#75 Musings Beyond the Bunker (Thursday July 1)
Good morning!
Conspiracy. An interesting spin comes from, of all things, a book review in The New Yorker. The book (which I have not read) is The Haunting of Alma Fielding, a study of a housewife in nineteen-thirties London, who claimed to be tormented by poltergeist and other such strange phenomena. The housewife and her claims were studied by Nandor Fodor, a parapsychologist. Kate Summerscale, the author of this book, studies the “craze for Spiritualism” as reflective of the lost lives in World War I, fears of rising fascism.
Summerscale notes that “The nation’s phantoms were distractions from anxiety, expressions of anxiety, symptoms of a nervous age.”
There seems a curious parallel to our current times—when the search for extra-terrestrial life is on the uptick, conspiracy theories abound and doubts about our values, our neighbors, and our place within the grand plan increasingly indicate an anxious populace. We are both fearful of the future—and the “other”—and increasingly view our own beliefs as the side of “right” against a value-less “wrong.”
Could it be that, after assaults on our democracy, years of declining real wages, an increasing wealth gap, multiple instances of killings by police, countless mass shootings, a pandemic, and increased focus on guns as a way of “protecting oneself,” we now are deeply in a “nervous age,” consumed by expressions of anxiety?
And with that anxiety comes a desire to explain the sources of that anxiety through means that reduce the vastness and complexity of problems into a simple, easily consumed, theory. Human beings struggle for a “unifying theme” to anything that they don’t understand and/or fear. This fear leads to the search for theories to “explain it all,” whether rational or not.
Enter QAnon, Tucker Carlson, and all the nut-jobs who spread lies and absurd theories, preying on people’s desire for easy answers (ironically, despite the complexity of the claims of simplicity).
GLUTTONS FOR PUNISHMENT
If you want to read back blogs, here’s the link. Note the great artwork that the very talented Vendela Hyde (who is helping me) has added: https://musingsbeyondthebunker.substack.com/
Have a great day,
Glenn