Defining Conspiracy Theory: From Paranoia to Huponoia

          

"Conspiracy Theory" or "Conspiracy Theorist" are terms now enshrined in our cultural temple as easy, finalized plaques of pejorative judgment on anything or anyone that questions one's own paradigm, or the "consensus" paradigms. In plain English, the connotation of the various "conspiracy" terms is, I think, simply "paranoia," which is a conglomeration of the Greek root words "para"(beside) and "noos" (mind). In the Greek world, "noos" has a much deeper connotation in terms of connection to reality, to the cosmos (order of things), and so to be "para" or "beside" the "noos" is a much more loaded term: together these words mean a divorce from order, from reality. I think we think of this word, "paranoid," in similar though weaker terms, and besides, the Greeks also had the richness, the generosity, the hope to maintain some awe of certain kinds of "beside reality," or madness: there could be a Bacchic kind, for example, a frenzy that was yet mystical, in touch with some deeper force beyond human rational categories. Today, I think we mean more that someone is overly afraid of things, or makes conclusions not based in the reality of a particular situation; some people, though, we think we can deem as fundamentally and comprehensively paranoid, and yet we don't have the distinction in language, so the difference comes across either through inflection or expression, or we use different terms and syntax like "He is a Conspiracy Theorist" to make the distinction categorically clear (the term is loaded and the syntax redefines the entire person: think: "She is a dog"). 

The Conspiracy Theorist, for most people at present, is one who more-or-less has a kind of complete paranoia about effects and consequences happening in the world, more particularly political, economic, or spiritual issues. Thus to use it nowadays, such as "Oh, he's just a Conspiracy Theorist," is to relegate a person to a functional madhouse; unfortunately, no one in the modern world seeks advice from a madhouse resident, ergo that person is effectively cancelled from the community or discussion; he or she simply cannot be taken seriously or even mystically, and all their offerings are suspect, whatever the subject. They are at the forefront of the "cancel culture," made all too easy by the lack of personal, face-to-face contact that is becoming ubiquitous.

However, let's back up a little, maybe to a few years before the Mel Gibson movie "Conspiracy Theory" came out and played with and perhaps inadvertently cemented the present defamation. Let's go back before the term seems to have been weaponized as a way to defame anyone questioning tightly-held narrations: Before the first weaponization of the term and the later comedy, a theorist about possible conspiracies was one who theorized or made hypotheses and perhaps even theses about something going on behind the scenes, much like a detective; because of the complex nature of the issues (groups in power and groups oppressed by it alike tend toward secrecy though of course for different reasons, I would argue), the hypothesis or theory required some inference, or, in circular terms, theorizing--much the way a scientist should theorize about the complex natural world, using the tools of induction and deduction with the humility to remain open to falsification or the better model to explain the appearances. Proper theorizing requires the prudence to know when evidence is complete and absolute and when the situation is simply at some point beyond our power to have absolute knowledge (the latter most of the time, in all areas of human knowledge, I think it safe to say, because, as Aristotle points out, particular situations are subject to so much variation, we can actually "know" these situations less, than, say, universal rational principles like the Law of Non-Contradiction).

Based on this earlier usage of the term "conspiracy theorist," one can define the early American "Sons of Liberty" as conspiracy theorists. They got a lot wrong because of the Atlantic Ocean between them and the British Parliament and the wide ocean of intent and miscommunication that created a lack of transparency between the British overlords and the colonists, but they used what data they had, and made tremendous inferences from what could have been (or weren't?) malicious actions, like the doing away with the tea tax which precipitated The Boston Tea Party. The jury is still somewhat out about the intent of the British Parliament, but the evidence we have seems to indicate that it was, at least partly, a  misunderstanding, a conspiracy theory not quite on the mark. However, though, do we then say that the Sons of Liberty were fundamentally madmen who should have been locked up instead of having their portraits painted and beer drunk by ensuing grateful generations of Americans? Were they just paranoiacs? Were their thoughts totally unjustified? Or correct in some deeper sense (the intent to use the colonies in the new, and cruel, dehumanizing paradigm of mercantilism) and yet off the mark slightly due to their status as the relatively powerless? 

