How to deconstruct Conspiracy Theories

There are people out there claiming that 5G might be causing the outbreak of the Coronavirus. I feel like I almost have to distance myself from these people to not be called a conspiracy theorist. Being a conspiracy theorist is becoming almost the worst thing you can be and when you want to explore the claim, you almost feel obligated to say “I don’t believe in conspiracy theories, but…”

Well, I don’t believe in conspiracy theories, but I want to give you my thoughts on the 5G claims. First let me brief you with my relationship with conspiracy theories.

I remember a documentary that came out in 2007. It was called Zeitgeist. It presented a number of conspiracy theories. It was well made and convincing and it did make me question the reality. I also remember watching a series called Ancient Aliens. I thought it was very interesting because I find the possibility of intelligent life on other planets fascinating. I often wondered what if they had visited us in the ancient past? Then again, life on other planets, may be very different from ours. It may be more advanced or less advanced. Maybe the fish on the nearest life supporting planet never came out of the water. Or maybe a natural disaster has wiped out all ape like creatures off the face of that planet? Maybe life on other planets evolves according to different rules?

Anyway, this leads me to my current position on conspiracy theories, or at least the position I’ve held for many years until recently. This position discredits all conspiracy theories equally. Whether they talk about the Moon landing being fake, 9/11 being an inside job or Tupac faking his own death. I have believed in some of these at some point before coming to a conclusion why conspiracy theories even exist. This is how I deconstructed conspiracy theories.

1. Human beings like certainty
2. Human beings don’t like randomness
3. Conspiracy theories attempt to explain significant events and tragedies (death of a celebrity, terrorist attack killing thousands)
4. Significant events and tragedies require matching explanations

So, let’s take 9/11 as an example. The official narrative is that the planes were hijacked by a group of terrorists from Afghanistan and they flew the planes into World Trade Centre towers. The conspiracy theorists question this version claiming it was an inside job. They say that the US government was behind the attacks in order to get public’s approval to go to war in the Middle East. This was at least the theory at the time. A theory that gained a lot of followers, called 9/11 truthers, which was not a compliment to say the least.

September 11 provides us with a significant event – the terrorist attack. Now, to believe it was committed by some Afghan men who live in the dessert somewhere, God knows where, is to accept a scary reality of uncertainty and randomness. It would mean that evil exists in the world. It is random and unpredictable, therefore unpreventable. It can strike at any time and we don’t know when. It means that these Afghan men can do it again, we don’t know their next move and their next target. We don’t know what they look like, we don’t know what they really want. We don’t like this uncertainty. We do however like to “know”. We like to know who really pulls the strings. We like certainty so instead we put a face on this invisible enemy. In case of 9/11 it was the US government. Maybe even President Bush. Now we know. Now we have a matching explanation. Instead of some barbarians living in caves, we have a powerful and capable institution responsible for this event. We now have a face to direct our anger at. We can watch their moves and hope that if only we can expose them, we will be safe again. We can’t expose or stop the Middle Eastern terrorists because there will always be more of them than we can defeat. But if we just dethrone our corrupt government, we will not live in fear anymore. The significant and tragic event required power, in other words, not untraceable religious fanatics.

Twenty years later, George W. Bush still walks free and being a 9/11 truther means you are a crazy person. You can find out what the truthers have to say about it and how they question the official rapports and make up your own mind.

Before I move on to my most recent take on conspiracy theories, let me mention one tragedy that took place in 2010 in Smolensk. It also involved a plane. It carried 96 people on board including the Polish president, his wife and many major Polish politicians. They were going to meet with the Russian leaders in Katyn. The plane crashed in Smolensk and left no survivors. I know about this because I am Polish and the whole country mourned this tragedy. The world leaders of course sent their condolences and the world media covered it for a while, the rest of the world carried on as normal. Among us Poles, conspiracy theories started to emerge to the surface. We blamed the Russians. There was a video of the crash site. Some people claimed they could hear a gun going off. They claimed that the Russians were finishing off the survivors and that this whole crash had been planned. “You can hear the gun shots!” was the common phrase of the time. Now this may well be true…. Or it was just a tragedy. Planes don’t crash very often, but every now and then, they do. It could have been an execution though. Maybe not by the Russians. Maybe it was an inside job. I don’t think I buy the gun shots thing though. I’ll have to revisit this whole story. But the reason I mention this and the fact that the theory formed in Poland while the rest of the world moved on is that it was a significant event for Poland, not UK or America so they had no emotional reasons to question the official reports. For Polish people, however, this was a huge deal, especially since it involved Russians who I guess we never forgave for “saving” us from Nazi Germany with their Communism.

As you see this was only significant to Poland, so the conspiracy theory was created and contained within Polish borders. The idea that planes sometimes crash was not good enough to explain the tragedy. It was easier to put a powerful and corrupt face on it and hope to expose it to never live in fear again. This goes to show that conspiracy theories will surround any event big enough for those emotionally invested in it. That’s why 9/11 touched the whole world because United States is the most powerful country in the world. Smolensk affected a small European country and so the rest of the world wasn’t interested in “finding the truth”.

