Why We Should Pay More Attention to Conspiracy Theory

The Image is not the Thing. It is the image.

We should pay more attention to conspiracy theory for two reasons:

1) such a large proportion of the population are attracted to them, so much so that even if nonsense, the wise will demand to know why exactly that is, because ignorance of it might miss an opportunity to discover something collectively important

2) though just images of the world, they always tend to point towards genuine and serious problems we all know exists but do not have the knowledge, certainty and language to describe with confidence, so these images are like a map leading to the source of very serious, yet probably unrelated extant social problems *

And yes, I'm well aware there are snake oil traders who do very well by exploiting people as conspiracy theory figureheads. Let them join the others. We're here to understand 1 and 2 above.

Despite conspiracy theory being prima facie 'nuts' to the normie material world observer, why then are such large swathes of the great masse so attracted to it. Is it not a dereliction of duty for those we pay most respect to, to ignore them?

We are not different. We all desire to go to the root of any important question, making us all radical, and even though we don't usually make it anywhere close to the root, we really really want to be able to. And the root is unified already. The root has no image but it's hard to see buried underneath a sea of them. So we are not different, in the end. And this activity is challenging because we tend to fall back onto cosy surface images of the world instead. Because going deep is so hard and risky.

We feel different because of the superficial images we create, to describe the root - the undescribable. It's like looking at a neutron. No one has seen a neutron, we only have the images we created to describe them. So we don't really understand energy still and waste resources. Nevertheless, these images still have great utility elsewhere. We just forget they are images and its this forgetting where all the conflict starts.

We create an image of the world. Then we worship the image we created. Soon the image is normalised into a socially accepted form through constant widespread use. It becomes important to us. Then, inevitably, when competing images clash, there is conflict...between competing images, which don't even exist!

Think of a national border. It's an image. But it's not actually there. There's a fence there. There's a piece of paper with ink saying it's there. But these are not a border. They are fences and paper.

So we're still looking at an image of the world. And now we're no longer aware it's an image, because it has become so 'normal'. 

Supplementally, reputation plays a very big part here. People think reputation is earned. It can be. But earning reputation is a corner case and limited to the rather limited case of individuals. Collectively, which is where it has most import, reputation is conveyed onto a figurehead or entity, by that collective which needs that figurehead to be a messiah for the preordained images. This messianic figure provides a critical support for the images we already created. And because we all know that supporting such an icon of reputation, that everyone else within that particular collective group is highly likely to support them too for the same reason. So there is no risk to group members in supporting these figures and the images are bolstered in concrete by implication. No one ever lost their job, friends, mortgage(home) or family for following these figureheads. Because their purpose is to uphold the images the unconscious collective wants to be real. Think buying software and Microsoft, Cisco and network gear, BTC and crypto.

Crypto is a topically interesting case. Dr Craig Wright has just lost a significant and costly civil legal case to the crypto world who worship their own images - even the judge has labelled him a chronic liar. Entirely on reputation. Everyone knows crypto is 99% a scam full of thieves and liars. Yet the image created by cypherpunks is one of freedom from banks and government. While the only one fighting fraud and crooks in the same crypto space is Dr Craig Wright! Images and reputation have no bearing at all on if something is either good or bad. Once fully adopted by the collective, anything goes and entire nations, nay, entire worlds, will support the 'genocide'.

It is now, when these images are competing fiercely with one another, that every conflict and social problem commences. We have forgotten we all come from the same source - of a unified world, at the root which is devoid of conflict because it cannot be divided. The world is the world as a whole. Only images divide it from itself.

We create these images as metaphors. Etymology of that term is 'to transfer' - from the root, into an image. From what is authentic, into something which merely describes the authentic. It doesn't matter that the description is accurate. It matters that it gets accepted wholesale by the collective. Similarly to the reputation of the figures who support the images. 

What drives this collective acceptance though? As always, whatever is the primordial need of that particular group or groups. If we need a pandemic to make us feel our lives are threatened, it will be manufactured. Not by a cabal of wealth and power. But by the collective group - everyone! This is why its so easy to corral entire nations into taking toxic chemicals, or that aliens exist or that a New York tower block was felled by Mr. George Soros to cull the population. Entire groups of people will start to believe in something that is not real because they 'need it' to be true. Without needing to be educated on it. Without needing to be forced against their will. Knowing it will be immediately harmful and lead to appalling unintended consequences. This 'need' is more important than all of those relatively little things. And it is being driven by this unconscious collective. We cannot test it easily because its not conscious of itself. This is not me trying to escape from analysis. It is me proposing a hypothesis for you to look into and analyse and discount wherever you can, but within hand, not out of it.

