What Lurks Beneath Conspiracy Theories?
Some people, despite all proof to the contrary, believe the moon landings were faked. Some people, despite all proof to the contrary, believe the last election was stolen. And those are just two of the many conspiracy theories that are believed by untold numbers of people.
How can we understand the phenomena of conspiracy theories? Conspiracy theories conjure up stories about grassy knolls, UFO cover ups, the Illuminati, and other wild ideas that most people consider to be nonsense. The people who believe them aren’t all asylum inmates wearing tin foil hats in fear of government mind control. Conspiracy theories are part of human culture. We cannot just dismiss them, if for no other reason than we can’t ignore the damage caused by conspiracy theories. We are seeing the deaths of thousands of people who believed conspiracy theories about the COVID-19 pandemic.
To ignore or ridicule beliefs in conspiracy theories is to be as dismissively arrogant as the conspiracy theory believers are about beliefs other than their own. We don’t have to agree with the conspiracy theories, but we need to understand what they are, why some people believe them, and what lurks beneath them.
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