Just read this book. I've been on a weird-history kick for a while now and this one satisfied. Here's the thing about conspiranoia, I think it's a thing that requires faith.
It's all about the invisible hand.
The invisible hand is the hand of god.
Whether Pat Robertson's vengeful god who flooded the low rent sections of New Orleans for... for... Mardi Gras?... or Milton Friedman's invisible hand of the "free market" or the conspiracy to keep people from driving electric cars.
Canadian author John Reynolds goes over the Tinfoil Hat All Stars, the Knights Templar, the Masons, the Rosicrucians, the Bilderbergers, Illuminati and even some secret societies that are something more than paranoid fantasy like Mafia organizations in Italy, China, Japan and the USofA.
Reynolds breaks down how these organizations started (the ones that actually existed) and goes into how a lot of conspiracy theories about them are totally bullshit. (But that's just what the Order of DeMoley wants you to think...) He really takes Dan Brown to the woodshed.
He also mentions organizations that are genuinely scary but don't get the History Chanel treatment like the American National Security Council.
I would have liked to have seen anything about paramilitary militias, a source of my own fascination/paranoia.
It's weird to think about. Conspiracies, paranoia.
Conspiracies are about victims.
If a shadowy cabal of bankers or Hollywood moguls or Old World royalty are secretly controlling the world, then aren't we all their victims.
Sometimes it's about things that actually really happened, like when Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, AIG, anti-regulatory regulators and a bunch of minor league scumbags caused an economic collapse of epic proportion a few years ago.
But none of those guys were out to dominate the world, they just wanted to make a dishonest buck.
But really, a lot of these conspiracies do require a lot of faith.
A non-believer could care less about the location of Christ's bones or secret progeny or Muhammad's last half-eaten sandwich or even Roswell space alien carcasses.
As for secret societies themselves, aside from a few cults, secret societies are so 19th Century.
Our society is much more free than it has been in the past.
Secret societies are just not necessary anymore.
Sub rosa societies are for people fallen through the cracks of the larger society and aside from our comically unequal wealth distribution, our society has a lot fewer cracks than it used to.
It's not even illegal to be gay anymore.
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2 Swimmers in the pool:
I agree -- the idea that these people could be organized and secretive enough to pull this stuff off clashes with what I've learned of the competence of large groups in particular and human beings in general...
Materialism may look empty to a guy who's name rhymes with Shmeepak Schmopra but I think there is so much on this side of the veil that I just don't find the other side of the veil very compelling. (possibly because it's never done much to compel me)
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