Is the belief in conspiracy theories really just a sign of mental illness.

Originally posted by 1Providence1
reply to post by December21st2012

 

There is always a balance; clearly there are many people who don't realize that questioning and analyzing important events that cause harm/affect things in a great way is actually a very GOOD thing to do. In a court room, if you have reasonable doubt, the case goes on until you reach a verdict. As far as I'm concerned, every person is a jury member, but too many people either fly off the handle and make wild accusations with unsubstantiated claims about conspiracy, and still others seem to proverbially plug their ears saying "La la la I cant hear you!!"

Now that, is mad.

Yes think of the amount or reality that has been dug up over the years by good investigative work. On any number of issues.

reply to post by December21st2012


Is the belief in conspiracy theories really just a sign of mental illness?

Answer: it is a survival instinct.

Hello everyone!
I would really like to know what a "normal", non- mentally ill person thinks about certain topics....and how their 'beliefs' are normal....as opposed to mine/ours.
What is 'normal' based on? Which set of beliefs are you allowed to adhere to, without being labelled as mentally ill?
Is it religion? Are certain religions "less crazy" than others?
Is it healthy (not mental illness) to accept everything we are told? If so....which sources are credible?
Our parents? Our government? Our television set?

It seems to me, that mental illness is a blanket term being used to cover somel people who....question authority? (re conspiracy theorists).

I don't want to be well-adjusted to a sick society.....but that's just me.
jacygirl

reply to post by December21st2012


Perhaps some are mad and for the rest, I think it is good old fashioned healthy paranoia.
Fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice, shame on me.

Originally posted by zatara
reply to post by December21st2012

 

Is the belief in conspiracy theories really just a sign of mental illness?

Answer: it is a survival instinct.

edit on 22/3/2013 by zatara because: (no reason given)

LOL, for the mentally ill. I think if resorting to fear and believing everything is not what it appears at face value, and when it has become imbedded as "instinct" in the largest brained creature on the planet with the ability to destroy everything around himself...it has reached the state of paranoia.

Fear is not life. Suspicion at every turn is not living, it is living in fear, unhealthy, unnecessary and unwarranted. Most people are who they say they are and mean what they say. I think rather than develop our paranoia, we should try to expose and rid society of the duplicitous and sociopathic by eliminating the NEED for anyone to be so deceptive and hold such contempt for others.

We CAN DO THAT by simply giving everyone what they want from birth onward. Love, attention and respect. It is all anybody wants. We cannot do that. We can't even manage to properly love our own children. Mothers pump them out and let them run. We reap what we sow and so there will always be those who are overlooked, unloved and abused who will feel the need to lie, cheat and steal.

That said, I do think there are some duplicitous forces at work both within this US Government and in the Catholic Church, perhaps all Churches. I think these both began as decent and legitimate ideas that were hi-jacked and usurped by "special interests" who I describe as "Old Money." Fortunes thousands of years in the making and immune to economic downturns, they win either way, by fooling people...Because in both POLITICS and RELIGION, there is the ability to "control" huge numbers of people and their behavior, skew the dice in your own favor and people are in place to do it. Let's call them "The Dealers."

Power always corrupts. Power, prestige, a family name, a heritage and a genealogy of being in the Ruling Class - corrupts absolutely. Even the idiots among them are above our laws.
And of course there are countless other scams out there targeting the weak, the elderly, and foreign, and charlatans have gone mainstream.

Life IS and has always been a bizarre.
Let the buyer beware!

double post

I will tell you what, it is not easy trying to type a reply to your thread with a straight jacket on so do bear with me

As another poster said... we all have some kind of mental condition if you left it up to the quacks to have their say all the time!

Kindest respects

Rodinus

I don't consider myself a conspiracy theorist. I consider myself as an intelligent person, who doesn't believe everything told to him by known and proven liars.

Originally posted by December21st2012
Are us conspiracy theorists really just mad?

So I stumbled on this and it got me thinking, well almost questioning my own sanity. I have never been to see a psychiatrist, should I be worried just because I have an interest in these theories?
Then I also began to wonder, how many people that post actively here might also have these concerns, perhaps have already been diagnosed or even on medication.

Is this the road down which we are travelling?

If it is the belief that there are some groups of individuals or organizations working either directly together, or separately but for some shared goal for the sake of dominance and control of others, the answer is no.

Originally posted by DAVID64
I don't consider myself a conspiracy theorist. I consider myself as an intelligent person, who doesn't believe everything told to him by known and proven liars.

Pretty much the same with me.
I was once a very "mainstream" person who did scoff at conspiracy theorists. Then some of those conspiracies turned out to be very very true.. so my brittle mind opened a crack. Now I spend time actually listening to/reading the ideas and researching the information concerning theories that are interesting to me or that may effect me/the country. Looks to me like its not the conspiracy theorists that are the mentally ill group.. but many of our "leaders" certainly fit the criteria of more than one psychiatric illness. This whole thing with the declaration that its a mental illness is just a way to malign those who question things and demand proof of things a person or entity or govt claims IMO.

