Conspirituality — Why are ‘spiritual-but-not-religious’ people prone to believing conspiracy theories.
The term ‘conspirituality’ has garnered a tremendous amount of attention in the last couple of years due to uncertainty surrounding the COVID-19 pandemic and the Q Anon raid on the US Capitol building. In this essay, I will seek to explain what makes a person prone to believing in conspiracy theories, the dangers of such beliefs, and how to navigate through these types of situations.
The term Conspirituality was coined in a journal article in 2011 by Charlotte Ward and David Voas from the University of Essex to describe the emerging phenomenon as:
“The merging of the female-dominated New Age, with its positive focus on self, and the male-dominated realm of conspiracy theory, with its negative focus on global politics.”
The core convictions are that there is a secret group covertly controlling the world and that humanity is undergoing a ‘paradigm shift’ in consciousness. Terms like the awakening, 5D consciousness, The Omega Point, The Rapture, and The Age of Aquarius, are examples of these theories (Evans, 2021).
Depending on one’s position in society, they may be surprised to hear how popular some conspiracy theories have become. An article published in The Guardian (Henley & McIntyre, 2020) looked at how many people believed that the COVID-19 fatality rate was exaggerated. The results showed that 18% of Australians, 22% of Brits, 38% of Americans, and 59% of Nigerians believed that the COVID-19 fatality rate had been exaggerated.
The same Guardian study found that at least one in five respondents in almost every country had concerns about vaccines. In some cases like South Africa, 57% of people had serious concerns about vaccines.
The most popular conspiracy theory, according to this article, was ‘The Global Cabal Theory.’ This is the idea that there is a group of people covertly controlling the world. Examples of such groups are The Illuminati, The Bilderberg Group, The Lizard People, and to the Nazis, The Jews. This theory was held to be ‘probably or definitely true’ by 28% of Britons, 37% in the USA, 55% of Spaniards, 68% of South Africans, and 78% of Nigerians. It would be helpful to see how these percentages have changed over time. However, I would conjecture that there has been considerable growth in these beliefs since the emergence of alternative media platforms such as YouTube, Facebook, and 4Chan.
Conspiracies grow at times of uncertainty, and there was a time when the theories themselves were much more straightforward. They used to cover one event, like aliens landing in Roswell, the moon landing being faked, or 9/11 being an inside job. We are now seeing the rise of these new all-encompassing ‘Super-Conspiracies.’ These are theories that manage to weave narratives that incorporate everything from global politics, economics, the media, COVID-19, 5G, and climate change to become like religions in themselves (Fuller, 2020). This is what we are seeing with groups like Q Anon and individuals like David Icke.
Despite the growth in the number of people believing in conspiracy theories, the believers would still find themselves within the minority in most cases. Arnold Mindell (Mindell, 2014), p33) would say that “all over the world, regardless of the country, any majority group will say the same things about the minority groups.” The types of prejudices that those in the majority typically ascribe to minorities, according to Mindell, are that they are different, strange, dangerous, morally inferior, not deserving of social rights, unclean, paranoid, intellectually inferior, and even evil. With global tensions related to the COVID-19 pandemic, more and more people are being divided because of their beliefs surrounding the cause and strategy for solving the crisis. With this division and rise in alternative opinions, more people suffer from the majority’s treatment given to the minority. Before discussing Mindell’s suggestion on resolving this conflict, it is crucial to understand how and why people believe in conspiracy theories.
There are various techniques that conspiracy theorists use to program their audience. One such tactic is the use of dissociative states. For example, Q Anon states that there is an evil cabal of Hollywood celebrities and liberal politicians (led by Tom Hanks and Hilary Clinton) and child-eating Satanists who control the world. When someone hears about child-eating, they are immediately put into a dissociative state as they imagine such a scene’s horror (Evans, 2021). Mothers are particularly vulnerable to this tactic due to their intense love for their children. Hence why the traditionally male-dominated conspiracy field has managed to recruit more of the historically female-dominated New Age spiritual group (Fuller, 2020).
Limbic-Hijack is another way conspiracy theorists convince unsuspecting individuals of their ideas. This is the tactic most famously used by the media known as ‘fear-porn.’ A news article twists the truth to make a story sound as scary as possible to elicit as much panic response as possible and ultimately sell more papers. This tactic activates the part of the brain responsible for survival, the limbic system, while simultaneously shutting down communication with the frontal cortex, which is the brain’s rational part. So, when someone is in either a dissociative state or limbic-hijack, they cannot analyze information critically and are in a highly vulnerable and programmable state (Fuller, 2020).
Connecting the undeniable to the unbelievable is another tactic conspiracy theorists will use to convince people of their ideas. Harambam and Aupers identified this technique in 2019. An example of it would be:
Vaccines have caused injuries (undeniable) > to > the US government removed liability for vaccine injuries in 1986 (Senate — Labor and Human Resources, 1986) because pharmaceutical companies were losing more money in lawsuits than they were making from vaccines (The College of Physicians of Philadelphia, 2018) (undeniable) > to > all vaccines are unsafe, and Bill Gates is a eugenicist planning to implant us all with ID microchips (unbelievable). With the growth in online forums on platforms such as Facebook and 4Chan, this type of thinking can spread without checks on its factual accuracy in people with certain personality types.
