My Conspiracy Theory

Plato believed that the best among us should manage the rest of our lives, because, well, we are all so stupid!

I'm convinced that Plato meant well and had a strong moral sense. Our handlers today may not possess his intelligence or moral excellence, but what they lack in those areas they make up for in ambition.

All it takes is paying attention to the advertising of our day. We are sold fast, processed food at every turn, along with other substances and amusements that saddle us with dreadful health. The decline of Christian influence has led to a default hedonism in the culture at large, in which a life of physical pleasure is seen as the best life. The party scene has captivated the culture perhaps like never before, especially among the young. Behavior that destroys the human organism is everywhere encouraged, from hydrogenated foods to sleeplessness to sedentary lifestyles endlessly enticed into immediate gratification.

Vegas sells us the dream of celebrity, at least for the weekend, and at a steep credit card bill. But the people never seem to see through the lie; instead they flock to the place like the flies that are drawn to the electrified lights that zap them to death.

Others of our "leaders" have pulled us away from a world of family and shared community life and into the virtual communities of Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and the many other social networks to which we commit enormous tracts of time. They tell us that such "connections" are as rich as those of our grandparents with their neighbors, but we know it is a lie. And we have lost any ability or desire to resist it. We can't imagine a personal achievement going unnoticed by our many "friends" on social media. While our bodies and minds are polluted, so are our relationships. Relationships become as one dimensional as a profile and an update. We don't share our lives with each other; we share our ego needs with each other. We proclaim ourselves rather than giving ourselves to others in community. It is possible today, perhaps even ultimately very likely, that a popular person equipped with over a thousand social media followers/friends is fading into lonliness.

And we are also told that this move to the information and image age is an innocuous, neutral change in the way human beings proclaim and process information. Yet we see that besides a gifted and attentive minority, the life of the mind is wholly neglected by the bulk of the human population. Does it not seem that the majority of our culture is simply bored, not with bad education, but with books, thought, logic, truth, debate, mathematics and science? There is a great deal being made today, again by our handlers, of the idea that the reason education is failing is because it is not engaging enough. But surely math is what it has always been and language is what it has always been. Of course there are bad teachers and good teachers, but a good teacher is one who allows math to be math and language to be language and leads the students to math and language. Bad teachers will surely fail, but good teachers also fail when the prevailing attitude of the culture is that math will not be accepted until the teacher makes it yet another hedonistic pleasure. For the last 50 years, teachers and schools have experimented with educational methods like never before, and it has leapt to light speed with the advent of the iPad. And yet the anecdotal evidence is lacking that we have become a more literate, thoughtful, articulate, precise and clear thinking culture. We are producing people who love educational methods but don't care all that much for math or for reading books of substance, or even for thoughtful conversation.

So where are we now? People develop these patterns of drinking soda, eating pizza and processed sugar of all kinds, and then they become unhealthy human beings. They whine endlessly about how boring school is and how boring work is and how boring life is. So they turn to other mood altering substances and lose themselves in pleasure again, and health breaks down further. But then we flip the channel to find that there are any number of drugs that can help with what ails us.

Then we wake up from the hedonistic hangover to realize that there are bills, economically and psychologically and spiritually and even physically. The body, the mind and the soul cannot sustain a constant immersion into pleasure.

We are sugared up, drugged, electrified by partying and require the constant support of medical professionals to patch us back together for the next round of unhealthy pleasures. We are like a bunch of chain smokers hooked up to chemotherapy. We complain about "income inequality" while giving what resources we have to those who pander to our insatiable material interests, and then by giving what is left to those professionals who promise to heal us after we abuse ourselves and the natural order.

But in swoop our saviors, the politicians. Their solution to all of this control on the part of clever capitalists is to tighten the clamps of control over us further; to look out for our good. They will be sure that the evil advertisers don't take advantage of us. They will make sure that our sodas are smaller! They will tax our wealthy manipulators and distribute the money to provide various cultural services. These politicians tell us that it is not our fault that we are unhealthy; it is the fault of the intelligentsia, who easily take advantage of us. Advertisers sell us the dream of happiness, and when it is shown to be a lie and we are in despair, the government swoops in to restore the dream of health and wealth and happiness.

What you may find conspicuously absent in all of this is anyone who cares to think about what true health and happiness even are, much less anyone who cares to help us build such a life. No, today one member of the aristocracy gets rich making us sick and the other gets rich curing us, except that it is no cure, which is another of the lies we are sold.

And so the average man works his middle class job, pays taxes, becomes miserable, but then turns to the ample titillations of the culture as an escape, thereby becoming unhealthy in various ways. The politicians step in and make certain guarantees. If he accrues too much debt, he won't need to pay it off. He will be given "healthcare" as a right of citizenship, so that his unhealthy lifestyle can always be cured. He will be given job training and social security and food stamps. There is nothing for him to worry about, because it is the job of government to eliminate the risks associated with life (aka, hedonism).

Now the simple question is this: Are we becoming healthy human beings? Are we flourishing in our humanity, mind, body, spirit and relationships? Will medical and government interventions restore us to full flourishing?

Now you may be asking how this is a conspiracy? I will put it this way. There are many people who benefit from the mass of human beings remaining unhealthy in various ways. As I've already mentioned, the big players of companies selling various pleasure inducing, but terribly unhealthy, products benefit. So do doctors and lawyers. So do pharmaceutical companies who create various drugs that in many cases only mask the symptoms associated with a lack of health. So do the saviors, the politicians, who promise to take from the people we have made rich in order to provide the services that will restore our "health."

The only way this odd relationship between companies, doctors and politicians can be broken up is by individuals destroying this unholy alliance against them. Who is the person most feared by the modern purveyor of this culture of illness? The truly healthy man or woman. The person who has little if any need for nasty food and nasty amusements. The person who grows a garden, buys quality foods from quality sources and finds ample entertainment in the glory of nature and in stimulating conversation. The person who exercises and sleeps well. The person who is content with silence. The person who finds joy in a sunset. The person who loves and is loved in substantive ways. The person whose day is filled to overflowing without spending a single dollar. The person who is self-disciplined, works, plays and is content. Such a person has very little need for what this culture is selling.

The problem is that such people are rare. In the meantime, powerful people will conspire to give us what we want: illness, escape, cures and saviors!