I believed, therefore I spoke,
“I am greatly afflicted.”
I said in my haste,
“All men are liars.” (Psalm 116:10-11)
I felt a bit triggered today when I saw someone casually mention the 9/11 attacks were an inside job. Were Bin Laden and his disciples bought and paid for by U.S. government officials? How does that explain anything better than the attack being their best effort to harm the country they hate? It doesn’t, but it is more tantalizing, more sensational, more of the prideful vein of being able to see through the lies powerful men sell us.
Earlier this week we said conspiracy theories were attempts at better explanations and they seem to ignore human neglect that causes all kinds of trouble. They also seem to ignore the common pride and self-interest that easily allow or actively pursue exploitation and hatred. We don’t need evil puppet masters pulling our strings to put our comfort or success over everyone around us.
Many people say prejudice isn’t natural, that people have to be taught who to dislike. I think prejudice is the most natural thing we do. It’s the easiest thing in the world to notice a difference in someone else and believe that difference makes you better than them. And it only takes the right flow of circumstances, rumors, and actual injuries to turn prejudice into hate.
I’ve read this is how the civil war in Rwanda was seeded. Belgian colonialists sowed racism among Rwandans a century ago, dividing them into ethnic groups in order to keep them under control. The people accepted this division and after a few decades began to hate each other. You could call that a conspiracy, but the colonial powers only wanted control; after they left, the hatred they sowed bore fruit in genocide.
Our own civil war was arguably worse, because we mostly wanted to exploit the labor of enslaved foreigners. Along comes General Lee to say, “What we wanted was the right to govern our lands by our own judgement.” But our judgement was an economy of exploitive labor, which many people both North and South supported. As long as we weren’t doing the hard work, we supported it. And along comes the Marxists to say, “All labor is criminally exploitive! We will lead a revolution to overthrow the current exploitation so that we can exploit the workers the right way–to our benefit!”
The Lord tells us to love him with all of our heart, soul, and mind, and to love our neighbor as ourselves, and if ever a commandment demonstrated our depravity, it’s this one. Who among us doesn’t want our neighbor to simply keep to himself? How many of us are willing to allow risks for people who are removed from us and not for those close to us?
This week, a friend on Twitter described his neighborhood as being on the wrong side of the tracks. When the city scheduled a day for big item pickup in the nice parts of town, it sent several trucks, and teams of people volunteered to help. For his neighborhood, it sent one truck at a time with one driver to clear off the things his neighbors set out on the sidewalk. Some of those things couldn’t be picked up for various reasons; the city felt no compulsion to get them completely cleared away. And so the poor are further impoverished by the carelessness of the privileged.
I’ve heard that pharmaceutical companies run drug trials in African nations, where people have less ability to push back when things go wrong. People are complaining that their neighbors are being experimented on. This, dear believer of conspiracies, is the way of the world. No evil society with mythical power to command presidents and CEOs. Just regular people seeking their own interest and likely not thinking too long about the best interests of their neighbors.
