Number blocked...

I have always welcomed the existence of simply elegant and wildly offbeat explanations offered by so-called "crackpots" and "conspiricists" in addressing that which inspires or confounds them. I'm less interested in the content of individual theories (though they're often wonderfully provocative), and more impressed by the choice to pursue them in public. It takes a certain courage to stick your neck out in our clubby species, one traditionally bound by fear and conformity, where being labeled a "conspiracy theorist" is not only instantly marginalizing, but also grounds for being considered insane. So three cheers to all the iconoclasts and visionaries and genuine nutters out there who've stuck to their guns, performed their own research, and broadcast what's on their minds in the face of rejection and worse.

They are just theories after all. The "conspiracy" prefix is a label that comes from a system that needs to protect itself and ward off ideas and speculations that might cause it to unravel at the seems. It doesn't matter whether the outside ideas are bogus or correct. The risk of any uncontrolled, un-vetted paradigm shift in perception is too threatening. It makes sense. (Those clever cabals who worked long and hard to build sheeple-containing systems would surely lose out!)

I'm always interested to see how people dismiss outsider ideas. "Ah conspiracy theory, the plague of feeble minds..." is one response I remember well. "People just aren't smart enough to pull that kind of thing off..." is another that's been used to derail alternative takes on everything from the moon mission to 9/11. "There's no proof..." is the classic response (to which one might counter "absence of evidence is not evidence of absence"). The list of debunkings goes on and on. The unifying agent? They always have an air of finality about them. As if the dismissing logic were draped over a single sentiment: DON'T MESS!

(Jean Luc Cornec)