Research suggests, on a psychological level, conspiracist ideation — belief in conspiracy theories — can be harmful or pathological, and is highly correlated with psychological projection, as well as with paranoia, which is predicted by the degree of a person’s Machiavellianism…
— from the Wikipedia ‘Conspiracy theory’ entry
For some time now, people in the mainstream media have been getting their panties in a wad over so-called ‘conspiracy theories’. The main point of the criticism seems to be that we’re not supposed to have ‘conspiracy theories’ and if we do have them, well, then there’s something wrong with us.
The way I look at it, there’s a conspiracy among the mainstream media to make us all feel guilty about having conspiracy theories. That’s my theory, anyway.
Speaking for myself — and hoping that I don’t get locked up for saying so — it’s pretty obvious that conspiracies have been around for quite a while. There was a famous religious teacher 2000 years ago, for example, who was nailed to a cross as the result of a conspiracy among a bunch of lawyers and hypocrites with opposing religious views. Seems they didn’t like to hear somebody going around claiming to be the Son of God.
Things went from bad to worse after that, as we all know. A group of clever people, claiming to be the followers of this same unfortunate religious teacher, ordered some fancy embroidered robes and pointy hats and set themselves up as smarter than everybody else — and somehow managed to convince folks that the sun went around the earth… and that the world was basically flat, so if you sailed far enough to the west, you would fall off the edge. A lot of people bought into this nonsense, and avoided sailing west as a result.
Anyway, my point here is that the conspiracies, back then, were just as crazy as the ones nowadays, except that we didn’t have a mainstream media trying to make us feel naughty, or worse, for having theories about them. Everybody had conspiracy theories — and it was no big deal. People were proud of their conspiracy theories, and happily passed them on to their children.
One of my favorite conspiracy theories — and once again, I’m hoping I don’t get locked up for talking about it — is that the Federal Reserve has been colluding with the US Department of the Treasury and the Internal Revenue Service to prevent me from paying off my credit cards. I occasionally run across other people who hold the same theory, and we drink beer together. Is there something so awful about that?
Another theory that I really like, especially with a good, hoppy IPA at my elbow, is that there’s a secret society of 7.8 billion people who are conspiring to use up all of the planet’s resources and pollute the air and water and basically make the world uninhabitable. I don’t have much proof, but it seems like a reasonable theory.
Of course, the news media — conspiratorial cabal that they are — is probably justified in attacking people like me who maintain a theory that the news media is a conspiratorial cabal, because… well, the news media might be completely innocent and fully justified in making me feel guilty for accusing them of doing, to me, exactly what I am doing to them.
But we were speaking about Machiavellianism. Or at least Wikipedia was talking about it. (Now, there’s a conspiracy, if I’ve ever seen one.)
As everyone knows, Nicolo Machiavelli wrote a little book called “The Prince” back in 1513, when people in Italy not only knew about conspiracies but wrote books about how to properly organize and maintain them — something we may have lost the knack for. (I mean, the knack for writing books on the subject, not the knack for forming conspiracies. Let’s get that straight.)
Machiavelli had many interesting things to say about successfully running a kingdom in 1513. Such as:
Every one admits how praiseworthy it is in a prince to keep faith, and to live with integrity and not with craft. Nevertheless our experience has been that those princes who have done great things have held good faith of little account, and have known how to circumvent the intellect of men by craft, and in the end have overcome those who have relied on their word…
That is to say: if you want to do “great things” you need to be a really good liar and deceive people every chance you get. But you don’t want anyone to know you’re deceiving them.
…But it is necessary to know well how to disguise this characteristic, and to be a great pretender and dissembler; and men are so simple, and so subject to present necessities, that he who seeks to deceive will always find someone who will allow himself to be deceived. One recent example I cannot pass over in silence. Alexander the Sixth did nothing else but deceive men, nor ever thought of doing otherwise, and he always found victims; for there never was a man who had greater power in asserting, or who with greater oaths would affirm a thing, yet would observe it less; nevertheless his deceits always succeeded according to his wishes, because he well understood this side of mankind.
If only we had someone like that, running our country for us. Sigh.