Schizotypal personalities are the type most associated with believing in a conspiracy. A schizotypal personality is someone prone to unusual beliefs such as telepathy, mind-control, spirit channeling, and looking for hidden personal meanings in events (Evans, 2021). I certainly have a degree of schizotypal thinking in me, but it can become a pathology when someone moves too far down the schizotypal spectrum. A famous example of such a person would be Willy Wonka from the Novel Charlie and The Chocolate Factory by Roald Dahl. Finding synchronicities in life can be a positive and fun way of viewing the world, but conversely, people can use it to justify atrocities. For example, Hitler is said to have seen The Northern Lights and taken it to be a sign telling him to invade Poland (Fuller, 2020).
Narcissistic personality types are also prone to conspirituality because of the idea that they are one of ‘the chosen ones.’ An idea common in conspirituality circles is that the people within them are privileged to know a secret truth. This idea appeals to the narcissist and a desire to believe that they are special (Nicholas J. S. Day, Michelle L. Townsend & Brin F. S. Grenyer, 2020). Trauma sufferers are also prone to conspiracy theories because they tend towards binary thinking. Trauma, like limbic hijack, prevents communication between the prefrontal cortex and the limbic system and encourages black and white thinking, good or evil (Evans, 2020). Professor Jules Evans believes that in times of great uncertainty like global pandemics, the skill we want to cultivate is the ability to tolerate uncertainty rather than collapse into a concrete narrative.
Mindell (2018, p33) believes that majority-minority polarizations are caused by fields rather than by people. He thinks that most people believe that one side must remove its projections about the other side for the conflict to resolve. While Mindell believes this to be an important step, he thinks that “we must also process field tensions as if the field were trying to express itself.” Mindell “approaches conflict within a group as an attempt … to confront, conflict with and know one another.” As someone who has found himself within the minority many times in the past year, I share Mindell’s belief that if the majorities were more willing to hear the views of the minorities without dismissing them as conspiracy theories, there would be less tension and aggression between sides.
However, there is a legitimate argument against allowing everyone to share their beliefs without censorship. This is an idea known as free speech absolutism. A person might think that there is no harm in enjoying a London Real Podcast or another proponent of conspiracy theories for entertainment. Nevertheless, this does not take into account the real-world examples of damage that conspiracies can do. As David Fuller (Fuller, 2020) often says, “Free speech does not mean shouting fire in a packed theatre.” Examples of these dangers are the Q Anon affiliated woman from Texas arrested for ramming passers-by in her car because she thought they were pedophiles. Or Alex Jones of InfoWars declaring that the Sandy Hook School shooting in the US was a deep-state hoax which led to the parents of the dead children receiving death threats from viewers of his show (Evans, 2020). The vandalism of 5G towers in the UK and the Capitol Building Raids are other examples of these potential dangers.
There are strategies to defend against gullibility, advanced programming tactics, and our personality vulnerabilities. Evans (2021) would suggest we “hold our beliefs lightly”. I.e., we become aware of when we might be wrong and are open to examining our position. When it comes to dealing with the theorists themselves, Fuller believes we need to be most suspicious of anyone certain of anything. It’s the person who is telling you that the Global Cabal is unquestionably trying to collapse the financial system for their benefit that you need to be wary of. Another useful heuristic is the famous Carl Sagan quote stating that “extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.” Applying this technique to David Icke’s most famous theory that a group of shapeshifting lizard people is running the world would undoubtedly render it untenable.
Space also needs to be made for the cases that were once called conspiracies that we now know to be true. Like the doctors recommending their favorite brand of cigarettes, the CIA using mind control on US citizens that lead to several deaths in MK ULTRA are just a few examples. These examples can lead to mistrust of authority and fuel unfounded beliefs in conspiracy theories, and hence we need to apply better sense-making strategies in our lives. It is not sensible to follow the idea that if authorities lied to us about one thing, they must lie about all things. In addition to this, a person should not go from mistrusting everything BBC News says to trusting everything that David Icke says (Fuller, 2020).
The challenge in a post-truth world is to practice holding uncertainty and embracing nuance. More and more people are embracing non-rational materialistic ways of thinking like channeled knowledge, dreams, downloads from psychedelic ceremonies, and intuition. Just as an overreliance on the scientific method has failed us, so will an overreliance on one other way of thinking. We must balance the mystical with critical thinking. At the same time as improving our sense-making abilities, conflict resolution processes such as those designed by Mindell must also be embraced to prevent civilization from tearing itself apart.
References
Evans, J. (2020). Nazi Hippies: When the New Age and Far Right Overlap. https://gen.medium.com/nazi-hippies-when-the-new-age-and-far-right-overlap-d1a6ddcd7be4.
Evans, J. (2021). ‘Conspirituality’ — the overlap between the New Age and conspiracy beliefs. Medium. https://julesevans.medium.com/conspirituality-the-overlap-between-the-new-age-and-conspiracy-beliefs-c0305eb92185
Spirituality & Conspiracy. What’s Going On? Fuller, D. (Director). (2020, August 5th,).[Video/DVD] Rebel Wisdom. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cZHZHygS3Es
Henley, J., & McIntyre, N. (2020, -10–26T14:30:22.000Z). Survey uncovers widespread belief in ‘dangerous’ Covid conspiracy theories. The Guardian https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/oct/26/survey-uncovers-widespread-belief-dangerous-covid-conspiracy-theories
Mindell, A. (2014). The Leader as Martial Artist (Kindle Edition ed.)
Nicholas J. S. Day, Michelle L. Townsend & Brin F. S. Grenyer. (2020). Living with pathological narcissism: a qualitative study. Borderline Personality Disorder and Emotion Dysregulation Volume, 7(19)
Senate — Labor and Human Resources. (1986). H.R.5546 — National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act of 1986. (). https://www.congress.gov/bill/99th-congress/house-bill/5546
