1. Unwanted opinions – conspiracy theories

First the virus, then within a few days, and this without any opposing view from anybody, a few fundamental rights of citizens of democratic societies abolished for a few weeks, and now after any public live is allowed again, the professional opinion makers discover this: There are actually a number of citizens who are wondering why and for what reason all this is happening and the politicians as the professional opinion makes, nervously discuss how it can happen that people make up their own minds, and the experts from the official media feel that they have to clarify what a decent opinion is and what not. They especially attack views about the virus policies they call conspiracy theories.    

Those who consider making opinions and debating as only their  business, all the journalists and the politicians, are wondering how it can happen that citizens do not just go about their business as usual and let as usual the opinion makers’ make everybody’s opinions, but strikingly make up their own minds.  Among professional opinion-makers, it is already causing a stir when all the ordinary people not only enjoy having the right to have their own opinion, but take the opportunity being allowed to have their own opinion to really make their own opinions, people who usually keep their mouths shut, and leave the opinion making to the professional opinion makers.

So there is a fierce debate in the media about what to make of these unsolicited opinions, which are suddenly and unasked by the opinion makers and reserved for the professional thinkers, saying what they want to say. The media experts and the politicians discuss, not with any citizens but in front of them among themselves if the opinions suddenly created by ordinary citizens should be dealt with, if they should welcome their debate or if the views citizens create and debate among themselves should not be considered as challenging the system of opinion making monopolized by the official media and via them reserved for debates among politicians and all kind of so called experts. Some raise the question, if the existence of such debates among people who are not officially in charge of opinion making is not questioning the political system of democracy, not because of what they say, but simply because people, whose business is to fulfil all their normal duties, but not to have any public debate and who suddenly intervene with discussion they were not invited to by any officials. Other argue that such discussions carried out in the public are better than keeping things privately, because this allows the official opinion makers to better know what peoples think and to intervene into their opinion making.

And intervening into these not invited opinion making people do independent from the official opinion business and all their professional opinion makers, they feel is utterly necessary. Not because people articulate opinions they feel must be discussed and criticised for what they say. The professional opinion makers, confronted with these unexpected views people create and discuss independent from the officials, is that people not only articulate views they disagree with; they detect with almost all these views, that people have no clue how at all to create an opinion and even not what a decent opinion must look like, how it works to create a view about what is going on in the world.

And the worse example they find as an unacceptable way of creating a view is what they – no not reject these views with any arguments, but as a fundamentally wrong way of making up one’s mind are those opinions they call “conspiracy theories”.  Calling them a “conspiracy theory”  is – no, not a critique of what these theories say, but the insult they attribute to almost everything what all these ordinary people think about the virus and the virus policies, not at all knowing what a decent opinion must look like, and in the next step raise the question about – not again not what these discriminated theories say, but about the people who articulate such unwanted views and  discuss the question, if these people have any mental, psychological or any other  problems.  Arguing in the media about the mental status of people who share such views, views considered as those incriminated conspiracy theories, is a top issues among the professional opinion makers, arguing how it is at all possible that people create such theories they consider as failing to comply with anything that qualifies a view as a decently arguing opinion and are wondering how it is possible that people create such theories, people they can only find more or less crazy and what must wrong about these people and their minds, if they might have any mental problems, creating such crazy views.      

So what are these views, discredited as conspiracy theories via discrediting the people who have these theories, what are these confusing views accused of not even knowing what a decent opinion is?  

