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u/Steelquake 3d ago
I mean... yeah a she said in the video, the hypothesis is that conspiracy thought breaks occur after a large scale humiliation; as in, the person has develops an overbearing feeling of victimhood and needs to justify it. It's a self harm behavior, same expressive toxic behavior in order to "justify" internal depressive modes of thinking.
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u/Eli_1988 3d ago
It also frees people to be not only okay with inaction on anything, they morph it into such hate to ensure they never will have to do anything other than be a hater. Of course they won't grow or learn acceptance, why would they for such evil things!! /s I'm not lazy or bad, it's them!
They will mock anyone who has a glimmer of thought otherwise to protect themselves from having to face reality while validating themselves.
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u/FlintBlue 3d ago edited 1d ago
I specifically remember experiencing major second-hand embarrassment for Naomi Wolf when I watched the video where her mistake was brutally exposed. What a gigantic fuck up! I know some historians who were experiencing some schadenfreude, because she had apparently often been a little out of her league, but my main reaction was to cringe very hard. One reaction to something like that would be personal reassessment. Another would be the path she eventually took.
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u/professor_sage 19h ago
I remember reading a post by someone with NPD where she talked about how she spent a stint as an anti-vaxxer because she was doing poorly in highschool chemistry and her brain couldn't admit she was bad at something so it jumped to 'all scientists are evil actually.' She said even after years of therapy and knowing that this conclusion is logically incorrect, on an emotional level she still feels resentful of the field even if she no longer holds those beliefs. That was kind of what that segment of the video reminded me of. Like obviously not everyone who falls to that kind of thinking is a clinical narcissist, but we all to one degree or another do have that little guy in our heads who goes 'it's not you, it's them' when something bad happens.
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u/itsquinnmydude 3d ago
My grand project has been trying to create this
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u/WonderFluffen 2d ago
Buddy, I'm sending you some solid good vibes
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u/itsquinnmydude 2d ago
Veganism isn't a conspiracy theory but because of how culturally marginal it is a lot of animal rights activism fits the same sort of vibe. I think "BlueAnon" is reaching a level of cultural momentum where it might start to have that sort of impact.
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u/WebBorn2622 3d ago
Like she said, communists aren’t conspiracy theorists because the rich do control the world.
If you wanted to create a conspiracy theory that encouraged people to feed the homeless you would have to propose a theory that someone far up in the system benefits from people being homeless.
But that isn’t a conspiracy theory. That’s basic capitalist analysis. Rich people do benefit from people being poor and homeless because the threat of homelessness keeps poor people in jobs with poor working conditions.
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u/deyterkajerbs 3d ago
People that do those things aren’t trying to feel special, they’re just trying to be helpful
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u/Any_Crab_8512 3d ago
There are some religious charities out there. Maybe bonkers adjacent is the conspiracy sweet-spot.
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u/Outrageous_Setting41 3d ago
Religious charities that do good work rarely indulge in the kind of conspiracist thought patterns that Contra was talking about. I am an atheist, so I don't have a personal stake in this, but I don't think it's fair or accurate to characterize any belief that strikes one as irrational (especially religious belief) as adjacent to conspiracy theory. To engage selflessly in providing material assistance to others doesn't really square with a belief that suffering in the world is secretly arranged by a shadowy elite, because at that point why bother, right?
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u/Any_Crab_8512 3d ago
Western religion is premised on faulty belief that man is created in image of god. Reality is that their god is created in the image of a controlling man. This control is exerted via race, class, and gender. The controlled acquiesce to subservience is driven by carrot (grace) and stick (surrender). The carrot is shared suffering and doing “good.” The stick which I won’t go into is the supremacy of the conspiracy over all others via “bad” means.
Here I wrote acts by persons in western religious charities are adjacent to a conspiracy. The participants feel special in a positive way because they are getting closer to the “truth” thereby giving longevity to the conspiracy. However, removing the conspiracy, they are still doing “good.”
I agree it is difficult to align western religion with conspiracy because the prominence of Christianity has spans millennia and forms the basis western thought/supremacy. A mainstream conspiracy? Can’t be. Yet, step back and see that most of the world’s population now or in the past is not Western. From the vantage point of a non-westerner, this Jesus-y stuff seems like a conspiracy.
