Conspiracy theory as evil theoria

And why beauty must be prioritized, even if truth remains the telos

Dr. Amp (aka Lawrence Jacoby) with his golden shovel, played by Russ Tamblyn in David Lynch’s Twin Peaks.

This story begins with the difference between conviction and conjecture. Maybe I ought to have journaled something dedicated solely to this topic already, but I haven’t. I know I’ve mentioned it several times. It has to do with the pattern of thymos and epithymia on the contemplative level. The soul’s capacity for repulsion and attraction are experienced on the practical level as anger and desire. Contemplatively, however, thymos manifests as conviction, repelling falsehood and taking knowledge which is within one’s power to take, and epithymia manifests as conjecture, using pattern-hunting and analogical projection to gape for knowledge which is beyond one’s power to possess. Symbolically speaking, conviction looks down, and conjecture looks up.

But among the things that are up, what do we choose to look at? Not only is God above us, but so is the prince of this world. Not only are found above us the principles of creation, the patterns, the logoi, the seeds, God’s intentions for the cosmos, against which everything shall be judged, but so also are the house of Satan, the house of sin, the law of death, the patterns of corruption, those modes of being that in deviating from their logoi stand against themselves and shall fall. Generally my temperament when looking above me with the tools of conjecture (speaking personally) is to trace the beautiful patterns of creation to which I am attracted. I would call that “good”. The temperament of conspiracy theorists when looking above them, on the other hand, is to trace the ugly patterns of corruption they find repulsive. I would call that “evil” — evil theoria — but I’m actually not writing this essay to condemn the activity but to show its potential place in the knowledge of good and evil to which we are called in human maturity. The objective of the conspiracy theorist, after all, is to free oneself and others from the tyranny of false principalities, which is nothing but good.

I’ve asked myself whether it would be useful here to pick a conspiracy theory as an example, to demonstrate its basic epistemological function, something for instance involving MK-Ultra or human trafficking, the Apollo moon landings, or Russian election interference. I think, however, that people are familiar enough with the phenomenon: the extensive use of inductive reasoning based on patterns, the analogical interpretation of events, the speculation concerning the use and meaning of symbols, the insinuation by association, plus the creative engagement of these patterns of thought for the fabrication of politically motivated myths and for social engineering (hence paranoia is baked into the activity from the start). It would not be helpful for me to get bogged down either in the factual details of a theory or the ideological biases behind it. Conspiracy theories are by nature controversial because they pertain to knowledge that is not commonly possessed. For one’s own health it is advisable always to keep in mind the epistemological limitations of conjecture. Those who act with conviction concerning that which is yet a matter of conjecture are misusing their minds — like a man claiming to be dating a woman who in fact has given no such consent.

I have my share of experience navigating these issues, though as mentioned I have no proclivity for engaging in conspiracy theory. In all my pattern-seeking evident in the pages of this journal, be it on the base level of dialectical polarization of thymos and epithymia, or in the loftier analogical layers of chiasmus and octaves, the epistemological tools are the same. I’m at length investigating the all-encompassing conspiracy of the Most Holy Trinity (insofar as this secretive, all-powerful Godhead can even be named) to create the world with meaning and love and to unite it with Himself or Themselves or whichever pronouns we’re supposed to use. Everything’s connected! Jesus Christ is at the center of it all! It’s a conspiracy! ...Etymologically speaking! (Conspiracy: the state or condition of being together in spirit, of breathing together.) It is not possible to avoid conjectural thinking, as if no knowledge exists beyond one’s grasp, or as if knowledge not possessed should never be sought after. Love-for-other impels conjecture, and satisfaction of that love creates conviction. These are the kinds of things I would write about in an essay dedicated just to conjecture and conviction, but I suppose I’ll try to cover them briefly here.

In your love for an “other”, an agent by definition outside of your possession, you seek to know and understand that which you do not. You conjecture, an epithymetic energeia of the soul. If this love is satisfied, the agent gives you possession of the knowledge you seek in an embrace, on which basis of oneness you can act with conviction, thymically protecting the relationship. Those in covenant with the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob before Christ may have only been able to speak of the Persons of the Trinity in conjectural language, not possessing the knowledge. But once the economia of Christ was completed in the descent of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost, God the Father through the Son in the Spirit had given Himself entirely to His people. Then, when the Holy Fathers of the Church encountered false teachings about God as well as about the Incarnation by means of which they knew God, false teachings which were patterned not after love but after pride, and conducive not to life but to death, these Holy Fathers were able to speak with conviction about the God of love and life because the God of love and life had given Himself to them. I, then, who do not possess the experience of the Trinity as they do, can yet receive their dogmatic instruction as guidelines to my own conjectural approach to our common divine source. Christ being both God and man both is eternally other and makes Himself entirely mine, such that I as an Orthodox Christian (insofar as I am faithful!) can speak with conviction about His identity and yet still worship Him as a divine object of endless conjecture. In being made one with the divine Other in loving union, I yet retain the relationship of other.

