Coincidence, Conspiracy, and Complicity

For over 50 years, scientists have known that mononucleosis is caused by the Epstein-Barr virus. So, when an acquaintance recently told me that he heard a talk radio host link the virus to a conspiracy theory about William Barr’s role in the death of Jeffrey Epstein, I was taken aback.

Once I got over my surprise at the far-fetched nature of the premise, I realized this is a perfect illustration of the human desire to make sense out of chaos and to find meaning in symbols and coincidence. When presented with an array of shapes, colors, or dots, our brain tries to find a recognizable image. When we look at clouds, rocks, and even food, we see faces. We love puzzles and illusions that require us to interpret images in different ways. Since our survival depends on making rapid sense of the world around us, our neural circuitry is “wired” to identify and respond to familiar patterns. When there is no apparent order to an image or situation, we generate an explanation to fill in the gaps.

On the basis of ancient cave drawings (petroglyphs) and the earliest recorded human writings, we know that humans have a long history of thinking in stories. We are interested in how things start and end, appreciate clever plots and resolutions, and resonate with archetypal portrayals of heroes and villains. Research suggests that when people are asked to retell a story, they often provide details that weren’t in the original version to make sense of the story. Even as I write this blog, I find myself watching the squirrel in my backyard and wondering where he sleeps at night, why he thinks he can get seed from the supposedly squirrel-proof bird feeder, and if he is deliberately taunting the cats.

As humans, we do this a lot. We name and attribute motives to cars, hurricanes, computers, and other objects we know are inanimate. Early in my career, I had the opportunity to work with individuals in treatment for schizophrenia. More than one patient told me that street numbers are really a set of codes, that you can find hidden messages in newspapers by crossing out words, and that newscasters send secret messages. Clearly, we are predisposed to find order in the world even if it isn’t really there.

This tendency also influences the way we deal with the unprecedented flow of information generated by our 24/7 media juggernaut. Figuring out what to pay attention to and who to trust can become an overwhelming task. Some people try to reduce their anxiety by ignoring the news altogether. Others try to limit their intake to sources of information that confirm the views they already have. Both strategies can be misleading since they fail to provide us with a realistic view of the world. But another dangerous coping strategy is emerging. In an effort to impose order on chaos, and to maintain a sense of control, many people are choosing to believe vast conspiracy theories that imply that there is invisible structure below the surface of our social structures and daily interactions.

Perhaps the appeal of conspiracies like the QAnon movement is that they provide people with the reassuring sense that there is order in the chaos, that there are clear distinctions between good and evil, and that there is a mastermind calling the shots. In a rapidly changing, increasingly diverse world, such beliefs could reduce anxiety and allow people to think of themselves as part of an elite group that can see things other don’t see. Although conspiracy theories are nothing new, the partisan nature of the currently trending theories, and their murky origins, make it extremely difficult to confirm the claims being made. If everything is a cover for something else, all messages are in code, and all coincidences are actually part of a plan, then reality becomes intangible and every story becomes reality.

However, relying on our tendency to force things into patterns as a means of coping with uncertainty in a technological, interconnected world isn’t going to help us solve the very real problems threatening our way of life and survival. In the middle ages, people thought, without evidence, that cats were causing the plague, so they killed off as many cats as they could. Unfortunately, the strategy backfired since rats, which do carry the plague were no longer being kept in check by feline predators. Today, I drive a car and type on a computer whose inner workings are as mysterious as the moon to me. But making up stories for how they work won’t be much help if one of them stops functioning.

It is certainly more fun to pretend that the world is a giant “word search sudoku puzzle” created by a hidden group of conspirators than that it is to acknowledge that we live in an incredibly complex, scary, and sometimes arbitrary world. But while we distract ourselves searching for non-existent clues and trying to analyze random coincidences, we put ourselves at the mercy of manipulative people who promulgate conspiracies for their own gain. This can lead to people being demonized or blamed for things that never happened and can result in our failure to respond to actual threats.

Conspiracy theorists can try to convince us that our senses lie to us, but ignoring gravity, viruses, threats to our independence, and anything said by scientists will inevitably destroy the lives and society we value so much. Educating ourselves, listening to others instead of demonizing them, and thinking critically rather than letting others manipulate our emotions isn’t easy. But if we fail to call out the people who are peddling conspiracy theories based on tenuous, faulty connections, we become complicit in the dissemination of false information. If we allow this to occur over time, we are going to lose far more than the freedom to walk around our neighborhoods without a mask.