The only thing crazier than believing in conspiracies is not believing in them!
It was December of 1985. I had just accepted an editorial position in Boston. I would be leaving my hometown of New Orleans in a matter of weeks, and I had a sneaking suspicion that my fiancee would try to throw a surprise party for me before I left.
I had reason to be suspicious. Just three months earlier I had successfully thrown a surprise birthday party for her (she never had a clue!), so it stood to reason that she would be out to get me back. Moreover, since being surprised is one of the few things I absolutely cannot stand, it happens also to be one of the things that friends and relatives of mine take special delight in. But, what really convinced me that I was about to be victimized by a cabal of compatriots was that when I challenged my wife-to-be, accusing her point-blank of planning a surprise party, she flatly denied it! That cinched it.
Granted, there is nothing of any great consequence at stake in the staging of a surprise party. Nevertheless, the collaboration of the participants in a scheme to conceal their intentions and to deceive the guest of honor does constitute an innocent sort of conspiracy. Most of us at one time or another have been either the victim or one of the perpetrators of such a conspiracy, and this is but one of many small-time conspiracies that we will encounter, or participate in, in the course of our lives.
Children may conspire with their siblings to obtain parental approval for something they desire, or to avoid parental reprimands for something they should not have done. Students may conspire with classmates to obtain the answers in advance for an upcoming exam. Employees may conspire with their co-workers to gain favor with their superiors by claiming credit for the accomplishments of others, or by sabotaging their rivals. And married men and women may conspire with paramours to deceive their spouses.
In addition to the many conspiracies that we will encounter personally in our lives, we will read and hear about hundreds of others -- the college athletes who conspire to shave points in a sports event, the brokers who conspire to engage in insider trading, the contractors who conspire to defraud government agencies, the politicians who conspire to misrepresent themselves to their constituents, the junior officers who conspire to stage a coup d'etat -- the list goes on and on.
A careful reading of history should convince any objective student that there has never been an age that was not riddled with conspiracies. But we need only open our eyes to see conspiracies all about us. And, if we are willing to acknowledge that our neighbors, friends, and associates are constantly engaged in various low-stakes conspiracies, why then do we hesitate to believe that the very highest stakes -- the conquest of an entire planet and all of its inhabitants -- would also inspire conspirators?
