Integritus Prime

I’ve been back to traveling this year. It feels like parts of me are still scattered in the countries I’ve visited so far, pondering my experiences. While I enjoyed work and play on my travels, I was struck by how common it has become for people to believe in conspiracy theories. I began noticing it when the pandemic started and I’ve noticed it on my recent trips as well. The curiosity has stayed with me and I keep noticing one of the hallmarks of conspiratorial thinking: a person is absolutely certain they are right, regardless of whether scientific consensus or simple logic is glaringly signaling a different truth. Absolute certainty to me seems to be about absolute control…which usually means we are responding to helplessness.

I decided to read more about the psychological factors associated with those who believe in conspiracy theories so I can understand more of what is going on. What I found has led me to the themes of mental illness and trauma. Here are a few condensed tips that might be helpful. What helps most is to have compassion for people who exhibit these traits:

1. People who subscribe to conspiracy theories tend to have high levels of anxiety and paranoia, feel powerless or lacking control, and feel unwanted or rejected, as if they don’t fit into society. This includes people who are deeply spiritual, deeply intuitive, and often highly intelligent. These feelings, combined with environmental or political crises that further create a sense of powerlessness, lead them to more readily believe in an insidious enemy that is causing these ills, which is a signature of conspiratorial thinking.
2. An important nuance is the relationship between historical trauma and belief in conspiracy theories. Historical trauma is correlated with powerlessness, victimization and poverty, which tend to precede conspiracy theory beliefs. When we are feeling powerless, victimized, and poor, as we have through wars, economic depressions, climate crises and political uncertainties, we tend to more readily accept conspiracy beliefs as a form of adapting to the crises. When these turbulent circumstances change, our adaptation becomes ill-founded but we tend to continue with them.
3. Belief in conspiracy theories can lead to dangerous behaviors such as shootings, refusal to be vaccinated, and a host of other actions founded on beliefs that may not be founded on sound logic. Refuting conspiracy theories can also have a backfire effect, leading to people reaffirming their beliefs in evil and conspiracy. To avoid or lessen this effect, it helps not to threaten the identity of the person, but to only challenge their belief with sound logic.
4. It helps for the conspiratorial thinker to try to think analytically, and to engage in logical activities – this allows the brain to suppress conspiratorial thinking. A rule of thumb is to ask the following questions: “One: What is your evidence? Two: What is your source for that evidence? Three: What is the reasoning that links your evidence back to the claim? Sources of evidence need to be accurate, credible and relevant.” As someone who has seen first-hand the damage done by climate naysayers, this form of logical inquiry is a non-trivial endeavor to master for the average person due to all the spin out there from trolls and special interests.
5. One indication of someone who believes in conspiracy theories is their defiant rejection of science as if it were a staged ploy to control the masses. They tend to state their opinion as fact, with no room for open-minded discourse. They also feel that those who do not share their beliefs are inherently against them, the “enemy” as it were. This is a divisive stance. As we scale up socially, it’s easy to see that conspiratorial thinking damages social cohesion through prejudice.

As someone who respects science and intuition, analytical and creative thinking, spirituality and traditional ways of knowing, I am often dumbfounded when I encounter conspiracy theorists. I am still learning how to navigate this, and writing this post is as much to help me as it is to raise awareness for others about this painful and potentially very dangerous epidemic in our society. It is my hope that we can heal, and face the complex and scary realities that confront us daily, both from the inside in the form of trauma and in our society in the shape of climate change and political corruption, and so much more.