The jury is still out, I think, on the Sons of Liberty...at least, the jury that resides in my mind is...but it is a serious conversation, and one would never think to simply consign them to the madhouse of history along with inmates like Joe Stalin simply by using a weaponized term against them, the ad hominum stick of desperadoes and cowards. That, seems to me, is paranoia. 

The other option is to think of someone theorizing about hidden political, economic, or spiritual motives, or even not-so-hidden ones, as possibly a "huponoiac"--now, I really did make up that term, though there is a real word in there, another Greek one: "huponoia," from "hupo" (under) and "noeo" (to think, to perceive). I am defining this as someone akin to the myth-makers (Hesiod, Homer, Virgil, Dante, Milton, MacDonald, Tolkien, and others) who tried to uncover, to reveal poetically the deeper truths of reality, of existence, of the cosmos. Like terms such as "science" and "theorist," "myth" is another word we've murdered, cut into little pieces, put through the grinder, and re-packaged as something to sell as "food" at the local store. In truth, a myth is a poetic image that, again, reveals things too sublime, too deep to express in human rational categories alone. The myth-maker is not crazy by definition; "myth" is not synonymous with "false," although one could talk, as Lewis and Tolkien and Barfield did one fateful night, about the "false myth" and the "true myth."

I'm not saying a 'theorizer' about what is 'underneath' the events and consequences in our present world is a myth-maker--I was making a kind of analogy, as the myth-maker creates within the Poetic World, the world that is meant to reveal truth, the Logos, through story, through image, through rhythm, a road to Truth through Beauty, or a portrayal in some way of Goodness. The theorist about patterns of power is in a different category. This "huponoiac" could be some one who tends to think "under" or to perceive the underlying patterns, intents, and motives resulting in the effects and consequences we live with in our moral, political, economic, and spiritual lives. Not an easy task, but one can see a quite necessary one. The huponoiac could, probably does, get a lot wrong; but when one has resisted the temptation to defame in knee-jerk response to discomfort, like one kicks when someone sneaks up and pulls a scab off one's knee (yes, we've all had that happen to us), then it is certainly possible to judge whether one's interlocutor is a paranoiac or a hupanoiac, a Conspiracy Theorist or a theorist about possible power-structure agendas.

How? First, be aware of your own cultural and family and tribal attachments: they are largely subconscious and shot through with emotion: affection, fear, love, hatred, anger. Emotions and attachments are not bad; however, as CS Lewis says, anything not kept in the proper hierarchy will become demonic, and subconscious attachments are often feasts where demons eat beyond their fill and get you to vomit them all over others. Be aware that you have them, and that they should be firmly governed by reason and the doctrines and principles of the Faith (that revelation of true Logos), by true sanity. Second, cultivate an attitude of listening and the responsibility to do your own homework before anything close to weaponized-word defamation is even on the horizon; know the difference between claims about absolute truth, theory, and hypothesis.Third, if at all possible, get a real liberal education, which includes hefty, foundational portions of logic and philosophy. Seriously. You need to know how to think, or anyone and everyone rhetorically compelling, or even emotionally compelling yet idiotic, will tell you what to think: and if he or she happens to be the fad, or in your tribe, or can get you some power, or toilet paper, as the case may be, then, well, then, it becomes really difficult. We all need authority and belonging, but we are also asked fundamentally to use our distinguishing characteristic in the natural realm (rationality) and our distinguishing characteristic in the spiritual realm (free will). 

Huponoiacs, as I'm defining the word, are often the prophetic type in the spiritual realm, or philosopher types in other areas; these are people who listen for, look for, are gifted in terms of, the "hupo" or that which is underneath normal, more shallow categories of thinking and action. Sometimes they are just regular people who, through virtue and common sense and experience, and the use of their God-given sight, see. I think all these types are more rare, or perhaps more and more 'cancelled' in the fearful, emotional, selfish, irrational, relativist paradigm we inhabit. Modern science, now far from its proper place in the hierarchy of knowledge is now unquestioned dogma, and real dogma is eschewed for the Self. The upside-downness of Christ's kingdom, the scandal of the True, Good, and Beautiful, is becoming more intolerable to those who cannot think, or see, or hear, beyond the neon signs and cartoonish conclusions of the "right-side-up" elite. What should be obvious, what is simply scripted for us in open documents like Reset 2021 is considered prima facie false because it calls our nannies, our nursemaids, those who squirt their reality into our mouths, into question.

