Conspiracy theories

There are allegations that people with ASD are more prone to following conspiracy theories than the average Joe. How do you define a conspiracy theory?

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  • Perhaps one of the major ones of recent years is one that I can't help myself but subscribe to.  9/11.  Too much that happened that day simply doesn't add up.  I'm not sure who was responsible... but when I read testimony from architects, structural engineers, demolition experts, munitions experts, air crash investigation engineers, scientists, police patrol men, firemen and countless others who've either investigated the disaster or were present on the day, I can't help but believe that the world was sold a lot of half-truths at best, and a huge bunch of lies at worst.

    In the simplest terms, WTC 1 and 2 should never have collapsed in the way they did.  And WTC 7 should never have collapsed at all, considering the minimal amount of damage it suffered.  Come to that, 1 and 2 shouldn't have collapsed at all, either.  Even a fully-laden passenger airliner striking structures of their size and strength would be the equivalent of a high-velocity rifle bullet being fired into a fence post.  It might do considerable damage to the post... put it would remain standing!

    But that's just my tuppence-worth on the subject....

    Maybe one man's conspiracy theorist is another man's truth-seer!

  • I’ve got an inquisive/observant mind but I think conspiracy theories are misleading. I see it more as truth-seeing, but if it’s thought of as a conspiracy theory, people treat it like it’s a piece of gossip or something, it’s alomst like they accept it while speaking outrage about it. People have been pulling strategies like 9/11 for hundreds of years. It’s all a big crazy game. 

  • That's right.  And once you start going down the route of some kind of collusion between the media and higher powers of government, then you soon begin to question what it is you actually know.  How much are we being manipulated by powers who have vested interests in maintaining a certain status quo, or in creating a climate of opinion (against, say, Muslims)?  People have a general tendency to accept things that they read in the newspapers and see or hear on the news, irrespective of any bias that might be being presented.  They expect correspondents to have researched the facts that they themselves haven't the time to research, and can only accept in digested form in brief spaces during the day.  People also, I think, tend to consume news media as it both identifies with and enforces their view of the world and their ideas of 'truth'.  People, for instance, regurgitate the 'facts' of any particular issue as they've read them in The Daily Mail, The Sun, The Mirror, or whatever.  So you have a polarisation of opinion as well as an 'adjusted' (at best) and a distorted, partisan, fabricated (at worst) version of anything you care to mention.  The tendency, too, of people to accept things they read on social media (memes, etc) shows how very easy it is to manipulate and distort what's actually going on in the world.

    And who knows what that is? Wink

  • It is true, though.  I'm not a religious person, but those words of Christ's are right.  And, unfortunately, people do use it as an excuse to carry on with their abuse.  I was in the town earlier and I passed the local baptist church.  Outside was a poster: 'All the mistakes you've ever made, erased through Christ.'  Which made me think - uncharitably, maybe - 'Okay... so you can do what you like, because you'll still be forgiven in the end.'  It's a bit like the Catholic confessional.  I used to work with a great bunch of guys who were all Catholic.  They were some of the most extreme blasphemers I'd ever met.  Some of them were abusers in other ways, too.  But then they'd go to confession to have the slate wiped down a bit.  I used to think of that as hypocrisy.  But, of course, they were simply being human.  I've been an abuser myself.  Verbally abusive to people (never physically - but verbal and psychological abuse is still abuse).  Even to people I love.  Perhaps mainly to people I love.  I regret it enormously, and I try my hardest to rise above it.  It's always a job of work.  An ongoing job of work.  I'll be working at it until the day I die, and still not finish the job.

  • It's important to remember that most people do not want to upset or alienate their friends, family, or boss. Even worse, get into trouble with the law. This is why they tend to go with the flow rather than question things.

    To illustrate this point, look at Galileo. Every sane person nowadays knows that Galileo was right and the authorities were wrong. Very few people at the time ran to the defence of Galileo and instead accepted the word of the authorities without question simply because they wanted to keep their nose clean and not get themselves into trouble. Defending Galileo could have ended up being an accessory to a crime.

  • Lol :-) I’m laughing and smiling because that’s not usually the response I get when I speak openly. :-D 

  • You know, we are all abusive, we are all everything, and a man or woman, who is in their ‘right’ mind, their (for want of a better word), god consciousness/god mind, would not ever harm another being. None of us would. Therefore, any time we do, any time anyone does, we are not in our right mind. We have slipped into being a product of our outer conditioning, we have fallen into the hypnotic state. So, as Jesus said, forgive them lord for they know not what they do. It’s so true. But that doesn’t excuse us to go sin some more. That doesn’t mean we should be punished when we do sin, when we slip back into the hypnotic state, that wouldn’t make sense. Many of the good actors, will be autistic, therefore they’re bound to fall from grace from time to time as we can’t akways stay within their rules. I haven’t watched many modern films so don’t know too much about actors, although I think I’ve heard that name, Kevin Stacey, I’ve got a vague idea of what I think he looks like. 

  • Our nd world is much greater, we are less connected to our physical aspect and more with our so called ‘spiritual’ aspect so we can identify with something because we know that’s only one aspect of who we are. 

    Well said!

