Abigail Affum: Conspiracy Theories; A World with Trust Issues

Before the coming of Coronavirus, conspiracy theories generally referred to messages forwarded by my mum from her group chats, that were either calling some strange Chinese product harmful or warning me about new kidnapping techniques. These could be easily ignored with an eyeroll and a laugh. However, the surge of conspiracy theories that accompanied the pandemic are not that easy to be ignored. And if the year 2020 could boast of its lessons one of them would be how much it has exposed our trust issues.

Why, conspiracy theories? I am no psychologist and a quick trip to google taught me that conspiracy theory referred to, “A belief that some covert but influential organization is responsible for an unexplained event.”. I am sure further research will give elaborate causes for such behavior and phenomenon but my rookie self can conclude on two reasons. One is, the world has trust issues and two, we like pointing fingers. Let’s get into that then.

If you have lived long enough, you are likely to have recieved some not so sweet lessons from life about trusting people. Recently, life doesn’t seem to wait on age to teach us such lessons. By the third time your father fails to get you that promised Christmas toy- you would have learnt that trusting people is not such a good idea. If life troubles tend to get harsher and more complex, you are likely to think that the world is out against you. We are constantly hearing of heartbreaking abuse of power and deception of leaders who seem to have no conscience. The reign of unfairness, greed and injustice have badly shook our faith in the world’s established systems. Systems that were seemingly set up to protect us. We ourselves cannot stand our images in the mirror because of how we have let ourselves down. It is little wonder then, that when we are collectively hit by pain and fear our first and almost natural response is to blame each other and others we think are powerful enough to commit such atrocities. We have been slow in having a unified voice that is laced with trust in building a strong front against a common enemy but who can blame us?

My second standpoint feeds off the first one, being distrustful stretches one’s fingers to others. We have seen many leaders ignoring their own failures and throwing unnecessary blames on other nations for the past pandemic. We have equally seen citizens thwart efforts of well-meaning governments to truly control the pandemic while loudly blaming and sulking at others but themselves. If there is anything else that the pandemic is teaching us is that we are a bunch of spoilt infants who act babyish about almost everything.

Experts have a more scientific perspective on the phenomenon of conspiracy theories but one thing we can all agree on is how counterproductive it can be. Being a victim myself, I know that spreading and believing wild and unfounded conspiracy theories does more hurting than healing. I remember a younger and more foolish me thinking evil of my elder brother because he was using, ‘Facebook’. Why? Because I had heard about it being evil and a devil’s tool rather than a social application and a potentially profitable marketing platform. I equally used to rebuke myself for tapping my feets to the tunes of Jay-Z and good Hip-Hop because of equally crazy conspiracy theories. I look back and laugh now, but I remember that I was not only blinded by these conspiracy theories I was guided by them leading me to hurt and wrongly judge others.

Is the bible new to conspiracy theories? I think not. Jesus himself fell victim to many- he was rumored as the Prince of demons among others to discredit his very person. Paul and the apostles continually battled the spread of such deceits. The reaction of Paul is quite inspiring in his letter to Philippians he announced his reaction to those spreading falsehoods in these words,
” So how am I to respond? I’ve decided that I really don’t care about their motives, whether mixed, bad, or indifferent. Every time one of them opens his mouth, Christ is proclaimed, so I just cheer them on!”

Though Paul’s context is very different from what is currently going on there is a cue we can take. We should decide to not ‘care’ for such baseless stories by refusing to share them to others or having arguments about them. Mostly people who spread such theories do not care for our arguments and in arguing with them we tend to further spread the lie and lose focus of the truth before us. This message is relevant as the pandemic seems to be making a second coming. It’s time to put in practice the lessons learnt in the first half and work at building a united voice against the pandemic.