Applying this pattern to conjectures about nefarious conspiracies plainly reveals a potentially idolatrous relationship. Insofar as knowing and loving overlap (in the biblical sense of knowing), to gape for knowledge of false principalities is to lay oneself open to their embrace. This can go very wrong. If you have ever observed yourself or a loved one fall down a conspiracy theory rabbit hole, you probably know what I mean. To contemplate a ring of deceptive puppet masters is to risk being made to serve their ends. Even your thymic repulsion to their activity can, like the passion that it is, be used as a means to manipulate you. The ’90s movie thriller Arlington Road narrativizes this process well. A D.C.-area history professor specializing in terrorism conjectures that his suburban neighbor is part of a domestic terrorist organization. His obsessive theorizing about this superior other power to which he is dialectically opposed opens him up, in essence, to possession by that same power. That all his conjectures prove true is beside the point because his terrorist neighbor is then able to utilize his paranoia as the means to engineer what appears to all the world to be a suicide bombing, perpetrated by the paranoiac professor alone. As a side note, paranoia is not friendly to metanoia, etymologically and really. Metanoia, the Greek word for repentance, signifies a change of the nous (the mind), a modal transformation. Paranoia indicates a displacement from the mind, a standing apart from and outside of the mind in a disturbing doubling phenomenon. It’s like vacating your mind in order to look back at it and see what’s controlling it, but in doing so, allowing it to be controlled, due to the vacancy.

Lovingly laying oneself open to the embrace of false principalities, however, is — somewhat surprisingly — not necessarily an un-Christian activity! Consider that Christ specifically lays Himself open to Judas’s embrace, doing so, indeed, out of love for this archetypal antichrist and false principality, respecting his freedom of choice (which respect is the hallmark of love). Accordingly, to gape for knowledge of evil via conjecture need not be an act of false worship. Of course not — a shepherd to protect his flock might want to know something about wolves, for example. Our first parents in Eden may have shown us how to reach for knowledge of good and evil in the wrong way, but Christ shows us how to reach for knowledge of good and evil in the right way. It is to allow oneself to be crucified. In the crucified and risen Christ all things are possible. That is, in Christ all things are permitted, with the caveat that not all things are expedient (cf. 1 Cor. 6:12, 10:23). The proper Christian who fulfills the law of love need not fear any evil power, nor have his or her freedom of activity limited thereby. “And these signs shall follow them that believe,” saith the risen Lord: “In my name shall they cast out devils; they shall speak with new tongues; they shall take up serpents; and if they drink any deadly thing, it shall not hurt them; they shall lay hands on the sick, and they shall recover” (Mark 16:17–18).

Insofar as we fall short of our Christian calling, though — which we all must recognize in humility if we are indeed to attain our Christian calling — we should beware not to drink just “any deadly thing,” tempting God with our lack of humility, as if throwing ourselves down from the temple in the way that even Christ refused to do when tempted by the devil. Not all things are expedient. Before we contemplate evil (πονηρός), to defend ourselves from it, as with the practice of conspiracy theory, we first must contemplate good (καλός), to unite ourselves to it. Otherwise no good will be accomplished. Attraction to the beautiful (τὸ καλόν), via a conjectural approach to God in love, must precede our striving for goodness (τὸ ἀγαθόν), via mental conviction. Only with both, then, may we apprehend truth. This is the Patitsas model of beauty first, of ordering the three philosophical transcendentals as beauty, goodness, and truth, instead of the other way around. I keep encountering Protestants recently who list them as truth, goodness, and beauty, and Dr. Timothy Patitsas has made me very sensitive to why this is deficient (see The Ethics of Beauty, passim). If beauty is left for last like an afterthought (first-place truth still being the telos), it is way too easily forgotten, ugliness being accepted in its place. Psychologically it’s important to us because the triadic pattern corresponds to the tripartite soul: beauty to epithymia, goodness to thymos, truth to logos. And everlasting truth, aletheia, as Patitsas adeptly describes it is not some “third moment,” but exists spontaneously when the other two are present (p. 81; cf. p. 96). Likewise epithymia and thymos comprise a pair of polar opposites, attracting and repelling, and logos exists in the proper negotiation of the two. And as on the level of praxis, reason’s aspiration for truth being fulfilled once desire’s appetite for the beautiful is disciplined by anger’s striving for the good — so in matters of theoria, apprehension of the truth being attained once our conjectural response to the beautiful is joined with conviction in the good.

