Blog #1: Conspiracy Theories or Conspiracy Myths? - Vickie GG
Blog Post #1
Vickie Garton-Gundling
1/19/23
Conspiracy Theories or Conspiracy Myths?
While reading the philosophical texts that will underpin our future readings of
C.S. Lewis’s fiction, I had an unsettling feeling I couldn’t quite name or put
into words. Then, last class period (1/18), our brief discussions about
conspiracy theories (in general and a la Dan Brown) helped me begin to understand my unease. Thus far, our readings and class discussions have focused pretty
exclusively on the positive impacts of myths and faerie stories, such as:
- Imparting the “joy” that is a “sudden glimpse of the underlying reality or truth” (Tolkien, On Faerie Stories, 83)
- “Present[ing] what the narrow and desperately practical perspectives of real life exclude” (Lewis, On Stories, 10)
- “Producing us in giving itself to us” (Marion qtd. in Redick, Saturated Meaning…, 2)
- Illuminating / producing a “sunny country of common sense” (Chesterton, 87)
- Helping writers and readers to truly know or reconnect with themselves – to “loaf and invite [the] soul (Wordsworth, qtd. in Barfield, 29)
- “Fulfill[ing] a psychological or rhetorical need” (Fisher, 4)
There are many ideas in the philosophical readings thus far that suggest it would be possible for conspiracy theory authors and believers to actually be creating and believing in (Second World) myths, with or without realizing it. For instance, Bormann (quoted in Fisher) defines fantasy as “a technical term meaning the creative and imaginative interpretation of events that fulfills a psychological or rhetorical need;” Fisher then adds / counters that these “rhetorical visions” are “dramatic stories constituting the fabric of social reality for those who compose them…constructions of fact and faith having persuasive force” (5). So, the author of a conspiracy theory may create such a narrative to allay a cognitive dissonance related to a Primary World issue or (perceived or real) threat, believing the story to be a “construction of fact” that has a strong “persuasive force” on the theory's believers, when really they are creating a Second World myth to fulfill a “psychological and/or rhetorical need” for themselves and others (in the Primary World).
Barfield’s critiques of Hume and both Chesterton’s and Fishers musings on democracy may also support the hypothesis that conspiracy theories can actually be conspiracy (or at least general) myths. Barfield laments Hume’s “notion that knowledge consists of seeing what happens and getting used to it – as distinct from consciously participating in what is. (Barfield, 24). But difficulty arises when (not if) multiple parties in our highly-populated, diverse world begin to disagree on “what is” or what is “common to all men” that should be “more important than the things peculiar to any man” (Chesterton 82). And when “the lay audience…[are] active, irrepressible participants in the meaning-formation of the stories that any and all storytellers tell in discourses about nuclear weapons or any other issue that impinges on how people are to be conceived and treated in their ordinary lives,” it becomes very possible for any Second-World conspiracy myth to be mistaken (by the authors and/or listeners) as a factual Primary-World narrative. Similarly, if Barfield’s contention that “the primary imagination makes ‘things.’ There is no other thinghood” (31), it seems entirely possible that someone could confuse their creation of symbolic Second-World things for the primary-imaginative creation of (or the perception of or Kant's "phenomenal") of literal things in the Primary World.
Likewise, if we believe Tolkien’s contentions that 1) “every writer making a secondary world, a fantasy, every sub-creator, wishes in some measure to be a real maker, or hopes that he is drawing on reality” (On Faerie Stories, 82) and 2) “we [all humans] have already an enchanter’s power – upon one plane” [the Secondary plane] – and the desire to wield that power in the world external to our minds” (my emphasis) [the Primary plane], then it seems both natural and likely that some humans would create what they believe to be Primary-World narratives of fact (i.e. acting as "real makers") when they are actually creating Second-World fantasies (of varying veracity, depending on the internal consistency of the world and logic within the conspiracy theory they create) - i.e. acting as "sub-creators."
