The Corrosive And Negative Impact of Conspiracy Theories
an essay by Matthew Bissonnette
In Dallas Texas in the year 1963, President John F Kennedy was assassinated by a lone assassin. The official record of what happened over the following decades became doubted by many who believed that powerful institutions and individuals had perpetrated the assassination; these theories where spread by books, media and film. This was the one of the first and most well known conspiracy theories but as time went on more of these alternative reconstructions of historical and current events entered the public consciousness. When the internet became widely available then these conspiracy theories became more pervasive. There are numerous individuals who spread there hypothesize of corruption at the heart of powerful institutions over the world wide web which is viewed by hundreds of millions; claims of governments perpetrating massacres of their own people and global powers seeking to enact a global genocide which will end the lives of billions proliferate on the information super highway. These internet commentators will tell those that listen the official record of significant events is a lie and present their suppositions as truth. Yet most of these sometimes paranoid theories may sound plausible, they tend to be a small part truth and mostly faulty information. But this phenomena of the dissemination of these theories may have detrimental consequences for society.
As I said before, one of the most common of these theories is that soon a shadowy organization known only as the New World Order will soon perpetrate a global holocaust killing most of mankind. If there is a individual who ardently believes that soon he and all those he cares for may soon parish then what would such a belief motivate him to do if he genuinely believes he is threatened? Would not such a belief in his own mind justify defending himself in someway which may be violent? How many men in society have been obsessively fixating on these theories and how many may feel that they must do something about it? Do those who accept these theories take the necessary time to research how much factual information is behind these claims? There have already been several instances where crimes have been committed by individuals whose actions where informed by their belief that shadowy threats exist all around them.
Another result of this conspiracy hysteria is that it leads to countless many distrusting their own governments not because of verified reasons but for surmised information which is mostly inaccurate. Though many times our governments act in a way people should be critical of, believing in ideas like they kill their own citizens directly may make individuals fearful and even hateful of their own authorities. It leads to a loss of trust between men and their own public institutions. If you want to be suspicious of powerful institutions, base those beliefs upon fact and not on information which is mostly speculation.
The conspiracy movement is a symptom of the breakdown of trust between some segments of the public and their own government. And it can lead to a oppositional situation where men may be moved towards destructive actions which are motivated by information which they have not researched themselves but have heard from a third hand source. Sometimes there is a differentiation between the accepted record of present and historical events, but your beliefs should be based on what you can prove to be factually true and not on what you surmise or guess.
It is called a conspiracy theory because a theory is not yet proven and is different from a fact.
