Tag: Faith

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A thought on conspiracy theories

George Monbiot, in a recent article for The Guardian, talked to “conspiracy fantasists” Jason Liosatos and concludes “he is insufficiently rigorous in choosing what to believe”.

The Guardian

I think Monbiot inadvertently shines a light on the organising principle of all conspiracy theories. They’re all governed by, and function within the paradigm of, that thing we call faith. It’s there in that willingness some people have to surrender to a higher power, to accept the kind of certainty offered by religions, all of them.

Religions have a logic, a way of understanding existence, that brings meaning to those willing to submit. In return for surrendering that thing they call a soul, acolytes are given a framework to make sense of the chaos. I have no doubt there is safety in joining likeminded souls inside the truth, a truth others on the outside couldn’t possibly understand. But this dynamic, the binary that favours inside and out, us and them, quickly takes on the euphoria of enlightenment. From there the polarisation of zealots and heretics falls conveniently into place. The East hates the West. Progressives are outraged by reactionaries. The liberal left rages against the fascists right. Each and every thesis defining their perfect antithesis. But, whichever side of the coin lands, they all share the same organising principles, a logic able to manufacture coherent but very different conclusions.

This epistemological shift away from observable truth and towards faith is the way of the world now. Monbiot sees it as the necessary precursor chemical in the manufacture of the designer drug neoliberalism. I wonder if it could be something different? The concurrent rise of religious fundamentalism and conspiracy fantasies, what I like to call secular fundamentalism, is too similar to be coincidental. I wonder if this new emphasis on faith-based-logic is actually the precursor chemical for what Yanis Varoufakis calls Technofeudalism.

Just as the feudal lords of medieval world harnessed religion to assure allegiance, man-rent, from their tenants and subjects. Are we now seeing the same faith-based-logic being used by the platform kings of cloud capital to harness the power of information. These platforms algorithmically organise what we see, who we talk to, what we care about, where we go, frame how we think? We have surrendered control, willingly taken the knee, pledged allegiance, without even realising. Are we becoming, or have we are already become, acolytes favouring doctrine, rather than individuals deploying critical thinking. Do we now embrace certainty and fear scepticism, submitting without question to faith in the algorithms? Is that why conspiracy theories are so attractive?

Just a thought.

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A thought on heresy

I’ve noticed a pattern.

A way of thinking.

A way of believing.

That has scorched the earth we share.

And made it almost impossible to discuss anything.

There are many iterations of this pattern, but they all share one thing. A willingness to retreat into absolutes. Lines drawn. Hilltops claimed. It’s the dynamic of binaries. Us and them. Insiders and outsiders. Believers and heretics.

Jess de Wahls’ embroidery art

Heresy is written in dictionaries alongside words like dissension and dissidence, blasphemy and idolatry, scepticism and atheism, but it has two main definitions.

The most widely understood relates to religion. Heresy is “a belief or an opinion that is against the principles of a particular religion; the fact of holding such beliefs”.

A broader definition describes what I call the secular understanding. Heresy is “a belief or an opinion that disagrees strongly with what most people believe”.

More recently heresy has taken on what I call the cult definition. It combines aspects of both the religious and secular interpretations but has a more sinister, authoritarian, tendency. In this version, it’s heresy “to disagree with, or question, any prescribed doctrine or articles of faith”.

The cult variant has its roots in, and more than a passing resemblance to, propaganda. It’s biased, often misleading, and “used to promote a political cause or point of view”.

It works by describing a set of values or principles, moral facts or correct thinking. These “articles of faith” are accepted and absorbed as ineffable truths. The faithful define who they are as people by committing, or more accurately submitting, wholeheartedly to these articles.

This creates a really simplistic binary. You either accept the orthodoxies, follow the path to acceptance and support, or you’re the enemy, a belligerent that can just “fuck-off-and-die”. Put another way, you’re either with us or against us. Think what we think or you will be destroyed.

It’s a seductive way of thinking. It offers security. Certainty. Your allies are easily identified. Your enemies clearly defined. What it doesn’t do, is allow for questions.

Anyone with a sceptical disposition, a natural curiosity, or even a question to ask, is treated as an unenlightened outsider. This makes enemies of even the most sympathetic minds. Condemning, dismissing, vilifying, shunning, threatening, or attacking, anyone who has divergent experience, a differing point of view, or a genuine concern.

Another thing I’ve noticed. This way of engaging with society doesn’t adhere to the traditions of the political compass, dissolving the distinctions between left and right. These positions still exist but only as insults. When the right-wing faithful condemn a heretic they’re “woke liberals”. When the left condemn what’s heretical, they’re “fascists”.

My conclusion, the binaries of faith and heresy have created a divide. You either believe or you don’t. Those that don’t are disappeared, erased from the conversation, vaporised like so many of George Orwell’s characters in “Nineteen Eighty-Four”.

Disappearing people doesn’t make the questions go away. The concerns don’t just evaporate. The condemnations only entrench positions. From the heretic’s point of view, it’s the intellectual equivalent of the faithful jamming fingers in their ears, and chanting la, la, la, la, la, at the top of their lungs.

I wonder if the faithful realise their dogmatism is heresy to me? I don’t know. I’m not sure they care. They’re safe in the absolutes of their understanding. For me that’s a problem. It shuts down discussion, stifles debate, and hobbles intellectual development. Not just for the faithful but for us all.

What the faithful should realise, what we all need to understand, is that we’re all someone’s heretic.

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No Deal is a dangerous fantasy

The Brexiteers know the disasters we are facing, they just don’t care, and they don’t care because they have “faith”, faith that the grass is greener outside of the European Union, that we will prosper if only we have faith to stay the course.

New Statesman

There is one thing we should remember about people with faith, they’re unshakable in their convictions. You can not argue facts and figures with them until steam exhales from your ears, they have their “faith”, and their “faith” will see them through.

Brexiteers are fundamentalists, and like all fundamentalists, they would rather do something suicidal than admit what they believe is wrong. You can unpick the logic, offer mountains of evidence, but as soon as they say “I believe”, the argument is over. It’s over because evidence based thinking is heresy.

The problem from the start of this project, is that Remainers allowed the Brexiteers to frame the argument, and that argument was framed in the hyperbolic emotion of faith.