Maybe ATS members aren't so Crazy afterall...

reply to post by onehuman


I think i speak for all of us when i say, "We are crazy, but not stupid"!

Suspicion is the mark of intelligence i always say.

I think Ron Paul's quote fits in nicely here...."truth is treason in the empire of lies." If we are to deny ignorance, how could we not question the " facts" being presented to us by the media , corporations and the government ?

I started feeling saner the day my friends stopped teasing me and started asking to borrow my conspiracy books.

I love that saying: Question Everything.

Thanks for the article, OP.

Being paranoid does not mean I'm wrong. It means I know something you dont know.

Now, back to the thread still in progress....

I especially liked this

Psychologist Laurie Manwell of the University of Guelph agrees that the CIA-designed “conspiracy theory” label impedes cognitive function. She points out, in an article published in American Behavioral Scientist (2010), that anti-conspiracy people are unable to think clearly about such apparent state crimes against democracy as 9/11 due to their inability to process information that conflicts with pre-existing belief.

Thanks for the article OP. I will use it wisely

Originally posted by Jonjonj

Originally posted by Wyrdnews
I must admit, some days I do wonder whether I' am the crazy one - but then generally speaking what I thought was coming or working up towards ends up becoming true.

About five years ago I mentioned to friends about the way things were going in terms of internet control, oil prices and trends with wars/globalisation etc. My mates first kind of laughed it off, and I was known as just being the harmless eccentric. Nowadays my friends who once laughed proactively come up and ask me what my opinions are on things, like I'm some kind of cunning man.

Friends do often make the worst audience though fella

lol. Maybe that's the case, but hopefully I know them enough to realise they aren't just taking the piss by asking

reply to post by onehuman


So what these studies show is that members of ATS that question my sanity, are crazy.

I'm good with that !

It depends on which member specifically but overall in general yeah it's true.

Sane people question what they are told by default just because they want to know how things work.

Insane people accept what they are told without question because they assume authority equates to perfection and ultimate goodness. (I guess? haha)

Originally posted by VoidHawk
I especially liked this

Psychologist Laurie Manwell of the University of Guelph agrees that the CIA-designed “conspiracy theory” label impedes cognitive function. She points out, in an article published in American Behavioral Scientist (2010), that anti-conspiracy people are unable to think clearly about such apparent state crimes against democracy as 9/11 due to their inability to process information that conflicts with pre-existing belief.

Thanks for the article OP. I will use it wisely

I have been studying this phenomena every day for years now.

Not just those around me or those posting on the Net, but within myself I have become much more aware of my own shortcomings and programming. Once aware of it I can deconstruct it and mitigate it's damaging effects. I am always worried I am missing something huge and that I will feel totally stupid again, it's a pattern that everyone that ever lived had to face, being wrong again and again.

The lesson here is that we need to just stop assuming things and start looking into things with an open mind. This works for virtually everything including one's own spiritual beliefs which are probably also in need of serious re-tuning.

When you disagree with someone it is a red flag that you must pay attention closely and question every aspect of the topic. There are solutions and compromises available to find which are usually much more accurate than the original divided opinions that everyone started with.

This works for pretty much everything and all of us are susceptible and fall prey to ignorance daily. The key is accepting this fact, embracing it, and taking action to correct yourself when you recognize you fall short. If someone says you fall short but you examine it and discover they are wrong, than agree to disagree. Etc..

of the University of Guelph

Guelphs and Ghibellines

The Guelphs and Ghibellines (English pronunciation [gwɛlfs], [gɪbəliːnz]) were factions supporting the Pope and the Holy Roman Emperor, respectively, in central and northern Italy. During the 12th and 13th centuries, the split between these two parties was a particularly important aspect of the internal policy of the Italian city-states. The struggle for power between the Papacy and the Holy Roman Empire had arisen with the Investiture Conflict which began in 1075 and ended with the Concordat of Worms in 1122. However the division between Guelphs and Ghibellines in Italy persisted to the 15th century.

I Bet that 7 out of 10 students /faculty at University of Guelph haven't even heard of this information or topic. If they have, well that would be a nice surprise. I hope I am wrong.

Essentially this extremely important aspect of history is often overlooked because it's implications are poorly understood.

What to draw from this topic?

1) That the elite caste are divided among factions, in a very generalized sense.

2) Most average people do not recognize the divisions among these factions, and often consider them one in the same.

3) A closer examination of heraldry and related subjects of the period will reveal obvious indicators that will aid one in determining the differences between factions through their "mascots". (This is just like the mascots we have today in sports etc, and the practice dates back beyond antiquity).

4) The primary cause of many wars in Europe during this period were a result of disputes between the internal divide among the ruling caste along these factional lines.


