Conspiracy theories have gone mainstream

What to believe these days?!

In this chaotic world, people are opting out of listening to the government and the media, questioning the information we are being fed, seeking alternative sources of “truth”, and relying on their intuition and their close friends for perspective on the world. There is so much distrust in the situations we currently face, that even I have started to build up my suspicions.

Now I am one of those people who wants to trust in the world that I live in, that our leaders are working for the benefit of all and not in for their self-interests, that businesses are creating value to us not just in it for profit, that the messages we have been told are for our greater good... and that generally everything is going to work out just fine! It’s a nice feeling, to feel safe that everything is above board. Maybe I am gullible, maybe I am a sheep, but I enjoy feeling a level of safety in my life. But this blind trusting has got me into situations where I have been scammed, or got into abusive relationships where I’ve accepted being treated badly and gaslit, or I’ve followed a career path that was encouraged as it is ‘professional’ but completely not right for me. So I’ve had to fine tune my ability to spot red flags when things just aren’t right and to follow my own truth.

When I read stories about new variants, lockdowns, vaccine passports and especially about new rules around controlling our behaviour, in the past I would have swallowed it all up, but these days I have a niggling feeling that something isn’t quite right. For example, people who are unvaccinated have the same likelihood of spreading COVID as people who are vaccinated, so why are they not allowed in restaurants? They are not causing it to spread. The reason we want to vaccinate everyone is so that when people catch the virus they are less likely to be hospitalised, sure, but why are European countries taking away people’s basic rights to travel and go out, so that they are less likely to die in the event of catching the virus? Surely it is the individual’s decision about that?

All I see now in news stories is the spread of FEAR. I am shocked when I see how much people’s mental health has suffered these past 2 years. Fear brings about anxiety and stress, which makes people frightened of life. I refuse to live in a fear state, I want to live my precious life in this beautiful world full of love, acceptance, joy and higher levels of consciousness. I want us to come together in community, connect with each other, feel free, and be kind to each other. But I see division, as opinions and beliefs differ: those who accept the rules, and those who reject them. However, there is no compromise when the rules are set for a 100% compliance to one way of acting. We are heading for a split society, and a world full of people full of fear on one side, or distrust on the other.

Is something sinister is going on…?

We were once told smoking was good for our health, our ancestors used to eat healthy whole foods yet we switched to processed / poor quality foods in fancy packaging sold by brands, our health system is based on fixing the symptoms with drugs rather than going back to root causes / changing our lifestyles, fossil fuel lobbyists have denied climate change, we found out that there never were WMD in Iraq, I could go on… So many things we are told to sign up to and believe has been proven wrong later on down the line.

I’ve never really got engaged with politics much as I find it ugly, a pantomime, so much in-fighting, arguing, corruption, and really I feel there’s not much I can do to make an impact, all I can do is anxiously sit and watch all the madness. I feel powerless to it all, and prefer to put my energy into things I can affect. Then there is the information we are being fed: we are being constantly conditioned, nudged and psychologically manipulated all the time by adverts, magazines, newspapers, social media. Add in that other peoples opinions around you, who want you to think like them, your close friends & family, your colleagues and your extended circles. We have a desire to belong, to fit in with our tribe, and I know that my whole life I have been swayed by other people’s opinions on how ‘to do’ life.

We are not born on this planet knowing what is going on. We learn as we go along — from school, parents, friends, books, TV, media sources etc. All of these information sources are fed into us to make up our view of reality in this human life of ours. A lot of education was missed out at school, such as how to navigate our emotional and mental health, and our teachers concentrated their efforts on the development of our rational brains. No-one’s parents are perfect, they also fed us warped information, that is why I am a strong believer in that it takes a village to raise a child. There comes a point where you have to stop and think, HANG ON, what is true here, what is right? We need to critically access everything! With all the stories that I am being bombarded with, the censorship of free speech (I know loads of people being blocked on social media for posting opinions that are ‘not allowed’), the division of sides, I am going back to what I CAN trust — and that is my body. Going in. What feels right and what doesn’t? I am strengthening my intuition muscle more and more, because without it I feel lost in this whirlwind of conflicting information. And yet it seems controversial to trust my intuition, I feel I would be laughed at to trust my own instincts above what ‘other people’ want me to believe.

So back to the topic, what can we believe in, who to trust? We live in an age of distrust and fake news, which is unsettling. People want something that they can believe in. Suddenly an outspoken person on YouTube is making more sense than your usual newspaper. A charismatic speaker comes along and has compelling evidence that there is something else at play, and people start resonating with them… so they start rejecting the mainstream media and politicians. Especially when so many things in the world are broken.

And in a world of distrust and not knowing what to believe, it is worrying to say that conspiracy theories are now having their heyday.