Conspiracy Theories; A Special Kind of Stupid

February 8, 2019

It takes a special kind of stupid to believe in conspiracy theories. And I don’t mean that like you’d normally say ‘special kind of stupid’, I mean there really is a very specific constellation of ignorance and narcissism involved in believing in ‘special knowledge’. Take for instance someone who believes the earth is flat; For that to be the case, well now we have to throw out everything we know about gravity. And the speed of light and thermodynamics and weather and satellites and communications and travel and all of modern technology and all the other planets and pretty much everything we know about the entire universe. To accommodate this one stupid little theory we have to throw out the entirety of the accumulated knowledge of hundreds of thousands of brilliant minds throughout all of human history. Everything. It takes a really special combination of narcissism and ignorance to come to a conclusion like that, as in either you are smarter than all of the smartest minds in all of human history and you know this one thing that upends all of human knowledge, or you’re just a stupid narcissist. If the correct conclusion here isn’t obvious to you, well, that’s a pretty special kind of stupid. The same goes for vaccines and evolution and climate science and gmos and chem trails and homeopathy and astrology and Bigfoot and 9/11 and anything that comes out of Alex Jones’ mouth and so on... Studies have shown that people with these kinds of fringe beliefs are actually expressing a deeply rooted need to feel special. Like, so deeply rooted that they will throw out all capacity for rational thinking, indeed they will throw out the entirety of human knowledge and place themselves atop all of it just to have that special need met. That’s pretty freakin special! And pretty freakin needy. So if anything I’ve said here about vaccines or climate science etc. makes you squirm a little you should probably be asking yourself “Am I really more special than every single person in all of human history, or am I just a stupid narcissist?” If the answer isn’t obvious to you then rest assured that it’s very clear to the rest of us