AU Blogspot

A classic 1959 social psychology experiment demonstrates how and why we lie to ourselves. Understanding this experiment sheds a brilliant light on the dark world of our inner motivations.

The ground-breaking social psychological experiment of Festinger and Carlsmith (1959) provides a central insight into the stories we tell ourselves about why we think and behave the way we do. The experiment is filled with ingenious deception so the best way to understand it is to imagine you are taking part. So sit back, relax and travel back. The time is 1959 and you are an undergraduate student at Stanford University…

As part of your course you agree to take part in an experiment on ‘measures of performance’. You are told the experiment will take two hours. As you are required to act as an experimental subject for a certain number of hours in a year - this will be two more of them out of the way.

Little do you know, the experiment will actually become a classic in social psychology. And what will seem to you like accidents by the experimenters are all part of a carefully controlled deception. For now though, you are innocent.

The set-up

Once in the lab you are told the experiment is about how your expectations affect the actual experience of a task. Apparently there are two groups and in the other group they have been given a particular expectation about the study. To instil the expectation subtly, the participants in the other groups are informally briefed by a student who has apparently just completed the task. In your group, though, you’ll do the task with no expectations.

Perhaps you wonder why you’re being told all this, but nevertheless it makes it seem a bit more exciting now that you know some of the mechanics behind the experiment.

So you settle down to the first task you are given, and quickly realise it is extremely boring. You are asked to move some spools around in a box for half an hour, then for the next half an hour you move pegs around a board. Frankly, watching paint dry would have been preferable.

At the end of the tasks the experimenter thanks you for taking part, then tells you that many other people find the task pretty interesting. This is a little confusing - the task was very boring. Whatever. You let it pass.

Experimental slip-up

Then the experimenter looks a little embarrassed and starts to explain haltingly that there’s been a cock-up. He says they need your help. The participant coming in after you is in the other condition they mentioned before you did the task - the condition in which they have an expectation before carrying out the task. This expectation is that the task is actually really interesting. Unfortunately the person who usually sets up their expectation hasn’t turned up.

So, they ask if you wouldn’t mind doing it. Not only that but they offer to pay you $1. Because it’s 1959 and you’re a student this is not completely insignificant for only a few minutes work. And, they tell you that they can use you again in the future. It sounds like easy money so you agree to take part. This is great - what started out as a simple fulfilment of a course component has unearthed a little ready cash for you.

You are quickly introduced to the next participant who is about to do the same task you just completed. As instructed you tell her that the task she’s about to do is really interesting. She smiles, thanks you and disappears off into the test room. You feel a pang of regret for getting her hopes up. Then the experimenter returns, thanks you again, and once again tells you that many people enjoy the task and hopes you found it interesting.

Then you are ushered through to another room where you are interviewed about the experiment you’ve just done. One of the questions asks you about how interesting the task was that you were given to do. This makes you pause for a minute and think.

Now it seems to you that the task wasn’t as boring as you first thought. You start to see how even the repetitive movements of the spools and pegs had a certain symmetrical beauty. And it was all in the name of science after all. This was a worthwhile endeavour and you hope the experimenters get some interesting results out of it.

The task still couldn’t be classified as great fun, but perhaps it wasn’t that bad. You figure that, on reflection, it wasn’t as bad as you first thought. You rate it moderately interesting.

After the experiment you go and talk to your friend who was also doing the experiment. Comparing notes you found that your experiences were almost identical except for one vital difference. She was offered way more than you to brief the next student: $20! This is when it first occurs to you that there’s been some trickery at work here.

       Thanks to Matthew Fitzgerald for permission to use this Photo.

You ask her about the task with the spools and pegs:

“Oh,” she replies. “That was sooooo boring, I gave it the lowest rating possible.”

“No,” you insist. “It wasn’t that bad. Actually when you think about it, it was pretty interesting.”

She looks at you incredulously.

What the hell is going on?

Cognitive dissonance

What you’ve just experienced is the power of cognitive dissonance. Social psychologists studying cognitive dissonance are interested in the way we deal with two thoughts that contradict each other - and how we deal with this contradiction.

In this case: you thought the task was boring to start off with then you were paid to tell someone else the task was interesting. But, you’re not the kind of person to casually go around lying to people. So how can you resolve your view of yourself as an honest person with lying to the next participant? The amount of money you were paid hardly salves your conscience - it was nice but not that nice.

Your mind resolves this conundrum by deciding that actually the study was pretty interesting after all. You are helped to this conclusion by the experimenter who tells you other people also thought the study was pretty interesting.

Your friend, meanwhile, has no need of these mental machinations. She merely thinks to herself: I’ve been paid $20 to lie, that’s a small fortune for a student like me, and more than justifies my fibbing. The task was boring and still is boring whatever the experimenter tells me.

A beautiful theory

Since this experiment numerous studies of cognitive dissonance have been carried out and the effect is well-established. Its beauty is that it explains so many of our everyday behaviours. Here are some examples provided by Morton Hunt in his classic work ‘The Story of Psychology

• When trying to join a group, the harder they make the barriers to entry, the more you value your membership. To resolve the dissonance between the hoops you were forced to jump through, and the reality of what turns out to be a pretty average club, we convince ourselves the club is, in fact, fantastic.
• People will interpret the same information in radically different ways to support their own views of the world. When deciding our view on a contentious point, we conveniently forget what jars with our own theory and remember everything that fits.
• People quickly adjust their values to fit their behaviour, even when it is clearly immoral. Those stealing from their employer will claim that “Everyone does it” so they would be losing out if they didn’t, or alternatively that “I’m underpaid so I deserve a little extra on the side.”

