08-08-2013, 02:41 PM
Jeffrey Orling Wrote:I think there is another issue operating here. People see the events of the world through a filter...a filter which blocks out some things and hilights others... much the way polarized sun glasses make the world look different from non polarized ones. But it's rather hard at some point to even realize that we are seeing the world through these filters... loosely referred to as subjectivity.
People who are firm in the belief of the JFK conspiracy tend then to see all events through a conspiracy filter as it were... and surely lots of what we see is not what actually is. We're subjected to deception 24/7 by advertising and PR and spin. At some point people simply accept whatever they want to see behind this all because deception is purposeful and the motives for it are no damn good.... ever.
I cannot speak for others, but I certainly do not see all events through a conspiracy filter. And "conspiracy" is such a vague and all-embracing concept anyway that to say conspiracy is to say little.
I think there is much truth in what you say about filtering, Jeffrey, and it does not apply only to belief in conspiracy, but could be seen as a general epistemological precept. I think all scholars of history or the human sciences worth their salt are constantly aware of this problem. I think that natural scientists have analogous problems (witness the anthropic principle, at least in some of its manifestations). Ultimately there is no absolute way out of it, but we all must be honest enough to admit that it operates in subtle ways that sometimes we cannot control. But awareness is half the battle.