“Aha!”

It’s an interesting feeling, isn’t it?

One minute you’re listening to someone describe a complex idea that is difficult to comprehend, and the next, the dots connect. From that point on you will always have some sort of an understanding of the concept.

Or how about this… You’re staring at a math problem and have no idea what to do. Then, suddenly, the random string of numbers begins to make sense and you work the solution.

Each time you look back at the problem it becomes easier to solve because you’ve seen the answer. You know what steps should be taken.

Save Will Smith and Tommy Lee Jones flashing their memory washing lasers, humans can’t unlearn things…

So what happens there?

Biologically, when someone is learning something the brain passes electrical messages from one neuron to another throughout the body. Eventually, a pathway is established for the given transmission to follow and, like paving a road, the task or concept is learned.

“Aha!”

These pathways will remain in existence as long as the brain continues to transmit electrical messages of any kind. Thus once you learn it, you can eventually recall it — although sometimes you have to dust off a few cobwebs if it’s a path without much traffic.

“It’s easier to fool someone than convince them they’ve been fooled.” – Mark Twain

The learning process can be interrupted, or even influenced in certain ways.

For example, the brain needs water to create neural pathways. So if someone is dehydrated, then their ability to think, learn and recall will be less effective. The brain also needs the right balance of proteins, fats, carbohydrates and sugars to work properly.

Another factor influencing the learning process is emotion, which can interrupt or redirect a given neural transmission. When our emotions swing violently, we say, do and believe things that we normally never would. This is typically just temporary, though. People will eventually say they are sorry or acknowledge that they were acting out of character.

However, long-term, heightened emotional states can have a lasting impact on the learning process. And Americans are always concerned about this…

We worry about what’s “ruining our children.”

Interestingly, these concerns aren’t tied to how much water is consumed throughout the day or our diet (although some are considering these more as of late), but to the things that altar emotions.

Issues at home, religion, video games, smart phones, violent movies, rap music and any number of things are all said to cause the woes of society. As if there was at some point an ideal environment that made America great, and it is the things that deviate us from that or redefine the environment which are leading to our downfall.

Most debates on this topic normally center on whether it is even possible for Grand Theft Auto or Lil Wayne to make our kids dumber, or more aggressive.

I think it begs a different question, though:

So what if they do?

Is deviation really that bad? Or, better stated: should we be worried when our needs and values deviate from what they once were?

To say that something is “deviating” assumes that there is an agreed upon “something” in the first place. I, personally, don’t like the idea of there being a “something”. A prototype… Some perfect, wide-jawed American out there that says the pledge of allegiance every morning.

Our default response doesn’t have to be to “make America great again.”

But that’s what we do. We rate ourselves based on the way America once was; we measure deviation from the prototype.

The Conspiracy Theory Conspiracy

“Conspiracy Theory” is a saucy term. And popular.

Nowadays almost everyone has seen a documentary in which rifle experts explain trajectory angles from downtown Dallas windows, or maybe that YouTube video on thermite.

Of course, proponents of conspiracy theories will quickly tell you that it’s actually a misunderstood term.

Which, it is. A conspiracy theory is simply a hypothesis that something unlawful was deliberately orchestrated by two or more individuals.

[By the definitions of both words, that’s it… “Two or more individuals plotting or conspiring to do something unlawful” (conspiracy) and “an idea used to account for something” (theory)]

But with the popularity of those documentaries and the higher frequency of awkward dinner conversations about Chemtrails, it would be obtuse to believe that “conspiracy theory” doesn’t carry more weight than its simple definition says it does.

No matter which online dictionary a conspiracy theorist takes a screen shot of, the term has become a genre unto itself.

Millions of dollars are made by TV networks for shows that cover nefarious topics ranging from ancient alien cover-ups to New World Order mind control. Amateur film makers like Dylan Avery make more than just some “loose change” on their YouTube sensations and Peter Joseph has definitely entered the “zeitgeist” since his meme-driven docu.

A conspiratorial view of the world is becoming the norm for more people than one might think and a variety of alternate explanations are being thrown around for just about everything that has ever happened in human history.

And some theories go beyond human history… Even so far as hypothesizing that the earth is really flat. Believe it or not, this is actually one of the more popular conspiracy theories out there right now. Manifesto may be a strong word, but a sort-of-well-known rapper even recently posted several tweets outlining why he believes “Flat Earth Theory”.

So where did all of this come from?

How has Jack Ruby morphed into reptilian Barack Obama?