I believe you can use this approach to any conspiracy theory. Or at least I believed it until recently. I still want to be careful about what I say here because it seems like the moment I say I might believe there is some truth to at least some of the theories, most of you will turn off and think I am one of those lunatics. Bear with me on this.

What happened to Journalism?

Apparently, the term “Conspiracy Theory” was invented by the CIA after the assassination of JFK. It was an attempt to silence and ridicule those who questioned the official investigation. Today, everyone has internet. In a way, everyone can ask questions and investigate for themselves. Whatever it might be, everyone can create a website and be a journalist who is asking questions. This is what journalism should be like – trying to find out the truth even if it means questioning the authority and digging deep. With that in mind, everyone with access to internet, can investigate so I guess my question is: At what point does investigation and curious journalism become a conspiracy theory? As soon as it questions the mainstream narrative and gains too much attention, seems to be the answer.

Asking myself this question and seeing how mainstream media attempt to ridicule those who are curious, made me question my approach to the idea of conspiracy theory. I am not saying I suddenly believe all of them but let’s think about it for a minute.

Thousands of journalists investigate, ask questions and try to find the truth, why shouldn’t we at least entertain the idea that they might be asking valid questions? I guess what I am trying to ask is, what happened to the curious journalist following a hunch or a lead even if sometimes it’s a dead end? What happened to the journalist we often see in the movies? That journalist who wants to expose the truth. This journalist seems to have been sacked by the mainstream media. Where did he go then? Maybe this journalist went on the internet where he was free to follow a lead? Maybe we should at least listen to him and decide what the evidence is instead of being told what to think?

In my opinion, the media is like Peter Parker. Peter worked for Daily Bugle and he was the provider of the best pictures of Spider-Man. Of course the only reason why that was, is because he was Spider-Man so he was just pretending to be a good photographer and journalist. In reality he was staging it all. He was providing the pictures but they were not what they were sold as. They were just selfies believed to be a real action Spider-Man pictures. This in essence is what the media has been doing and it’s not even a conspiracy theory anymore. They have been exposed to stage protests to push their political agenda, they take words out of context and they often exaggerate events to make sure people tune in for more. I’ve seen this picture of one journalist reporting from a flooded urban area and he was kneeling in the water to make it look like it was worse than it was while his camera man was next to him and the water was barely up to his waist.

This brings me to coronavirus. There seems to be a growing number of people believing there is more to it than we are led to believe. I won’t get into all this. It’s a story for another time. What I want to talk about is the 5G and its connection to the outbreak of COVID19. There are people who believe there actually is no COVID19. There are also those who believe 5G causes the disease. There are also those who are quick to debunk those people. I don’t know what to believe. On one hand we have people asking questions, on the other people who may or may not have an agenda, debunking and ridiculing those 5G conspiracy theorists. All I know is people are asking questions. They are researching and following a hunch which might be a dead end or not. I also know that at this point I do not want to blindly believe anything the media tells me. Not after how quickly they dropped the Jeffrey Epstein case. They reported on it for a week or two and then settled for the official story and moved on to reporting on fires in the Amazon which by the way happen every year so there was nothing special about them. Still it seems to have worked because it got our eyes off the Epstein case and nobody asked anymore questions. “This Jeffrey Epstein guy sure knew a lot of rich and powerful people and looks like they all liked to spend time on his island. His suicide sure looks very suspicious but oh hey, look there is fire in the Amazon! Quick, get Leonardo DiCaprio and let’s make it a huge deal so people think this is important, so we don’t have to report on that Epstein guy anymore!”

At least this is what it seemed like. And this is why we should ask questions or listen to those who ask them and want to find the answers. It may not turn out to be true but at least we can think for ourselves.

Just an Ape surrounded by 5G towers

Humans have lived on this planet for 6 million years. That’s a very long time, most of which has been uneventful in terms of adaptations of humans to their environment. It is believed that for a significant part of that time there lived a number of species of Human until our current form, Homo Sapiens was the only one left. We claimed more territory and drove other species like Neanderthals to extinction or maybe we were better at adapting to climate. Maybe we were able to leave more offspring. Who really knows? War was probably significant in making us the only one left standing. A book called Sapiens – A Brief History of Humankind by Yuval Noah Harrari illustrates just how it all happened and what has led to where we are today as species and societies so I am not going to get too much into it because I might misrepresent some of the facts and theories but it is nonetheless a fascinating subject.

Even if we focus entirely on us – the last standing species of Humans, then we are still looking at species that is at least 300 thousand years old. Another book called Tribe by Sebastian Junger focuses on how even though we live in big cities, we are still very much equipped with a mind of our ancient ancestors who lived in small tribes. They hunted together. They ate together. They looked after each other too without having to rely on the state to take care of them when they are sick like we do in the modern world. The book also mentions that a genetic adaptation in humans takes 25 thousand years. I would imagine it may even take longer now considering how many people live in earth currently. Adaptation can only happen by having offspring with the best possible candidates. That’s why I believe it is easier and quicker for many animals to adapt to the challenges their species face. There is less of them and only those with superior genes get to mate and leave offspring. Humans don’t have that luxury since we are spread all across the globe and we often mate with the best candidates in our local community which means the superior genes required to create superior offspring that is say, resistant to certain disease, might never find each other. If you’re interested in this subject, I recommend “The Red Queen” by Matt Ridley. It goes in depth on how genes act and what they really want.