If someone questions the narrative of our global governments and NGOs and agencies and corporations and technocrats, look at the evidence. Not an easy task, if you can't think or you don't have access, or there's just too damn much. However, if you've got documentation and a clear logical pattern of centralization and manipulation; if you've got motive and means, then a conclusion, however uncomfortable or unbelievable in terms of our emotions and paradigms, might just be a good theory and not madness, no matter what the parrots on our screens say. If you watch something like Plandemic 2, do your homework on the evidence they present: don't just knee-jerk it because Bill Gates looks too nice in his hot chocolate sweaters, or Anthony Fauci looks so--small. How could someone that size pack a nefarious punch? Think for yourself, based on solid rational and spiritual principles. It could be, it just could be, that our governments don't have our best interests at heart, that they are fundamentally corrupt; if history teaches us anything, it is that this is the tendency of human institutions, and that no nation or tribe is exempt, except, perhaps, those who know they have that tendency and who don't kill their genuine prophets and philosophers, their huponoiacs, their "I beg to differ and here's why."

Back to paranoia: does everyone deserve a hearing equally? No. There are mad people about, people whose logic or principles are simply not in accord with reality. Historically, these are usually people or groups who have a lot to lose or are deeply fearful and thus desire manipulation, but there are some who've been driven a little mad by this valley of tears and deserve our pity and understanding, and a la Shakespeare, perhaps at times speak the truth no one else dares to say. The former lot deserve jail or worse, especially if, like many corporations and powerful individuals, they have killed or oppressed many people. They probably deserve the Eighth Circle of the Inferno. 

Do your homework and if you're confused, find good people who are willing to dialogue with respect and honesty. Look for those who've had a genuine liberal arts education and/or live good, humble lives; look for those, liberally educated or not, who show a clear pattern of laying down their lives (and not just self-aggrandizing disguised: Do they give up their place on dais? Do they allow others to shine? Do they genuinely allow dissent? Do they listen? Do they love you with a love that is genuinely about your good and not about looking good or about flattery? Do they need to portray themselves as experts and make sure you know it?). Look at the wide range of their thought and writing and action, and make a suitable theory about whether or not they are mad (See? You're now a huponoiac). Look at mission statements in writing (like BLM or the Communist Party) or look for, ponder in prayer, mission statements that are embedded: remember that everyone and everything has a mission statement, or principles by which and for which they act. As Aristotle says, no one acts except towards some good, true or perceived, some love. That 'good' or end is usually expressed in a kind of mission statement or statements, or in a pattern of action, and it is the end or purpose for which that person or group or thing acts. There are some obvious ones, like "corporations exist to make money." Period. Don't believe they exist fundamentally to make you more virtuous or safe, even if they have some good programs, etc.. Remember that modern governments exist for many different reasons, and that it isn't always found in some Declaration or Manifesto. Remember that Communists fundamentally exist to build a materialistic paradise, a replacement for heaven, for God, that they are "humanists" denying the proper end for humans. Remember that many people think they exist to aggrandize themselves or their political cause. Remember psychopaths are real, and they tend to run things because they have no scruples. Remember that Machiavelli was probably mad from being tortured, but that he described powerfully the way people act when their final end, their basic principle, is maintaining political order and power, no matter the cost, divorced from metaphysics and proper theology. Look to St. Thomas More if you want a picture of a good man acting on the best principles in the political realm.

If you can figure out how to see basic principles for action, you are on your way to true discernment of the world around you, and you are on your way to being a huponoiac. You may, however, have to deal with being called a Conspiracy Theorist if you happen to question secular or corporate or science dogmas (one is not allowed, for example, to remind people that the theory of Darwinian biological or social evolution is a theory, a model). Just yell "You mean huponoiac" and I'm hoping on a wing and a prayer (?!) that people who think a government that legalized the murder of unborn children is still benevolent somehow, and people who think that just because they have money are magically allowed become a medical authority for millions of people at once, and people who think that Marxist organizations care about the Good, will start listening to you.

Valley Girl voice offstage: "Nawwt."

