Crazy Bulgaria; Top 3 Conspiracy Theories And how they are harming us!

Crazy Bulgaria;

Top 3 Conspiracy Theories

And how they are harming us!

Well ladies and gentleman I have not written in a long time, this was maybe due to the lack of motivation that I had been having to write on the blog. Nevertheless today I feel differently and I wish to share my thoughts with all the readers (although at the time they are very limited) about conspiracy theories, and how they had an impact on my personal live. As I have mentioned in previous posts of mine I live in an interesting EU country, a country of myths and legends. Where on the news we hear many accusations, finger pointing, blaming and the good old fashioned conspiracies. However what we do not hear is reasoning and argumentation. Now not to be too harsh, there are some tv channels that do provide reason and argumentation, sadly they are mostly ignored by the public, because it seems "boring". In this short article I will go about and give my reasoning of how I see conspiracy theories, and the way I believe they effect our lives. In order to make this article mostly non-bias (due to the reason I know my bias) I will attempt to provide a few arguments on why they might be "helpful"

Nowadays we have access to a vast amount of information and the world has never been smaller, thanks to the internet and other media. It is interesting to see a country being divided into multiple spheres of information regarding the same event. To best illustrate this I am going to give an example with the downing of the Russian plane near the Turkish boarder. Bulgarian media was pretty much divided into multi-spheres on which side to take. Some of them pretty much started spreading fear and pure anti-west propaganda, while the others attempted to do the opposite. So far so good, this is where afterwards the conspiracy started kicking in. There were rumors by people that another "Great War" was upon us. Panic and fear grew as people sat at home, eating microwaved food, watching television and being subjected to processed information.

You might be asking yourself well where is the conspiracy theory in that? All i see is pure propaganda!? Well what I missed out on purpose for the sake of the story was all of the myths and legends that most of our citizens believe and follow upon. I will be numbering them and give a sort of reasoning to provide you with a inside of what the real issues within conspiracy theories are and how they are harmful for the development of society. Just as John S. Mill had described it "tyranny of the majority".

1. The government is working against the people; and the people are helpless victims. Nothing seems to be more obvious when talking to friends of mine and relatives, that are not familiar with politics and how the political system works, the misinformation and anger that they have developed for the governance. Most of them however do not associate governance as any formally acquainted person with politics would. Most do not make the difference between institution, political party, organization, NGO and the list goes on and on. Sadly it is related with people, a person is considered as the government themselves. However this is not the scary part that I am actually trying to portray. The scary part of believing that the same government, which is there to serve the needs of citizens is actually out to get you is the paranoia that a person develops. Once a person is paranoid that everybody is out to get them, they stop functioning and developing properly. They do not feel secure anymore and they are stuck within the second step of Maslow's Pyramid of Needs.
2. Public=good, Private=bad: There was and sadly still is a believe that everything that is privately owned is something of the devil himself. I can best illustrate this with education, there is a believe that in our educational system; students, which were to graduate from the private sector are either dumber or less qualified. They are ignored of their achievements, because they are paying for their education. Only rich people can afford such education in order to keep the poor and mistreated people "in their place". This is an argument that I have heard in my life multiple times, even from close relatives of mine. I can go on and give about a dozen of arguments of why that "believe" of private being bad is wrong, however this is not my intention in this article, as do not wish to counter-argument every theory that I list on here. The reason of why this theory is mainly harmful not only to people but to pretty much the whole country is the fact that it resembles the "glorious past" (communism) of everything being state owned. I am sure that most of you know why this is not such a "good" idea.
3. We are being overtaken by minorities!: This is a simple and yet bizarre public believe that minorities such as Roma population (mostly referred to as "gypsies") are actually overtaking our country. I am not kidding when I say that I had heated debates with people that were claiming that Roma population were going to invade, enslave and rape everyone. They are being mostly portrayed and "monsters", rapists, liars, and the list goes on and on. In truth the Roma population is anywhere between 7-10% of the total Bulgarian population, however due to their cluster like style of living they give the notion that they are "billions". The story of where this believe comes from is a long one, I am sure that in my professional live I am going to do a case study on it, nevertheless due to my limited time now I can say that the roots of the propaganda can be identified once again within the "glorious past". I am aware that you as people can see why this public opinion of minorities is not only discriminative but harmful as well. For one, we are stuck once again in the second step of Maslow's Pyramid of Needs (see above) and worst than that, we are beginning to identify the cause of what is wrong within society. This has given birth to some nationalistic parties, my beef with them is an a whole another level, but that is a topic of another day...

I for one had been effected by all of those "popular believes" that had been spreading from a person to another like a deadly virus. Why do I call them deadly? Well for one all of those believes limits the idea of freedom and that such a notion does not exist. It gives the ability to people to raise their hands and blame the "others" that their lives are not going the way they had been wanting. In this sense we have an excuse and who to blame if anything goes wrong, because what will happen if there is no one to blame?!? Might it be so that then it will be my fault of the stuff I failed to produce? Impossible! 

Conspiracy theories are good when they are limited and people are using them for the sake of challenging the "idea". We should not overlook them blindly (unless they are utterly pathetic), they can be used as a different point of view! However once they start being used as an excuse, we enslave ourselves within those conspiracies, reminding us each day that nothing can be done, because I am a weak, pathetic human being....

I am going to finish this short article with a quote from Frederick Douglass as I believe his quotes fits the best within this propaganda machine and the most citizens in Bulgaria (however not limited to) are being subjected: "Where justice is denied, where poverty is enforced, where ignorance prevails, and where any one class is made to feel that society is an organized conspiracy to oppress, rob and degrade them, neither persons nor property will be safe."

Let us break the chains of conspiracy theories and start focusing on things that actually do matter...

Enough is enough I say, how about you?

Are you a believer?