A dog in the mist

Boy, I tell you, PMS is a bitch. It’s even more a bitch when middle age is closing in. It’s utterly horrible when you’re confined in the same house with two kids and a husband, whom you love dearly, but who can not, in all honesty, provide comfort at all times and respond to my every psychological / philosphical need with an omnipotent blanket of patience and empathy. The worst thing is, we get into arguments over the stupidest things that exist. Conspiracy theories, people. Yes.

Not that he believes in them. Nor do I. But as we heard in the beginning of this week, we're only half way through with the quarantine. People are getting lonely, desperate for communication and understanding, and frankly going insane. I have never seen such an inundation of conspiracy theories on social media as I have during the last month. Not only the usual ones, but brand new ones have become mainstream, and it's pretty hard trying to avert one's eyes from seeing them every-single-day. (You know. The government doesn't do anything/ it overreacts; there are way too many people dying/ there are less people dying than ever; quarantine is inefficient, herd immunity is needed/ herd immunity is inefficient, more quarantine is needed; who is keeping masks from us/ who is profiting from selling us all these masks; why can't we get masks/ why should we wear masks, they are inefficient; why can't we be given chloroquine, they want us dead/why are we pushed to take chloroquine, they want us dead; 5G causes corona/ we'll all get it without 5G; New World Order is taking over as we look away/ banks are profiting from all these bankruptcies to get stronger; China is behind this, there are not enough deaths in China/ China has more deaths than anyone, they are keeping information from us; It was created in a lab in China/ it was created in a lab in the US/it was created by WHO; It was the Muslims/it was the Jews; only vegetarians are saved/ only meat-eaters are saved; It was Elon Musk/George Soros/Bill Gates/Emmanuel Macron/Barack Obama/Donald Trump/ the EU/ a serving of bat soup.)

I have to admit: I have tried reasoning. Pointing out inaccuracies and plain lies in the diverse theories. Boy, is that a waste of breath. The ideas just run at every direction, pointlessly, like a dog in the mist looking for a lamp post to urinate on. 

Then I've tried blocking. Just block and freeze the hell out of every fearmonger. As new ones flood in, it's hard to keep up. In some cases, it's a sure way to lose friends and acquintances, who believe you are either insensitive to their suffering, or just blinded from The Truth: that we're all being lied to and abused by The System, a hidden hand that guides us, so hidden that it's invisible actions are only visible to those in possession of remarkable mental clarity: themselves.

Are these complex hidden structures, that require an in-depth understanding of political theory and a knowledge of political history plus a vast comprehension financial theory and practice, are they seen and decoded by those with the most education, the most studies, the most experience? Logically, that is how it would be. In reality, I'm sorry to point out, it's the opposite. Hard-core conspiracy theoreticians are usually the less educated and the less employed.

It would thus be easy to dismiss this as another example of human stupidity and gullibility. E basta!

Not that simple. Many of the people I know and love are now flirting with these ideas. I can no longer dismiss them as just stupid or uneducated. Not when I see how afraid many of them really are, scared frozen, unable to help themselves, convinced that we are all heading towards our doom. 

Then a friend asked me if I had ever considered the idea of conspiracies being a religion. Well, maybe, I answered, I guess I sort of had. Except when I gave it some more thought, I realized that my friends  that are the most prone to conspiration theory thinking are those that are also the least religious. How does this all match up, then?

In the olden days, when a famine ravaged a country, when a debilitating disease ate its way through a population, when nature destroyed entire cities, it was not the crowned heads that the people looked to, fisrt and foremost. It was to God. If death took its toll, well, it was the will of God. What a relief that must have been to the kings and queens of those days. Sort of a generic pain killer, a palliative for the government.

When I was growing up, it was more common to be a member of some church or another than not. Then came the nineties, when leaving the church gained massive momentum. It was the intelligent thing to do, after all; a human did not need a higher power to explain his existance. What a silly thing, to believe in a higher power that controls us, a hidden hand that plays us like marionettes, that disasters, diseases and famines were caused by an invisible dominance!

Except in any given conspiracy theory, we ARE being controlled by a higher power, a hidden hand, played like marionettes by invisible dominance. 

In a modern democracy, these outdated scenarios of fatalism could, of course, never take place. A democracy places the people in the position of power. So when things go wrong, we do not look for an account to be given, no! We do not place the blame, we take the blame. We take responsibility. We take immediate action, we lead through example. 

Sound familiar?

Nope, to me neither. We hold our government accountable, for we have elected them as our representatives. But the problem is just that: the politicians represent us, they represent all of us. Not only the brilliant, all-knowing, all-seeing intelligent and accountable side of us. Being human, they also represent the lying, hiding, sniveling, back-stabbing, egotistical and greedy as hell side. So, when a disaster happens and an account has to be given, we are given the kind of account that we ourselves would give when caught unprepared, hand in a cookie jar. Nothing happened! This is nothing at all! I didn't do it! I knew this would happen if we left HIM in charge! No-one could have predicted this! Nothing actually happened, fake news!

Under authoritarian regimes, it seems there are much less consipracy theoreticians. One must wonder why. Is it because they're so much better off? In Russia, in China? So much happier with the way things are run, especially since they are not in any way involved with the decision-making processes, and do not really get to know what the government is up to at any given time? Of course not. They are just silenced, scared to disagree, and for good reason.

So, in a way, hearing all these people running their mouths at our government is actually good news. It means this is still a democracy, and people can still blather any old nonsense into the void if it makes them feel better.

And for those of you out there that still feel the icy, gripping hand of an invisible, invincible new world order around your unsuspecting neck, do us all a favor. Treat your fear as if it was fear of gods, which it sort of is. Become a non-believer. You are an atheist anyway, right? The word atheist comes from ancient Greek: a-théos, without god. What would the denomination be for a person without dogma? Adogmist?

There it goes again, that dog in the mist, wandering aimlessly, looking for a new lamp post to micturate upon.