21st of February 2016

...One thing that stands out on my 'subvert' is the profound sense of fear.

'Waking up' and realising that there were sinister forces at work, that may or may not be some kind of reptile based shape-shifting alien, was understandably disturbing.  Believing that governments, the very people we elect to keep us safe, could allow or even orchestrate full blown terrorist attacks was absolutely terrifying. 

Yet... as a good friend pointed out after watching a screening of Zeitgeist: "This is still fear mongering propaganda - it's just for a different cause."  She was right.  Why does Zeitgeist have a series of flashing images showing traumatic things such as war and dead people at the start of their film?  Haven't they read Naomi Kleins 'The Shock Doctrine' that explains traumatic images numb the brain to critical thinking and so are useful to show if you want an audience to take information in unguarded?

Is there ever a reason to use shock inducing traumatic images even if it is for the higher good? 

It certainly makes people pay attention - we're hard wired to pay attention to anything that's trying to kill us - but if it also cuts off the critical thinking part of our brain then surely we're not really progressing - just replacing one set of beliefs with another?


At this point cracks started appearing in my unshakable belief that what I was being told was the entire truth, and that perhaps the conspiracy movement was just another way to keep the masses in a state of fear and impotence.

There are some conspiracies, in the true sense of the word, that I still regard as very likely.

I'm suspicious, for example, when a government feels the need to publish an 'official' account of an event that reads like a trashy novel.  It makes me wonder what they are actually trying to convince us of (the other time the US published an 'official account' was when JFK was shot). 
I'd see some sense in it if, after decades of rumours and accusations, the government officials got fed up and decided that it was time to tell their side of the story, but it came out just 3 years later, reading - did I mention - like a trashy novel and claiming to provide 'a full and complete account of the circumstances surrounding the September 11th, 2001, terrorist attacks'.   I don't want to get all Derrida on these people but I couldn't provide a full and complete account of the circumstances surrounding my breakfast, let alone a complex and large scale attack on two buildings by foreign agencies.  Did I mention that it reads like a trashy novel?

At the time, in 2008, I was certain.  Now, in 2016, I'm unsure.  Yet, conspiracy is not a dirty word for me.  I wouldn't put it past the power hungry mob in charge of world politics and economics to see the deaths of a few thousand people as expendable units in the march of progress...