CONSPIRACY THEORISTS: FROM CONTRAILS TO CANNIBALS

 

I drew these graphite ghosts of my neighbours, who happen to own the coffee shop right across the street from my condo in downtown Regina SK Canada.

And this cartoon below, was sent to me yesterday by my favourite National Hockey League scout, Brad.  FUNNY. FUNNY. FUNNY. 

   

Factoid:  This cartoon inspired me to write about conspiracy theorists, the topic for my blog entry today.

And here I go:

• CONTRAILS (THE CHEMTRAILS CONSPIRACY THEORY)

On my daily run around Wascana Lake last summer, I was confronted by long-haired hirsute (male) individual, a reminder of the 60’s hippy look.  Perhaps he really was a hippy who refused to let go, keeping that Jesus image to match his evangelical outrage.  He deliberately blocked my run while pointing at the sky and screaming into my face, “Are you f@#king, blind!  See those f@#king chemicals our government is putting in our sky!”

Ignoring him as best I could under the politest of social conditions I could muster, I slightly (pun intended) acknowledged him and attempted to go wide.  He blocked me again while yelling even more expletives my direction.  And then when a tourist bus stopped to unload a group of seniors into the Legislative flower gardens, he turned away from me and directed his intruding attention toward them.  Being ever the good citizen, I called the police.  The officer, who arrived within minutes, expressed to me that she’d had several calls in the last hour with regard to this ranting fellow and offered, too, that he was “well known” to the city police.

• EXTRATERRESTRIALS AND UFOS (MARTIANS AND THEIR SPACESHIPS)

She was physically beautiful and academically bright, and she was a high school teacher colleague at the time.  I quite adored her lunch conversations right up until the day she claimed she had been abducted by aliens from outer space, and was subsequently rewarded by having been granted powers to completely shut down power grids and other electrical systems when angry.

• ASSASSINATION OF JOHN F. KENNEDY 

(LEE HARVEY OSWALD AND HIS IMPOSSIBLE MAGIC BULLET)

He was your stereotypical 70’s Political Science 100 professor.  Complete with thick lensed horn-rimmed glasses, the good academic doctor had a long ponytail and an even longer mustachio.  It was during our very first out-of-class small seminar when he matter-of-factually explained to us in great depth how the Kennedy assassination was the inside job prompted by Lyndon Johnson, the vice-president at the time.  I think it’s important here to state that during the 70’s, the Political Science Department, along with the Sociology and Psychology departments of the University of Regina, were politically very left of centre.

• FLAT EARTH (THIS CONSPIRACY THEORY IS VERY, VERY FAR OUT)

This guy was a familiar stranger kind of friend.  We shared many friends and, therefore, many social gatherings together.  I knew from the start that he was more of a pseudo-intellectual than a bona-fide academic.  However, such types at recreational gatherings where one is prone to imbibing, such a pseudo-intellectual can really be a challenging source to be reckoned with.  Some of his theories could be tolerated, capitalism favouring corporations, white people always having the advantage, and other sorts of understood truths.  But this one time, specifically, came the tipping point.  At that party he was loudly expressing with unwarranted emotion that the earth was flat, and that anyone willing to hike to the edge would be shot on sight by some planetary government guards.

• COVID-19 (CONSPIRACY THEORISTS REFER TO THIS AS SCAMDEMIC OR PLANDEMIC)

One of my band mates changed almost overnight.  He and I had performed several gigs together to the tune of at least a dozen times.  About a month after our last gig had been cancelled due to Covid-19, he texted me, and thus came the harsh reality about his thinking. “It’s time to wake the f@#k up, Neil, about the plandemic!  If you do not realize this is a scamdemic, then you will no longer be welcome at my table!”  Yikes.

All of this, never mind the American fantasies of the fluoridation of drinking water being the government tactic of flushing toxic waste; the flu and other such vaccinations being the medical scheme betwixt doctors and pharmacists to get rich; the global warming being promoted only for the greening of America; the trumpeting of the deep state along with the BIG LIE promoted by the big buffoon; and in my mind one of the most disgusting, the notion that Hillary and her host of Hollywood celebrities all being a Democratic cabal of cannibalistic pedophiles.

No matter the lack of consensus, no matter the lack of any scientific evidence, all of the above happenings, known by the very chosen few, who believe these to be elaborate plots contrived by corrupt and clandestine governments.  And, too, they believe that those of us who are vocally skeptic or seeking simple proofs are just foolish and sheepish followers.  Really. 

My candid thoughts are that all of these conspiracy theorists are rather a picayune set of people who are unwittingly engaging in imaginary political atrocities they think of paramount importance.  Ha!  There is certainly no social ensky here!

Believing such twisted tales somehow must add quality to their lives, in the sense that only they, being the enlightened few, are privy to certain raw truths about what is really going on.  And to add insult to their idiocy, they attempt to voice their delusional concerns through continual demonstrations and proclamations.     

Are these people idiots?  No.  Are they idiosyncratic?  Yes.

Am I an idiot?  No.  Am I idiosyncratic?  Yes.

I AM IDIOSYNCRATIC BECAUSE I AM A BUSKER.  And being a busker is perhaps why I can empathize (somewhat) with their marginalized position on the social norm chart.  I do not have a load of emotional reaction towards any conspiracy theories or theorists, but sometimes the protests pain me intellectually.

