I'm writing a paper on the psychology of conspiracy theories (Why people come up with theories and why people believe them).
I'm loving it, besides the awkward assignments that I don't quite understand. Like doing 4 free writes with topics like "reformulating binaries" and "uncovering assumptions." Overall I'd say free writing about my topic and my sources has been great for my memory and I have delved a little deeper into my topic, but I don't stay on topic with the free writes and hopefully I don't get counted off for it.
The thing I've realized the most about conspiracy theories is that the psychology behind them sounds EXACTLY like the psychology behind religion. It's the results of people not feeling control in their own lives and turning to theories that are impossible to prove to explain why things they don't like or feel uneasy about happen. It's humans buying into their own fears and creating something even scarier so that they don't ever have to cope with the fact that we control ourselves but we can't control the world.
I think this is a mark of my maturity and how I've grown more level headed in recent years. I completely understand that part of life is doing everything you can to have the results you want, and that when you don't get them it's out of your control and you should accept them. People don't die because of the devil or because it was "god's plan" they die because people die. If a higher power exists, they die because we weren't created to live forever but our death is hardly because of a deity sitting around going "Jesse needs to die in a car accident at the age of 16 because someone was driving drunk! That will teach everyone a lesson about the importance of safety and sobriety!"
Yes, its valuable to learn from the tragedies that do occur, but the idea that it MUST be someone else's plan would imply that we don't have free will. If we didn't have free will there would be no purpose to Jesse dying in an accident because our lives are already fabricated for us and we're just following them.
Conspiracy theories are also a mechanism of people with strong individualistic ideals being faced with things they don't agree with teamed up with our brains natural desire to see patterns. If someone is very aware of themselves and proud of their tattoos and had bad service from a restaurant numerous times they'd see that pattern and link it to being a personal attack on their body art. Sure, it could be, but it could also just be that the place has bad service. Every time I've gone to the Tilted Kilt I've gotten terrible service, but others haven't. I could make that to mean something, or I could accept that I've just had a few bad or new waitresses. Conservative Christians feel uncomfortable around gays and therefor feel that their marriage should be illegal and their quality of life should be less than a heterosexuals. They formulate ideas of it being a sin against god to back up their feelings when in reality they're choosing to hide behind their ideas instead of facing their fears and accepting that the way they feel is only their opinion and my not actually be based in fact.
That's my feeling of organized Christian religions at least. This paper has been AMAZING to read up on. My brain juices are feeling good.
XoXo,
S
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