You might be wondering why I’m talking about all this. Well, I am not a scientist. I have an interest in anthropology and evolution but that’s as far as it goes. Still, I believe what I am about to say makes sense.

For 6 million years, evolution has shaped human body and behaviour. The environment we lived in, our habits, behaviour, diet, nutrition, mating preferences, they all shaped who we are today as species. Just like each individual lion or zebra are the product of their evolution that took millions of years. A Lion raised by humans, still knows how to be a lion. A Zebra that’s never seen a lion, knows to run from one when it sees it. Behaviour is passed on just like the stripes or strength. Humans have lived in pretty much the same conditions for 6 million years until they decided to explore the world some hundreds of thousands years ago. They still travelled and settled in small tribes and hunted and gathered. All this time evolution enforces their lifestyle and their lifestyle enforces evolution. 6 million years of no air pollution, no chemicals, no electricity, no oil, no processed food, no vaccines and no 5G towers. Instead for millions of years they lived surrounded by nature and had access to clean water.

Even if we only look at Homo Sapiens, we are still looking at 300 thousand years of living in small tribes with no technology as we know it today. I bet many individual birds have died when we erected the first skyscrapers and towers and started flying. Birds had to adapt quite quick to living in cities. I am sure many have died and those we see today are the descendants of those who were successful in both surviving and breeding. I believe many species of birds went extinct purely because of not being able to adapt quick enough to surviving in cities. When was the last time you saw a bright and colourful bird in London or New York?

How does this relate to us? Well the technology is a very recent invention and the modern technology is even more recent. Mobile phones are less than thirty years old. Smart phones are less than 20 years old. 3G, 4G and 5G are even younger. Vaccines have existed for less than a blink of an eye comparing to immune system. I’m not saying vaccines are bad, but I am saying that we are all descendants of those who lived through and were immune to diseases. Of course, everyone wants their kids to be healthy so they will vaccinate them. In social terms, that’s reasonable way to think about it. In evolutionary terms, it’s a bad idea because if we rely purely on vaccines and not immune system then we will not leave offspring that will be immune to the disease. Some theories suggest that birds choose each other based on their immunity to diseases. They can tell by choosing partners with the brightest colours. When researches artificially upgraded the male’s colour, females chose to mate with them regardless if these males were actually immune to a disease or not. Vaccines can have the same effect if we purely rely on them for health at least when Bill Gates talks about vaccinating the whole world leaving no room for immune system to do its magic as it has been for the last 6 million years.

Now to the 5G. If you watch the interview on londonreal.tv where Brian Rose interviews Dr. Kaufman, you will see what the 5G theory really is. It doesn’t suggest that 5G causes COVID19. It purely says that it can cause other complications including compromising our immune system. It would make total sense if you think about our evolution and adaptations we have gone through over the last millions of years and the fact that a single adaptations takes roughly 25 thousand years. There’s been simply no time for us to adapt to current technology or lifestyle. Our brains are suffering because they haven’t evolved to live in big cities and away from our families. Our mental health is at stake because we haven’t evolved to see our close relatives through computer screen. Technological progress is just happening too quick and our evolution is too slow. If last time we had a tiny adaptation was 25 thousand years ago then we will have to slow down the technological progress to the minimum over the next, say 100 thousand years for our bodies and mind to catch up… or at least catch a breath. It’s perfectly fine to assume then that something as recent as 5G can have negative effect on us even if not directly causing illness. The truth is, it hasn’t been around for long enough for us to test the pros and cons so completely discrediting the people who suggest it may not be that good for us as “conspiracy theorists” is harmful in my opinion. These questions need to be both asked and answered.

It is safe to assume that a cow kept in captivity, in a small cage only to be slaughtered for meat is living in huge stress. It is still a cow though. It has no freedom t move around, it is denied living to its full evolutionary potential. It is still a cow though. A cow that evolved to be free, breed and live offspring. Everyone knows it whether you are an animal rights activist or if you eat meat. It is still a cow though. This can be said about 5G. We didn’t evolve around 5G towers. We evolved around trees and water. For millions of years they were the only environment we knew. Suddenly, and it is very sudden, we have to be quick to adapt to cities, social media, smart phones, plastic, pollution and 5G towers and these things haven’t existed long enough for the slow process of evolution to adapt.

This is why I believe concerns about 5G need to continue to be raised. There might be nothing to worry about. It’s worth checking though especially since there is more and more experts coming out explaining how 5G may actually be not good for us. Dr. Kaufman who I mentioned earlier is a good example. He is a literate and educated man who knows what he is talking about. Furthermore, we see more and more content being censored and banned purely for mentioning 5G and COVID19 connection and this is something that should raise our suspicions. I might be wrong about all this though.