  

Out of the Depths

 

We were snorkeling between the shore and the little rock island, my mom and I, that little island that lay only a few hundred yards from the shallows where the waves broke; to me, it looked--well, it was--much farther. I was about six--actually, I distinctly remember being six, because it was a topic of discussion about whether or not a six-year-old could make the swim with snorkel and fins, and I had pleaded and pushed: my sister was already on her way out. Every few seconds, I had been tracking her snorkel poking out of the water, straight and steady. It had looked simple and besides--I ran miles every day--I ran everywhere--it was a point of pride for me. A runner, a horse, a galloping thing, a bird flying low to the ground, I could walk all the way up to Panorma, miles above Thessaloniki, by myself (though my mom didn't know that). Nevertheless, the logic was easy: I could therefore swim a few hundred yards to that island, that other world, that place forever separated from land, a place that basked above the swirling sea. I wanted to go out there, and I wanted to even more because I'd heard my sister saying that she hoped to catch a glimpse of the bubbles from the divers below, to see them as they grew and expanded with the lessening water pressure, as if, as they rushed upwards from the confinement of the tank and the lungs deep underneath, they felt more and more free to be themselves, to be air, the closer they got to the surface where they would once again, be part of that greater air, their home. Though I could not articulate that clearly to my mother as I had tried to persuade her to let me go, that is what I wanted to be, a bubble...

I remember her sighing and getting up from her towel, brushing sand from her legs--in this present moment, I can see my mother young again, not so small and not so, so thin; her legs then were miracles of shape, smooth and artfully proportioned ("Except my knees," she'd say); her hair was long and dark, and her face was beautiful like a doll's. I know her again in this moment as a young woman, much younger than I am now, full of life and strength...and in that moment, she was the slightly annoyed but deeply patient elementary school teacher who saw the concentrated-in-a-cup dreams of a six-year-old child.

"Ok. I'll go with you. Just a sec..."

I hopped around, adjusting my snorkel and checking on my sister's progress every few seconds. She was so far out already! We'd never catch her. Finally, the shapely legs were moving and there was a hand for me to grab. We got in and started swimming; now I was going fast, confidently, and I began to relish the view around me, as the bottom, the boring sand bottom, faded and the sea took over, that great and clear Adriatic, great womb of beauty and myth, great storyteller, great wild one. Here I was in her, swimming, my mother beside me, just a little ahead; she would turn, her mask hiding any expression, and check on me every few seconds. I could swim to that island ten times and back.

I looked for bubbles, but the concert of blue, pale fading into dark, and finally black below us where the divers were, my father and his friends, was the only reality--and I wondered about my father. It looked so dark, like death beyond the upper registers of blue; color was somehow life, or perhaps it was light. There was no light down there, and as yet, no bubbles dancing upwards. I began to look for the bubbles as signs of life from the depths, but still I saw none, and the water pressing on me, the small caressing weight of it at the surface, became somehow tinged with malice. 

Then I saw them. At first, floating innocuously in their relaxed way, they looked like bubbles through the blue water-lens that was thick and slightly distorting like thick colored glass. My thoughts of the depths disappeared in a rush of expectation. As we got closer, they resolved into what they where: huge jellyfish, their heads pulsating like bubbles on the rise, but they were not rising; they kept themselves at the same level, their heads drawing entrails behind, and I knew what those meant: pain. They weren't bubbles, they were predators, and they'd got me a few times before; the searing pain reared up in my memory as I began to slow my pace. At first it was only one or two floating in front of my mask; then, as I turned sideways, right and left, I realized that it was a school. They were dotted in maddeningly regularity all around us at about ten feet apart; we were now threading through them.

My heart began pounding, and I needed air, but I was afraid to take my eyes off them; though I knew they didn't behave this way, every skin cell fully expected a concerted rush to sting the life out of me. I wavered there, finding it hard to breathe, feeling the thuds inside my chest. I finally just needed to be in the air, so I broke surface and ripped the mask and snorkel off my face. Head just above water, keeping my fins going below to keep me just at surface, I treaded water. My mom popped up and pulled off her mask. 

"I can't make it, Mom," I panted. She stared at me for a few seconds, saying nothing, just staring at me. I know now, years later, that what she translated was "I'm too tired to swim farther; I'm too weak"; what I meant was "I'm too scared of those jellyfish." Lost in our own translations, we stared at each other; I could see the island a hundred feet off, much bigger and closer; it looked enormous from the perspective of the irregular, rolling surface of the water. She didn't grab my arm or say anything, until, very quietly, she said: "You can make it. It is just a little farther, see? Follow me. Follow me." 

