Thursday, December 11, 2014

Speaking of the devil, conspiracy theorists, and heresy

What were heretics for the establishment in the Dark Ages, today's establishment calls
"conspiracy theorists." You see, those who are skeptical about official truths must excessively theorizing, and the word for thinking comes from a Greek verb for seeing. Those who don't just buy what they are being told must be thinking and seeing too much, more than required. And, as "conspirators," they are also apparently exchanging their notes with each other instead of just keeping it for themselves. They are thus today's heretics--instead of being just securely blind and thoughtless. Those who are not asking hard-hitting questions are evidently less likely to theorize, and who does not theorize cannot be a conspiracy theorist by definition.

Moreover, as the term indicates, conspiracy theorists believe that the world has some secrets and that there are things, which are hidden or concealed. Isn't that utterly ridiculous or what? But it is not ridiculous when the state pays dozens of billions of dollars to people whose living is based on dealing with these very things. And I am not talking only about scientists, provided that scientists are not researching and searching for what is already know. I mean, for example, that agency, which sees itself not only central to the state and order, but also very central to intelligence itself, which it claims as its sovereign domain.



Conversely put, Galileo or Giordano Bruno were not really thinkers or scientists, but merely conspiracy theorists. When Thomas Hobbes, the founder of modern liberalism and even modern conservatism, was declared a heretic and atheist, he too was clearly also a conspiracy theorist. And so was Machiavelli, the founder of modern political science. 

Rumsfeld: "Building No. 7? I've never heard of that!"

See, Rumsfeld is immune to being in danger of being a theorist. Or in danger of conspiring against world peace. What does not need to think to see that.

The popular phrase is that "the devil is in the details." But when one thinks about it, that is, if one allows oneself to think about it, one might realize that the phrase is not quite true for it appears that it is rather the truth that abides and hides in all these small pesky, concrete details. For lies are usually sold to us in bulk. In bundles (with other things perhaps). In generalizations. To look into details means to take the bulk apart, to analyze, to look more closely and more attentively. 

But who would have thought to call the truth hidden and lost in the details "the devil"? Who would dare to demonize the truth? A devil himself? A conspiracy theorist?
That's also perhaps why we have today something which is called mass society and mass movements ... and groupies ... including what one may call mental groupies. Buying in bulk is cheaper. So we are being told. A matter of the scale and simple economics. One can save on thinking, seeing, and brain power too.


"Everyone can see the obvious." And the establishment's bet is that everyone wants to be everyone. Mr. or Mrs. Obvious. And to play the devil to those who beg to differ and who are calling the Emperor naked. 

And today's world might be, indeed, sliding into a clash of "civilizations" or sets of certain truths in bulk that are held to be self-evident, much like the Cold War was also a clash of the systems of self-evident, everyone's truths, which can get copied and pasted.

And a mass man is not a man dealing well with details ... or the truth ... or even the devil.

Somewhere here also appears to lie hidden the root of what has befallen the left. The predicament of bulk thought, which stands in the way of solid theorizing or thinking and hence the inability to tell things apart, which is which and who is who. 

Yet, strangely, the hate for those who beg to differ seems to be very strong with those who don't have much patience with the details of individuality and who require the safety of the fold, which someone told me might also be etymological root of the word Leviathan. Thomas Hobbes' name of choice with which he christened the modern state. The beast. The machine. The devil. The power which has "no higher on earth."

So one can either "conspire" with thought or replace that with the bulk of ready-made and instantly available obvious truths the freshness of which is as good as the accuracy of their expiration dates. 

One either lives along with a living spirit ("conspires") or one's humanity has expired. And that's the truth.


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