What do conspiracy theories say about this moment in history?

A myth is not synonymous with a fantasy or delusion, says American philosopher Charles Eisenstein. Myths are vehicles of symbolic (not literal) truth. Underneath their literal interpretations, they convey important information about society.

Classical Greek myths seem like lighthearted stories until decoded symbolically, with each god representing a psychosocial force. Myths are the truth about the psyche or society in story form. A myth’s truthfulness does not depend on whether it is scientifically verifiable.

The “arch-conspiracy theory” of this age is one such myth: an evil gang of insiders “deliberately pulls the strings” of major governments, corporations, the media, the intelligence services, the banks, etc. Basically: we are lied to and controlled by malicious forces.

This myth expresses the profound disconnect between the personas of our leaders and their true motivations, something we sense collectively. Political culture is opaque to the ordinary citizen: “a world of secrecy, image, PR, spin, narrative management, and information warfare."

Many understand that our current system is in many ways anti-life. So why does most of humanity comply with a system that drives Earth and humankind to ruin? There must be some “inhuman power” that has us in its grip, many intuit.  

Whether conspiracies are true or not, locating this evil power in a group of malevolent people or deliberately crafted systems or ideologies is easy. This is because we have someone to blame in a familiar us-versus-them narrative in a world of otherwise unexplainable horrors.

Every person is captive to a mythology. Society itself participates in what Eisenstein calls the myth of Separation: “me separate from you, matter separate from spirit, human separate from nature;" we must dominate our competitors and master nature. 

In this story, progress is an increase in our capacity to control the Other. The Separation myth paints history and progress as a linear ascent from one triumph to the next. It motivates the conquest of nature and turning everything into money–no deliberate conspiracy necessary.

War mentality still saturates society. Each side uses the same formula: exterminate the Other, the enemy. We exhaust ourselves in a tug-of-war that never ends, not suspecting that this formula itself perpetuates the same things it is trying to stop.

Bottom line: By dismissing adherents to alternative narratives as ignorant, we mistake a symptom for cause. The cause is loss of trust in the system. The popularity of conspiracies is a sign that something deeper is not well with our world.