Don't even think it - they're listening!

Yesterday’s blog was about the lengths people go to in order to construct something other than themselves to believe in, something to live their lives for… which they will then convince themselves is also worth dying for. Puny humans! I thought I was pointing my scathing finger at some of the hypocrisy of organised religion and political movements, from a position of extreme scepticism. I’ve always poo-poohed conspiracy theories, largely on the grounds that I’ve lived among all sorts of human beings and I reckon we’re nowhere near as crafty as we think we are. And I always – or at least I thought I did – look at most news stories with a degree of disbelief bordering on the neurotically suspicious.

So, imagine my surprise to be tweeted “Oh you are so, so stupid!” followed by “You believe everything the MSM report. It makes you appear daft!” accompanied by some picture ‘memes’ about government propaganda and manipulation of the media and being a modern slave to the consumer cult. For a fella who wants to retire to a retreat up a mountain, far away from the ludicrous chatter of the idle and ignorant I felt quite deflated. Blimey, I thought, maybe I have been manipulated and the government cups me in the palm of their collective, controlling hand. Maybe I only think I’m an independent thinker and all of my many, many blogs dismissing the gullibility of those who slavishly follow fashion, diktat, religion or blinkered ideology are the result of an invisible urge implanted by GlaxoSmithKline… or agents for the shadowy ‘them’.

So, let me try and understand this criticism because – unless I’m mistaken – the essence of impartial, scientific enquiry is to challenge everything and if my belief that I draw my own conclusions is spurious and I only imagine I have freedom of thought then we’re in big trouble. Because I look at the socialists, the religious, the childish copyists, the X-Factor wannabes and the conspiracy nutjobs down the length of a very long and cynical nose. I thought that I was almost the antithesis of gullible, believing in little I haven’t seen with my own ears; heard with my own eyes._[stet]

But now I know the truth: just like all the rest of you I am a mere tool of the system, a willing fool a useful idiot and an indoctrinated sheep; slave to the machine of state. Every thought I have ever had, every instinct I have ever followed, every factoid I have ever challenged… all just further proof of the extent to which I have been manipulated. To what purpose? To make it appear that there are dissenters, when in truth I am just a part of the plan? Are we all just pieces of the national jigsaw, neatly slotted into place in the big picture? Or am I just saying all this to make it look as if I’ve stumbled across the plot… or is that just what they want you to think I think?

Wait! I see it clearly now...

I’m not going to say my challenger is wrong, besides I’m far too gullible to mount a reasoned defence of my own. If Carslberg did conspiracy theories? Then again, little does she know, that I know that she knows, that he knows that… where was I? But here’s the thing: if my thoughts are not my own, whose are they? I blame that bloody Matrix. (You knew I’d say that, didn’t you?)

Chill Pill

Are you a Useful Idiot? Are you unwittingly doing the bidding of an unseen master, banging the drum and flying the banner for an ideology that despises you even while it uses you as a foot soldier? For that matter, am I a useful idiot also? Am I swallowing a sinister, worldwide Zionist plot to rid the planet of islam by deliberately and cynically sacrificing thousands of its own innocent civilians in order to incite people to unite against Hamas while claiming to be the victim? Are they playing me? Then well played, I say… well fucking played.

It may be possible that, Matrix-like, the world I experience is just the world that some sinister conspiracy wants me to see but you know what, I’m more than happy with that; it’s a world that works for me. Why would I want to take the red pill and wake from the dream? Why would I want to even know about the pills at all if, as the likes of Owen Jones and Co like to insist, reality is that a cold hard puppet-master is twisting my mind to despise the little people? In the world of my experience most people – and I include myself - are enormous bell-ends anyway.

But wait. If those on the left, as they constantly tell us, believe the world is in the thrall of a massive capitalist conspiracy to enslave the masses to corporate ends, why do many not on the left see socialism as a massive plot to subjugate and enslave the masses to statist ends? Surely, if I was bound to the Matrix, I would see neither argument. And if I was in thrall to the Zionist master plan, why would I take a middle view that would happily see both sides expunged from existence… anything for a bit of peace and quiet?

Or is this all a clever – too clever by half – double bluff, whereby William of Ockham was induced, almost seven centuries ago, to develop a hypothesis of simplicity simply to persuade me, little old me, here today, that the more complicated things look, the less likely that explanation may be? In this way I can scoff at Owen’s People’s Assembly and their fervent belief in foul intent and dastardly doings, while remaining blinded by my partisan prejudices to the complexity of the other argument; believing instead that shit happens and it’s every man for himself. If that is how the supposed right-wing controls the affairs of man it is sheer genius.

Think about it – I do – to adopt a leftist stance I need to believe first of all that a species capable of the gross stupidity, recklessness and tribal loyalty that causes millions to be senselessly exterminated is also capable of a system of benign public stewardship of the planet’s resources. That such a system can fairly distribute to each according to his needs without favour or prejudice. If I believed THAT maybe I could also be persuaded to believe that the nasty people who make things and grow food and build factories and hospitals and schools and houses are all engaged in a bid to herd the rest of humanity into cruel servitude.

To me, that way of thinking is way too complicated and takes up far too much processing power that could be used for getting on with your life, but it turns out that there may be a natural explanation for socialism after all. There appear to be evolutionary origins for the morals we adopt and we may in fact be powerless after all; not to resist some big plot to gain our endorsement but powerless to engage in thinking beyond our biological imperatives. Left or right, it seems, we are at least partly victims of our genes. Given that nature tends towards greater efficiency it looks very much like those on the left are just not as highly evolved as the rest of us.