Some say it’s the nature of people who believe in conspiracies. That they (conspiracy theorists) think everything is a half-truth or a lie, so they’ll eventually find themselves believing just about anything.

It is simply dumbfounding that so many people offer up this logical fallacy as a reasonable explanation…

If conspiracy theorists thought everything was a half-truth then they wouldn’t believe just about anything would they? Furthermore, if they believed just about anything then how is everything simultaneously a lie?

We also don’t come to things like “Flat Earth Theory” in the year 2016 from individuals going out and researching evidence on their own. As romantic as it may sound, people don’t survey land or travel to Antarctica only to come to the same conclusion that the world is flat.

They watch videos and read things online.

It’s not a matter of conspiracy theorists’ psychological evolution and it’s not organic – or at least, it doesn’t feel organic in some cases.

So where do theories like the NASA hoax come from?

The Big, Fat Elephant

There is another problem.

Some conspiracy theories are true.

Well, there may be a few straw man issues with specific hypotheses, but the general idea of “you are being lied to about what happened” seems to be true for some conspiracy theories. And the evidence for these real conspiracies is out there for anyone to look at.

But this is where it gets really interesting…

Because sometimes even the evidence that points to a particular conspiracy being true is, in actuality, fake. Or forged. Or falsified.

This is what is called disinformation.

For example, regardless of what you believe about 9/11 one item sticks out as classic disinformation… That the federal government immediately sold the steel from the World Trade Center’s rubble to China and it was “basically shipped out overnight.”

Conspiracy theorists love this and say that it’s a sign the government was trying to get rid of evidence. Those that believe the official story will say they were just clearing space to find any survivors.

Either way, the whole notion is simply bullshit… There were no steel beams to ship out.

We all saw the collapse, the whole thing turned to dust and spread throughout Manhattan. We remember the iconic images of people covered in dust and the very few pieces of steel that did remain intact sticking up through the white powdered dunes. There’s even footage of whole steel support columns turning to dust right before your eyes.

But the report is real.

So why would it be put out? Why would we say we sold steel that no longer existed to China if we simply didn’t?

Reporting a transaction that would have involved hundreds of people couldn’t just be a misquote or from reading a report incorrectly. It’s an out and out lie. It’s disinformation.

But the disinformation points to conspiracy…

One could assume that the conspirators wouldn’t make something up that is evidence for a conspiracy, but it does make some sense. Because it covers the actual trail.

If both the conspiracy theorists and official story believers are caught up on steel and why it was shipped off, neither side will look at 9/11 from the viewpoint of there being no steel to begin with.

People learned to connect steel with 9/11. Whatever “Aha!” moment they have about 9/11 after that will come from the perspective of there being steel (“Jet Fuel Can’t Melt Steel Beams”).

Taking it a step further, it would make even more sense to generate so many ridiculous conspiracies theories that the entire way we think of the term “conspiracy theory” changes.

Get average, prototypical Americans to equate all conspiracy theories with “Flat Earth” or alien Barrack Obama, and they won’t look too deeply into any of them.

If you had the means to pull something like that off of course.

I don’t. But I think I know just the guy. The perfect, wide-jawed American…

And it all makes sense now.

Aha!

Robert Redford.

It’s that golden-locked bastard Redford who is behind it all.

Think about it. All of his great movies are kind of conspiracy-y and they’re basically guidebooks on how to steal, con, sellout or corrupt.

Hell, Redford’s been both the corrupt politician in The Candidate and the one exposing a political conspiracy in All The President’s Men.

He fought the banking system and police state in Butch Cassidy And The Sundance Kid and prepared for martial law in Jeremiah Johnson.

The Sting was staged shooting hoax 101 and Three Days Of The Condor is a film that is literally about Redford trying to blow-the-whistle on a CIA cover up.

His personal story just screams government asset too…

Before becoming a movie star Redford was heading nowhere in life and was kind of a deadbeat. He went to UC Boulder on an academic scholarship but joined a frat, partied, drank and eventually was kicked out of school.

Robbie Red then chilled out in Europe for a while before winding up in New York doing TV shows… He then landed the lead in a few films and became a star.

And that’s pretty much it. He ended up in New York somehow and then started starring in movies.

Or that’s when the CIA grabbed him and made him a star… in all of their Hollywood movies. Because all of those movies are just government propaganda anyways.

They pump out nothing but disinformation, I tell ya what…

Talk about a crazy theory, huh?