Conspiracy of Echoes: Is “Conspiracy Research” a Passing Fad?

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13 Responses

  1. Mihai says:

    Well, I do have to disagree in at least one respect.

    For example, you mention that stuff like transhumanism is gaining no wider acceptance. This is not true. Perhaps you live in a smaller town where these things are not so easy observable but where I live (and I believe this is true for every metropolis or larger city in the West today) it is no longer unusual to hear opinions that just a few years ago seemed fringe. Among the simpler and older age types this is not true, but among the younger generation (20-40 years old) especially those involved in the corporate environment it is quite typical to hear about the revolutionary changes that would be brought about by the new technologies, the halting of the aging process, perhaps even defying death in the longer term future, since everything is chemicals anyway and if you can reverse the chemical process bla bla bla…

    All of a sudden everyone became a philosopher. And though not all might have heard of something called transhumanism, their ideas are perfectly in line with it.

    This of course does not mean that these pipe dreams will ever be realized, nor that they will one day gain nearly complete adhesion, like you correctly say. But there is no question that these ideas are spreading at a disquieting rate.

    And although it might sound cliche, just look at how social life differs now from what it was some no more than 5-6 years ago, before the mass introduction of smart phones. Back then you could sit next to someone at the table and talk to him, rather than watch him frantically pressing some buttons on his touchscreen.
    These things have altered the mass psyche significantly and cannot be underestimated.

    Of course, like we talked before, it is impossible to conceive that all these would spread at such a rate and with such success if they wouldn’t correspond to some strong tendency in most people living in this age. It is impossible to attribute them to conscious manipulation only. At the very least, even the die-hard conspiracy theorist would have to admit that some part of contemporary man wants- even begs- to receive this manipulation.

    Besides this- and getting back to the wider theme of your podcast- I am still not entirely convinced how to treat these internet tendencies and what weight do they have on everyday reality? Perhaps it can be considered a study of the most raw psychic phenomena present in people today- raw because the internet and the anonymity it affords requires almost no social mask of any kind.

    • Malić says:

      Perhaps I was a bit ambiguous there in terms of terminology. I was talking about sustainable development as a concretely outlined policy. Posthumanism is a much broader thing – one that I’m sometimes tempted to use as an umbrella term for almost every social ill I write about. And, as for me, you don’t need to move to the big city to encounter it. For instance, I see it progressively in the transformation of work displayed in the job advertising. Whenever I have to go through adds I get sickened by plethora of cryptic new job descriptions that seem to me more like adverts for pieces of human computer code. Also, the invasion of English in my native language, now common for “intellectuals”. I call it “Hrengleski” (Cronglish) and it clearly displays invasion of realities for which we don’t have proper language because they’re in fact still not the problems in a country like Croatia, but people who are so displaced from reality see them as present. This happens, of course, because they live out most of their free time on Internet (missing on KT in the process, obviously) and slowly appropriating globally promulgated simulacra to artificially inseminate their own public with them. Believe it or not, Croatian Alt Right aficionados excel in this.

      • Silent says:

        All the domino pieces from the ‘Enlightenment’ era onwards are perfectly lined up by now for the final solution of the human problem through technology. They don’t even need any radical ‘Singularity’ for this to be seemingly inevitable if only the ‘horizontal’ level of historical development be taken into consideration. It is only a divine intervention that can save humanity now—and it will.

      • Ante says:

        Who do you consider to be Croatian alt right? I thought for a while that Ivan Pernar is trying to sneak his way into such a niche when he was talking about NATO, Putin and Russia in the parliament last year or whenever plus his anti-catholic rhetoric that sprang up here and there but he is yugonostalgic and literally serbophilic so it doesn’t really add up. Also the guy seems to be genuinely too stupid to be something on his own, he looks more like someone else’s useful idiot himself. Who else is there?

  2. Mihai says:

    Hrengleski..

    We have romgleză = romglish. 🙂
    And like in Croatia, many people don’t even notice anymore that they are using it.

  3. Silent says:

    I agree with you, Mr Malić, that typical conspiracy theory discourse is flawed. But the fact that theories are flawed doesn’t mean there is no global conspiracy, even though it certainly doesn’t possess total power. There are certain things that will never be “out”, and one of those things is the 9/11 problem as exposed by serious men of science such as the following:

    http://www.ae911truth.org

    This is not going away. Do you mean to say that all these people were simply wrong, that what they have found, and all the other countless indications of deception/conspiracy surrounding 9/11, are nothing? It is impossible for me to believe that.

    • Malić says:

      I believe no one will ever know. On the other hand the so called “truth movement” is a cesspool of fringe and not so fringe agendas masking as a research. I think that accomplishments of internet promulgated conspiratorial thinking has been devastating for overall level of awareness of the history of XX. century. All that was accomplished was to shake the belief into inherited truths, some of whom indeed were truths, and establishing nothing but the belief that one can reboot the world in his own head and remodel it to his own liking.

      • Silent says:

        But have you given the evidence presented by thisassociation serious consideration? If not, I challenge you to do so. This is evidence oriented, not furthering any particular conspiracy theory. That being said, the evidence has of course enormous implications. I am surprised that you can say we will never know. The complete and detailed story may never be made known to the public, but that 9/11 was (and therefore still is) a conspiracy and mass deception, necessarily implicating important power structures, can be safely established. This we can know, and it should be of great concern.

        • Malić says:

          And to what has this concern led? Zillion of people arguing complex theories only to be debunked by other complex theories. And most of them thoroughly enjoying themselves in the process. I don’t buy the official story, but neither do I buy into “9/11 truth”. What if I challenge you to consider the evidence presented by dozen organizations and individuals all thoroughly explaining the event and even more thoroughly debunking one another? That’s training in unknowing, not knowing, by information infatuation.

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