Factoid:  I’m not one to even believe in ghosts (save for the graphic ghosts that I draw, or those people who have passed and still always on my mind).  I believe none of the nonsense mentioned above.  And so then really, what is a Zen-existentialist to do!

Referring to myself in the third person, here is what he does.  Not-so-strangely, I welcome most of these theories as being counter-patterns, as academically-researched and isolated occurrences that are quite contrary to the norm of public notion, but academically necessary to instill authority and credibility to those theories that actually do have a scientific base.

Whether it be a social or academic, I can easily and simply and unemotionally tolerate almost anything anyone presents.  It is only when such nonsensical claims affect me directly, as those illustrated above, that I go out of my way to resist them and write about them in Psychology Busking a la Wordswords fashion.  I know that my pen is mightier than my sword.  And I know that my word swords are my recreational and pseudo-academic escape from those conspiracy theorists who are chanting and marching in La La Land.   

And speaking of marching, this week I’ve just one person marching in my CHAUCERIAN PARADE.  Another hockey aficionado, Scott, sent me this the same day my favourite NHL scout sent me the conspiracy cartoon that prompted this blog entry.  

Talking with Scott this morning, this NHL twitter post has over 11,000 hits to date!

WORDS OF LOVE: THE HAPS AND TRAPS

MY BIKER NEIGHBOUR, BALA

Hmmm …Now that the love-inspired Saint Valentine’s Day, which began as a heterosexual solicitation (a contrivance of social psychology) to immediately procreate and ultimately continue the species (the confection of evolutionary psychology), is finis, I’ve had a few days to reflect and research just enough to write about the kinds of love with a semblance of authority.  

Even though those early Christian Saint Valentine’s Day feasts were nary a tribute to the LGBT community, our current February 14^th has certainly become a commercial celebratory and romantic date for all.  But rather than gormandizing on feasts as they did in the days of yore, chocolates and strawberries and cards containing little red hearts are now the affectionate nibbling fixes for everyone lesbian or gay or bisexual or transgender or asexual or pansexual or even, heterosexual,

Yes.  All this tradition in the name of love. 

And just as there are divers types of lovers, there are, too, divers types of love.  According to Canadian activist and academic writer, John Alan Lee, there are six:

There is Eros, the Greek for word for romantic, passionate.  An Eros love means a love with as much sex as possible.  Definitely the behaviour of adolescents and young adults, even those older adults having affairs are enjoying the fruits of Eros.  Playing guitar on stage at a bar or on the sidewalk on a busk lends opportunities for Eros on EVERY OCCASION.  (This I know based upon empirical evidence.  Even though a didgeridoo is more phallic than a guitar, didge busking is not the girl-getter compared to busking with a guitar.)

There is Ludus, the Latin word for game.  Ludus lovers have as much fun as possible with one another.  Outdoors or indoors, those in Ludus are playful and adventurous.  Ludus lovers are the ones who hike together outside and tantric together inside.

Of course in evolutionary psychology we have Storage, the Greek word for familial love.  These are the loves among siblings, the love shared between parents and spouses, parents and their children, and the obligatory blood kin love for cousins and other family loyalties.  The proverb, “Blood is thicker than water” has been around since medieval times.  I understand the pain of my parents; whereas, I feel the pain of my children – this is Storage.  And at those family reunions, whether they are weddings or funerals, everyone tolerates the gossipy Aunt Gladys and the tippling Uncle Ted.  Everyone is civil to the hidebound, cousin Harold, the maudlin, cousin Mary – this, too, is Storage.  (Such reunions prompt a rabbit-hole of alliterations, which are always fun to write.)

Mania, the Greek word for mental disorder seems the worst kind of love.  This is love obsessive and love possessive.  This is the love that causes madness and jealousy.  This is the scary love you see on thriller and horror television and movie screens.  This is the scary love that necessitates the need for women’s shelters.

Agape, the Greek word for altruism, represents the purest form of love, selflessness.  Not-so-strangely, Agape is oftentimes referenced with religions and commitments to deities, both polytheistic and monotheistic.  There is even an Agape Television Network, purportedly an inspirational and Christian delivery of information.

And the last I’ll mention is the love of Pragma.  Pragma, the Greek word for businesslike, manifests love in a pragmatic, practical and convenient sense.  The Pragma type of love is the enduring type of love; the kind you see with old married couples still holding hands.  Pragma is the kind of love that has grown over time because of compromise.  Similar to the familial love of Storage, friends you’ve had since childhood, too, are Pragma.  (Every time one goes to a graduate or town reunion, and no matter the distance in time between visits, your childhood friends from your developmental years are still the same and still your friends.)

If it proves so, then loving goes by haps, some Cupid kills with arrows, some with traps (Shakespeare’s Much Ado About Nothing Act 3, Scene 1).   

All of these types of love mentioned are just haps and traps.  All these loves are the consequence of happenchance, where you’re from and where you’ve gone and whom you’ve met along the way, and once stricken, when you are love-struck, you are trapped.

One upon a time in a graduate Psychology class, a colleague of mine presented a paper on The Concept of Love, in which he argued that anyone, under the right conditions, can fall in love with anyone.

And when you think of it, of the 7.6 billion people on the planet, how is it that it just so happens that we often find our true-love, our soul-mate, our heart’s-desire, at our school or at our workplace or at any other gathering of chance.  What are the odds! 

Saying this, whether we be oafs or profs or somewhere in between, fortunately the evolutionary odds are very high that we will hap and trap and be able to love and beloved by that special someone!