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There are lots of conspiracy theories out there. We have conspiracy theories about the Holy Grail, about the Kennedy assassinations, about 9/11, about... well, damned near everything. We see conspiracies in the bushes, burned into our toast in the morning, lurking in our cereal. Nothing happens by accident; all Significant Events are plotted out by Machiavellian and mysterious agents and organizations.
Why is that?
I wonder if a part of the attraction to conspiracy theories isn't because we, as humans, also love fiction: in the form of oral stories, in the form of books, in the forms of the visual media. In fiction, one of the rules is that "everything must be connected." In fiction, events are properly foreshadowed. There is a reason behind every plot move; all the events are carefully constructed to create the maximum tension leading up the climax and eventual resolution. The sub-plots support the main plot and shed light on the thematic underpinnings. The characters are carefully chosen to fit into the plot -- none of them are extraneous or superfluous.
Everything ties together. Neatly.
In fiction, we howl in distress if something random happens. We sneer at deus ex machina devices coming in to solve the protagonist's crisis. Fiction may reflect 'real life' but it's not real life. "The way it really happened" rarely makes good fiction. In life, as the bumper sticker says, shit happens. In fiction, we remove the shit.
But we see fiction all the time. We read the novels, we watch the television, we see the movies, we listen to the stories. We have this subliminal expectation that life will imitate art. There's a solace in the thought that "everything is connected," that there's some dire, diabolical, and devious plot behind everything that happens, that there is a hidden force directing things, that everything happens "for a reason."
It's comforting, in a strange way. It's better than thinking that someone might kill a famous person just because they're delusional and deranged and not because they're part of a secret cabal. It's better than thinking that life is random and our fate might be decided by a roll of cosmic dice. There's more meaning to death if someone dies in a plane wreck that's caused by his evil opponents than just because some component of the plane happened to fail at critical time.
You can't trust a world that's random. You can't be safe in a arbitrary universe.
So the next time you're assailed by some nutjob telling you how your iPod is giving you subliminal messages that will soon cause the entire nation become vegetarian, thus undermining the beef and chicken industries and making us entirely reliant on Asian tofu imports and wrecking our economy, realize that it's not their fault. It's our fault, the Secret Organization of Fiction Authors (SOFA).
You see, it's all an evil plot to get you to buy more of our books... Bwah-ha-ha-ha-ha!!!!
Why is that?
I wonder if a part of the attraction to conspiracy theories isn't because we, as humans, also love fiction: in the form of oral stories, in the form of books, in the forms of the visual media. In fiction, one of the rules is that "everything must be connected." In fiction, events are properly foreshadowed. There is a reason behind every plot move; all the events are carefully constructed to create the maximum tension leading up the climax and eventual resolution. The sub-plots support the main plot and shed light on the thematic underpinnings. The characters are carefully chosen to fit into the plot -- none of them are extraneous or superfluous.
Everything ties together. Neatly.
In fiction, we howl in distress if something random happens. We sneer at deus ex machina devices coming in to solve the protagonist's crisis. Fiction may reflect 'real life' but it's not real life. "The way it really happened" rarely makes good fiction. In life, as the bumper sticker says, shit happens. In fiction, we remove the shit.
But we see fiction all the time. We read the novels, we watch the television, we see the movies, we listen to the stories. We have this subliminal expectation that life will imitate art. There's a solace in the thought that "everything is connected," that there's some dire, diabolical, and devious plot behind everything that happens, that there is a hidden force directing things, that everything happens "for a reason."
It's comforting, in a strange way. It's better than thinking that someone might kill a famous person just because they're delusional and deranged and not because they're part of a secret cabal. It's better than thinking that life is random and our fate might be decided by a roll of cosmic dice. There's more meaning to death if someone dies in a plane wreck that's caused by his evil opponents than just because some component of the plane happened to fail at critical time.
You can't trust a world that's random. You can't be safe in a arbitrary universe.
So the next time you're assailed by some nutjob telling you how your iPod is giving you subliminal messages that will soon cause the entire nation become vegetarian, thus undermining the beef and chicken industries and making us entirely reliant on Asian tofu imports and wrecking our economy, realize that it's not their fault. It's our fault, the Secret Organization of Fiction Authors (SOFA).
You see, it's all an evil plot to get you to buy more of our books... Bwah-ha-ha-ha-ha!!!!