With these ideas in mind, on to the case studies. First, let’s look at Chesterton’s unique theories about the causes of and conclusions about repetitions in nature (within our Primary World) (The Ethics of Elfland, 106-110). Chesterton questions the “necessity of things being as they are” in nature, specifically as relates to “unavoidable repetition” (106). One example he gives is of the sun rising each day. For Chesterton, the (scientific) belief that the sun rises every day because it must (based on the Earth's rotation and the sun's and Earth's positions in space), because it is an impersonal, “dead” object or entity that has no will and thus there’s no option but for it to keep rising like “clockwork” is a “false assumption” (107). Instead, Chesterton presents a counter-hypothesis or counter-myth: “the sun rises regularly because he never gets tired of rising. His routine might be due, not to a lifelessness, but to a rush of life” (108). Here, the sun is a personified entity with a will to keep rising each day. And the concept that this sun, like a child in our Primary World, would want to keep rising because of the excitement to “Do it again” (108) seems consistent enough in a potential Secondary World in which the sun would have human-like qualities and intentions. Chesterton also adjacently speculates that the sun could even be rising at God’s command, because “perhaps God is strong enough to exult in monotony” (though, a God that could and would create a sun with a personal will would seem unlikely to take joy in monotony, in any world!) Still, the Christian God of our Primary World is ultimately a mystery to those who believe in His existence, so Chesteron’s second idea here could simply be a literal hypothesis in our Primary World and still be consistent with Christian theology (if we accept that narrative as Primary-World fact, of course, which some do and some do not). But the idea that the sun could (literally) have a personality and will to keep rising seems inconsistent with the reality of our Primary World (unless you come from a Pagan, American Indian, or other similar background, and even then one could still argue that such mythologies about the sun are meant more symbolically than literally). Therefore, Chesterton’s myths here about the sun could be seen as one example of an author believing they are telling a factual, First-World narrative when they are actually creating a (interesting and somewhat internally consistent) Second-World (conspiracy?) myth. However, one could of course argue this is a Second-World myth but not a conspiracy myth, since Chesterton does not suggest that either the sun nor God are conspiring to trick (Primary-World) humans; there’s no “enemy” here. However, if someone were to believe (literally) either of Chesterton’s narratives here rather than the modern-science narratives of why the sun rises every day, could that lead to negative outcomes related to any laws or policies? (Not sure!)
My second case study is COVID-19 conspiracy theories, and here I think there’s a much stronger case that 1) COVID conspiracy theories often became conspiracy myths and 2) there were very negative impacts on the basis of actions and policies that came out of widespread belief in those myths that were believed to be Primary-World facts rather than Second-World myths created to fulfill “psychological and/or rhetorical need(s)” (Fisher). For instance, there are a variety of COVID origin stories. The Chinese government created COVID to take down the West. The U.S. military created and sent COVID to China (because China is a competitive world power, because most of our national debt is money borrowed from China, because China is communist – take your pick). Bill Gates created COVID. Former President Obama created COVID. The U.S. government created COVID to target and kill African-American citizens. Big Pharma created COVID so they could benefit from the (eventual) vaccine profits. GMOs are to blame for COVID. And, of course, the classic narrative that COVID isn’t actually real and was just a plot for global powers to exert more influence over regular citizens and reduce people’s freedoms around the world. What is consistent among these stories, though, is that there’s an evil person or entity who purposely and with ill intent unleased this virus (or the story of the non-existent virus) on the world, and that commonality is my case for COVID conspiracy theories as COVID conspiracy myths. They are definitely conspiracies because there’s an enemy and a negative outcome in every single possible narrative. But they are much more clearly myths than our first case study (Chesterton and his happy, child-like sun) because there’s a powerful, evil, larger-than-life enemy pitted against the common man / the underdog. Lewis argues in On Stories that, when it comes to myth, “Nature has that in her which compels us to invent giants and only giants will do” (9) and “the whole quality of the imaginative response is determined by the fact that the enemies are giants…that heaviness, that monstrosity, that uncouthness hangs over the whole thing” (8). And while one might obviously argue that Big Pharma or (the evil version of) Former President Obama lack the otherworldly quality of giants, they are no less monstrous and sinister for their closer similarity to their actual counterparts in our Primary World. Further, Lewis’s assertion that pirates are mythological, though real in our Primary World (9) suggests that other real, living entities in the Primary World can also have mythical counterparts in a created Second World. Likewise, if Tolkien is correct that Arthurian legends are faerie stories, despite being “about” humans (and humans who may have historically existed – no clear consensus on that among medieval scholars, to my knowledge…), that’s further evidence that COVID conspiracy theories could actually be COVID conspiracy myths, despite versions of all “responsible” parties actually existing in our Primary World.
Even the possibility that conspiracy theories could actually be conspiracy myths could be a new answer to the oft-asked question of why so many people cling to such beliefs (despite a lack of empirical or other Primary-World evidence to back their claims). Ricoeur (qtd. in Redick) discussed “the power of myth to evoke speculation”? But when people act and create policy based on speculations born of (Second-World) myth but perceived those speculations as being born out First-World, literal narratives, the consequences can be catastrophic (such as people not wearing masks and thereby unnecessarily infecting themselves and others with a deadly disease.) When conspiracy theories become conspiracy myths, how can we help the sub-creators and believers of such myths to differentiate a spell “story told” (in and about the Primary World) from a spell (a Second-World myth’s “formula of power over living men”) (Tolkein 56).
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