You as Unreliable Narrator: The Conspiratorial Pitfalls of Searching for Meaning in Stories
Gabriela de Mendonça Gomes
From whispers of shadowy cabals orchestrating world events to intricate tales of clandestine cover-ups, the notion of conspiracy taps into a deep and persistent vein of human curiosity and skepticism of what we are told. As puny individuals living in a world where we are detached from yet subject to the rules and decisions made by opaque greater forces and institutions, it seems indeed natural to want to question the veracity of the information provided to it because opacity breeds suspicion. To a philosophically-minded or historically-informed observer of the social formation, perhaps it seems even a moral obligation to doubt.
Descartes showed us the power of doubt not only in metaphysics but also in politics. He doubted in a sociocultural context where his kind of skepticism led other thinkers to their deaths at the hands of the dominant institution of the time, the Christian church. “I think, therefore I am” is the positive side of doubt. Descartes indeed says that the existence of the doubt is what allows him to hold his metaphysical certainty.
Even moving away from metaphysics, doubt remains a crucial attitude. From Watergate to MKUltra to Nazi Scientists hired by the U.S. government and many many more instances, the U.S. government has committed moral wrongdoings and deceived its citizens of it all. (Although I’ve only cited U.S. problems, there likely is no government without fault). While ‘the Government’ is a disembodied bureaucratic mass, the pieces that form that mass are people. And people are not only individually epistemologically and morally fallible, but bunched together, they are susceptible to groupthink and peer-pressure.
When whistleblowers or victims of these acts then come out to revolt and claim their truth stake in the unwelcoming public terrain, they might be called conspiracy theorists. This, of course, would be untrue, for they herald a narrative that accurately reflect the series of events which took place. But conspiracies--true or false--emerge in the same way. That is, mass media provides one narrative, conspiracy another. What conspiracy theories can do, then, is present an epistemological challenge, forcing us to confront the fragility of our certainties. For they question the nature of truth and the mechanisms by which it is constructed and disseminated––two interrelated but distinct philosophical and practical matters. Further, questioning accepted truths––what a conspiracy, in essence, does––is necessary for diversity in opinion, for public discourse, and for establishing an internally consistent set of beliefs.
Thus, to dismiss conspiracies outright as mere fabrications or the purview of the paranoid is to overlook their profound philosophical significance. These narratives, at their core, reveal fundamental aspects of human cognition, the currency of trust and attention that flows between sources and absorbers of truth, and the ceaseless human quest for meaning with its many detours and deadends. This intricate existential pathway is not a marked trail.
We all can, and do, get lost. Journalist Roger Cohen wrote that “conspiracy theories are refuge of the disempowered;” as creatures that seek patterns and explanations, we can find shelter in an organized narrative in a world chaotically hurling an abundance of information our way at any given second. So, when we feel disempowered or excluded from the decision-making processes that govern our lives, turning to a conspiratorial explanation as a way to reclaim agency and understanding may seem like the sign we’ve been waiting for all along this trail of meaningfulness and meaninglessness. Because conspiracies offer a framework where events are interconnected, and intentions are clear, however nefarious. Narrative simplicity is psychologically satisfying, even if it distorts the more complex and nuanced reality.
I believe that we make meaning of our lives by weaving narratives. Conspiracies simultaneously show the appeal of this view and how it can be wildly misapplied and taken to a delusional end. The concept of conspiracy shows the potentiality embedded into how we understand the world: certainty can be fruitful and it can be dangerous; doubt can be fruitful and it can be dangerous. Conspiracies demonstrate the tight-rope walk that our existential trail can turn into: how do we balance a necessary healthy skepticism with the need for social cohesion and trust in institutions? More contemporarily, how do we do that in a world where mass culture seems to both create an international community while simultaneously alienating individuals from constructing rooted identities because of that same expansiveness?
Because while all this philosophical meditation on conspiracy unfolds in this newsletter and (hopefully) leaves its readers with questions upon which to reflect in their lives and regarding their conduct—as Stella has shown us and Madeleine as cynically laughed with us at—the spread of unfounded conspiracies has dire real-world consequences in eroding public trust, fomenting division, and acutely alienating its believers from their personal lives. Stories create and stories destroy.
The allure of conspiracy is a testament to that. What accompanies the empowering realization that in creating self-knowledge and knowledge of the world by way of narratives imbues each of us with the power to change who we are and who are becoming merely by telling ourselves a different story is the profound burden of interrogating our authorship. The prevalence of conspiracy functions as a call to remain vigilant in our choice, what story we choose to believe and path we choose to pursue in the search for self, meaning, and truth. Indeed, there is no self without other, and if we are to coexist, we must write ourselves and the world with care.