But it’s important to admit the usefulness of skepticism regarding the prioritization of beauty because real danger does lurk there. Where free will is involved, the presence of danger is presupposed in any situation. The danger of prioritizing beauty, therefore, is that beauty can be superficial, distracting, deceptive. Such beauty falls short of goodness and truth and contains death, as our first mother discovered. When such false beauty is consumed, the curse of indigestion soon follows, consequences which are designed for the instruction of the hedonist. Pleasure is accompanied by pain. This dyad leads the heart to seek beyond appearances, while at the same time providing an empirical model by which to understand the spiritual realities one is to find beyond appearances. Life in God is true pleasure; life apart from God is true pain. This is the path of instruction for the human soul.

I have lived this in my life and can testify to it: the spiritual pain that ensues when praxis of the virtues is not prioritized over theoria of the beautiful can be severe — severe, yes, but instructive. We’re talking about a fractal triad here: yes, beauty, goodness, and truth is the order to follow on the level of theoria, but in a wider sense theoria must be preceded by praxis in the sequence of praxis, theoria, and mystagogy (in other words, purification, illumination, and perfection). Adherence to this sequence on all levels is essential if one’s spiritual path is at all to be conducive to humility. One must prioritize beauty, while necessitating goodness and, if I may coin a word, teleotizing truth. By this path humility may result. When one prioritizes that which is teleotized among that triad, humility is lost and destruction results, as when one both prioritizes and teleotizes beauty, and truth becomes an afterthought one is all too easily distracted from, or when one both teleotizes and prioritizes truth, and beauty becomes an afterthought one readily abandons. Self-love and pride are the common destination.

This is the danger of conspiracy theory. What happens when truth is both teleotized and prioritized is that our enemies have all these ugly truths queued up to present before our eyes as idols. We then take as objects of contemplation not the logoi of creation but the tropoi of corruption. (Tropoi = modes, the changeable counterparts to the unchangeable principles of creation called logoi. Discerning between logoi and tropoi is critical to Orthodox cosmology.) In a fallen world, through fallen eyes, these latter ugly truths are more easily discovered. And then how easily satisfied with ugly truths is the soul that prioritizes truth over beauty! A proud soul reaching for truth as a means of power over all that reigns over it — power over history, power over governments, power over demons — will find felicitous the path of conspiracy theory. Then what experience of pain can be that soul’s correction? The proud who prioritize truth, unlike those who prioritize beauty, are often impervious to pain. Where then is the path to humility? Would freeing oneself from the tyranny of false principalities be worthwhile if in the process one becomes a false principality oneself? Is there any escape from the master-slave dialectic by that route? Truth, aletheia, is that which lasts forever, but on account of God’s loving respect for our free will — which loving respect surely lasts forever — hellfire lasts too. The outer darkness. The loss of communion. Deceptive beauty is by design a fall one can recover from, but the outer darkness is a destination from which one does not return. It lasts. It’s “true.”

Yet I again assert the proper place of an evil theoria in the Christian way of life. Surely, to the innocence of doves should be added the wisdom of serpents. According to biblical mythology, which is true, we live in a fallen world in which corruption began fractally with the deception of beauty, the attraction to pleasure. That’s the seed of all human sin, planted from above by the devil and containing his pride within it. As the seed grows, the prideful justifications for hedonism naturally coalesce in the form of conspiracies, the law of sin which rules over us. These conspiracies must be perceived and renounced. Attraction to beauty must be disciplined by repulsion from evil. To be repulsed by evil, one first must be made aware of it, and when forces of evil rule over you, conjecture is the only way to approach awareness of them.