Her calm demeanor translated itself to me; something in her eyes and voice came through, across the rolling water, above the water bursting with mindless energy, above the wind wantonly slapping waves together, dancing facade to the horrors beneath. Strength came across to me, like an arrow, tinged with a certain firmness, steel-like. She put her mask and snorkel in place, and nodded to me. I followed suit, imitating, and I decided I would just watch her legs and fins and just go right behind her, like a little duck across the road. Pride was all gone, and I just wanted to get to that island. She threaded her way through the jellyfish, and feeling safe behind her, I began to look around again and realized that they were, after all, ten feet apart and they were kind of interesting up close. They even looked pretty dumb. 

I remember to this day the feel of the first island rock I grabbed, that rough yet slimy feel, that strange juxtaposition between the solid and the fluid; I climbed up expertly and only then did I notice that my mom, sitting beside me on the rocks, was breathing hard in relieved fear. "Oh, that was scary, " she breathed, as my sister came up with the predictable, "What happened?" 

"I'm sorry, Mommy, I just got scared. I am sorry I scared you."

"That's ok. Look, here's Dad; you can go back in the boat."

Later, many years later, when I had my own little children, my mom and I remembered this together; I don't remember the circumstances of the sharing, but I do remember what she said: "I was so scared; here I was with this six-year-old in the middle of the ocean and I couldn't carry you; I wasn't strong enough. I knew I couldn't save you. So I just started praying; I knew then to tell you that you could make it; I suddenly got the strength of will to hold it together for us both."

I then told her it was really about jellyfish, and we laughed. I told her it was really about jellyfish, and we looked at each other again, across the years, across life, and we could see one another again, both young again, without masks, in the air, close to shore, out of the depths.

He is Given

 

A whisper runs, dances gently, twirls in undulating arabesques, lifting my hair ever so slightly; it is the early, early morning, or late, late night---I am not sure which. As the scene before me gently reveals itself in the remaining starlight and the coming dawn, heralded by sleepy murmurings of birds, I discern in the dark two male voices, also murmuring, two grey forms huddled over a growing pile of branches set upon a cairn of rocks. I can only hear the voices as part of the landscape, much like the gentle noise of wind and bird; I cannot understand even where the words begin and end; the speech is fluid, undulating, arabesque, like rhythm unadulterated by instrument. The human forms are busy, in their fluid way: the more solid, bent shape stays at the center like a navel of the world, this little world of rock and dust and brave vegetation arranged in a circle around the cairn, the sage-like tree-scrubs bending toward the center, toward the solid man who is also bowed. The more lithe man-shape is moving deftly through the trees, almost like a horse in rope-training moves in response to the trainer at the center; he brings back choice pieces of branch and breaks off smaller branches from the larger pieces and places the wood, in response to the murmuring from the other, on the cairn, always on the cairn, piece by piece, murmur by murmur. 

The man at the center is revealed as he looks up from the cairn and toward the Eastern edge of the visible world, and reflected in his face, I see the light has been steadily, gently, inexorably, growing almost unnoticed. The wind stops and there is absolute silence; at this, the man's expression fractures ever so slightly, and I see that he has deep crevasses around his eyes; I cannot see his cheeks or mouth because of the head cloth and his luxuriant, flowing, white beard. Only his eyes and the wreckage of life around them, a wreckage that grows more apparent, deeper, as the seconds pass and the light grows and the silence weighs in on us. Even the young form stops and turns toward the East, toward the silence. My eyes invariably return to the eyes of the old man by the cairn, and I see that they are full of fire, burning still, a fire of desire. He stays like this for a long, long time, as the light grows, and we other two, I and the boy, we wait upon his eyes, upon that desire and the silence it draws in. My heart and mind argue as I think I see, in the relationship between his eyes and the Silence, Another. The reality becomes overpowering and I know there were never only two of them here; there were three. I see this Other in the old man's eyes, I feel this Other in the whisper, the growing pressure of the Silence, but this One impoverishes my ability to categorize, or perhaps I understand the poverty for the first time. I dare not move, but I feel I must kneel, so I do so as slowly as possible; I feel the tired, silky dust and the little rocks mixed in as they dig into my skin. The old man and the young one do not know I am there watching with a heart pressed in from all sides and a mind stretched to the breaking point. I leave my fruitlessly searching reason and return to contemplation of what is passing before me. 

