My many more suspicious friends often ask me why I don’t suscribe to the many conspiracy theories they try to convince me about.
Right now, as England hovers on the brink of finally coming out of Covid social restrictions, many of my friends are frantic that the rise of the Delta variant is going to be used as an excuse to keep us all restricted for longer. They believe there is some big conspiracy to do us all harm in some way.
It’s the same with all the conspiracy theories. Somehow “big government”, “big pharma”, “big agriculture”, in the end, big brother of some description, is trying to do us all harm.
The bit I never quite manage to get out of them is … to what end? Is there some murky elite somewhere who are somehow getting off on making us all suffer?
Frankly, that’s a world-view that is just so depressing to me that if it was true, I’d rather not be around.
Don’t get me wrong, it’s not that I think governments, big business, or the banks get it right all the time. They don’t, in fact they make some colossal cock-ups.
But I choose not to believe that when they get it wrong, it’s because they hate me and want to hurt me. As far as I’m concerned, everybody on the planet is doing what they believe is for the best, for the world they want to be part of. Sure, they may not be actively seeking to help me specifically, I may even be entirely irrelevant to them.
I choose to believe that the vast majority of humanity wants a happy world for everyone, and I simply cannot see the point of assuming anything different. How would it serve me to spend my entire life angry at some faceless “them” that’s out to get me?
So instead, I choose to assume everyone’s acting with good intent, that when they do things that don’t work out well, it’s because they didn’t think it through.
Maybe I’m naïve. But I’m a whole lot happier than most conspiracy theorists I know!