...
Truthers of all stripes would have benefited from a childhood playing Dungeons and Dragons. In the D&D world you learn early that randomness can upset the best laid plans of mice and men; you also learn about organisational dynamics and why conspiracies are always self defeating in the end. Let me unpack that latter point a little. In D&D you can choose between six different alignments: chaotic good, chaotic neutral, chaotic evil or lawful good, lawful neutral, lawful evil. Chaotic characters tend to think only of themselves, lawful characters are more rule bound. Good characters tend to promote good ideals, evil characters evil ones. The Nazis were lawful evil, pirates chaotic evil. Robin Hood (if he existed) was chaotic good, King Arthur (if he existed) lawful good. Do you get the picture? I hope so because I'm done explaining and my point is that when you play a lot of campaigns you learn that chaos gradually seeps in everywhere. Regimes and campaigning parties are constantly buffeted by chaotic events and almost always fall apart in the end, but the most successful parties are the ones that have a balance of good and evil, chaotic and neutral. Lawful evil parties and lawful good parties collapse quickly because they just don't have the flexibility to cope with events. Also the more chaotic and evil characters you have with you on the campaign the more likely they are to betray you all at the end when their interest outweighs the group interest. Classic prisoner dilemma situations abound when D&D campaigns and conspiracies start to fray because every person added to the conspiracy increases the chaos already inherent in the system. I don't know if there's a law of conspiracy theories but if not I'm going to invent it now: McKinty's first law of conspiracies states that "Every individual added to a conspiracy doubles the likelihood that the conspiracy will collapse."
...
Luck is very important in the game and also in life. Luck rewards bad people and punishes good ones. When my pacifist 11th level cleric was killed by a Storm Giant on a 20 roll of a 20 sided die it was just plain old bad luck. It wasn't fair, but I didn't fly off the handle into madness. I mean what can you do?* When Prime Minister Macmillan was asked what might blow his government off course he is supposed to have said "events, dear boy, events." I don't think its a stretch to say pace Ventura that organised religion and conspiracy theories are both crutches for people who can't face the brutal exigencies, cruelties and randomness of our world. Maybe a good dose of D&D is what these people need instead (does anyone still play D&D?) Or, then again, it could be that this entire blogpost is just an attempt to make up for a geekily misspent youth...**
...
*You can pray to Odin to resurrect your cleric. Our Dungeon Master used to give Odin a 1/100 chance of answering your prayer.
**Although as a counter to this statement in other news this week it came out that Stephen Colbert is getting a part in The Hobbit. Why? Well here he is talking about his childhood playing D&D, reading Tolkien and learning Elvish.
35 comments:
This is way off topic but Adam Curtis has a brand new blog post on the UK, Ireland, America and Colonel Gadaffi, here:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/adamcurtis/2012/10/hes_behind_you.html
I think Curtis is wrong to play up Gadaffi's clownishness and wrong to play down how dangerous he was: especially the havoc and death he brought to Ireland. But the stuff about Pan Am Flight 103 made me think...There's also good stuff about Vanessa Redgrave and her vile, anti semitic brother Corin.
False conspiracy theories can create the hysteria that leads to real conspiracies.
In the 1950s, the false fear that there was a dangerous communist under every bush led to the genuine conspiracy of the Blacklist.
The hysterical fear created by the domino theory fantasists kept us suspended in Viet Nam. If Viet Nam falls, Thailand will be next, they all said, and then all of Asia. It didn't happen.
I'd always thought that the notion that Bobby Kennedy had Marilyn Monroe killed was just another conspiracy theory. But this week I read Jay Margolis's work of scholarship, MARILYN MONROE: A CASE FOR MURDER, and I'm convinced that Kennedy did have her silenced.
At least until someone shows me an equally documented account that can convince me to change my mind.
Conspiracy theories, for the believers, make the world a more magical, exciting place, and they, as the initiates, become part of select fraternity that carries a hidden knowledge, hence the appeal of conspiracies for people who would otherwise be nobodies. Truthers would also benefit from playing Texas Hold 'Em poker: sometimes your pocket aces get beaten, as mine did this past weekend by this bastard who hit a set on the flop. That was a $200 lesson in truth and random bad luck.
People hate the idea things happen to them for no reason, or for a reason so far removed from them they can't imagine it could affect them. People want order in their lives, some kind of predictability, and they're willing to give up a lot to preserve the illusion they can get it.
Scares the hell out of me.
There's also a lot of self-importance in the (admittedly few) truthers I've spoken to - or had speak at me, which is usually how it works.
9/11 happened so that the US could go to war because, for some reason, "the people" had to be convinced? The craziest thing about the truthers is they believe the opnions of the people matter...
Now, I've been telling people that when I read James Ellroy's Underworld Trilogy I believed every word of it and when I read Stephen King's 22/11/63 I believed Oswald acted alone. It may be that Ellroy is a terrrific writer and Oswald acted alone.
Also, I'd just like to say that D&D has been very good for my son, a shy kid who hasn't made many friends.
Now that's a photo that brings back some good memories.
