Conspiracy Theories and the Aliens Amongst Us

Last week I heard a news report about the leader of the GOP in Michigan, Mike Shirkey, claiming that the insurrection in Washington, D.C. on January 6th was a hoax.  That it was staged by people working to smear then President Trump and that the people involved, “wasn’t Trump people.”  

Mr. Shirkey was censured by his state’s party the next day and has since apologized for “insensitive comments,” but has not recanted his opinion on the subject.

When I heard this report I became very upset and disturbed.  How can it be, I asked myself rhetorically, that so many conspiracy theories like this and others before it, like Qanon, and the idea of a “stolen election,” can sprout forth and gain traction.  I have no doubt that Shirkey’s idea will gain traction.  That it already is being spread amongst the citizens of this country that willing to believe it.  

And the ultimate reason, I’ve come to believe, is that their brains are just built differently than mine.  

In October of last year, there was an article published by Scientific American about this.  It was in the Behavior and Society section under the title, “Conservative and Liberal Brains Might Have Some Real Differences.  It was written by Lydia Denworth.

In the article, Ms. Denworth describes research done by scientists from Nebraska-Lincoln and Rice University demonstrating the differences between liberal and conservative thinking may be rooted in personality characteristics and biological predispositions.  

The article describes how, in individuals that describing themselves as “Conservatives,” the part of the brain called the amygdala will have more gray matter than in individuals describing themselves as Liberals.  This is the part of the brain most responsible for regulating emotions and evaluating threats.  Self-described Liberals, however, will have more gray matter contained in their anterior cingulate cortex than conservatives.  This is the part of the brain responsible for resolving conflicts and detecting errors.  

The chicken and the egg problem regarding these differences, the question as to whether such differences predisposes someone to think conservatively or liberally, or whether one’s experiences and how one was raised creates conditions in the brain where these regions are more highly developed, is up in the air.  And it is not an either/or situation, where someone can be completely categorized as one or the other.  People reside on a spectrum of political believes and can sometimes have or support causes that contradict the classification of liberal or conservative were they to be so labeled.  

The point to take from this though, I believe, is that some concepts will sit more easily in one person’s brain than it will in another’s.  The experience we have with languages are an example.  Some languages have concepts that are absent in others.  In Japanese, for example, there is the concept of “Ma,” which is described as a pause or interval in space and/or time, but which has no exact translation, though it has great importance to Japanese art and culture.  The Pirahã tribe of South America have a language with no recursive elements.  This is when two sentences are combined with one inserted into another.  For example, “The man is wearing a hat” and “The man is walking down the street,” becomes, “The man wearing a hat is walking down the street.”  

Apparently because of this lack of recursion, the only language in the world that lacks it, the Pirahã language lacks perfect tense, which we use to talk about the past.  As a result of that they don’t have any history, oral or otherwise.  Their discussions are always about what is happening now or a “short time” in the future.  They have no numbers.  No fixed color terms.  No tradition of art or drawing.  They have no words for, “all,” “each,” “most,” or “few.”  The Pirahã use canoes to fish, which they buy from other tribes, but when one is broken or unusable they don’t build a new one.  When shown how to, they replied that they wouldn’t do it because, “it was something that wasn’t done.”  

The Pirahã word for other languages translates as “crooked head.”  The negative connotation is real.  

The Pirahã are an extreme example.  But all of us can be accused of regarding some other group or people as “crooked headed” because they just don’t get something that seems obvious to us.  And while it is possible to learn what someone else’s viewpoint might be it goes our inclination.  Studies have show that everyone’s first response when told something to believe is wrong is to defend it.  And to continue to defend it even when evidence is presented showing its flaws.  As with learning a language, it takes effort and effort requires at least a sense that there is something there for us to find.  It is probably harder for us to see this need than the Pirahã to see this need since the people we’re dealing with, the “other half of the country” from whatever position you stand in, seem to be using a language that we’re familiar with.  It’s the conceptual underpinnings that are askew.  To paraphrase Winston Churchill, America is a country separated by its common language.  

So…  What is to be done?  In another Scientific American article, this one from November 2020, the author, Claire Wardle, was writing about how to get through the misinformation of the then coming election.  Ms. Wardle’s advice was, instead of muting those that post such seemingly outlandish beliefs, or to argue with them, focusing on the veracity of what they are saying, we should start a dialogue, using “emphatic and inclusive language” about the choices they are making and the results they want to see.  

At the time I read this article I will admit to being dissatisfied.  I wanted to find a weapon to prove them wrong.  To show them their errors and find a way to make them change their thinking.  Or at least shut up and go back into the shadows.  

But in this way, also, I’m reconsidering.  If someone were to confront me about something they didn’t believe in this way, it would only escalate into something worse, with both sides entrenched in their beliefs, looking for some way to get back at each other.  And that would be the best case scenario. 

When I first went to Japan in 2007, someone on the tour with me said that she was going to explore the country as if she were visiting another planet making contact with an exotic alien species.  I liked the idea and adopted it in my own way.  I think it can help us in our current socio-political solution.  That we are in a colony that we share with similar looking alien race.  Some may be duplicitous and/or violent.  But others could very well be looking at the landscape that I am and are seeing something different because of how they are wired.  To live in peace we will need to learn what each other is seeing so we can at least speak about it in a common tongue.