Conspiracies are convenient, compelling, meaningless. They are the febrile machinations of busy brains fueled by suffocating fear and boundless confidence. The big forces that guide the hands of society are more mundane: bureaucracy, attrition, pettiness, our savage appetites. There's no master plan, no puppet strings, just chaos driven by the turbulence of everyday life. No one is out to get you; you just make things hard on yourself.
It is surmised that our escape from the primal muck into consciousness and social media was precipitated by pattern recognition. It is the genesis of intelligence. Our furry forebears who saw the tiger hidden in the grass lived longer than the others. Long enough to mash bits, calling more furry forebears into being, begetting another generation just slightly better at seeing tigers in the grass- or movements in the global markets indicating the coming apocalypse. Fear is the engine of change, even as fear of change is the death of society. Fucked either way.
Apophenia is the tendency to link together unconnected things, to see patterns where none exist. It's the codex of superstition. It's the falsework where we built religion, luck, quantum mechanics and all your weird rituals to ensure the Bruins win the Cup.
Everyone wants a guided hand: God, government, the Knights Templar. We want a reason for all this mess. Why is this happening? Who did this to me/us/that poor lady?
If there's no one at the wheel, then we are careening out of control.
Clearly.
