The tutor opens a discussion about conspiracies. While the concept is still important to some, it might be losing mainstream appeal.

I understand conspiracy to mean a group of people acting in secret towards a possibly sinister, but certainly dubious, goal.  My Merriam-Webster and Collins Essential Canadian dictionaries agree that a conspiracy centres around a crime.

The first conspiracy I ever heard tell of was during the Reagan presidency.  From centre stage Reagan faced a tough recession and a blossoming Cold War.  His unshakeable confidence proved contagious:   he presided over a tremendous economic recovery and the Western World’s final encirclement of Communism.  I’ve heard he was the most popular president ever.

While America revelled in its surprising success under Reagan, some people watching from their armchairs didn’t believe Reagan was responsible.  While clearly a great man, did he seem to possess the technical understanding needed to tackle America’s complex problems?  Someone else behind the scenes must be doing it, they thought.  They suspected those people were highly intelligent and would remain unknown. I heard people talk about a “shadow government” that actually controlled America, virtually independently of whom the voters chose.  They called it a conspiracy.

If the “shadow government” was a conspiracy, what was the crime?  The secrecy of how the country was actually run, the detractors argued, violated the spirit of democracy.

There are many other suspected conspiracies; like with the possible one discussed above, proof is often lacking.  However, there are puzzling scenarios that involve numerous accounts, much documentation, yet no answer to satisfy everyone.

As well as probing deeper into the philosophy of conspiracy theorists, the tutor will examine possible conspiracies in coming posts.

Cheers:)

Jack of Oracle Tutoring by Jack and Diane, Campbell River, BC.