Chem Trails et al

I had started out thinking this would be a short one, dismissive and insulting, about my new theory, that says there's a direct relationship between how well thought out and presented a website advocating a given belief or theory is and the validity of the theory. Upon reflection I decided that I didn't have either a website or a well thought out plan for one to espouse this theory, and that I'm too lazy to do the research that would be the proof or at least support of the theory. In fact all I have is a sample size of one, that one being a website devoted to the theory that the government is applying all kinds of mind control, behavioural control, by spraying chemicals from the jet engines of passing aircraft. I still think it's a good theory, but I also think I'm too lazy to try and prove it.

So, instead, the thought was What is it that makes theories like that plausible to many people? What is the need that conspiracy theories of all stripes and sizes meet? What's the invariable appeal of the local politician whose main message is "Those bastards....down in Washington (or Ottawa, or Victoria, or wherever the next seat up is)..." The same thing happens in companies that measure employee satisfaction or engagement: staff always report that their immediate manager is all right, but that each level above that one is successively less trustworthy, aligned, informed...and that person at the top is invariably an idiot, except to those who report to them.

Okay, so probably two different things going on there, eh? The politicians and employee satisfaction one probably just comes from having no face to face connection to those who make decisions affecting us - I think it's the same kind of thing that causes road rage, except with that there are way more opportunities and way less risk perceived in forcing that face to face confrontation - just roll down the window and shout a few obscenities, and presto! connection made. If you're working or sitting in the same car every day with the same people, you tend to be a little more moderate in your responses, you tend to develop a little more trust, a little more empathy, a little more of all those things that kind of impair a good mindless black rage. Don't know what the solution might be for that - public transit? All government by town hall meeting?  Everyone in every organization all work in one vast room? Better check the "Answers to Every Question" blog that some other guy writes.

The other one, though, the one that causes us to believe in things that really don't make a lot of sense on the face of it....that's a lot harder to make up some glib theory about....but since this is essentially the "Glib Theories For Every Question" blog, I better give it a shot.

(As an aside just between us and not all the other people reading this thing, I'm slowly discovering that if you have a question and no answer, no theory, a really good strategy is to attach it to a much larger and well-discussed mystery that also has no real resolution. You don't have anything to add, but you still have a shot at coming off as though you have insight. Watch this, I'm going to do it in the next paragraph...tell no one!)

I think the thing that drives our ability to believe that Marilyn was killed by the CIA, in chem trails, in the possibility that Elvis still lives, in the shooters on the grassy knoll, that the moon landing was faked, and so on, is the same thing that makes us believe in the boogey man and fairies, Devils and Angels. There are questions that don't have answers, and nature abhors a vacuum, so...we put stuff in. Don't misunderstand me as trivializing or dismissing religion, or even any of the things I just listed, including chem trails! There are a lot of open questions that we can settle in our minds based on experience and knowledge, and we come to closure for ourselves on many of those based on likelihood, probability...and there are some questions and experiences that we cannot settle in our minds, that are not really satisfactorily explained for each of us as individuals by what we know and what we've seen, and our makeup, our big evolutionary advantage, is that we really are not comfortable without some kind of explanation for things. Lots of times the explanations we make up turn out to be completely correct, and the mental itch is satisfied...and other times we have to just satisfy that itch with a belief whose proof is still pending.

So that's it, I haven't got answers on those chem trails, but I think it's a little bit conceited for me to just dismiss them as nonsense...a little.