Theories, those “conspiracy theories”, rejected by the professional opinion experts as the confusing view of people who must be mentally damaged and who have no clue what a decent view about anything is, are theories which do two things:  Firstly, they argue that anything bad that happens to them and they must cope with must be made anybody, by any subject, by any human and also say who they are. In the most prominent conspiracy theory, these theories argue, that there are humans, particular subjects, mostly business people, namely a Mr. Gates, together with other humans, mostly politicians, that is those who – unlike ordinary people –  do have the political power to make anything these business people want, to make this happen, thanks to the power they have. Secondly, the harm people are confronted with, in the case of the virus and this Mr. Gates, these theories argue, that what these business people do with the help of the powerful politicians that they do this purposefully, that they do what they do carefully planned and any harm for the people such business implies is something these business people either take into account or aim at, in any case benefit from. In other words: Any business is done because there are business man who aim at making this business, they do this business on purpose and any harm this business creates or implies is part of this well planned business.  In the case of this Gates story, one might argue about the  question, if these pharmacy business people were those who spread the virus in order to then create a vaccine that creates a superb business they benefit from.  But this, raising the question, who did what for which purposes, this is not what those professional opinion experts argue about, when they discredit such views as “conspirary theories” and by doing this, discrediting these theories as sick ideas and accodingly the people who have these views, or vice versa, they suggest to not even discuss their arguments, because they consider these theories anyway not as a theory and calling these theories, which insist both on subjects doing things and that they do what they do purposefully, this is enough to reject these theories as theories and therefore any debates about what they say as not worth it, or even as impossible to being discussed at all. 

2.Wanted theories – the world as a constraint

But why are all these professional opinion makers not very happy about these conspiracy theories, though they really could?  Especially, all the really economically powerful business people and all the powerful politicians are presented in these conspiracy theories as not being at the end of the day responsible for any of the harms these theories discuss, in the case of the Gates story,  all their political decisions, the lockdown of rights, the violence against citizens, the health policies and all their victims of all their business, for everything these theories blame any others, here Mr. Gates, people which are always super powerful and influential people, more powerful than the most powerful, manipulating even those who cannot not be topped regarding their decisions power. Why do they not welcome these theories as a perfect excuse for what the powerful do and use these theories to put the blame for all the harm on those manipulators behind them, just as these theories do it, obviously convinced that such awful things cannot be done by all those  business people and by their politicians, all those who are in power, and no way ever do such things with such harms for people on purpose ?

No, professional experts knowing what a decent opinion is, reject these theories and they reject them, again, not because they disagree with finding and naming the subjects  doing what they do and they deny that anything they do they do on purpose. They insist, that seeing anything that happens in this world, must be interpreted, not as something done by any particular subjects and done by them to achieve any objectives, but that everything any humans do, including the powerful, must be seen as a response, a mere reaction to what happens and all this happens without anybody’s intentions. The right view on the world is, that what happens must happen and it happens beyond anybody’s intentions, what happens, happens due to any factual constraints ruling the world and ruling the people, including those who rule the world. The world is progressing by itself and any humans can only react.

Sorry? Firstly, all the business people and their companies, when anywhere in this world their workers ask for better salaries they reject this because, as they say, higher salaries are questioning a successful business, stocks go down; this fighting against peoples income, they do not do this fully on purpose, are they not even telling us what they want and why they want this and are they not doing it and do this very determined and do this with the support of politicians? Pharmaceutical companies, health assurances, they all make their business with diseases, and they do this though their only intention is people’s health? Health assurances refuse covering the costs for testing people if they have the virus or not, because this, as they argue, damages their business. They, the health assurances, consider caring about the health more than it is healthy for the business with health as too costly and as a damage – not of the health, but of their business and this is done without any subjects deciding this and deciding this without knowing why and what for they make these decisions? Sorry: When all businesses use the earth as their rubbish bin, they only coincidentally loose their rubbish they blow with all sorts of high techs developed for this in line with the rules, given by the politicians, into the air without knowing this?  Nothing does more harm to people but the wars between states and the world is full of such wars – and we should now think that wars are happening without anybody’s intentions? Nation states holding monstrous military powers, they only do this without having any clue what for and why? Wars happen, nobody gives the orders to shoot and nobody wants them, they occur naturally – like weather?  

Secondly and besides, does it really matter, does it create less harm for people, if all this, the harm business does to people, the poverty they create for the sake of their business, the wars killing people, does it really make any difference if all this is happening unintentionally? Killed people are no killed people, because there is nobody whose intention it was to kill them? Is this, doing any harm to people, no matter if it is done by any particular people one can name and if it is done on purpose or not, is this not reason enough to criticise this and to stand up against this?

