I Don't Know

 It feels like my existence consists of balancing alone on a narrow ridge.  On one side of me is a valley populated by people who uncritically accept mainstream views and conventional wisdom.  Even to ask certain questions is enough to get you branded as a conspiracy theorist.  On the opposite side are the actual conspiracy theorists who claim to be skeptical but are actually much more open to believing narratives that are wildly implausible than those are are simple and logical.  Pharmaceutical companies aren't just big heartless corporations, they (along with the WHO, Bill Gates and the "global elite) are part of a global conspiracy to depopulate the planet.  I don't want to join either camp.  It's tempting to join the mainstream camp and just push aside all of the nagging doubts.  And I know from past experience, the conspiracy camp can be intoxicating and addictive; believing that you're on the cusp of discovering the truth behind some great secret.  I don't dare fall asleep for fear I will fall to one side or the other and not be able to get back to where I am.

The ridge is obviously a metaphor but the divide is very real.  I know people in both camps.  I think both have something to contribute.  However, the two sides have stopped talking to each other and now just lob mortars over the ridge.  The mainstream camp people think they can just marginalize and ignore the conspiracy side.  For their part, the conspiracy people think that they have a monopoly on hidden truths and eventually everyone else will join them. I see both sides and I get frustrated with both.

They have more in common than they think.  They both seem to have a need to know.  For the mainstream camp, this means accepting what they are told by authority figures and not asking too many questions.  They're begging to be lied to and used.  For the conspiracy camp, it means rejecting anything "mainstream" and listening to various narratives without real regard for source or logic.  They are also begging to be lied to and used, but by different people.

The problem is that governments do lie to us - a lot.  And we don't always find out until much later and in some cases probably never. Science does get things wrong - a lot.  What's accepted today is overturned tomorrow, usually without any public reckoning of the harm done or even what went wrong.

For me, the answer to the impasse lies in three little words - "I don't know".

Was the JFK assassination the result of a larger plot?  I don't know.  Why did the twin towers collapse on 9/11? I don't know.  Was COVID made in a lab?  I don't know.  Is there some conspiracy amongst billionaires to de-populate the planet?  I don't know.

Those three words aren't much of a conversation starter but at least they don't end it.  People with mainstream views could be more open to skepticism and be more flexible in their view of the world.  The old left-right paradigm of politics is collapsing and in its place is emerging a divide between people who want incremental change and those who are looking for radical solutions.  For their part, people who distrust everything and want a revolution should be careful what they wish for.  However bad you might think things are, they can get worse.  

I have one last comment to make on the divide.  The resulting distrust and polarization is making progress difficult and paralyzing governments across the industrialized west.  If we think of who stands to benefit from that polarization, we could come up with a list.  Authoritarian regimes (principally China and Russia), the billionaire class, organized crime. Is that a conspiracy theory?  Yes.  Does it have any truth?

I don't know.