conspiracies of emotional laziness in feeling empowerless

The thing about words like ideology or even narrative now, is the sense that some forces control us through them.

For some among us, when a light goes off in someone’s head, when a truth/story is revealed/explained, they reject the world. But still they seek to world this feeling. So they find companions who enjoy meeting and discussing these very things, and being-in-the-know together. 

And of these world-rejecting groups there are those among them who “know the truth” so well, and see reality as hidden from the sheeple they live amongst. In their rejection of the world, they are still worlding, and this conflict of rejection while still doing it, comes to be enjoyed in and off itself, and thus in this shared but removed conversation, become separatists, at least emotionally. They see confirmation when people react against them, and reject their separate specialness of knowing the truth which protects them just as it isolates them for there is satisfaction in this worldly depression.

Knowing the truth others do not now, gives a pleasure in identity, no matter how paranoid it is. Knowing the truth also delivers a frisson between the free-will that enjoys sharing knowledge, but with the specialness that comes with lacking all control that a conspiracy theory enjoins to their soul, but still fighting the good fight.

The lack of control means they have no responsibility for anything that happens. Like children or ghosts they are not culpable. Even as they take the credit for knowing the truth, they will take no blame for being actively bad at world-building, if not actively destructive. The entitlement is covert. Conspiracists are are type of invert narcissism, where the world not the self is lived as an emotinal solipsism.

Generally when we think of conspiracies as described by theorists, they are shadowy cabals of powerful people meeting and deciding things according to agendas that get increasingly weird as people gain ever more knowledge about the conspiracies, in direct proportion to their reduced responsibility. I.E. they substitute knowing stuff for having agency, at least in the sense of being a responsible adult. They know how to blame and it gives them pleasure to have no agency, that there is nothing they can do, except KILL the EVILS.

Now there are powerful people who decided things and do so openly, but these are all regarded as shams and scams by the knowers of who-is-really-to-blame.

Actual conspirators (as opposed those who theorise and know stories) do exist. The crazy thing is that besides cult-leader psychopaths manipulating their flying monkeys into death cults with stories or ideologies about agendas and narratives, many real conspiracies begin in the very same paranoia about imaginary conspiracies. The classic one is Nazi narratives about Jewish banking. It is not that no conspiracies exists, but that organising your world around them, is bad for the world, bad for you.

Don't do it.

It is better for the world if no one theorised about conspiracies, even if there were conspiracies. This is because hatred and fear destroy, and blaming the conspiracy for you own lack of responsible worlding well is bad. It should not be done. It is bad as in immoral. Conspiracy theorists are immoral.

This badness of worlding badly (fear/hate/powerlessness) is still felt in the pleasure of knowing the truth. This is how truth can set you weird, and not free. This badness is framed by the paranoia that they are out to get your pleasure, where you have reduced-down and set-apart your agency into a tiny little space, like the dry husk of a seed that will never grow into a seedling. You are not the world, but you are responsible for both you and you in the world. That is worlding.

Talk about conspiracies is nearly always a deep emotional laziness about taking responsibility for one’s own life, this is why it is some sort of group-thunk covert narcissism, except the pathology tries to exclude the world from the self, rather than a pathology where self=world.

Such that only the self is left, the world is excluded removed. Weird.

In each group of conspiracy theorists, the shared ego-ism that remains once the world is removed, once the world is exorcised, is often an identity. Or that which can be indexed to an identity— i.e. real things like family/clan/cult (used metaphorically) or imaginary categories like race or other forms of “being special/chosen”.

Perhaps here it has simple survival advantages where freaked-out peeps living on adrenalin alone, surviving when lions or hyenas that might get you in the dark, but in the real world where we are the top predator as a social learning species, this is all is very mal-adaptive.

The funny thing is, that anyone can know a truth but not all are chosen to be ‘enlightened’ by it. The self-confidence trick here is that conspiracy theorists use this very specialness to actively choose take no responsibility for their lives. Power is what other lions people have, so, they think away their own agency, because they know the pleasure of knowing.

This is crazy talk, crazy feeling talk.

It is bad world-building, it is deeply doctrinal/ideological, that is, it attends to the world, but in fear of intentions (of/by/among others) to attend to the world, it (effort to world) retreats elsewhere.

But there is no where else. And this despite the fact the world does not really exists otherwise. The world is a judgement call beause values are effort.

This is in part because of our lack of traditions in regard to the difference between (what I label) worlding and world-building. Traditions that should instruct us that we are responsible for the world we live, not just the self we ego.

In conspiracy theorists, who do it for pleasure, or at least some relief of pain, as a type of self-medication, do so in order to feel no responsibility at all…. —keep me-ego safe, or pure, or holy, or whatever world-building accessory they prefer while rejecting the responsibility it (worlding/world-building) might otherwise bestow up on them.

Conspiracy theorists see doctrines (outcomes) as a life-event, and life-events as interruptions to doctrine. This is the wrong way around. This is because 'we' fail to take responsibility as agents, not just for ourselves each as their own ego, but also for our worlding of that ego, that life among others doing the same.

The paranoid schizophrenia has no world, they are adrift, judgement is ripped from them, but are left with fear. Energy without effort.

Worlding the world requires judgement which has been ripped from them.

Conspiracy theorists actively seek this state out, they seek to remove the worlding they do, they actively seek to world-build a life without the world. A place of pure doctrine, pure ideology, pure knowing. In the worst cases they are narcissistic sovereigns, with psychopathic intent. Psychopathic because they move themselves to intensify the removal of empathy from all good selves. It interferes with knowing. Judgement always interferes with pure knowing. They reject the world in order to know pleasure, in order to remove guilt/shame.

And all because world is 'out to get them'. That way they never need be responsible for the shared work the world requires, which we feel when we should ourselves. When we realise we are the world and we are not out to get anyone.

Conspiracy theorists refuse to world, refuse to be a part of what is out to get them, in this they shirk what it is to be human. It’s not my problem, because I know what the problem is, and it’s not me, it’s you. Even if I do not know you.

We are the world. Unfortunately, we must pick up the sad reality that the world is often dead to us.

I am not sure at all I know what to do now that I know, but we should do something to help.

I have explained a lot and ended up with no pleasure at all.

Re-posted in 2025  from substack.com in 2023. More on worlding listed here.