Is the Conspiracy Theory
of History Correct? Well, Yes and No.
Edwin L. Young, PhD
April 9, 2010
Want to know a tiny bit about the behind-the-scenes motives in international conflicts? Did you think I was a conspiracy theorist?
Consider this small example of revealing information: http://www.google.com/search?q=Gas+Reserves+in+Gaza&hl=en&sourceid=gd&rlz=1D2GGLD_enUS362US362
If you dip into the massive number of bits of information like this, and because of the internet, they are easy to access, you cannot escape believing history is rife with conspiracy. Not to suspect conspiracies as the prime movers of international strategies is, virtually, to be the hooded one pulling the Guillotine’s lever on the unsuspecting, innocent, populace of the world. But that is only half of the story.
As a young man, I began asking myself these questions:
Asking, “What difference does it make?”, “So what?”, and “Why for some questionable goings on and why not for others?” about issues that began to be presented to my young mind. Those haunting questions and where they led me engendered a disquieting feeling that led me to a change of course toward a perturbing awareness that my words, my essays, were hampered by my ‘local’ perspectives, by my gross deficiencies in information, and led to a curiosity about the geographical and human worlds just a bit beyond where I stood at the time. Like those with an itch to explore, every hectare of the highs, lows, and in-betweens, of the hemispheres before they die, my itch was to explore into the inner worlds of those in different life circumstances as well cultures and subcultures. This appeared to be to me as daunting a challenge as exploring the entire globe or understanding every known academic discipline. I wanted to experience and to know what it would be like, what I would be like, were I to have grown up under those exact conditions. Of course, the success of my quest was miniscule compared to what was there to be known and understood. Yet, with the little bits, I did get under my belt, so to speak, I was forced to question and constantly revise my perspectives, assumptions, values, creeds, and so forth. The initial perturbing instigations led to recurring experiences of unease as one after another of my tightly gripped certainties plummeted into the abyss of endless, unfounded, yet fiercely defended, human meanings. These were not shed without anxiety. I clambered to find ways to test and confirm those fading from as well as those contending for my acceptance. The minds and personalities, with their conventions and beliefs, that I encountered in my ventures began to seem understandable but, with such a menagerie of them in the world, none seemed to be able to lay claim to being the absolute ones. I took this questioning and curiosity with me when, eventually, I was forced to looks beyond and above the singular person to search for explanations of each of those differences in people and to look into increasingly higher levels of systems and structures. There, I finally found astounding confirmation.
I had not just accepted but gobbled up what I had been taught about abnormal personality, psychotherapy, and even cognition, or mind, and sociology or social theory. My first experiences with changing the structure and systems in institutions like mental hospitals and prisons shattered tenets I had acquired in academia. The mentally ill and prisoners in their respective institutions initially appeared to be as I had been taught. Yet, when I made radical changes in these institutions, their residents quickly made radical changes to become quite similar to the everyday, non-institutionalized persons in any community. This happened without the benefit of any kind of therapeutic intervention, including mind-altering medications.
Upon reflection, I inferred that these institutions had not been designed to be the way they were based some enigmatic conspiracy. No, rather, that they, and I now speculated, and all institutions at every level of government or commerce throughout the history of humanity, had simply, inexorably, and willy-nilly, evolved with a necessity for deception and conspiracy. Humans and their institutions are so adept at this that they cannot see it and would take offense at being accused of such. So, it is not that conspiracies may exist and you have to work hard to detect and expose them. Rather, to not assume that they are going on is to allow yourself to be the hooded one pulling the Guillotine’s lever on the unsuspecting, innocent, populace of the world.
Whatever machinations are going on between political parties, nations, cliques, or dyads, you can be sure that some form of deception and conspiracy is involved.
Imagine that you are a nation or group or pair of any kind and you are subject to something like Kurt Lewin factors in a field of forces.1 You will, if you look thoroughly enough, eventually have an ‘Ah, hah!’ moment. How do they conceive of themselves, what do they fear, what do they want, who and what is pressuring them, to whom are they accountable, what reputation are they trying to preserve? Such things as these will shape their missions and goals, and, more importantly, their strategies. These aspects of their motivations, as they are subject to their unique field of forces, will ultimately forge a conflict with some ‘Other’ or ‘Others’ with whom they must contend. Inevitably, they do so by using force and/or conspiracy and deception. This is as fundamental to human civilization as is the law of gravity to physics.
The task for you is take the hood off your own head and look, without diverting your glance, at the defenseless, innocent populace you were about to decapitate under orders from some generally acknowledged authority. Then, with your loss of your own innocence, proceed to divert your gaze from the ‘victims’ and look, unabashedly, at this world’s diseased and destructive structures and systems with all of their nasty, usually semi-conscious, conspiracies.
Now, take up the cause of de-hooding the rest of humanity. It is not the fault of those being ascribed as mentally ill, criminal, corrupt. It is the fault of the structures and systems that shape us all. With hoods off, we all must work to make these structures and systems humane for individuals and for the destiny of humankind.