No doubt there is something strange about the way flights 77 and 93 crashed but I can't understand given the amount of published work on all this how this lot refuse to believe that this was a terrorist grouping at work.Maybe they should all be required to read the 09/11 Commission report or The Looming Tower.But,the world would be a duller place without them,plus it's amusing to see how obsessed conspiracy believers all become.
There's a programme running here at the minute where a comedian called Andrew Maxwell takes few people on a road trip across the US to confront them with their various beliefs.Very amusing,but you can see the frustration growing with him as he's tries to get some sense into them and fails miserably.They will believe what they want to and it appears there is no convincing some people.
Rich
I dont know the details of that Marilyn book but I have 2 points to make about that. 1. JFK had DOZENS of mistresses during his brief Presidency, which would Bobby risk everything to silence only 1 of these women. 2. Dont you think it more likely that a bipolar troubled young woman overdosed or accidentally overdosed than the possibility that she was killed by Robert Kennedy, one of the few sane voices in the sixties?
Cary
I agree. When I read youtube comments (I know, I shouldnt) and every third one is some kind of crazy anti semitic conspiracy theory I realize that that there are a lot of poorly educated or half educated gullible people out there.
Well I think pocket kings getting beat by pocket aces is a punch to the solar plexus every time.
Dana
An Irish poet spoke once of a "rage for order" and I think he's right. We're pattern seeking animals and will impose patterns and order even when there's none there.
Even pigeons do this:
http://io9.com/5746904/how-pigeons-get-to-be-superstitious
John
Yeah 2 great points. The secret knowledge crowd are usually very arrogant. And yup the elites dont give a shit about public opinion. Maybe I'm slightly off about the actual numbers here but I think it was pretty obvious at the time of the Iraq war that maybe 70 - 80 % of the UK population were against the invasion. Didnt stop anything.
John
Yeah 2 great points. The secret knowledge crowd are usually very arrogant. And yup the elites dont give a shit about public opinion. Maybe I'm slightly off about the actual numbers here but I think it was pretty obvious at the time of the Iraq war that maybe 70 - 80 % of the UK population were against the invasion. Didnt stop anything
Paul
I've heard about that programme and tried to find it on youtube to no avail. Its not on Project Free TV either and of course BBC iplayer doesnt work here. So I'm confounded. But we've all experienced that frustration. Its like trying to convince a Mormon or Jehovah's Witness missionary at your door on a wet Wednesday afternoon. You can marshal all the arguments you want but none of them will penetrate their mind or even plant a seed of doubt. Its ultimately a big waste of everyone's time.
Maybe I'm slightly off about the actual numbers here but I think it was pretty obvious at the time of the Iraq war that maybe 70 - 80 % of the UK population were against the invasion. Didnt stop anything
You are correct Adrian....This is true pretty much across the board on issue after issue...Kinda gives you an idea about what kind if democracy we live in, at least in the USA.
The population of the US stands to left of both political parties on issue after issue. Does not mean much.
As for the 9/11 "truth movement" they strike me as a fringe group more than anything else...You don't even hear much about them anymore. The are so dogmatic and fanatical that they even accuse someone like Chomsky as being a CIA agent since he doesn't buy in to the idea that it was a US back and planned plot.
His whole adult life as a tireless advocate for peace and social justice,whether you agree with him or not, is thrown out the window for the truthers and he is just a "gatekeeper" on the payroll of the CIA. Its sad actually.
Very
Yeah but then again just to undermine my own point I'll bet a vast majority of the UK population was in favour of doing a deal with Hitler in April 1940...
By September 1940 the game had changed but in April...
"... every third one is some kind of crazy anti semitic conspiracy theory..."
I used to have my "conspiracy-click-through test," how many mouse clicks it took to get to "Jews." It used to take about four clicks but more often these days it's right there on the first page.
Always makes me think of that old joke about the Jewish guy who liked reading the anti-semetic newspapers because according to them Jews ran everything in the world.
I also find it interesting how conspiracy theorists rarely take into account opportunism or compromise - in the theories whoever is behind it is always after some kind of total control.
Re; Your two points about Marilyn Monroe
Adrian, that's exactly the way I might have put it before I picked up Jay Margolis's book. A silly conspiracy theory.
But this scholar impresses me by double checking the evidence offered by others, and there is much more than I had ever imagined. There were at least three books on her death published this year (the 50th Anniversary of her death), and this was the one I picked to read because there are so many notes and detailed sources and indeed it seems the most sober, thorough, and scholarly of the three (which all come to basically the same conclusion).
As to why he should he bother with Monroe, none of Bobby Kennedy's other mistresses had the power nor the inclination to expose him the way Marilyn Monroe threatened to do on the day of her death. Peter Lawford's later account and confession of complicity, detailed in this work, is compelling.
Margolis offers much more, and this is definitely not a political work.
I'm not about to argue the case myself, as I did not research it myself. I'm saying that Margolis makes a scholarly and compelling case for what I had always considered a silly conspiracy theory.
There's a nice article from an old Believer Magazine on Gary Gygax and the Dungeons and Dragons world from a few years back.
