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| (c) 2014 by Stefan Kunert; Used under license from DepositPhotos.com |
When does a conspiracy theory become fact?
We have been conditioned to discount and deride accusations of conspiracy. “Conspiracy theorists” are openly derided and automatically depicted as tinfoil hat-wearing near-lunatics. For many years I, like so many others, tended to adopt this same benign disregard for anything labeled a conspiracy or conspiracy theory.
Recently, my thinking was challenged when I read an author
who asserted that throughout history conspiracies are the norm, not the
exception. I decided to test the validity of this assertion. To do that I
started with defining the word conspiracy. This forced me to first look at the
definition of the root word, conspire.
A conspiracy is formed when people conspire. Self-referential
definitions are meaningless, by themselves. So, to define what is a conspiracy,
we must first determine what it means to conspire.
Per Dictionary.com conspire, a verb, means:
1.
to agree together, especially secretly, to do
something wrong, evil, or illegal:
2.
to act or work together toward the same result
or goal:
In today’s world the terms “wrong”, and “evil” are
considered relativistic value judgements; meaning what is considered wrong by
one person may be considered right, by another. This is epitomized in the
saying, “one man’s terrorist is another’s freedom fighter.”
This means, we must discard those values-based elements from
the definition. They become part of the connotation versus the denotation of
the word. We all know that the connotation of a conspiracy is that it has bad
intentions. Unfortunately, that connotation is preventing us from accurately
evaluating the truth of the notion that conspiracies are widespread and normal.
For similar reasons we can disregard the connotation of “illegal.”
What is legal varies too widely from one part of the world to another to
provide any help with this exercise. For
instance, is countries where Sharia Law prevails homosexuality is illegal and
punishable with death, while in the US it is legally recognized as a form of
marriage. Because of this variability we must discard the illegal modifier as
another value-based part of the connotation rather than a legitimate part of
the definition of conspire or conspiracy.
This leaves us with the simple elements of agreeing together,
acting or working together, toward the same goal or result. While “especially
secretly” is thrown in, that too is more of a connotation than the actual definition.
It isn’t reasonable to assert that a publicly viewable conspiracy is less of a
conspiracy than a private one. Public or private, they both meet the same
criteria of being two or more people working cooperatively toward a common
goal.
Per Dictionary.com a conspiracy, a verb and a noun is defined
as follows:
1.
the act of conspiring.
2.
an unlawful, harmful, or evil plan formulated in
secret by two or more persons; plot.
3.
a combination of persons for such an unlawful,
harmful, or evil purpose:
4.
He joined the conspiracy to overthrow the
government.
5.
Law. an agreement by two or more persons to
commit a crime, fraud, or other wrongful act.
6.
any concurrence in action; combination in
bringing about a given result.
Again, to get at the definition we must strip away the
values-based connotations which have been used to modify the definition. When we
set aside “unlawful”, “evil”, and “harmful” that also allows us to disregard
the adjectives (or adverbs) of “crime, fraud, or other wrongful act.”
All this leads me to the unambiguous definition of conspire
(the verb) to be:
·
Two or more people agreeing to do something.
And conspiracy (the noun) becomes:
·
Two or more people cooperating to achieve a
common goal
Stripping out relativistic values from the definition, we
are left with a definition that can apply as accurately to the Boy Scouts, or
the US Senate, as to Al Qaeda.
Well, perhaps the US Senate doesn’t qualify as a whole
because they seldom appear to be working toward the same result or goal.
However, the political parties of those Senators certainly qualify as conspiracies.
The members of their political parties conspire with each other to do what it
takes to elect their chosen minions to public offices and political
appointments where those conspirators can work to further the agenda of the
political party (the conspiracy).
Interestingly, using this working definition, any business
that is more than a sole proprietorship is correctly defined as a conspiracy.
Add in the fact that the notes from board meetings of most companies are
routinely classified as corporate secrets, we can make a blanket inference that
secrecy is the same as “evil, illegal, criminal, fraudulent, etc.
The same could be said of almost any meeting of top
government officials (for all countries).
My point?
The next time someone seeks to denigrate a story as a “conspiracy
theory” instead of just going along with the potential smear-job consider the
fact that the accuser is almost certainly part of a different conspiracy that
has its own objective(s) and the conspiracy theorist is gumming things up for
the author’s pet conspiracy.
© 2022 Thomas K Sheppard, All rights reserved.
Follow Tom on Twitter: @ThomasKSheppard
Tom Sheppard is a business consultant and coach to small business owners and individuals. He is a recognized author with dozens of titles in business and fiction to his credit. One of his endeavors is to help those who want to see their own book in print. He does this through his trademarked Book Whispering Process (TM).
The author is not an official spokesperson for any organization or person mentioned herein.
(c) Copyright 2020 A+ Results LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Your comments are welcome... Please observe some ground rules. No profanity, vulgarity, or personal attacks. Profanity, vulgarity and personal attacks not only betray a lack of vocabulary and imagination, they also are the hallmarks of bigotry, and bigotry is the hallmark of someone who is fundamentally insecure in their views. Facts are always welcome.
If you believe Government is NOT the answer to all our problems, you will want to read
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Godvernment: Government as God