This is from the freedictionary but it's a snippet from the so called "Great Soviet Encyclopedia" :

On the whole, however, the enmity of the Guelphs and the Ghibellines reflected profound contradictions between the circles of tradesmen and craftsmen and the feudal nobility. This social antagonism became confused with the struggle of the cities for independence from the empire, the papacy, and foreign states. From the 14th century in Florence and several other Tuscan cities the Guelphs divided into the Blacks and the Whites. The Blacks united elements of the nobility, while the Whites became the “party” of the wealthy townsmen. The White Guelphs had real power in Florence, and they had their own palace, which has survived to this day. The weakening of the political role of the empire and papacy in the 15th century brought the end of the struggle of the Guelphs and the Ghibellines.

So even among the Guelphs it divides further into sub-factions, etc.

Weird and right...their worst nightmare,Pardon I must don my chainmail and leather to go out tonight. Q'apla!

No big revelation to me. Just backs up what I already knew.

As children we are told to question everything yet socially we are told it is wrong to do so. We go from open curious minds to ones that accept what they are being fed. Living in this insane country (doing something repeatedly and expecting different results) you may choose to follow what you are told therefore becoming as sick as the society you live in or appear "crazy" to those same people. Either way we are stuck in a vortex where questions are posed but none answered because too many people still allow themselves to be fed. Very cool article. Thank you for sharing this but the larger issue is if everyone is crazy then no one can be accountable.

The first step of the scientific method is formulate a question, so when given a story we ask a very basic question, is this true. Then we go to step 2 form a hypothesis, heres a snippet of the definition of that step 2:

A hypothesis is a conjecture, based on the knowledge obtained while formulating the question.

And a more important snippet.

no theory can ever be considered completely certain, since new evidence falsifying it might be discovered.

So right there in the scientific method that we are all taught very early in school as children, it tells you once you ask a question YOU NEED TO DO THE RESEARCH AND GAIN INSIGHT TO FORM YOUR OWN HYPOTHESIS.

Now i know the scientific method is for scientific inquiry, and i get that applying it here might be a little stretch but im simply bringing it up as an example of how we are always taught to find the truth for ourselves, and that the path to the truth is information and knowledge acquired.

People take stories and headlines read them and just accept what the have read? I always say theres 3 sides to every story, Their side, your side, and the truth lol. I always hated when people said to me "OMG your such a conspiracy nut" but those people would rather never open theirs eyes, theres a certain comfort that can be found for some in not knowing.

The study does make sense, the only difference between "conspiracy nuts" and other people is that the nuts tend to go about things much more logically, and put it a lot more time in to get the real facts and make an opinion for themselves, where as the other people throw logic out the door turn off there brains and do the following............ Read, Retain, Recite ..... like some sort of robot lol

I like being crazy cause to be sane is to be ignorant, delusional and in denial!
In other words I would rather be a crazy CT individual then a sane PC deluded sheeple!
The truth is we are all crazy at least those of us who ignore that we are living in a world on the verge of
our own destruction be it through nuclear, economical, ecological, biological, geological and climatological devastation!
We ignore these things which could very well devastate us all but worry about nonsense like certain entertainment and political wedge issues! We IMO have failed to remove the veil of ignorance and this makes us
all less then sane!
I realize there is so many things to worry about and to really worry about them all would have us all on antidepressants and/or valium but we do need to see that these things are here and we do need to realize
that change only happens with eyes open! May we someday realize this!

Originally posted by phishyblankwaters
reply to post by onehuman

 

There are plenty of insane ATS members, we get treated to their insanity now and then in threads. You can't deny it. But it doesn't surprise me that those of us considered "conspiracy theorists" would be "saner" than the rest. We are mostly educated, intelligent, inquisitive, and tend to really immerse ourselves in a given topic, I know I do.

I find it much more insane to blindly believe what I'm told without the ability to test it for myself.

With that said, it's almost as if the last 40 years of redicule has driven the "open minded" to keep digging deeper and getting more, viable, backup information to support the theories. A great evolution of social dynamics! You know, the whole "Boy Named Sue" thing.

We're not going to stop asking questions and demanding truth, so bring on the redicule, turn on the mainstream media overdrive and keep trying to keep us out. The more they have to pour it on, the more obvious the coverups become to those paying attention...

Originally posted by phishyblankwaters
reply to post by onehuman

 

There are plenty of insane ATS members, we get treated to their insanity now and then in threads. You can't deny it. But it doesn't surprise me that those of us considered "conspiracy theorists" would be "saner" than the rest. We are mostly educated, intelligent, inquisitive, and tend to really immerse ourselves in a given topic, I know I do.

I find it much more insane to blindly believe what I'm told without the ability to test it for myself.

There are plenty of ATS members with seemingly no education on English grammar though! It drives me nuts sometimes.

Nice article, though the author kind of seems to be trying to prove that so-called "conspiracy theorists" are sane and "gatekeepers" are not, so it seemed a little less-than-objective in my opinion.

"There are plenty of ATS members with seemingly no education on English grammar though! It drives me nuts sometimes. "

The preposition should be IN English grammar, as we are being grammar nazis