Let’s say there’s some conspiracy theory about a plague — it could be factually false even, which is unhelpful and not ideal to say the least, but at the same time it could be adhering to knowledge of the patterns of corruption, which is helpful to learn. In the aggregate, this conjectural speculation could be more helpful spiritually than an official story about the plague that distorts both information and knowledge for the sake of political power born of pride and hedonism. For the theory to be of any relative benefit, however, the proper context needs to be in place around it. Chiefly, attraction to the beautiful in some form of positive faith must have precedence over the negative resistance against the evil conspiracy. Even then, if the fruits of conjecture are asserted with conviction without there first occurring the proper consummation of knowledge, any relative benefit can be undone and reversed, the epistemological transgression, perpetrated in passion, becoming an occasion for manipulation by hostile forces.

But conspiracy theories are fun, let’s admit. That’s a fact I can recognize even though I’m not deep into what are properly known as conspiracy theories. Are Adam Curtis documentaries any different from conspiracy theories, though? Are the songs of Nick Cave, for that matter, or the movies of David Lynch? These are evil theorias. They are conjectural myths that trace the patterns of corruption. Whence the fun, though? I suggest it’s not just a sick, passionate attachment to evil, either in the form of attraction or resistance — though that exists and merits our vigilance. There’s also an innate human purpose to our struggle to understand evil, the satisfaction of which contributes to our sense of excitement. Solomon was praised by God for asking for this knowledge, that he might judge according to wisdom and justice. In Christ we should be free, and we should possess the epistemological tools to protect our freedom from the forces of pride and pleasure that seek to control us. A history of ideas tracing the apostasy of Western culture, such as Fr. Seraphim Rose’s Orthodox Survival Course or Joseph P. Farrell’s (the non-canonical “Bishop Photios” upon original publication) God, History, and Dialectic, amounts on the whole to a type of conspiracy theory writ large, an evil theoria that seeks to raise the believer in Christ above the evil. The endeavor is not dissimilar to when desert fathers like St. John Cassian or St. John Climacus trace the patterns of the passions, studying how they arise, how they operate, and what they produce. But the differences between the two types are instructive. Those desert fathers locate the evil they are studying in the soul, internal to the believer, whereas the historians locate the evil in the world, external to the believer. Evil wanders both wildernesses, within and without; these endeavors need not conflict in purpose. But the historians, like all conspiracy theorists, risk fostering a feeling of self-righteousness that is inimical to the life in Christ. In fact I think the two examples of histories of Western apostasy that I named diverge in their spiritual purpose along these lines, and do so quite independently of the veracity of their narratives.

I’ll confess I’m often exasperated by conspiracy theories in their constant search for evil outside of the self. In so much unverifiable speculation, it feels like peering out into the darkness trying to perceive the shape of things when night-vision goggles dangle idly around our necks. The goggles in this simile are the ascetic teachings of the Church, which if applied would teach us in vivid colors everything we would need to know about the forces of evil domineering our lives. I recognize, though, that both study of the soul and study of the world can be helpful partners to the same end. That which we can not see within is often made clearer in its reflection without. Those whom prejudice might have me dismiss as conspiracy theorists may very well have insight into my soul which I need in order to discipline my attraction to beauty and thereby come to the truth, if only I could learn to appreciate their language. To this end it would help me to understand analogically the way I benefit from my own preferred forms of evil theoria, works of art that consume themselves with the patterns of corruption rather than the patterns of creation.

Pursuing the music of Nick Cave, for example, we can see how having one’s attention consumed by evil truths has a way of transforming into something bright and shining. Corruption occurs in patterns for a reason. Because the world is created in order, according to the logoi that are the Logos, when cracks of corruption are introduced, they form along lines that themselves are ordered. Someone dedicated to running his fingers along those lines in true and honest living can in the end have his vision inverted from negative to positive and glimpse the Logos. It recently occurred to me that the shape of The Bad Seeds’ discography may itself be testifying to some cosmic vision that despite its preoccupation with evil reflects the beauty, goodness, and truth of our Creator.

This outline is speculative on my part, a conjecture concerning knowledge I don’t have. I don’t even know how the discography ends, hence the cursor. The last album I hazard to place, Wild God, doesn’t even drop until August (though the title song has been out since March and fits the pattern). As I see it, the shape of this band’s history conforms to the patterns of creation, a positive and beautiful rhythm of cosmic identity and transformation. It achieves this in its akolouthia (its sequence) whilst musically, in content and form, emerging from the cracks of hell, from the ashes of desecration, from the depths of cosmic ugliness. Paschal transcendence is to be found there, though, if listened to with patience and suspension of judgment. It’s enough to make me believe no contemplation of evil this side of eternity is without its potential for redemptive use. From the dead, Christ is risen.