The other day an Arab friend of mine opined to me that the floodgates would open soon in the Arab-American community and a spate of conspiracy theories about Boston would come forth. After all, he said, "Arabs love conspiracies." I smiled remembering similar attributions by and about African-Americans, Jamaican, Brits, Africans, and virtually any group of people I have lived with and known. His casual observation sent me on a weekend journey processing what I know about conspiracies.
I think we all love, or at least, understand conspiracies given that we have participated in countless numbers of them in our lifetimes. We conspire against friends with other friends, family members with family members, teachers with classmates, the strong with the weak, the weak with the strong, opponents with teammates, political parties with political parties, on and on. Winning, surviving, thriving, seem to depend often on these secretive enclaves. We laugh at the elaborate conspiracies we hear long enough to suspend the current conspiracy we are practicing. The naive and almost magical possibilities of luck, chance, and serendipity have been replaced with the petty and cynical notions of more comfortable and familiar notions like collusion, envy, treachery and deceit.
We are a sophisticated generation, so we think, therefore our personal conspiracies must be elaborate and must be detectable only to like minds. Minds that are as intelligent, intuitive, or experienced as our own. There is no prize in detecting and identifying a conspiracy, only the self-satisfaction of possessing that particular form of exclusive enlightenment. I have Facebook friends who post the evidence of conspiracies constantly - and I am not sure if this is to lead to change in the world or simply the world recognizing their exceptional insight. It must be lonely having this much inside knowledge of such cruel and suspicious realities. The notion of "wonder" for these folks is no longer the amazement in the discovery of new and beautiful things, but the pedantic loathing of a world full of dupes and dummies.
My favorite people lately though, are those wise friends who don't subscribe to the smaller and focused conspiracy theories created by minority groups or those "less educated", but who endorse gigantic, world-wide cabals involving billions of people endorsing a faith other than theirs. With all the complex racial, ethnic, cultural, economic, political, and religious components responsible for the psyche of these two brothers from Boston, these pundits will focus on the faith of these two misanthropes, then will extrapolate this one convenient splinter and gleefully extrapolate it to the Islamic world. Islam thus becomes the conspiracy. The Chechnyian piece will be ignored as it produces too much dissonance for us - Chechnya was victimized by the evil Russians, and we sympathized with them. Now if these boys are Chechnyian and not Muslims, we have a problem. Or if they are outcasts, or political fundamentalists, or racial extremists, those things ring too close for comfort. So we take the small sliver and indict a good part of the rest of the world for the sake of our convenience, laziness, or our often suppressed desire to be openly bigoted and hateful.
The greatest conspiracy of all, of course, is that nearly 2,000,000,000 hate America and are its greatest threat. That two billion people think the same, share a preponderance of weaknesses and evils, and are more cohesive in effect than any other populace on the face of the earth. This is ludicrous and frightening in the same breath. I try but am unable to understand this thinking - instead, I spent some time creating a few conspiracy theories of my own to explain this hatred aimed at Muslims. It was easier than I thought, as human nature may indeed be lazy and self-serving. I don't think I really believe these somewhat playful contrivances, and I would not speak them seriously. But, as an exercise in pure speculation, here goes:
I think we all love, or at least, understand conspiracies given that we have participated in countless numbers of them in our lifetimes. We conspire against friends with other friends, family members with family members, teachers with classmates, the strong with the weak, the weak with the strong, opponents with teammates, political parties with political parties, on and on. Winning, surviving, thriving, seem to depend often on these secretive enclaves. We laugh at the elaborate conspiracies we hear long enough to suspend the current conspiracy we are practicing. The naive and almost magical possibilities of luck, chance, and serendipity have been replaced with the petty and cynical notions of more comfortable and familiar notions like collusion, envy, treachery and deceit.
