The world’s population is currently estimated at over seven billion. Each day, tens of thousands of people will die and tens of thousands will be born.
Every minute of every day, news comes to us instantly through TV, radio, Internet and newspapers, and we are bombarded by national and international events, both tragic and uplifiting, on a constantly rolling basis.
The saying “Things happen for a reason” is well known, and as human beings we do like to have our reasons. Our logical method of thinking requires us to find rational explanations for the things that happen in our own lives and in the world we inhabit.
We make decisions all the time, and use our emotions in many of them, but ultimately it’s logic we use to justify those decisions to ourselves and others – reason.
In this world, we’re faced with disasters both human-made and natural. We look at the current freak weather systems occurring throughout the world and we need to find a reason their happening. We hear reports from scientists and weather experts who speak about how the jet stream has shifted, how global warming has done this or that, but on the whole we’re glad that someone is coming up with a reason.
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“when we encounter events that cannot be immediately explained, or are unable to find answers to the questions they produce, we seek reasons. And where we’re unable to find them, we humans have a tendency to blame others, whoever they may be.”
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And yet there are those who voice the possibility that these meteorological extremes may be just random occurrences. And that’s where we sometimes have a problem. It seems that as humans we’re in some way ‘programmed’ to search for reasons. We don’t like random occurrences, we want to know the how and why. When we find the reason, we’re content, or at least more comfortable.
So, when we encounter events that cannot be immediately explained, or are unable to find answers to the questions they produce, we seek reasons. And where we’re unable to find them, we humans have a tendency to blame others, whoever they may be.
On 31st August 1997, Diana, Princess of Wales, died as a result of injuries sustained in a car crash in the Pont de l’Alma road tunnel in Paris. There can be hardly be anyone, old enough at the time to have been aware of this event, who will be unable to recall where they were when they heard the news that Diana had died.
Questions were immediately raised. The speed of the car to the possibility that the driver of the Mercedes carrying the Princess and her friend Dodi Fayed had been drunk, were just two among many others. Later, there were reports that surveillance cameras along the route had apparently stopped working prior to the crash.
Suddenly, many voiced the idea of a conspiracy, and since that fateful day in 1997, a number of theories have been put forward in support of the idea that the death of Diana, Princess of Wales, was not an accident. Rather, they suggest it was masterminded by the British government, by MI5, or any number of other organisations.
We could of course look at the idea that this was just a random accident, which occurred due to a random series of events in a short space of time. But if we do this, we’re not using that ‘reason’ within our logical thinking. And in the absence of a ‘reason’, we continue to question. However, when we look at the option that a conspiracy is in some way to blame, we discount randomness and come up with a reason. Solved!
In short, a conspiracy theory can probably be used to answer almost any of our unanswered questions.
A UFO and alien autopsies?
Many people, especially conspiracy theorists, will have heard of Roswell. On 8th July 1947, the Roswell Army Air Field issued a press release stating that they had recovered a crashed “flying disc” from land near Roswell.
Later, a subsequent press conference was called, during which the military claimed that the crashed “flying disc” was actually a weather balloon. To back this up, officials produced debris from the balloon in order to explain the crash.
The military’s explanation did not sit well with some people, including nuclear physicist Stanton Friedman. In 1978, Friedman interviewed Major Jesse Marcel, a soldier who had been involved in the recovery of the “balloon”. During the interview, Marcel said that the recovered debris he had seen was “not of this world”.
Eleven years later, the claims gained more steam when former mortician Glenn Dennis came forward and announced that alien autopsies had been conducted at the Roswell base. But from day one, conspiracy theories abounded that the disc was of alien origin and alien bodies had been recovered from the wreckage.
Looking at this case, we see that the conflicting press releases began to raise questions. Perhaps this was the random crash of a weather balloon. Perhaps it was an alien object that crashed to earth. But without questions being fully answered at the time, and the fact that the non-answers raised even more questions, we again look at a conspiracy theory, as conspiracy (a government cover-up) can answer all the unanswered questions.
Then we have the Kennedy assassination, where a whole collection of conspiracy theories have been the content of many a conversation, documentary and book over the years. At one point it was said that more than half of Americans believed there had been a cover-up concerning the assassination.
Lee Harvey Oswald was arrested for the shooting of the president. However, Oswald himself was shot and killed two days later, before a trial could take place. Since then, there have been numerous conspiracy theories, and as time went on, further concerns were raised, particularly about the ‘single bullet’ theory. There were simply too many unanswered questions about Kennedy’s assassination.
As conspiracy theories have developed and grown over the years, we find that although some seem to rise from nowhere, many have a governmental or establishment association.
According to some, for example, a giant computer system exists somewhere, monitoring all our emails and phone calls, and is designed to pick out certain words that may link to national security issues.
It seems we often blame governments for conspiracies, another useful way of giving ourselves a ‘reason’.
Whether conspiracy theories are real or unfounded, they will doubtless continue to be part of our lives for generations to come. We will always seek reasons, and dislike the presence of unexplained randomness in our lives.
Having said all that, in years to come I’ll remain positive that one theory in the conspiracy chest is absolutely true... I’m sure that Elvis is alive!
