Conspiracy Theories That Turned Out To Be True
This Is Your Brain on Kafka
| Your brain gets a good workout contemplating things that don’t make sense. Many people have a hard time figuring out geonomics, so it should be good for them to try. Another good mental exercise might be to consider if “conspiracy theories” are ever right. We trim, blend, and append two 2009 articles from (1) Miller Mc-Cune, Sept 16 (later at AlterNet), on absurdities by Tom Jacobs and (2) New World Order, Dec 18, on conspiracies by Jonathan Elinoff. |
by Tom Jacobs and by Jonathan Elinoff
- This Is Your Brain on Kafka
Absurdist literature, it appears, stimulates our brains.
That's the conclusion of a study recently published in the journal Psychological Science. Psychologists Travis Proulx of the University of California, Santa Barbara and Steven Heine of the University of British Columbia report our ability to find patterns is stimulated when we are faced with the task of making sense of an absurd tale. What's more, this heightened capability carries over to unrelated tasks.
In the first of two experiments, 40 participants (all Canadian college undergraduates) read one of two versions of a Franz Kafka story, The Country Doctor. In the first version, which was only slightly modified from the original, "the narrative gradually breaks down and ends abruptly after a series of non sequiturs," the researchers write. "We also included a series of bizarre illustrations that were unrelated to the story."
The second version contained extensive revisions to the original. The non sequiturs were removed, and a "conventional narrative" was added, along with relevant illustrations.
All participants were then shown a series of 45 strings of letters, which they were instructed to copy. They were informed that the strings, which consisted of six to nine letters, contained a strict but not easily decipherable pattern.
They were then introduced to a new set of letter strings, some of which followed the pattern and some of which did not. They were asked to mark which strings followed the pattern.
Those who had read the absurd story selected a higher number of strings as being consistent with the pattern. More importantly, they "demonstrated greater accuracy in identifying the genuinely pattern-congruent letter strings," the researchers report. This suggests "the cognitive mechanisms responsible for implicitly learning statistical regularities" are enhanced when we struggle to find meaning in a fragmented narrative.
In a second study, participants were asked to recall situations in which they responded in very different ways, and instructed to consider the notion "that they had two different selves inhabiting the same body." They, too, did better on the letter-pattern task than members of a control group. "The breakdown of expected associations that participants experienced when arguing against their own self-unity appeared to motivate them to seek out patterns of association in a novel environment," the researchers write.
To Proulx and Heine, these finds suggest we have an innate tendency to impose order upon our experiences and create what they call "meaning frameworks." Any threat to this process will "activate a meaning-maintenance motivation that may call upon any other available associations to restore a sense of meaning," they write.
So it appears Viktor Frankl was right: Man is perpetually in search of meaning, and if a Kafkaesque work of literature seems strange on the surface, our brains amp up to dig deeper and discover its underlying design. Which, all things considered, is a hell of a lot better than waking up and discovering you've turned into a giant cockroach.
JJS: If your brain is limbered up, here’s some history that part of our brains wished never happened. Probably you’ve already heard that theorists were right about the Gulf of Tonkin, the BCCI, and the Iran-Contras-cocaine link. Here’s some intrigues you may have missed:
- Conspiracy Theories That Turned Out To Be True
Some were proven in congressional hearings, others through investigative journalism, and many were admitted to by those involved.
The Business Plot: In 1933, group of wealthy businessmen that allegedly included Senator Prescott Bush tried to recruit Marine Corps Major General Smedley Butler to lead a military coup against President FDR and install a fascist dictatorship in the United States. Smedley spilled the beans to a congressional committee in 1934. Everyone he accused of being a conspirator vehemently denied it. Still, the House McCormack-Dickstein Committee did acknowledge the existence of the conspiracy.
MK-ULTRA: In the 1950s to the 1970s, the CIA sought a "truth serum". Test subjects were given drugs, often without consent, and some were tortured. At least one man died as a result of the experiments. The project was finally exposed after investigations by the Rockefeller Commission.
Operation Northwoods: In the early 1960s, American military leaders drafted plans to create public support for a war against Cuba by committing acts of terrorism, killing innocent people and U.S. soldiers, and hijacking planes. The plans were all approved by the Joint Chiefs of Staff, but were reportedly rejected by the civilian leadership.
Testimony of Nayirah: A 15-year-old girl testified before Congress that she had seen Iraqi soldiers pulling Kuwaiti babies from incubators, causing them to die. The testimony helped gain public support for the 1991 Gulf War. The public relations firm Hill & Knowlton, which was in the employ of Citizens for a Free Kuwait, had arranged the testimony. Daughter of Kuwaiti ambassador to the USA, Nayirah had taken acting lessons on request of the CIA. Congressman Tom Lantos was hosting Nayirah and popularizing her allegations.
For more details and more exposés:
http://www.newworldorderreport.com/Articles/tabid/266/ID/980/33-Conspiracy-Theories-That-Turned-Out-To-Be-True-What-Every-Person-Should-Know.aspx
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Jeffery J. Smith runs the Forum on Geonomics.
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