On Conspiracies

"Conspiracy mythology is a cop-out...a way of evading our responsibility for history."

—Robert Shea

"I am profoundly suspicious about all conspiracy theories, including my own, because conspiracy buffs tend to forget the difference between a plausible argument and a real proof. Or between a legal proof, a proof in the behavioral sciences, a proof in physics, a mathematical or logical proof, or a parody of any of the above."

—Robert Anton Wilson

As quoted in The Illuminoids by Neal Wilgus.

I especially like Shea's more succinct statement. It is one of those "pernicious truths"—a favorite phrase of mine which came from Shea's and Wilson's Illuminatus! trilogy. I don't know exactly what they meant—if they meant anything at all—by that phrase, but to me it means a truth that most people refuse to agree with. But when they do finally agree with it, it changes their perspective on how they view the world. And even when they don't agree with it, it still lurks in the background of their mind, niggling away at them, slowly chewing away tiny bits of the foundation of their reality grid.