Anyone who’s ever been reduced to a quivering mass of deafened jelly by the piercing squeal of a low-fi PA system in a school auditorium before, will know exactly what I’m talking about. Because when feedback happens, usually it’s the worst frequencies in the signal—the sharpest, the most hair-raising, the most soul-piercing—get amplified the most, and so what comes out of the speaker is enough to make the banshee cower in fear.
In this regard, a conspiracy theory is very much like the feedback squealing out of that low-fi school auditorium PA system.
Let me explain.
The other day one of my favorite blogs, Reasons Why posted a piece on “Reasons Why a Conspiracy Theory is a Hole You Don’t Want to Fall Down.” It covers everything from the Paul is Dead Conspiracy Theory to the darkest holocaust denials of Jim Keegstra, and is certainly worth a read.
Towards the end of the post, the author mentions the fact that “almost 30% of Americans believe the coronavirus was manufactured artificially and intentionally,” and describes a newspaper full of “anti-Chinese and Sinophobic articles regarding COVID-19” that was delivered anonymously to their door.
It all made me wonder: is there is something about a crisis like the coronavirus pandemic that makes us especially at risk of “falling down the hole” of an good old-fashioned conspiracy theory? Conspiracy Theories, after all, give us simple black-and-white explanations for complex issues, where there is a clear (if unseen) villain to pin the problem on and a clearer hero (ourselves) to resist it. They feed the hunger of our xenophobia and scratch scapegoating itch that crises tend to aggravate in us. They allow us to project our anxieties and sublimate our fears in ways that give them faces and names.
But in all these ways, as I’ve said, a Conspiracy Theory is like that awful squeal coming out of the high school PA system. They are, if you will, an epistemological feedback loop.
When I was studying the ethics of education as part of my teacher training in Alberta, in the 90s, we looked at the story of Jim Keegstra as a case-study in what not to do. If you haven’t heard, Keegstra was a High School teacher in Eckville Alberta, who was charged and convicted of hate speech in 1984, for teaching his students, among other things, that the holocaust was really an elaborate hoax perpetrated by the Jewish people as part of a clandestine plan to take over the world. I read a fair bit of Keegstra’s story for that class, and was stunned not only that a teacher could get away with teaching these things, but that anyone could believe such rubbish in the first place.
And then my ethics prof explained something about conspiracy theories that I’ve never forgotten. A conspiracy theory, he said, is psychologically self-reinforcing. First of all, they require a great deal of social “risk” to buy into one, because they set you apart from the vast majority of the public who don’t believe. They may even open you to ridicule, rejection, or, in Keegstra’s case, legal action. As a result, the person who has bought in has a profoundly strong (if sub-conscious) motivation to guard their investment. Too much is at stake to be proven wrong.
And this is where the epistemological feedback loop begins. Since the psychological stakes are so high, once you’ve signed on to a conspiracy theory, you become more interested in “being right,” than you are in “discovering the truth.” And once you’ve made that subtle shift in your thinking, then any evidence that someone might produce to disprove your theory, becomes for you all the more evidence that you were right. The microphone picks up the signal and just sends it through the amplifier of your conspiracy theory, making it louder (and grosser) than it was before.
For the conspiracy theorist, photographs documenting the very real holocaust become evidence simply of how advanced the “Jewish plot” for world domination really is. “See! They have even infiltrated the history books and news media, slipping in their faked photos …”
For the conspiracy theorist, the lack of evidence proving the existence of a clandestine Illuminati pulling the strings of global politics becomes evidence, simply, of how powerful the Illuminati really are, that they could effectively erase all trace of their activities. “Of course there’s no sign of them! That’s how secret they really are.”
And on and on it goes, until the paint is peeling off the walls.
A few weeks ago I had the opportunity to participate in a live-streamed theological conversation with Kim Alexander, professor of church history at Regent University in Virginia. We were talking about the theological meaning the church could draw from the Covid-19 pandemic, and the lessons that church history could teach us about it. I was hoping to dig into the ways eschatology, Christology, and pneumatology must illuminate our theodicy at a time like this. You know: the biggies.
But then a question popped up in the chat bar, that asked, in effect:“What should the church do about all the COVID-19 conspiracy theories floating around?”
It was a bit deflating, to be honest, but I have to admit that four weeks later, that's the question I'm still chewing on. I'm planning to post more about conspiracy theories in the days to come, both in general, and as it relates to the pandemic specifically, so I hope you’ll check back in as I continue to chew it over. But for today let me simply say this: let’s remember that usually when a feedback loop happens, the worst frequencies in the signal are the ones that get amplified; and whatever we choose to believe about the coronavirus, let’s not allow the epistemological feedback loop of a conspiracy theory amplify the worst frequencies in us.
1 comments:
Great thoughts! Looking forward to further reflection on conspiracies and theology!!! Have you ever read Dan Brown novels, might get some good ideas ;)
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