it a dangerous predator or just the wind? Well, if you believed it was a predator, but it was just the wind, youâve made a [false positive] error. But no problemâno big deal. On the other hand, if you believe the rustle in the grass was just the wind, and itâs actually a dangerous predator, youâre lunch. And so thereâs a high cost to making a [false negative] error. [Thus,] our default position is just to assume that all patterns are real. This is the evolution of âpatternicityâ or superstition. Thereâs been a natural selection in our cognitive processes of assuming that all patterns are real important phenomena. And weâre the descendants of the most successful patternicity primates.â
At the societal level, the âagenticityâ and âpatternicityâ Shermer describes have shaped the foundational myths that humans develop to infuse meaning into life: We take comfort from the idea that the randomness of human life, with all the attendant sorrows and catastrophes, is actually part of some master plan created by a (usually) unseen higher power. In the Western literary tradition, the prototype was Odysseus, a long-suffering pawn in a feud between the protective Athena and the malicious Poseidon. Aeneas was buffeted by similar divine intrigues on his way to founding Rome. Indeed, the whole arc of Greco-Roman mythology, and even the Bible stories that replaced it, is premised on the idea that human events are guided by mysterious supernatural agentsâconspiracy theories in robes and sandals.
In many cases, this conspiracist reflex has blended with tribalism, the human instinct that causes us to rally around our own kin groups, and demonize outsidersâespecially during times of conflict or crisis. The most venerable example is the blood libel against Jews that periodically gained a following in medieval European societies (and still pops up in Muslim countries), according to which Jews were accused of killing gentile children and using their blood for the production of their Passover matzos. Such anti-Semitic conspiracy theories have been around in recognizable form since at least the time of the Crusades, when bellicosity toward Muslims morphed into a more general form of religious xenophobia.
The Crusades also led to a second and distinct form of conspiracismâone directed toward the Knights Templar and similarly secretive groups of monk-warriors. While these holy legions originally were organized to fight in the Middle East, they eventually set up banks and commercial networks, and exerted a sometimes malign influence on domestic affairs. As Daniel Pipes wrote in his 1997 book Conspiracy : How The Paranoid Style Flourishes And Where It Comes From , the Knights Templar âhad a conspiratorial air about them . . . At the initiation ceremony, a candidate was told that âof our order you only see the surface which is the outside,â implying that something very secret took place behind closed doors. At the end of the initiation, each knight kissed the adept on the mouth, an act with obvious homosexual overtones . . . Together, the spectacular rise, great power, and grisly end of the Templars [at the hands of King Philip IV of France] turned them into a permanent feature of European conspiracy theories.â
By modern standards, these theories were simple narrativesâfolk tales for peasantsâthat purported to describe finite, localized plots against this or that monarch or town. But this began to change in the eighteenth century, as capitalism, industrialization, and urbanization transformed Europe. The French Revolution, in particular, demonstrated that a relatively small group of ideologically motivated radicals, armed with a universalist creed, could propel a state, and possibly even a whole continent, into mass upheaval. âIf French fears from 1725 of a âfamine plotâ to starve the country symbolize conspiracy theories
At the societal level, the âagenticityâ and âpatternicityâ Shermer describes have shaped the foundational myths that humans develop to infuse meaning into life: We take comfort from the idea that the randomness of human life, with all the attendant sorrows and catastrophes, is actually part of some master plan created by a (usually) unseen higher power. In the Western literary tradition, the prototype was Odysseus, a long-suffering pawn in a feud between the protective Athena and the malicious Poseidon. Aeneas was buffeted by similar divine intrigues on his way to founding Rome. Indeed, the whole arc of Greco-Roman mythology, and even the Bible stories that replaced it, is premised on the idea that human events are guided by mysterious supernatural agentsâconspiracy theories in robes and sandals.
In many cases, this conspiracist reflex has blended with tribalism, the human instinct that causes us to rally around our own kin groups, and demonize outsidersâespecially during times of conflict or crisis. The most venerable example is the blood libel against Jews that periodically gained a following in medieval European societies (and still pops up in Muslim countries), according to which Jews were accused of killing gentile children and using their blood for the production of their Passover matzos. Such anti-Semitic conspiracy theories have been around in recognizable form since at least the time of the Crusades, when bellicosity toward Muslims morphed into a more general form of religious xenophobia.
The Crusades also led to a second and distinct form of conspiracismâone directed toward the Knights Templar and similarly secretive groups of monk-warriors. While these holy legions originally were organized to fight in the Middle East, they eventually set up banks and commercial networks, and exerted a sometimes malign influence on domestic affairs. As Daniel Pipes wrote in his 1997 book Conspiracy : How The Paranoid Style Flourishes And Where It Comes From , the Knights Templar âhad a conspiratorial air about them . . . At the initiation ceremony, a candidate was told that âof our order you only see the surface which is the outside,â implying that something very secret took place behind closed doors. At the end of the initiation, each knight kissed the adept on the mouth, an act with obvious homosexual overtones . . . Together, the spectacular rise, great power, and grisly end of the Templars [at the hands of King Philip IV of France] turned them into a permanent feature of European conspiracy theories.â
By modern standards, these theories were simple narrativesâfolk tales for peasantsâthat purported to describe finite, localized plots against this or that monarch or town. But this began to change in the eighteenth century, as capitalism, industrialization, and urbanization transformed Europe. The French Revolution, in particular, demonstrated that a relatively small group of ideologically motivated radicals, armed with a universalist creed, could propel a state, and possibly even a whole continent, into mass upheaval. âIf French fears from 1725 of a âfamine plotâ to starve the country symbolize conspiracy theories
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