Official and unoffical narratives--whose conspiracies are whackier?

[eridani]

Unofficial narratives are usually perceived as whackier. There is a reason why the counternarratives may actually be whackier than the official ones--this is a normal response to the experience of not having access to enough information and being constantly lied to by people who do.

The radical therapist Claude Steiner once said that paranoia is actually a heightened state of awareness, in which the paranoid put together narratives that make sense of the only information they have available. He gave an example of a woman he treated who believed that her husband was engaged in several elaborate plots on her life. What Steiner did was to interview the husband, who was disturbed by his wife's narrative. The husband was in fact thinking of having her permanently committed to the funny farm, but he always responded to his wife's questions about what was wrong between them by saying "Nothing, honey."

That was the crux of the problem. The wife was in a heightened state of awareness and knew only that "Nothing, honey" was a steaming pile of bullshit. Not having access to real information about what was going on in her husband's head, she invented it. Steiner's solution to the problem--quit lying. In this case, the husband did not exactly lead the examined life, and was unaware of the harm that social "white lies" can sometimes cause. Being genuinely concerned about his wife, he agreed to try to be more introspective and committed to being honest about his feelings. The wife agreed to acknowledge this effort, and to be more persistent about asking for information instead of automatically assuming the worst.

The relationship of husband to wife mirrors exactly the relationship between our overlords and the rest of us. Of course the neocons have no such commitment to making it all better for the rest of us--see the movie Gaslight for a good fictional take on their game.

The bottom line here is that people need to make sense of their information environments--it is a fundamental requirement for sanity. And if those people with all of the real power in society constantly lie to the public and hide information, many are going to be tempted to fill in the blanks with material from their own imaginations. It's similar to sensory deprivation. Swim around in one of those tanks long enough to deprive your brain of sensory input and it will quickly start inventing input.

[rman]

1. whack motive according to the official narrative:

"because they hate us for our freedoms"

If you'd have to believe the RW, then the motive for anything that anyone ever does that the RW doesn't like, is hate.

[Celebration]

2. yes and

"we're fighting them there so we don't have to fight them here."

Yes, quit lying and quit hiding things and maybe I wouldn't be so paranoid about the administration and government.

[HamdenRice]

3. Thanks -- very perceptive -- kicked nt