It is true, this view, that even the most powerful business people and those politicians, who even have a decision monopole, with which they cannot not only decide about anything in our societies, but have the command over a monopole of power instruments, all means of violence no other human have – by the way, including all the Gates behind them do not have –  to enforce their decisions to people, and if they think it is needed doing this with these means of violence, just as they do it with their lock up measures –  yes, this view interpreting everything as only executing any agenda nobody wants namely business people and politicians only always execute, an agenda one must imagine as a factual constraint of the reality, everybody must follow, this view is somehow nicer for all the powerful people, because especially any harm occurring in this view occurs as an inevitable thing nobody is responsible for and with this view all these powerful people can be presented and present themselves as always doing their very best to protect people against the naughty realty. This view, unlike conspiracy theories, is indeed much better for them, because in this view of the world as constraints, nobody makes the world but everybody must cope with it, this view not only absolves all those people who decide about what is going on in this world being ever responsible for any harm, it also allows to present themselves as victims and as heroes helping all the powerless – by the way, in this theory including all the Gates. But the really best about this way of seeing the world is, we are all sitting in the same boat, we all have to stay together, all the business people, the politicians and all the ordinary people – and not to forget the Gates – all together coping with the world. Sounds like the essential of nationalism, this idea about what a decent opinion must say, unlike those exclusive conspiracy theories.

One thing must though be finally said. It is true, views interpreting the world as a constraints we all must follow is the better ideology – though is this theory, that everything in this world happens due to any unknown agendas ruling the world and the world’s people behind everybody, isn’t this a much more radical conspiracy theory, in which an unknown something makes everybody do what we must do?   Isn’t this a truly medieval conspiracy view, making the world the result of any mysterious subject ruling the world behind the world.  The idea of factual constraints, ruling peoples lives, isn’t  this the enlightened version of the  idea about gods ruling mankind? This is what all those highly educated people governing the economy, the state and what else, all those people who studied at Universities, this is what all these economic and political Mullahs and all journalists with all their sophisticated knowledge learned how the world works? Sounds quite familiar, somehow the true image of leadership, to present everything all the powerful people do as nothing else but executing an agenda they only execute and that they themselves are only executors on behalf of a higher will beyond mankind’s influence. However, isn’t this on the other hand a disastrous image about this society, telling us that nobody in these societies of the 21 century  is able to decide what these societies are doing and where they are going to? Nobody has any idea or plan (careful: conspiracy) where we are going to and towards which aims? A society stumbling through live following any mysterious agendas, nobody has any influence on? And this, not during any medieval times, but while people have, for example, the knowledge to know how to create an artificial virus as a medicines against it?

PS: For those who are too young to experience this: Doing anything on purpose, planning, this is the synonym for anti-capitalism since the so-called “cold war”; accusing capitalism to plan anything, reveals in the eyes of the official opinion makers a fundamental misunderstanding about how to see the society we live in; planning, this is the opposite of freedom, this is communism; the society we live in, capitalism, is a society ruled by freedom, this is the opposite of planning, freedom is the the art of people to adjust what they do to what they have to do volontarily and to interpret what they have to do as constraints ruling this world. Seeing this as their freedom, this is the way wanted opinions must be constructed in free societies and the right way of using the freedom of speech.

Comments preferably in English.

1 Comment

  1. A very relevant topic of discussion. Planning becomes more important with the 1917´s Russian Revolution, with the New Deal, with the II WW and the III Reich. Conspiracy theories were a literary gender (science fiction and futurology, mostly against aliens) when Cold War two superpowers conspiracies polarise all the world. TINA only start working full time after the ’90s, the fall of the USSR. In times of globalization, conspiracy theories become a virtual wall between authorized topics and non-authorized debate topics. Whenever, wherever, whoever wants to say something out of authorized topics all conspiracy theories show up to inhibited any progress on the discussion. That is the way most social media works.

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