My son has a theory. He identified a scourge: conspiracy. He found a culprit: Santa Claus. Or rather culprits: all the adults in the world, who pretend that Santa Claus exists. Is there a conspiracy more extensive, across the planet and spanning the ages, than this, he asks? How can we then be surprised at the growing popularity of conspiracy theories?
It is true that every child in the West, after having been regularly reprimanded for having lied, discovers that he has been the victim, since his birth, of a vast deception. This is his first contact with organized lies, therefore with conspiracy.
Psychoeducators reassure us. Children’s belief in the fantastic “corresponds to their cognitive development”, explains among others Serge Larivée, of the University of Montreal, who has written on this subject. No trauma at the moment of discovering the truth, rather a progression of the critical spirit (where does it come in if you don’t have a chimney? How many are there?) which leads to a revelation. Having become aware of the reality of things, the child in turn enters into the confidence, becomes a member of the conspiracy.
It’s very beautiful. Still, from the age of reason, we are informed of the existence of a lie maintained by all, for our good. The acquisition of skepticism is certainly an essential element in the education of the future citizen, but does not the extent of this lie not prepare us, also, to consider as possible the existence of other nonsense, seated similarly? on the will of a large number of actors to enfirouaper us?
The loss of religious faith of a growing number of Westerners is fueling this trend. If the Church is wrong in the story it tells of God, of Adam and Eve, of the miraculous powers of Jesus, how not to be stunned by the immensity of the means mobilized for 2000 years to support this version of things?
Since the central elements of what we were taught as children — Santa Claus, the tooth fairy, baby Jesus — are the result of a vast enterprise of intoxication from which we extracted ourselves by the force of our rationality and to
against the tide, why conclude that organized lying is the exception, rather than the norm?
The generations born since the advent of television programs for children, that is to say the
1960s, undergo in my opinion an additional shock with reality. For at least 10,000 hours, they are presented with stories, animated or not, where the heroes face a difficulty or a villainous character, but succeed, in 100% of the cases, in making good triumph over evil.
This thread was of course present in most of the tales told to toddlers in the pre-television era. (Although, in the first version of the Little Red Riding Hood, the little girl straying from her grandmother’s path was devoured by the wolf, end of story. Moral: listen to your mother or die. And if you only know the Disney version of The little Mermaiddon’t read the original tale unless you have a strong heart.)
Still, the optimism inherent in children’s shows doesn’t prepare anyone to face an insurmountable obstacle, suffer a setback or deal with an injustice, those things that life will make sure you experience time and time again. Isn’t the discrepancy between the bombarded ideal in young heads and the brutal reality of the playground and social networks providing the breeding ground for the epidemic of depression that is affecting an increasing number of our teenagers? We almost come to applaud video games, in which players lose repeatedly and must resume their task by acquiring new knowledge in order not to sink again. At least there the difficulty exists and with it the frustration and the motivation to overcome it.
Mind you, before screens, there were other ways to learn to live with defeat: board games and sports. A bygone era, certainly, if we are to believe the recent indicators of a severe drop in physical activity among young people.
Of course, we cannot overlook the political lies surrounding the Vietnam War, Watergate, the invasion of Iraq under false pretenses, the corruption of certain politicians. All of this reinforces in the average citizen the reflex: “They are hiding something from us. »
And even if Bill Gates failed to put a chip in the anti-COVID vaccines (mind you, it would have been easier to download the updates), remains that the immense and outrageous power of the pharmaceutical companies, the connivance proved with researchers, the huge profits harvested on the back of the crisis are so many points of support not to give them the benefit of the doubt. Aren’t some pharma companies now found guilty of causing the opioid epidemic for the sole purpose of increasing revenues and profits? Result: in May 2020, no less than 60% of Quebecers believed that regarding the pandemic, governments “voluntarily hide information”.
“For the brain to function, it needs events to make sense,” explains psychoeducator Larivée. And since we are wary of lies organized by the powerful, we take it upon ourselves to construct an explanation that immediately excludes the official version and seems more satisfactory to us.
The fact that the conspiracy theorists are sometimes right does not help matters. The thesis that the COVID-19 virus came from a manipulation error in a Chinese laboratory in Wuhan, once mocked as a conspirator, is now accepted as a real possibility. Finally, we all live more or less in the film Deadly plot, from 1997, where a Mel Gibson (in his pre-anti-Semitic phase) fervent of conspiracy theories is pursued by assassins who want to silence him. The central question being: among his wacky theories, one is true and puts his life in danger. But which ? The existence of Santa Claus? Do your research.
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blog: jflisee.org