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Climate change, Benghazi, … The science behind the right’s irrational obsession with conspiracies
http://www.salon.com/2014/10/12/climate_change_benghazi_the_fed_the_science_between_the_rights_irrational_obession_with_conspiracies/[font face=Serif]Sunday, Oct 12, 2014 06:59 AM EDT
[font size=5]Climate change, Benghazi, the Fed: The science behind the right’s irrational obsession with conspiracies[/font]
[font size=4]No matter the topic, a conservative fringe views it through a conspiratorial lens. New research explains why[/font]
Paul Rosenberg
[font size=3]The world is full of conspiracies, large and small. Little kids conspire to eat cookies behind their parents’ backs, while parents conspire to hide grownup truths from their children. On the other extreme, tobacco companies conspire to addict, and (unfortunately for the bottom line) inevitably kill, a vast ocean of customers. In between such extremes, the plots of countless stories involve conspiracies of one sort or another, simply because humans are social creatures who readily conspire (literally, “breath together”) to get things done that they might not be able to do alone.
With all this conspiring going on, it’s not surprising that some folks would notice — and many have. The writers of all those stories, for example. But some folks who notice have an annoying tendency to get things all wrong. What makes most stories interesting is precisely the fact that conspiracies are human creations, and we humans are fallible lot, we mess things up all the time. We can’t help it. It’s just our nature. As a result, conspiracies are usually rather messy and limited affairs, often undone by other conspiracies, or by their own internal tensions, like the scheming on a typical “Seinfeld” episode.
But some folks see conspiracies as anything but a reflection of our nature. They see conspiracies almost wholly as “other,” deeply sinister, and maddeningly perfect — or at least nearly so. Such folks are properly known as “conspiracy theorists.” They’re not wrong to believe there are conspiracies everywhere around them — as many of their critics mistakenly believe — but they are wrong about the nature of the vast majority of what’s really there, as well about how powerful and important conspiracies are, absent other forces working in tandem with them — such as the enormous economic and political clout possessed by tobacco companies.
The philosopher Brian L. Keeley wrote a brief but insightful article in 1999, “Of Conspiracy Theories,” from the perspective of epistemology (the philosophical study of knowledge). In it, he defines conspiracy theories as “a proposed explanation of some historical event (or events) in terms of the significant causal agency of a relatively small group of persons — the conspirators — acting in secret.” Although his analysis is insightful, this definition fails to capture the historical/social science sense of what’s commonly meant by the term, to wit: that it’s an explanation of human events via behavior that deeply violates ordinary norms, usually including serious criminal acts. Another paper by social psychologists provided a definition more in line with this:
…[/font][/font]
[font size=5]Climate change, Benghazi, the Fed: The science behind the right’s irrational obsession with conspiracies[/font]
[font size=4]No matter the topic, a conservative fringe views it through a conspiratorial lens. New research explains why[/font]
Paul Rosenberg
[font size=3]The world is full of conspiracies, large and small. Little kids conspire to eat cookies behind their parents’ backs, while parents conspire to hide grownup truths from their children. On the other extreme, tobacco companies conspire to addict, and (unfortunately for the bottom line) inevitably kill, a vast ocean of customers. In between such extremes, the plots of countless stories involve conspiracies of one sort or another, simply because humans are social creatures who readily conspire (literally, “breath together”) to get things done that they might not be able to do alone.
With all this conspiring going on, it’s not surprising that some folks would notice — and many have. The writers of all those stories, for example. But some folks who notice have an annoying tendency to get things all wrong. What makes most stories interesting is precisely the fact that conspiracies are human creations, and we humans are fallible lot, we mess things up all the time. We can’t help it. It’s just our nature. As a result, conspiracies are usually rather messy and limited affairs, often undone by other conspiracies, or by their own internal tensions, like the scheming on a typical “Seinfeld” episode.
But some folks see conspiracies as anything but a reflection of our nature. They see conspiracies almost wholly as “other,” deeply sinister, and maddeningly perfect — or at least nearly so. Such folks are properly known as “conspiracy theorists.” They’re not wrong to believe there are conspiracies everywhere around them — as many of their critics mistakenly believe — but they are wrong about the nature of the vast majority of what’s really there, as well about how powerful and important conspiracies are, absent other forces working in tandem with them — such as the enormous economic and political clout possessed by tobacco companies.
The philosopher Brian L. Keeley wrote a brief but insightful article in 1999, “Of Conspiracy Theories,” from the perspective of epistemology (the philosophical study of knowledge). In it, he defines conspiracy theories as “a proposed explanation of some historical event (or events) in terms of the significant causal agency of a relatively small group of persons — the conspirators — acting in secret.” Although his analysis is insightful, this definition fails to capture the historical/social science sense of what’s commonly meant by the term, to wit: that it’s an explanation of human events via behavior that deeply violates ordinary norms, usually including serious criminal acts. Another paper by social psychologists provided a definition more in line with this:
Conspiracy theories are lay beliefs that attribute the ultimate cause of an event, or the concealment of an event from public knowledge, to a secret, unlawful, and malevolent plot by multiple actors working together.”
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