I do see where a conspiracy could feed into a person's mental illness though.

reply to post by December21st2012


No, there just trying to brainwash people more into believing that questioning the "status quo" is insane and not normal.

Is the belief in conspiracy theories really just a sign of mental illness

Is sitting around and wondering if your significant other is cheating on you when they are an hour late to get home, after they've already been caught cheating twice before, crazy? No, the crazy part is that you didn't want to move all your furniture into storage and try to find a new place to live and separate all your belongings and the dog, so you forgave her and made yourself believe her when she said it'll never happen again...

reply to post by binkbonk


Sorry to hear that man. Hope it all works out.

That's absurd. If anything, they coin it a "mental illness" to guilt people into not seeking the truth. I like to call them "Truth Realities" instead of "Conspiracy Theories". There is a huge agenda to keep a lot of information at bay, and TPTB will go to any lengths to get people to stop looking into it.

If seeking the truth and raising awareness means I'm a crack pot, so be it.

First that wife might listen to some of those theories here husband subscribes to.
And if he thinks every kooky theory to come down the pike is something to adjust his life to then yes he has a problem and it's a true parinoid condition.
A lot of us old timers were called crazy when we talked about MK Ultra......oops to all the accusers of such.
But...there is only so much an individual can handle...wanting to know the truth is a noble calling...letting it rule or even rule your life is problem and a mental illness...but one can become OCD over a number of things, don't let the search for truth become malaligned because of it.
And for everyone....you only got one life, take a break from this crap on a regular basis and just have a good time! Shoot some pool, have a beer, watch a movie, play b-ball with a buddy. Wanting to know the truth is an awesome calling. Letting it make you a loon is not.

Our US government routinely rely on hoaxes to sell their agendas to an otherwise reluctant public.
The Romans accepted the Emperors and the Germans accepted Hitler not because they wanted to, but because the carefully crafted illusions of threat appeared to leave no other choice.

Our government too uses hoaxes to create the illusion that We The People have no choice but the direction the government wishes us to go in.
Once lost, the Romans never got their Republic back. Once lost, the Germans never got their Republic back. In both cases, the nation had to totally collapse before freedom was restored to the people.

Remember that when Crassus tells you that Spartacus approaches.

Remember that when thugs in the streets act in a manner clearly designed to provoke the public fear.

Remember that when the Reichstag burns down.

Remember that when the President lies to you about weapons of mass destruction.
Obama care we just wont have any choice.......Hoaxe
Coincident with the expected public statement of Monica Lewinsky following her testimony, Bill Clinton ordered a cruise missile attack on Sudan and Afghanistan, claiming to have had irrefutable proof that ...........bogeyman extraordinaire (and former Afghani ally) Osama Bin Ladin was creating terrorist chemical weapons there.

President Lyndon Johnson wanted a war in Vietnam. He wanted it to help his friends who owned defense companies to do a little business.
He needed it to get the Pentagon and CIA to quit trying to invade Cuba. And most of all, he needed a provocation to convince the American people that there was really "no other choice".

On August 5, 1964, newspapers across America reported "renewed attacks" against American destroyers operating in Vietnamese waters, specifically the Gulf of Tonkin. The official story was that North Vietnamese torpedo boats launched an "unprovoked attack" on the USS Maddox while it was on "routine patrol".
President George H. W. Bush wanted a war in Iraq.George Bush was motivated by money. there was really "no other choice"..........operation Desert Storm
I thank we are all mental

It’s like living in a fantasy world, and each new idea creates a new twist to the plot that never has any actual ending, because the social media stops people from actually BEHEADING the queen or the Pope or the presidents and instead keeps us in a dream state of socially interconnected nonsense!
Welcome to your self-created and perpetuated Matrix – Facebook, Infowars, Youtube
That is why social media was invented and so well funded by governments and corporations – not to connect the people to the world but to disconnect the people of our country by making them interconnected in their minds.

This is the Matrix....

We are victims of our own ignorance and willful consent and compliance to the tyranny and oppression......

There are the general of the run conspiracy theorists. People that I would say think for themselves. Then there are the super genius conspiracy theorists that can go from beginning to end of a topic in such fashion that it makes mere mortals look pathetically stupid.

My humble opinion is that some of the deeper thinking individuals are far more superior in their thoughts. They are very rare and I do respect those that think way outside of the box.

I'm not a conspiracy theorist. I'm not as intelligent as those that are good at it. Yet I do enjoy reading it immensely.

I think mental illness is a conspiracy. Some times if you don't feel well and you talk to a therapist or psychologist, they have a way of convincing you whats wrong with you. One of the craziest relationships I ever had was with a just graduated psychologist. Trust me, I wasn't the crazy one in that relationship.