Fabrication Doctrines

What is the opposite of a 'conspiracy theory'...? If we say it is an antonym of the truth, we are assuming that conspiracy theories are always false, which would be unwise. But we certainly don't want to say that falsehood is the opposite of a conspiracy theory either. In our current usage of this term, we are tacitly assuming something more than we are willing to recognise...

This term, 'conspiracy theory', has steadily gained currency as a means of discrediting certain ways of viewing events. The unstated assumption is that if something is a 'conspiracy theory' it isn't true and can be ignored. "Oh, that's just a conspiracy theory..." But of course, just because someone theorises about a conspiracy, it doesn't necessarily mean that they theorise in error. It was a conspiracy theory that Emily Dickinson could be understood as a lesbian, a view that is now essentially mainstream. Likewise, it was a conspiracy theory that Edith Wilson, the wife of President Woodrow Wilson, was running the country after her husband suffered a stroke. However, this is now accepted as an entirely credible account of what actually happened.

In terms of scientific parlance, 'conspiracy theories' are hypotheses as to what may have happened, which could be validated be the appearance of further evidence. In the lexicon of the sciences, 'theory' is the contrast case with 'hypothesis', but since that word is baked into 'conspiracy theory' we can scarcely use that to construct an alternative term! Besides, 'theory' is a word that is simultaneously too strong and too weak for our purposes... we forget when it comes to scientific theories that these models of events, much like conspiracy theories, can be validated or invalidated by future evidence. We mistake them for truth, something we humans are especially good at doing.

I want to propose as an antonym for 'conspiracy theory' the term 'fabrication doctrine'. It is a fabrication doctrine that Apollo 11 landed on the moon, and a conspiracy theory that this event was faked. It is a fabrication doctrine that the world is a sphere, and a conspiracy theory that it is not. It was also a fabrication doctrine that Emily Dickinson was a lonely poet who didn't show her poems to anyone, and a conspiracy theory that she loved women and shared her poetry with them. In this regards, I note that Dickinson had ten poems published in her lifetime... this fabrication doctrine did not even reflect the available facts at the time it was circulating.

Now the objection that will come in at this point is that the word 'fabrication' implies 'lie'. But frankly, these days, so does 'conspiracy theory', even though neither 'conspiracy' nor 'theory' entail this meaning when used alone. On similar lines, 'fabrication doctrine' can take on whatever inference we need it to. It is strictly true that our majority viewpoints of events are indeed fabricated - just like every other understanding of the logical truth or falsehood of the world. Furthermore, as long as we are intolerant of other ways of understanding any given issue, then these fabricated understandings are also doctrines, which is to say, accepted ways of thinking. And we have always been hostile to alternative points of view.

What appeals to me in contrasting 'fabrication doctrine' to 'conspiracy theory', is that it makes it clearer that both these ways of understanding can be doubted. The increasing tendency to associate 'conspiracy theory' with falsehood obfuscates the vital knowledge that our consensual understandings of the world will be incorrect in ways we are not aware of. We need them to be challenged if we want to be open to the possibility of truth.

Let me provide a simple example. I mentioned above that it is a fabrication doctrine that our planet is a sphere. You might prefer to consider this as absolutely true. But this instinct is driven primarily by the desire to avoid concluding that it is flat (the most popular conspiracy theory offered as contrast). Nonetheless, the Earth is not in fact a sphere in anything other than an approximate sense, and  a more accurate description of the shape of our planet would be 'oblate spheroid'. Furthermore, whether our planet should be understood as a sphere depends entirely upon the frame of perception we are dealing with. If we render our solar system in a four dimensional model of Minkowski spacetime, say, the Earth is no longer anything like a sphere. We could approximate its 'shape' in this context as a cylinder, but even this would be inaccurate. The fact is, humans can only think in four dimensions by analogy, and so our language breaks down in this particular perceptual framework. If we accept that Minkowski spacetime is indeed a more accurate description of reality, then we must also accept that 'the Earth is a sphere' is merely a fabrication doctrine.

