Conspiracy theories

Conspiracy theories

The world is full of them: Dan Brown has made a fortune from peddling one of the older ones, though if you want a better view, read either Foucault’s Pendulum of the Illuminatus trilogy. The latter provides a drug-fuelled and irreverent view of conspiracy theory, while the former leaves the central character hiding in a museum: having disproved the existence of the Illuminati, he is hiding from their assassins.

That sums up conspiracy theory, for me: it’s about people who would rather believe in the impossible than the idea that the world is full of ****-ups: and to quote the magnificent Hannah Gadsby, their research, like Brown’s, is not of the facty truthy kind.

I have friends who believe in things that I find incredible, and which are directly contradicted by all the facty truthy stuff. But then, I have friends who believe in fairies, and in politicians. For a more balanced – if fictional – view of life, do what I’m doing and watch The West Wing on All 4 Freeview. The world is mostly full of good people, trying to do their best, plus a few people for whom ‘best’ is all about themselves and their career. But mostly, even they are doing their best for their families.



There are conspiracy theories in photography, too. One of them is that manufacturers are cynically making us buy cameras we don’t need, and always selling us models that are not as good as the one they’re developing now.

Duh! If they weren’t doing this, but instead selling old models until they’d got the perfect camera, we would not be happy. And they’d go out of business. Research is constantly producing better ideas, and better implementation of older ideas. If you doubt that progress is real, get yourself a Praktica L from eBay, and see how you fare – always remembering that it cost as much as a modern bridge camera in real money, allowing for inflation.

Production engineers always want to freeze the design, and never make changes: design engineers are always finding things that are worth tweaking, just a little…



More than 20 years ago, I was closely involved in investigating a lot of dodgy doings in a city council. Early on, I brought a file home and spent much of the weekend going through around a hundred different allegations, trying to find a pattern, looking for a conspiracy. I didn’t find it. The reason is that there were a series of ****-ups: a bit of poor management here, a couple of light-fingered people there, and a previous unwillingness to look at how things were done.



And that’s how most of life is, I’ve found. The best way to deal with things is to accept that there’s imperfection, and get on with what you’re doing. There are occasional conspiracies (there was one to prevent us investigating, for sure: but over a dozen people lost their jobs and one went to jail by the time we’d finished, so that didn’t work), but mostly, there are crossed wires.

That’s why my children had all their vaccinations, and I have had my ‘flu jab: I have at least a sketchy understanding of the science, and I know that the risks of not having it are significantly greater for me as an individual if I don’t get the annual vaccination. And yes – I’ll be lining up for a Covid vaccine at the point that my GP is offering them to men my age. I don’t plan to try to get ahead (I know that nurses and teachers and care workers need them far more than I), but I’ll not be refusing one, either.