On Conspiracy and Narrative

I was recently removed from a "private" group on Facebook that was centered on political discussions. Most people in the group would happily refer to themselves as Conspiracy Theorists, mostly concerned with 9'11, but also very interested in things like Government encroachment on privacy, groups like Masons and Bilderbergs, terms like New World Order, Gatekeeper, and "Official Story." I am not a conspiracy theorist but am critical of power. I would say I'm in a political camp that keeps company with people like Noam Chomsky and the late Howard Zinn.

The people in the group were not crazy. Most of the people I conversed with most often would be what I would call something like "Ron Paul libertarians." Where we tended to disagree, as I look back on it, was how to construct narrative. I believe what people call "facts" are really pieces. Pieces that fit together into some kind of narrative, often unconsciously.

So why was I a problem? Well because I challenge their narrative, just like they challenged the official narrative. What became interesting is that I don't consider myself who falls in line. In fact, I wouldn't say I subscribe to the official story of, say, 9/11. However, I also do believe that Bush didn't orchestrate it. To many in the group, this put me neatly in the camp of "brainwashed."

The nature of the Conspiracy Theory is always to need a person behind everything - it is a political metaphysic - replacing God with "New World Order." Then pieces are assembled and everything ends up confirming the narrative. This assembly is the same reason both Marxists and Christians can walk through the world and have their world confirmed every day. It is the nature of a narratological fundamentalism. Once the story is in place, every piece that doesn't fit is dismissed. Every piece that confirms is highlighted, elevated.

The Conspiracy can be true. Let's be clear. Sometimes, there really is a conspiracy. However, when it becomes a religion it tends to follow the same lines of religious thought - seeing the world in terms of insiders/outsiders and so forth, believers and non-believers.

So what is left is the realization that a lot of our beliefs, mine included - I am not above falling prey to my narrative biases, are held because they make our world make sense, not because of truth, and certainly not because of TRUTH. "We" tend to want confirmation. The trick is to get rid of the "we". Nobody is a "we" and the will to see ideas as part of ideologies is problematic even while being unavoidable - hell, I've done it in THIS post. It's an incredibly hard predicament. How do we see people as being unique, from their position, not part of a larger position, while realizing that our ideas are connected to other ideas, other people and so forth. This isn't easy - I use a lot of group-labels - postmodern, modern, left, right - as shorthand ways of talking, but they always reduce complexity and certainly eliminate the really interesting differences between people - as was recently pointed out to me - Derrida is not Delueze and Merleau-Ponty is not Bergson, to just mention a few people I've often put together in a camp.

And just to plug the comment about the differences between Derrida and so forth - Daniel Coffeen on his wonderfully thoughtful blog "An Emphatic Umph."