What Have the Illuminati Ever Done for Us?!

Quite a lot actually!

Me and conspiracy theories go way back.

I still recall the summer of ‘99 and being on a flight back to London from Yaounde, Cameroon, where I’d just undergone the infamous Bwiti Initiation ritual. My travelling companion, Adam, closed the book he was reading and passed it to me, saying “Here, you need to read this.”

The book was David Icke’s “The Truth Shall Set You Free.” And turning the first page marked the beginning of my descent into the great rabbit hole of modern-day conspiracy theories. Being still somewhat out of it, from the flood dose of Tabernanthe iboga that I’d consumed in the Cameroonian bush, I think I fell even deeper and faster than Alice.

I emerged from the rabbit hole some three or four years later, considerably wiser about the world and also much more aware of my personal trip with authority.

I had learned how to spot a likely conspiracy theory, as opposed to something more objective. I learned the “tells” that give it away, like one of those guys who monitors the table cameras in Las Vegas, spotting clients who try to cheat the house.

• Tell #1 - Confirmation Bias. Selecting only those pieces of evidence about a scenario that fit the desired interpretation, and ignoring those that point to a different conclusion.

• Tell #2 - Extreme Joint Enterprise. The theory requires the collusion of so many people that it becomes unwieldy and one cannot realistically imagine anyone being able to organise it.

• Tell #3 - Creative Retrofitting. Good conspiracy theorists are masters at this technique, constantly altering their theories to match what is going on in the world and thus making it seem as though they had all along been predicting the current situation.

• Tell #4 - The ‘One Bad Guy’ Scenario. Selecting for “single agent causation” over more complex possibilities, or emergence. There is evidence from the field of evolutionary psychology that, under stress, we are wired to select simplistic theories that point to one, negative actor. And to reject more complex interpretations. This helps rabbits avoid predators but leaves us prone to believe in conspiracies.

• Tell #5 - Naive Fantasy. An implicit belief that humanity would be “just fine” were it not for these evil conspirators who are constantly plotting to enslave us. This belief allows any negative actors to be seen as supremely bad, as opposed to simply being on a continuum. The belief seems to be akin to the Myth of the Happy Primitive, perhaps popular with people who never had a chance to really play as kids.

I want to say that all the above by no means excludes the possibility of conspiracies existing. It is merely to point out that human evolution has furnished us with a brain that will at times lead us to adopt beliefs that are highly irrational.

And so to the title of this piece and the questions it engenders.

• Could there be an Illuminati and could they be controlling us all?

• Or could there be an Illuminati and could they be doing something useful?

• Or don’t they exist at all?

I think a useful point to examine is the contention that underpins many conspiracy theories - that humanity would be better off without any bad guys manipulating and seeking to control us. There seems to be this assumption that we would both be happy and that we could evolve and develop without challenging situations coming into our lives. I would deeply contest this notion. I see essentially zero evidence that it might be true.

How I see us humans is that we are basically apes, only walking upright and with less hair. We like comfort. We like to chill and laze around. We like to chase after sex and food and we like to fight each other. We like to posture and to make out that we are of higher status than others around us.

All this we do, not because we’re dumb, but because our brain evolved in an environment where those abilities were selected for.

It is only through living in conditions where we were acutely challenged, for millennia, that we developed more intelligence. It is only because the hardware of our brain could adapt to run new symbol-based programs, via exaptation, that we could create new worldviews and thus new technology.

What I’m trying to say is that I think it is childlike to imagine that humanity could develop to the degree that it has without colossal ongoing adaptive pressure. We would not have made it this far. And, when I look around me, I think we still have quite some distance to travel. Meaning we will need an awful lot more challenges yet.

All that we have achieved, we have achieved through facing challenges. Without significant childhood trauma, there wouldn’t be the ones who developed huge self-awareness because of it and could thus come to understand psychology.

Without manipulation, deception, lying and abuse, we wouldn’t have developed a respect for clarity, honesty and uprightness.

Everything bad that has happened to us, thus far, has finally had a positive outcome.

Once the childish fantasy that we would be “just fine” without challenge, horror, misery, poverty and corruption can be dropped, then we are ready to be adults. We are ready to accept the utter limitations of where we have come from and the need for colossal, ongoing challenge.

To be honest, I don’t know if there is an Illuminati or not. It actually would not surprise me to learn that there are. And, if they should turn out to be real, then all I can say is that they’ve been doing a pretty good job so far.