The French philosopher Alain Badiou advanced a view of truth that he associated with Plato: the truth exceeds our ability to express it in language or thought. Every time we try to grasp an understanding of any situation - every time we build a fabrication doctrine - the truth exceeds that situation. Truth, therefore, is nothing so dry and dull as a statement... rather truth punctures our experience of reality, it breaks through, as if from the outside. For Badiou, this is a description of scientific revolution - the excess of reality overwhelms the old model; Einstein's understanding replaces Newton's, which replaced Aristotle's physics. Badiou also sees this excess in art, politics, and indeed, in love... the truth punctures our understanding and reveals something hitherto unrecognised.

It is, alas, far easier to live life within the fabrication doctrines we are offered. The less you question, the less resistance you will meet from the world around you. But this is not to suggest there is anything good about this state of affairs. It is merely to claim that life is easier when you become indifferent to lies. That statement is logically true. But that does not make it an expression of the truth, nor ethically desirable. On the contrary, when we become indifferent to lies, we permit terrible things to happen. We have, in fact, all permitted terrible things to happen precisely because we prefer to live inside our fabrication doctrines rather than seek out the truth.

Likewise and conversely, if we try to shut out the conspiracy theories, we do not become closer to truth... on the contrary, we will then find ourselves accepting lies as if they were true because we the enforce our fabrication doctrines as inviolable and deny that they could be in error. All this obsessive commitment to ensuring "harmful disinformation myths are stopped in their tracks", as BBC Director-General pontificated at the foundation of its political power bloc with Google et al, is self-deception. If what is being defended are fabrication doctrines - and this is the only thing they can be - then stopping 'disinformation' necessarily means enforcing dogma. We have seen this error so many times before, and yet still we blame it on religion and not on the inherent fallibility of our nature as humans.

To be open to truth is to be open to error. To attempt to prevent error from being spoken is not just pernicious and unjust censorship, it is to turn our fabrication doctrines into quasi-religious dogma. Regrettably, there is just as vast an appetite for this today as their was in the Middle Ages... we just don't recognise it, because - then as now - our fabrication doctrines are misunderstood as truth. Only when we accept the fallibility of human knowledge can we hope to remain open to that rare possibility of encountering a truth that inevitably exceeds the limits of our understanding.

Comments

[Daniel Hadas]

Very interesting piece, but the correct spelling is "Dickinson", and you are too harsh on the Middle Ages, which was a time of ceaseless intellectual ferment, not stale orthodox sloganeering. Medieval churchmen did believe in dogmatic authority, but they were also always looking for new ways to express the highest truths that they knew could never be fully expressed.

[Chris]

Daniel,
I twice thank you - for your thoughtful comment, and for your corrections. I have amended Ms. Dickinson's name. What a careless mistake to have made! I should never trust my memory when it comes to such things...

As for being too harsh on the Middle Ages... I accept this criticism. I suppose I wrote this piece expecting that the reader would come from a certain perspective on that period of European history, and tried to play upon my expectations of how such a reader would think about this matter. You are quite right to call me on this tactic.

Chris.

[Chris Billows]

Hi Chris,

I am placing a quick comment before I work on a blog-response to this post. I appreciate you saying that we fabricate the doctrines we follow because I think it is true, but you leave this too wide open that it feels a bit nihilistic. We need to believe in something, but I'd have liked you to comment on how we develop skills on when to discard unhelpful beliefs.

Plus I think you sanitize the term 'conspiracy theory' too much. Conspiracies are fundamentally about power and creating a theory about how that power is being used to control the larger populace. I will outline in my response there is immense power in them and they should not be minimized.

Regards,

Chris

[Chris]

Hi Chris,
Since 'conspiracy theory' is now used as shorthand to dismiss legitimate dissent, my motivation in writing this piece was to attempt to restore the balance between the majority and minority viewpoints. I kept this piece short as I when I let it get any longer than this, it opened the door to letting Foucault into the discussion, and I didn't think it needed the digression.

I'd welcome pushback on this, or anything else, as ever! And many thanks for commenting. (But why is it that I've gone months without any comments, but now that I'm on vacation everyone turns up to leave a comment! Not that I'm complaining... it's just odd timing!)

Thanks again,

Chris.