
2. the act of making such plans in secret
conspirator n
conspiratorial [kənˌspɪrəˈtɔːrɪəl], conspiratory adj
conspiratorially adv

I was also making the assumption that anyone who was reading this would have the intellect to conclude that i was talking about conspiracy theories, if you want quote the oxford definition i think you will find that it suits what I said in this tread. With that said however do you agree with what i have wrote about people who make the more imaginative conspiracy theory claims?

it is clear that you are a repitilian robot alien from nibiru come to disclose some very unimportant and distracting information. you are an obvious dis info agent from outer space and i dont care what anybody says im right and you're an extraterrestrial disinfo agents and you probably eat kangaroos YOU EVIL TWISTED ALIEN