We are a sophisticated generation, so we think, therefore our personal conspiracies must be elaborate and must be detectable only to like minds. Minds that are as intelligent, intuitive, or experienced as our own. There is no prize in detecting and identifying a conspiracy, only the self-satisfaction of possessing that particular form of exclusive enlightenment. I have Facebook friends who post the evidence of conspiracies constantly - and I am not sure if this is to lead to change in the world or simply the world recognizing their exceptional insight. It must be lonely having this much inside knowledge of such cruel and suspicious realities. The notion of "wonder" for these folks is no longer the amazement in the discovery of new and beautiful things, but the pedantic loathing of a world full of dupes and dummies.
My favorite people lately though, are those wise friends who don't subscribe to the smaller and focused conspiracy theories created by minority groups or those "less educated", but who endorse gigantic, world-wide cabals involving billions of people endorsing a faith other than theirs. With all the complex racial, ethnic, cultural, economic, political, and religious components responsible for the psyche of these two brothers from Boston, these pundits will focus on the faith of these two misanthropes, then will extrapolate this one convenient splinter and gleefully extrapolate it to the Islamic world. Islam thus becomes the conspiracy. The Chechnyian piece will be ignored as it produces too much dissonance for us - Chechnya was victimized by the evil Russians, and we sympathized with them. Now if these boys are Chechnyian and not Muslims, we have a problem. Or if they are outcasts, or political fundamentalists, or racial extremists, those things ring too close for comfort. So we take the small sliver and indict a good part of the rest of the world for the sake of our convenience, laziness, or our often suppressed desire to be openly bigoted and hateful.
The greatest conspiracy of all, of course, is that nearly 2,000,000,000 hate America and are its greatest threat. That two billion people think the same, share a preponderance of weaknesses and evils, and are more cohesive in effect than any other populace on the face of the earth. This is ludicrous and frightening in the same breath. I try but am unable to understand this thinking - instead, I spent some time creating a few conspiracy theories of my own to explain this hatred aimed at Muslims. It was easier than I thought, as human nature may indeed be lazy and self-serving. I don't think I really believe these somewhat playful contrivances, and I would not speak them seriously. But, as an exercise in pure speculation, here goes:
- Why older Christians are threatened by Islam - Take a tour of Catholic and Protestant churches around this country; enter from the back and look out over a sea of grey and white. Perhaps they notice the legions of young Muslims quoting religious text as well as teen aged non-sense and they worry about the future of their diminishing congregations. As they lose their youth (their own and their children), they despise a faith that stays connected.
- Why politicians use Islamaphobia - Politicians need votes, and often end up endorsing things that will win favor with their constituency - They recognize that they have a large group of people in their district who are stupid and hateful, and who have had to run from their enemies so fast in recent decades (Jews, homosexuals, Blacks, Catholics, etc.), that they are desperate to lay their ugliness on something, and to do so publicly, loudly, and proudly.
- Why American women are so eager to proclaim the oppression of their Arab counterparts - Simply, Beyonce'. Women in this country are still oppressed and don't even understand the mechanisms involved. In fact, they contribute to their own oppression. No matter how successful, how talented a singer is, she still has to perform half-naked and spew sex-laden lyrics. Using her sexuality gets a woman further than her intellect. Instead of examining this complex dynamic, it is easier to look elsewhere and to point at something they don't like, that looks simpler to their dissonant minds. It must be disheartening to realize though, that your daughters' most successful role models are Beyonce' and Madonna.
- Why people in Kansas are so afraid of Sharia - Because they live in Kansas - enough said (fill in your own conspiracy here).
I don't believe these things, but I do recognize that I have dug them up from tiny seeds of prejudices and poorly constructed patterns. I do not profess them publicly, not because I am afraid of condemnation, but because I know they would indicate a weakness in my own intellect and in my humanity. These things are handy sometimes when I don't want to think or even possibly reconsider my stance on a subject. They are also useful when I get in the right company and I want to feel the false affirmation of brazen bravado bounced off of thick skulls. As I said though, I understand conspiracy theories all too well, just trying not to love them so much.
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