While it feels like I’m writing this I’m not sure that I am the one in control of my mind and body. Gord’s Gold airs on Folk Music Notebook on Wednesday at noon, six, and midnight Eastern Standard Time. I archive the new episode bundled with three old ones and post it on Mixcloud on Thursday. Till now I have mixed the show whenever I can get to it on Thursday. Last night I mixed next week’s show, uploaded it, and scheduled it to be published on Thursday noon EST. I never do anything in advance. When I travel I start packing that morning if I’m ambitious. Sometimes I wait until the afternoon. The only explanation that I can come up with is that some alien, or supernatural being has taken control of me. My money is on alien as there is far more evidence for extraterrestrial life than supernatural beings. That doesn’t just bother me when I watch stupid shows like Supernatural but well-written shows like Buffy the Vampire Slayer. If supernatural beings existed in such quantities that they can be encountered weekly, everyone would know about them. They would not be supernatural, they’d be natural. Supernatural means it isn’t real if it’s real it’s natural. Do NOT tell me that it’s only a TV show. Do you think I don’t know that?
My mind went down a philosophical garden path as I made breakfast this morning. I could share with you the details of making my hameggandcheese on an English muffin, but I’ll resist and give you one highlight. I dropped one of the eggs on the floor while transferring it onto the muffin. I considered just picking it up and putting it on the sandwich, I saw an infectious disease doctor that said it’s fine, but I’m not that brave. It was directly in front of the cats’ food bowl which made it even less advertising. Now I wonder if I should have put it into the bowl. My dog used to love eggs. I should have tried it. If I did and the enjoyed it they’d start trying to trip me every time I made breakfast. Cats are evil and get away with murder by looking cute.
That was the not the philosophical garden path I referred to. The path I followed was the human discomfort with chaos, and our preference for unfounded explanations over no explanations. We are all faced with unpleasant events that are not consequences of our own actions, or that we don’t want to admit are the consequence of our own actions. The rational response is to say, “bad luck,” but we are not rational. It’s much more emotionally satisfying to blame someone. We refer to natural disasters as “acts of god;” Isn’t that just assigning blame to god? It wasn’t natural, it was part of “god’s plan.”
This attitude has been getting a lot of attention in the political arena of late. Trump’s supporters cannot accept that he lost so blame it on a vast conspiracy by the deep state. Q-Anon supporters think it’s part of the great Trump plan because all the other problems in the world are created by a gang of pedophiles that run everything. In the McCarthy era anything bad that happened was because of the Communists. There are plenty of people that feel that way on the left too. Jeffrey Epstein couldn’t have committed suicide, it had to be a vast conspiracy of the same people that Q-Anon thinks are pedophiles, that control everything so tightly they can keep the secret. Hey, it’s just like the monsters on Supernatural which stay secret even though people are exposed to them all the time. Whenever there are conspiracy theories you’ll find anti-Semitism because everyone knows that the Jews control everything. It’s often embodied in one rich Jew or rich Jewish family, Soros or the Rothschilds. The forged Protocols of Zion still circulate because people find it comforting to believe in them. We don’t live in a world of random misfortunes we can’t avoid; we live in a world with an enemy, and all we have to do is beat that enemy. We haven’t changed much since the days they were killing witches.
What particularly struck me today was the parallel with religion. I brought up acts of god before, but it goes deeper than that. People have been giving devils and evil gods the blame for evil and gods for good as far back as records go. We had a great harvest. That’s god’s bounty. The crops failed it’s either the Devil’s doing or God punishing us. I was once waiting in a courthouse and listened to two women waiting near me discussing their lives. They explicitly blamed every bad thing on the Devil and gave God credit for everything good. I recently saw a headline that I didn’t read saying how religion was the original conspiracy theory. I dismissed it as New Atheist propaganda. I’m an old atheist. Now I see the connection. I would still never put it that way. Many New Atheists see religion as the evil force behind all conspiracies. I don’t. That could be an entire other entry, one that will be sure to offend everyone.
Another place this line of thought is prevalent is sports. Kill the Umpire! It’s rigged! The Patriots cheat! The last is true but that’s not the reason they won so often. When the Knicks won the first draft lottery people screamed that the NBA fixed it for them. Funny how they have never gotten lucky once since then even after 20 years of misery. That remains the only time they drafted higher than they would with no lottery. I got it, because people got upset the Knicks won the first lottery the league has fixed every other draft to hurt them. Yeah that’s it! It’s so tempting to think that way.
Some people are so in love with conspiracy theories that even when the evidence is out in the open for all to see they assume there are secrets that they can’t see that are the true cause. One of the triggers for this was something that happened on Facebook recently. Smartmatic, a company that makes voting machines sued Fox Business $2.7 Billion because Dobbs accused the company’s machines of changing votes to hurt Trump. In response to the suit Fox Business fired Dobbs. That’s the entire purpose of filing suits like that, to discourage people from libeling you in the future by punishing those that libeled you in the past. That clear reason was not enough for one person. They were sure that there was a secret reason behind the firing.
So that’s what I was thinking while making my breakfast sandwich. Hey, I was planning on writing this as I cooked and then got distracted by dropping the egg. I bet George Soros financed antifa witches to put a curse on me. They knew where I was because of the chip that was in the flu vaccine. Big Pharm is in on it too. Don’t let them fool you. The truth is out there!
Wise Madness 