The more information we have about what governments and corporations are up to the less we seem to trust them. Will conspiracy theories eventually destroy democracy? We live in a golden age for conspiracy theories. There is a growing assumption that everything we are told by the authorities is wrong, or not quite as it seems. That the truth is being manipulated or obscured by powerful vested interests. And, in some cases, it is. The reason we have conspiracy theories is that sometimes governments and organisations do conspire, says Observer columnist and academic John Naughton. It would be wrong to write off all conspiracy theorists as swivel-eyed loons, with poor personal hygiene and halitosis, he told a Cambridge University Festival of Ideas debate. They are not all crazy. The difficult part, for those of us trying to make sense of a complex world, is working out which parts of the conspiracy theory to keep and which to throw away. Mr Naughton is one of three lead investigators in a major new Cambridge University project to investigate the impact of conspiracy theories on democracy. - BBC.
Posted on: Mon, 28 Oct 2013 03:15:22 +0000
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