Another Deep Dive into Stupidity - Conspirituality

By Wayne Brown

This post includes links to great podcasts. I encourage you to follow the links to the podcasts. They are much more informative than anything I have to say about them.

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As COVID deaths in the US exceed 700,000, I continue my search for the source of widespread stupidity.

To state the obvious, stupidity sells.

I encountered this CBC podcast on the subject of "Conspirituality" - lovely term embracing the dog's breakfast of ideas promoted for commercial reasons that treat "mainstream" health measures (such as vaccines) as a kind of conspiracy against the individual who, instead, should be buying magic crystals, retaining semen or following some arcane practice rather than submitting to the awkward fact that good intentions and independent thinking will not save you from having a more or less run of the mill body and life.

Another lovely term from this podcast is "privatized religion". This refers to the fact that anybody with a measure of charisma** can take to YouTube and start what is, in effect, a religion for profit. At its heart, such religion must regard all the facts arrayed against it as a vast conspiracy (such as Youtube taking down anti-vax posts).

I often hear people say they are "religious" but reject "organized religion". While I am certainly skeptical of "organized religion", I think that disorganized religion is even worse. Especially the kind promoted for profit by a charismatic individual*

While you are at it, take a look at a compact and informative podcast from New York Times on the ivermectin issue. Previously softened up to believe anything, "conservatives" tend to believe that the vaccine is part of a huge conspiracy and ivermectin is being hushed up and suppressed by "them" - maybe Biden and his fellow cannibals. 


The CBC podcast shows how some specific "conspirituality" commercial religions are specifically linked to Q-Anon, the conspiracy theory animating the true believers of the Trump core.

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* I know, I know. Catholicism fits this description on a huge scale. So do all organized religions. People who abandon the grand conspiracy theories behind these religions fall into the arms of snake oil salesmen that simply sell them a more exciting alternate universe. There is nobody out there selling rationality or reasonable skepticism. In the supermarket of ideas, rationality has an obscure kiosk in the alley. 

** "Charisma" is performance art. For more on this, check here.

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