The good thing about conspiracy theorists is that they teach us that conviction means nothing.
I hold out hope that there is a meaning beyond our own apprehension of it, but I don't presume to know what it is.
And though I don't have the gene to be a conspiracy theorist--because I really believe it must be something about how the brain processes reality, rather than just stupidity or fear, as very smart people sometimes fall prey to these obsessions--I do think there are enough cover-ups, lies and chicanery to preoccupy us all.
The Ghaddafi piece looks interesting.
John
In the comments in the last 2 youtubes I watched on Jimmy Saville it went straight to anti semitism. Of course Saville was a Catholic and the DG of the BBC was Church of England.
Rich
Ok in that case I'll check it out. It would certainly be sensational if RFK killed her. Or indeed if Oswald did not act alone.
Seana
Yeah thats a nice piece. The video with Stephen Colbert in the main blogpost has a nice Gary Gygax shout out in it that seems to have completely baffled Conan O'Brien.
Seana
And thats a pretty good start to the World Series for your Giants I must say. I was NOT expecting Verlander to get lit up like that.
Uh, I am supportive of my friends who support the Giants. Except for the part where several of them seem to have mysteriously DISAPPEARED while I was working the cash register and couldn't get a price check.
Still, it's fun to see everyone in their regalia.
Sorry, the whole Verlander thing was lost on me and likely to stay that way. Personally, I'm embroiled in a discussion with my book group about Joseph Smith's run for presidency. Heartening to know that part of his platform back in 1844 was anti-slavery.
Like I keep saying, it's not Romney's Mormonism that's the problem.
I have to say that people showing up in orange shirts and hats in support of the Giants seems very season appropriate. It's like the arrival of the Great Pumpkin after all.
And just to show that I am not agin baseball, because I'm not, here is my blog pal PQ's assessment of the World Series possibilities.
He's from New York, so not an S.F. Giants fan, but we share a Giants fan or two in common...
Seana
Joseph Smith was an abolitionist but Brigham Young denied that black people had souls and that slavery was their natural lot. Indeed the "black people have no souls" idea was official LDS policy until 1978 when Mitt Romney was 30 years old, well after he had done two years missionary work for these doctrines and this church.
Seana
I read your friend's WS forecast. Like every other commentator and me he got game 1 completely wrong. Verlander was horrible, the Giants hit home runs, Detroit didnt hit, Zito was the Zito of old. Hopefully the Tigers can get their shit together.
I agree with your point on conspiracies and would like to add another reason why they are so hard to believe. People are not good at keeping secrets. We love to talk too much especially after a pint or two. So even if a big conspiracy does work, someone will tell the secret before too many years.
By the by Mr. McKinty an effect of your writing. I have to take vicodin for various aches and pains, though fortunately not every day. Often when I take it and the glass seems to disappear from my hips, I think to myself; lovely vicodin, lovely vicodin. Amazing how a good line just sticks with you. (I am sure you know this, but just in case vicodin is a distant, far weaker cousin to heroin.)
Jim
Everyone blabs these days. There isnt an Omerta in the mafia anymore. Mafia wives have their own TV reality shows for heavens sake. No, I agree, the bigger secret the more likely it is to come out.
Vicodin is great. I'm not saying I recommend this at all. In fact I am NOT recommending this to anyeon: BUT I've taken Vicodin with Chimay Blue Label a couple of times and its been terrific.
I smoked opium once in Cairo and that was truly amazing. If I had my way there would be an opium pipe in every hospice in America.
I do remember the odd relation of the Mormons to non-white races--the oddest to me was the sort of paternal appropriation of Indians--from when my family friends were transferred to Salt Lake City. Still, that wasn't Joseph Smith's original idea.
I expect that it was bad for the development of the Mormon faith that Joseph Smith was murdered.
PQ may have gotten the opening wrong, but he did have a good intuition about the Giants vs. the Cardinals which went against his own analysis.
One of my friends is from Detroit and she's a good friend of some of my Giants fan friends, so this could be interesting, even for me.
I wish I'd known about this Vicodin thing before I just downed two Weyerbacher Double Simcoes at my local.
Quote ". Also the more chaotic and evil characters you have with you on the campaign the more likely they are to betray you all at the end when their interest outweighs the group interest'l
That should be reason enough, eh?
It's scary to think we would have such an absurd movie.
Seana
If the Giants have got Verlander's number (and its ridiculous to speculate after one game) then the Tigers are in BIG trouble.
Peter
I am NOT recommending that as a course of action. I dont want to be responsible for anyone else's liver. Its bad enough looking after my own.
Cinabear
Maybe it will be a black comedy? Thats the only way it could be worthwhile I reckon.
My friends here would be quite amused to think I am holding up even the illusion of my end of a conversation about baseball. Still, when its the local favorite in the game, it's hard to avoid it. It's a lot better for the innocent bystander when they win than when they lose, let me tell you.
Unless they win the World Series, and the innocent bystander's car is destroyed, store trashed, or path blocked by celebrating drunks.
Liver and let liver, I say.
Post a Comment