    One of its main stars, Kevin Spacey, has unfortunately dropped a long way from the high esteem I used to hold him in as a human being.  I still think, though, he's a brilliant creative artist and director.  And Jeff Bridges is always watchable.  If you can dissociate Spacey the actor from Spacey the abuser, it's a great film...

    Prot on Humankind

  • Haha I’ve never heard that quote before but I agree :-) although, in Truth, I can see how we have managed to make it this far. And unfortunately, it has mainly been through acts of violence. 

    I agree with you, people have been taught what to think for so long that they are not even aware that they possess the faculty to think. And until they do start to think, they will continue to kill each other. While ever they identify with their physical body, as being all that they are, they will continue to kill. The very act of identifying causes conflict. But even that’s not so straight forward. We can identify, for example, I identify as autistic, but only as a means for understanding myself in the nt world. Our nd world is much greater, we are less connected to our physical aspect and more with our so called ‘spiritual’ aspect so we can identify with something because we know that’s only one aspect of who we are. 

  • Which is why I no longer try to identify as anything - except neurodiverse!

    But this is how humankind is.  It likes to be able to explain something in some way, and will often go to the lazy shorthand of a convenient 'ism'.  Socialism, conservatism, liberalism, globalism, post-modernism, terrorism, Islamism.  These can only act as the very broadest of identifiers - but, ironically, as soon as they're assigned, they start to narrow something down.  And once a label is attached, it makes it much easier to attack something.  'Bl**dy Tories!', 'Loony Lefties', 'fanatical Muslims', etc.  Witness the stigma still attached to autism and mental health issues, in spite of the growth of knowledge and openness surrounding these issues.  Similarly with homosexuality.  Even in a liberal, modern society, the stigma is still there.  Anything that's not 'the norm.'  "Oh, that's such a gay attitude to take,"... that kind of thing.

    My views and beliefs would make me broadly socially liberal, socialist, green, humanist, and so on.  But I'm so much more than the sum of these parts.  We all are.  Yet we still revert to these stereotypes - because, basically, it saves having to think. 

    Until we can all start to think in much broader and more open terms about things, we're going to carry on along this route of killing each other.

    As Prot, the alien in K-Pax, said:  'You humans.  Sometimes it's hard to imagine how you ever made it this far.'

  • It’s all part of the crazy game of power and control, it’s all part of the grand illusion. It’s insane and the minute we pay any attention to any of it, we become part of the problem as we are giving it validity, where really, there is none. There isn’t even such a thing as a ‘terrorist’,it’s a joke, but people everywhere believe it. 

    I’m currently learning more about my neighbour’s native homeland in Africa, the island of Bioko, and it’s funny because the natives of that island were originally called savages because they resisted being kidnapped and sold into slavery by Europeans who came across the island when they were going around kidnapping people for slavery!!!! 

    9/11, 7/7 etc etc are just a greater manifestation of what is already inside of us, all of us, and the only way to prevent these great big acts of violence is to stop the violence in our heads which occurs the moment we identify as anything. Whether that be man, woman, Christian, Buddhist, Muslim or whatever, even postman, electrician, whatever. The minute we identify as anything we are committing an act of violence and from that we see that violence outplayed in our lives in a multitude of ways and people everywhere accept it. 

  • Something to take into account is that the news media was traditionally ephemeral but in more recent years has become archived. This enables independent researchers to easily collect then carefully analyse reports on certain issues.

    One problem is when the media tries to present an event in a way that the public would have wanted to have happened rather than what actually happened.

    To illustrate this point, 7/7 shows all the hallmarks of an attack by the IRA rather than Al Qaeda if you study the history of the styles of attacks by the two outfits. Had 7/7 taken place exactly 5 years earlier in 2000 then the public and the media would have pointed their fingers at the IRA irrespective of whether the IRA had carried out the attack because they were the violent terrorists at the time. Although there is no evidence (in the public domain) that would stand up in a court of law that the four alleged 7/7 bombers (that the Metropolitan Police still call suspects today) were even on the trains and the bus that exploded, the story presented by the media is the one that the public wanted to have happened. The IRA cannot be ruled out of carrying out 7/7 with the evidence that exists but the way that the media has handled the event completely jeopardises investigations by the police and the intelligence services.

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  • Something to take into account is that the news media was traditionally ephemeral but in more recent years has become archived. This enables independent researchers to easily collect then carefully analyse reports on certain issues.

    One problem is when the media tries to present an event in a way that the public would have wanted to have happened rather than what actually happened.

    To illustrate this point, 7/7 shows all the hallmarks of an attack by the IRA rather than Al Qaeda if you study the history of the styles of attacks by the two outfits. Had 7/7 taken place exactly 5 years earlier in 2000 then the public and the media would have pointed their fingers at the IRA irrespective of whether the IRA had carried out the attack because they were the violent terrorists at the time. Although there is no evidence (in the public domain) that would stand up in a court of law that the four alleged 7/7 bombers (that the Metropolitan Police still call suspects today) were even on the trains and the bus that exploded, the story presented by the media is the one that the public wanted to have happened. The IRA cannot be ruled out of carrying out 7/7 with the evidence that exists but the way that the media has handled the event completely jeopardises investigations by the police and the intelligence services.

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