What is this collective I'm talking about? It is whichever is the dominant worldview commanding the greatest number of individuals, in that time and place. There will be competing collectives too. They will come and go as required. But the iron law of conspiracy theory demands in any time and place there will be one master and many slaves. Or one dominant image and many competing with it for first place. We can see this with the perennial battles between left and right, rich and poor, the powerful and the weak,  nation and nation, the politicians and the bureaucracy, the merchants and the landlords, the central bank and the private banks, the planet savers and the freedom fighters. All images. And so it goes...

When we use the images in daily life in the material world they can be very useful, which is why we use them. Money for example does not exist materially. But it's very useful. It has great utility. So give me a piece of the actual money, not the material world tokens we use as a proxy for it. You won't be able to, because it's just an image, and a very useful one too.

The problem is when we start believing the image is actually the thing. Once it's become normalised in the collective mind, which is an unconscious mind. This mind cannot be aware that it's looking at an image if it's activity is unconscious. All we all know is that the image exists and its is nearly always more cosy to believe that, than to analyse it authentically. The collective will support me every time. It is safe to support it in spite of it being good or bad for me or others. Because everyone else supports it, I will take the easy pathway or not leave home at all. 

When we use images to describe the world we are looking at the image, not the root thing. Conflict is therefore inevitable if there are competing images. Especially when the image has great importance to us, justified or not. This is where every material world conflict is sourced - in superficial images which do not actually exist. Images help us escape from the root into a cosier place, but there's a heavy price to pay for that escape - the inevitable conflict and disastrous unintended consequences. Conflict cannot come from the root.

So how does all this fit in with conspiracy theory and why that phantasm is worthy of more attention?

All people know intuitively, though will rarely admit it publicly, there is an unconscious entity with more command over us than is comfortable. All people, not just the religious know this. Not necessarily as a threat, and maybe too. The feeling that its unknowable or outside our control, yet we feel obliged to deal with it, is not something which lends itself to feelings of security. So we usually to the escape from it, using images. We know intuitively that we cannot know about it being buried away so deep. It is an inkling. The only way to describe it, if we chose a cosy escape route, is with images.

Science has dismissed it long ago, there are no job prospects in it, because you cannot measure cause and effect of something you cannot know. We can only measure the competing images relative to each other. Science is the measurement of images, which can have great utility for economic productivity say. Nevertheless, science is just measuring images, not looking directly at the root.

The overwhelming temptation and ease of use of images in a challenging and often risky world means we normally live separately from the root because its more cosy and everyone else is doing it anyway. We divide the real world, into images. Sometimes that is destructive. The destruction cannot be sourced though because it's an image. So it cannot be attended to through analysis or statistics.

There are very real, very serious problems in our world of social organisation. I need not show the litany of failure people across the spectrum preside over equally and unanimously having being given the power to do so. We created it all. It belongs to us. We cannot escape it. It is ours entirely. The problems stem from these competing images we prefer to use instead of going to the root. It is cosier to use images, in the short term. We uses these images to point at these very real problems, without taking the risk of being seen to move against the collective authentically. They are metaphors for very real world problems in the form of an escape route - we can 'point' at the problem and just walk away from it with impunity.

Now, conspiracy theory. What of it? Do we create a new image of the world, as a conspiracy theory, as the only way we have of pointing at these very serious problems? After all we know they are there. We just do not, can not, have the language to describe them. So we create an image of the thing, a metaphor, to 'transfer' meaning from the root, into the material world where we can at least have a small chance of attending to it, finally. It's at least a stab, in the dark.

So to discount conspiracy theory as only for tin foil hat wearers is a terrible mistake, if, we want to understand the world more fully. Because these theories might point indirectly at the root, in the only way they can, as an image. Of course there are also conflicting conspiracy theories. These too end up reinforcing a world full of conflict. But to be fair, that is no worse than all the other images is it? And at least it is taking a bold stride into the unknown where there are large risks and no guarantees - becoming the hero in ones own adventure.

I don't mean you should start believing conspiracy theory at all. I do mean that a wise old man would use all these images, as having the same eventual meaning, and without creating conflict between them, as a map leading to the unified source - the real world were things actually happen.

There are so many images. Many have the same meaning. At their source they are not different. In creating the differing images we merely use different colours and brush strokes to convey the same meaning in our own way. When they become normalised socially they gain importance and we fight over them as if they are the root. But they are just images of the root.

Perhaps, conspiracy theory is the first step for anyone who is deadly serious about the world, in returning to the source of the bubbling spring, which has been tended so well.

* See C.G. Jung and 'Visionary Rumours'.