January 28th, 2021
Want to hear my conspiracy?
I just finished doing a read-through of The Invisibles, Grant Morrison’s hugely-influential, extremely 90’s comic book series about a secret war between those who fight for freedom and those who fight for control; for truth and for lies; for subjective good and for subjective evil.
It operates under the question: what if every conspiracy theory is actually true?
As I tagged along with this ragtag cell of psychic operatives, I simultaneously started thinking about the 90’s itself, and the paranoia it successfully stoked, most notably in series like The X-Files and films like The Matrix (whose creators have cited The Invisibles as a major influence).
These works were all based on a singular theme: never stop questioning your reality.
Which, at its core, is the human theme. There isn’t anything inherently unhealthy about asking questions.
Or is there?
We’re now a few decades along on this particular path where paranoia and pop culture merged in a very significant way. Groups like QAnon have preyed on severe, indoctrinated distrust, and folks who were taught that the truth is out there are now determined that the truth is anywhere but what is right in front of their face.
The stunning revelation here is that in almost all these examples, the heroes are trying to prevent the end of the world as we know it, and the only way they can do it is by exposing the “truth.”
But what happens when the asking of questions becomes the final stage? What happens when a person decides that there are no real answers or, even worse, there are only subjective answers — the only thing that can be right is the thing that I believe to be right.
Well, that brings me to my conspiracy theory.
My theory is that people refusing to accept objective truth isn’t the way we’re going to save the world. In fact, it’s quite the opposite: the rise of conspiracy theories will be the end of everything we know.
(So what I’m asking you is this: please help save the world with me.)
The Den 