Stuff is changing in the world. This seems clear to me.
I think, 5 years ago, I assumed that the forces of government were corrupt and incompetent to a degree. But that they likely got most stuff right and that there thus was no need for me to be bothered with the world of geopolitics.
But, in 2021, coming out of the Covid times and with me starting to travel outside of the West, that changed. And I ended up going on a deep journey of trying to understand the underlying power dynamics of the world I inhabited. Having been a raging conspiracy theorist growing up, I was aware of how easy it is to form inaccurate models of how the world functions, and to be absolutely convinced that they are correct. So I understood the value of dispassionate analysis.
I still crash dialectically, in classic Hegelian style, from conspiracy to objectivity. But each time I do so, I seem to ricochet back to a deeper centre.
Two years down the line, after a lot of reading and podcasts, it seems pretty clear to me how the power-base of the West actually does function.
It’s a Blob.
And it’s composed of an uneasily-nested coalition of nation state governments, quasi-governmental think-tanks, corporate interests and rich idealists. Each has its own agenda. Each has its own lobbyists.
All these agents and their lobbyists exist together as a form of coalesced Blob. And they all nudge each other in the direction that they want the Blob to move in. Inevitably, much of the nudging cancels other nudging out and so no overall movement takes place. But, when enough players happen to nudge in the same direction, then the Blob moves. And we, the people, are dragged along in its wake.
There may be times when certain players feel little need to nudge. Their agenda seems to be progressing quietly along and they can have a rest.
There may also be players who have a high degree of clout with the media. If they choose to make use of this power, they can stir up the general population, outside of the Blob, to also try and nudge it in their chosen direction.
There may further be players who have been chilling for a while, confident that all was going to plan, who are suddenly awoken from this siesta by the realisation that the playing field is rapidly changing. In panic, they may utilise their clout with other players or the media to try and drive the Blob back in the direction they wish it to go.
In considering how regular citizens might meaningfully push back against the direction of the Blob, an issue immediately arises.
It is it is not easy to oppose a Blob. Our mind cannot even form meaningful images of trying to do so. In our evolutionary history, we never fought Blobs. We fought wild animals. We fought bad guys.
And so the conspiracy theory enters the mix.
It is far easier to engage with a narrative that features a clearly defined bad-guy, rather than a very vaguely defined Blob.
Bad-guys stir our emotional system to life. They trigger us in a way that Blobs cannot. “Bad guy” governments, corporations or billionaires make ideal vessels onto which we can project all our submerged feelings around power, control, authority and hierarchies.
Few of us experienced a childhood authority figure from whom we felt love as well as control. And so we will inevitably have developed behaviours to help us cope with being told what to do. We inevitably have a lot of suppressed anger and pain around power, authority and hierarchies.
So, during a time when the Blob’s behaviour appears to be rapidly changing, conspiracy theories will inevitably abound.
As conspiracy narratives concerning one of the players in the Blob mount in the public mind, attributing all the bad things going on to this agent alone, so this player - be they an individual, a nation state or whoever - has a couple of choices.
They may choose to withdraw into the background and, in future, act only through lobbyists who do not on the surface appear to directly represent them.
Or they may use their own power to try to get the Blob to stop the conspiracy narrative from gaining more traction, via censorship or changes in freedom of speech principles.
Into all the above we must of course add the electoral process. Maintaining the image of democratic freedom gives the Blob a considerable mandate to act in the world, whilst also allowing it to mask its very existence.
The Blob is the true nature of the Western power-base. Engaging with it is a kind of higher-dimensional chess, where it becomes increasingly difficult to predict the outcome of any given action one makes.