Conspiracies and truth
Think about what you did last week, and ask yourself, how much time did I spend trying to decipher people’s intentions?
It’s not an easy question to answer, because we spend more time trying to figure out other people than we may even realize. Even when we’re not consciously thinking about it, the urge to solve mysteries can happen subconsciously and even visit our dreams (or nightmares).
There’s something chilling about the need to see and understand, isn’t there?
The imaginary creature under the bed probably never left.
We say we are “haunted” by things we don’t understand. The specter of a history becoming increasingly bizarre, a shapeless monstrosity capable of penetrating every space, is not something that can be reasoned with. No matter how many documentaries are produced, the past can never be captured with the clarity we need. We can be confronted with images and videos from the past, but we can only imagine the context in which they took place. The act of imagination may bridge the past and the past. It may even make us more aware of our potential future. All of this is good. But there is one thing we also know to be true. The man inside the closet is still watching us.
He’s waiting for us to make a mistake. Is that not always the case—that someone, somewhere, is waiting for us to make a mistake? We must never let down our guard, for we fear that punishment may be eternal. We rightfully reason that others share our fear, and we make kinship out of misfortune.
If tragedies can answer our deepest questions, they would never happen again.
They say the truth will set us free, but is freedom what we seek? Truth and freedom often live in contradiction to each other. It can be argued that the more we know, the less free we are. Seeking the truth can lead to persecution and chaos. We know this implicitly from the experience of growing up. How many conspiracies have we invented among family and friends—just to preserve our innocence?
The fault always resides with someone else. The crime is always committed somewhere far away. Far enough that you could believe that the world is still innocent. That life can go on just like we remembered.
Not everyone can be a crusader for truth. It’s far better to imagine than to see with our own eyes.