The fire in the old man's eyes begins to fade in the face of the growing glow on the eastern horizon; as if this is a signal, he suddenly turns and attends to the pile of sticks; I hear a scraping and at this, the boy breaks also from his vigil in the trees and rushes to the center. I hear a murmuring, but the sounds have, almost imperceptibly, lost the elegant, arabesque-rhythm; they sound broken, like a record that has been warped and tries yet to sing. Singing is over, it seems; there are things which must be said, things that break the instrument with which they must be sung. 

As the small fire holds its own on one side of the cairn, so near--ever so near--to the protrusions of the larger pile with its flat bed of dry weeds and grass on top--the boy finally, as the sounds of speech die, holds out his hands to be bound. The Silence presses in again on us all, birds and silent predators slinking, ground animals in their tunnels, the tiniest insect arrested in mindless flight; I feel myself most akin to those insects, arrested, convicted, and I see myself as I really am, almost--not quite--but almost by nature convicted, almost made bound over, already condemned, condemned in the blood, from the very beginning, from beyond my beginnings; I see it as certainly as any sum demonstrated, an inexorable rock of reality. I am, in a sense, helpless, helpless as the boy whose hands are now bound, the boy who has now gone silent except for the groaning, cackling, whining branches protesting as he climbs with the old man's help; I can see now they are father and son because the old man's hands are shaking as he helps his son, a shaking that seems backwards, somehow: anti-shaking, hands not used to shaking, a shaking that should not be, but is, nonetheless. 

A massive, last groaning and creaking as the boy lays down; my head also down as the knife reveals itself in all its man-carved efficiency. 

In all that Silence, a whispering wind, undulating, arabesque: the Lord is in the Silence and the Whisper and the Light rushing suddenly across the dark blue-grey mountains, breaking suddenly free of the edges of the eastern horizon, rushing like a youth of a thousand summers, an unconquerable joy and life, dancing and leaping toward the cairn and the bound boy and the broken old man with the knife; the Light rolls itself in the surprised chattering of the birds in the trees, making each leathery, thirsty beak and leaf sparkle with morning dew, the salvation of the desert; He, Light, rolls and rounds in one spot among the trees, in perfect line with the Sun at the eastern end of the world, and a bleating is heard from the blinding, shimmering, exploding spot; Jason's golden fleece suddenly has meaning, its true meaning for me, a living fleece, golden with the Light, almost, it seems, one with that Light. 

The sticks groan again as the boy descends and the ram is taken, with unnecessary firmness by the boy, because it does not fight as he expects. It lays in his arms as a lamb would in the shepherd's arms; the boy looks at his father and something I share in but do not fully understand fills me: wonder, relief, yet shame and grief, grief and wonder mixed in the face of a burning, light-filled love that knows no death, no bounds, yet will resolve itself into creature, into death, for the boy, for the man, for me. 

The ram makes no sound except that which it cannot help, the gurgling of the throat as the blood pours forth in response to the stone blade, as the heart desperately pumps harder to keep life alive. Eons, eras, pass before the gurgling stops and I can stop my uncontrolled reaction of swallowing in mixed horror, disgust, shame. Silence returns mercifully and presses in, making it hard to breathe. My head is still down; I have only looked with my ears: the crackling of fire makes my eyes snap toward the drama in the center, an ancient instinct of self-preservation within me at the sound of fire, at the sound of nature being destroyed, and I pull my heart away from my instincts so that I can understand the scene and not simply flee with my strung-out nerves. 

As the fire caresses the carcass, dead now, no longer golden except where the flames eagerly lick hair and flesh, the sun looks across, growing in strength, and the birds begin singing, as if on cue from the maestro of the east; they cry out, not in the normal cacophony, but in one, minor note; as this note progresses, another note, from the sky, wafts down from a flock of the lords of the sky approaching, what I see as eagles or hawks, perhaps even vulture-types drawn to the carcass yet kept by the fire in the sky---this other note, firmly in the major key, takes over the minor birds and draws their note into a lovely harmony that turns sorrow away. 

He has been given. He will always be given.