what you believe is out there

Part of me re­al­ly wants to like con­spir­a­cy the­o­rists. Really.

What they do is ex­plain the world around them with the lim­it­ed tools avail­able, some­thing hu­mans have done since time immemorial.

And there is some­thing en­chant­i­ng about a world
            where large, un­know­able an­i­mals lurk just out of sight,
            aliens have re­pro­grammed grandma,
            and his­to­ry is rid­dled with clues that open un­seen doors
            that ex­plain which se­cret me­dieval cult runs Congress.
 

So where does all this come from?

A place of entitlement.

It doesn’t mat­ter that tragedies are so well-doc­u­ment­ed these days one can fig­ure out what brand of socks a shoot­er was wear­ing, or that we have just enough med­ical knowl­edge that says no, you can­not catch any­thing from a chemtrail.

It’s be­come com­mon­place that the only truth one needs to be­lieve in is the one you make with your own hands, per­haps in the garage af­ter a cou­ple of beers.

Fact-check­ing has gone awry, where the in­ves­tiga­tive spir­it has been per­vert­ed be­hind fan­ta­sy, gos­sip and click­bait. Even though knowl­edge (and the sim­u­lacra there­of) is read­i­ly avail­able at our fin­ger­tips, the fools are still able to spawn big­ger fools.
 

You be­lieve that? Hey, so do I!

Un­like an­cient hu­mans at­tempt­ing to ex­plain why the ball of fire rolled across the sky every day, con­tem­po­rary John­ny Ap­ple­seeds have a pletho­ra of tan­gi­ble in­for­ma­tion they can sim­ply ig­nore, re­ject at the wave of a hand. Why? Be­cause they don’t like it.

And if you – per­son­al­ly – don’t like some­thing, it’s ob­vi­ous­ly WRONG.

We live in a rich age, where one is re­al­ly spoiled for choice. You can choose to trust in the myr­i­ad fact-based con­clu­sions of peo­ple paid to be smarter than you, or you can camp on an in­ter­net fo­rum foam­ing about how the Holo­caust nev­er happened. 

And, as an adult, one can eas­i­ly make these choic­es. How­ev­er il­log­i­cal, how­ev­er hair­brained, one can find com­pan­ions – start­ing with some key­words thrown into Google. What you be­lieve is out there.

Part of me re­al­ly wants to like con­spir­a­cy the­o­rists. But nev­er for very long.
 
 

—rachel gard­ner

Flom­mist Rachel Gard­ner cur­rent­ly writes weird fic­tion with a hor­ror bent. Find her at Greet­ings from the Waste­land, which up­dates week­ly. Copy­right © 2016 Rachel Gard­ner. Im­age by flom­mist Dan­ny Joe Gib­son, © 2016.

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