2 years ago
752
Went for dinner with some colleagues yesterday. One of them suddenly steered the conversation onto chemtrails and then spent ten minutes holding court about how they're caused by governments dropping chemicals to change the weather, how they've used this power for good as well as bad (apparently they were able to cause a hurricane to deviate path and miss Hawaii), and how it's not a conspiracy theory because it's proven with easily available facts if you're just willing to open your mind. Little bit awkward, but amusing to watch my boss's face as he listened and realised that it was on him for hiring this guy....
Did he say “just look up!”?
I’ve been in a conversation recently with someone I semi-knew but clearly not well enough as he started to go full on Alex Jones. I leant into it and prodded him and he got more confident that I was also in the know and went full on nutjob. It was ace.
I’ve turned down his invitations via e-mail to join a bunch of groups though, think I’ll swerve him full stop in future.
If I wanted to discredit all notions of conspiracy, to hide mine, I'd encourage all manner of nutjob conspiracies to discredit the very notion of conspiracy. Of course it would require the sort of sophisticated thinking of (say) an intelligence agency, and ridiculous levels of funding.
Using the Goebbels playbook to weaponise fascism
....and there is documented evidence of that funding in foreign territories, exactly as was deployed inside Russia itself.
You have to be deeply against the notion of conspiracy, to refuse to look at a government of your own, using exactly the same techniques, largely funded by contributors with links to russia, that ignored the intelligence services in putting a russian national, and the son of a known ranking KGB agent, in the houses of parliament, and impeded publication of a report into russian interference in our elections prior to pivotal moments in our modern electoral processes.
If you open your mind too much, your brain will fall out.
Conspiracies are real and happen and all that. A good way to tell a real/plausible one from the various branches of nutjobbery is to look for a beginning and an end, and for the people on the inside who blabbed.
Feds infiltrating and assassinating Black Panthers = conspiracy and also a thing that definitely happened.
Jews plotting to take over the world since the dawn of civilisation = racist nutjobbery
You say that, and without trying to open a huge can of anti semetic worms, isn't that the general aim of most religions. Our way or the highway to hell type of thing.
Just to point out, I do not however believe the conspiracy theories about the Jewish people trying to take over the world, this is a point about any organised religion.
If they're not trying to take over the world then why do they have space lasers starting forest fires, hmm? Come on sheeple, think for yourselves.
In fact, Judaism is a non-proselytising religion:
An important tenet of Judaism is that God's will is for people to exercise free will. As such, proselytizing is generally regarded as offensive in Judaism. Consequently, Judaism generally does not proselytize non-Jews. Instead, non-Jews are encouraged to follow Noahide Law, assuring a place in the world to come.
The religions of the world are divided into two groups: those that actively seek new followers (missionary religions) and those that do not (non-missionary religions). This classification dates back to a lecture given by Max Müller in 1873, and is based on whether or not a religion seeks to gain new converts. The three main religions classified as missionary religions are Buddhism, Christianity, and Islam, while the non-missionary religions include Judaism, Zoroastrianism, and Hinduism.
There was one extremely prominent Jew who did a fair bit of proselytising...
I'd like to go on record as not knowing anything about Zoroastrianism whatsoever.
Freddie Mercury and Nina Wadia from goodness gracious me were/are Zoroastrians.
I'd like to go on record as still not knowing anything about Zoroastrianism whatsoever.
I know two more things than I did two posts ago
I'm sure that we can all agree that Zoroastrianism has had an absolute belter of a millennium, thanks to the terrific support of the likes of Freddie and Nina. But is it time for us to say, as far as non-proselytising monotheistic modern religions go, that it's really the greatest ever now. I mean...look at it's history.
Thank you for that Florist, we live and learn and my knowledge of most religions is minimal at best.
Still not a fan in general.