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u/monkeedude1212 3d ago
To engage selflessly in providing material assistance to others doesn't really square with a belief that suffering in the world is secretly arranged by a shadowy elite, because at that point why bother, right?
In terms of modern day Christianity, it does.
Keanu Reeves plays titular character Constantine in the 2005 film that portrays a universe where the more conspiracy theory aspects of Christianity are literal fact. There is the dualism of good and evil, God and Satan are competing for human souls and they send their angels and demons to subtly influence people.
I too am an atheist, but I have most definitely been surrounded by people who do actually believe that "impure" thoughts are temptations sent by the devil.
But a large amount of Christians hold the same flawed belief that John Constantine holds: that performing good act while you are alive is meant to be a test: it's is a way to please God so that when you die you get granted access to heaven.
And you often see this line of reasoning when people ask hard questions of the theocracy. Like, if God is All knowing, all powerful, and all-good, why does he allow suffering to take place in the world? And usually the answer is to hamstring one of those qualities; He works in mysterious dick-ish ways. It is the sort of thinking that short circuits the logical center and is a thought terminating pattern.
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u/CMDR_Profane_Pagan 3d ago
I think this is a correct assertion especially if we consider the conspiracy theorists in the online infosphere.
But the situation can be a bit more complex if you only include people who are not chronically online.
My former best friend - I would love to call her my best friend, but sadly we grew distant as she lost her mind- went turbo hippie and lost herself in the conspiracy theories of big pharma, cancer can be cured by positive thoughts, depression is not real, plants with memories and feelings etc...
She went to live with her children in the Spanish mountains in a communa with same minded people. She wants to contribute to this strictly vegan and isolated community which lives from barter trade between its members (the nearby city pays them yearly to keep that section of the mountain clear that is their only income which they put into maintaining their infrastructure). She is teaching the communa's childred without any teaching credentials - so she invents her own curriculum and playful classes, bc she is also against government and governmental education now.
I believe she has good intentions, but the last time we saw each other I was almost unable to bear her constant lecture about everything in the world conspiring against humans.
It also pains me to see how her two nice little kids are determined to grow up in such an environment which doesn't prepare them for the real world - such a secluded life without even proper education. But I never brought this up to her, still... you get where I am coming from. You can do whatever you want with your life but you should not condemn other to medieval-like poverty.
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u/HuntsmenSuperSaiyans 3d ago
I believe the illuminati compels the moon god to puppeteer my body and force me to volunteer at the soup kitchen.
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u/sunflowerroses 3d ago
I also wonder if getting involved in real-life hobbies can easily distract from the entertainment provided by conspiracism.
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u/AdditionalHouse5439 3d ago
Those conspiracy theories are called religions, and they can work sometimes. Successfully religious people are also intentionalists, for example but they view God or Goodness as being ultimately in control, rather than the Devil, as pessimistic conspiracists do. Everything happens for a reason that fit in the purposes of a good God.
Negative conspiracists agree with atheists that this is not a good enough answer, but also disagree with rational Materialism, and so try to find an ambitious answer that both rejects ultimate, but often inscrutable positivity in the deeds of an omniscient/omnipotent God, and the ideally morally neutralizing view of Materialism, which eliminates ultimate moral judgement at all.
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u/paperd 3d ago
The helplessness is an opium.
She talked about this aspect in the video, but the difference in a the way conspiracy theories talk about hierarchy and the way leftist commonly talk about hierarchy are very different. Conspiracy theorists put us all at the bottom: helpless, victim, baby, innocent. You don't have to do anything because you have no power. You have no responsibility, and therefore have committed no sin.
"Check your privilege" is not a decree of helplessness. It is a reality check on where you are in the hierarchy. Yes, you're oppressed. Yes you've been hurt. You have it worse than a lot of people. But there are also a LOT of people who have less power than you, who have it worse and wish they have what you have. Your power is limited but it is still something, it is still power. You are not a baby deer alone in the woods.
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u/NOT_ImperatorKnoedel 3d ago
Idk, I thought the elites causing a volcano to break out on Kanye's birthday was pretty wholesome.
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u/mariavelo 3d ago
It's kind of true. There's religion though, the ultimate conspirative theory, and it promotes a fair share of good actions (the bad ones are usually hidden under excuses)
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u/hymn_to_demeter 3d ago
The elites don't want you to clean the ocean. They use the great pacific garbage patch to alter the tides so they can control the moon.