An individual online stated: "Acknowledging conspiratorial ideas is pathological." I profoundly disagree. Rather, the opposite is true. People conspire almost automatically and so this tendency to ought to be more closely examined and understood.
In my view, common sorts of conspiracies occur at the most primal level of human consciousness. For instance, tell a male that "feminists" are after his bread and butter and he will immediately side with all other males in the world as males, no matter how much he would actually dislike them in person. What matters to him at the moment is to defend himself via the primeval category of "maleness".
Wherever primal conspiratorial thought occurs, it is not at the level of a conscious decision. The origin of most conspiracies can be found where human unconscious processes defend a notion of "us" versus "them". People of all sorts unconsciously "conspire" when they act in unison with others on the basis of a felt identity, whilst acting defensively against those of an "out-group", which would then be felt to endanger the group's primeval sense of unity.
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You want me to simplify? Because, really I was responding to the idea that some people have -- that if you point out that there are collusions against you or your interests that you must necessarily be "paranoid". But actually the human mind functions in a way to create in groups and out groups. We naturally "conspire" with those whose identities we can identify with and we naturally alienate those who seem different in some way. It's so natural that we don't even realise we are doing this.
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