Once you start to think about it, the list of situations in which people resolve cognitive dissonance through rationalizations becomes ever longer and longer. If you’re honest with yourself, I’m sure you can think of many times when you’ve done it yourself. I know I can.

Being aware of this can help us avoid falling foul of the most dangerous consequences of cognitive dissonance: believing our own lies. 

You can read Festinger and Carlsmith’s entire report at Classics in the History of Psychology.

Jeremy Dean
Creator of PsyBlog
Ashworth University Contributing Blogger

*Having already attained his law degree, Mr. Jeremy Dean is now studying for an MSc in Research Methods in Psychology at University College London.  Through his widely read and acclaimed blog, PsyBlog, Jeremy is committed to providing an insider’s view of psychology without the journalistic sensationalism.  We’re privileged to share this unique view with our students and sincerely appreciate Jeremy for providing us with this opportunity.  Visit PsyBlog to learn more about Jeremy’s life and work.    

Today we were treated to another dose of “Dr. Phil Now!” where Dr. Philistine investigated the very current phenomenon of school shootings. Obviously, we shouldn’t belittle the trauma felt by victims of any violence, nor should we condone brutal, inhumane behavior. At the same time, it might be just as wrong to refrain from belittling Dr. Phil, allowing his brutal, inhumane brand of psychology to persist without criticism. This issue touches upon many political ramifications such as gun control, education policy, and the rights and freedoms afforded to individuals (particularly young people). The most interesting fallacy related to school shootings, though, is not overtly political, but rather historical. Dr. Phil repeats an oft reported error so familiar to media reports, expert explications, and uneasy community meetings: these acts of violence are new and anomalous. This is an irrefutable—and perhaps deliberate—distortion of the historical record.

A Columbine survivor and guest added: “one thing got me into college, I thought it didn’t happen there.” Again, this is the historical record being annihilated. Even between the Columbine shooting and the Virginia Tech massacre (which apparently re-opened this victim’s eyes) there were at least 9 shootings on college campuses resulting in 19 deaths and many more injuries. In fact, there are dozens more similar acts of violence going back to at least 1936 where a student at Lehigh University killed himself and his English professor after demanded that his grade be changed. In 1966, for instance, a meticulously planned shooting by a deranged, well-armed shooter took place atop the Tower at the University of Texas which killed 16 and wounded more than 30 more.

In fact, a reasonable (though necessarily morbid) examination of the relevant history shows that almost all the common assumptions are wrong. Some of the most deadly school related killings in modern times don’t even take place in America, but rather as part of broader conflicts in places like Bratunac in Yugoslavia, Stalino in Ukraine, Hue in Vietnam, and Beslen in Russia. As these events also illustrate, such attacks are also often not the result of, as Dr. Phil muses, “heartbroken teenage boys” and “loners” but rather adults (or, more ominously by groups of adults) with deep felt social, political, and personal grudges. Even in America, the deadliest school-related killing was not perpetrated by a depressed, socially awkward adolescent at a modern, suburban campus.

                 Thanks to caribb for permission to use this Photo.

Instead, it was at a rural Bath, Michigan schoolhouse in the year 1927 when a 55 year old school board treasurer and farmer killed 45 students and teachers, injuring 58 more. Disgruntled over his foreclosed farm, difficult family situation, and other townspeople who ignored his fight for lower taxes, the killer used dynamite and combinations of shrapnel to destroy his own home and set of explosions in three locations at the township’s only school. The purpose of recounting these gruesome events is not to glorify them or even compare body counts as part of a dismal contest, but instead to point out that they are not completely new phenomena, nor do they follow (at least with any great regularity) any of the characteristics so meticulously mapped out and emphasized by Dr. Phil. This is quite different from Santayana’s famous claim that “those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it” (George Santayana Reason in Common Sense). It is difficult to see how anything can be repeated when it is forgotten, covered up, or unknown to begin with.

There are many conceptions of history. Hegel and Marx posit dialectics where various stages and interactions are thought to lead to progress and eventually a teleological perfection. Others, like Walter Benjamin, read history as a persistent accumulation of chaos and catastropher, with progress coming in the form of the backward-flung angel hurling through the post-lapsarian state (Illuminations). In this sense, it doesn’t really matter whether our age is the pinnacle of human existence or the nadir, or even if our time is not substantially different from anything that has already occurred. What is important is that virtually all reputable sciences, philosophies, and psychological movements (predicated on the idea that past events affect subsequent consciousness) must take account of past events and consider a broader historical context. Otherwise, as Dr. Phil demonstrates, one’s historical perspective mirrors that dangerous relationship where the subject becomes an illogical and introverted, social outsider obsessed with destruction.

Seth Woolf
Creator of Deconstructing Phil
Ashworth University Contributing Blogger 

*Although Mr. Seth Woolf is currently pursuing a law career in Boston, Massachusetts—he may need to change horses in midstream, as he’s already fast becoming an underground legend in the psychology world, not for his theories on Freud or Žižek or even Foucault for that matter, but for his groundbreaking work on the enigma that is Dr. Phil McGraw.  The recently launched blog, Deconstructing Phil, is insightful, funny, disturbing, and always original.  We’re excited to have Seth Woolf as a member of our contributing bloggers’ network and we’d like to thank Seth for the opportunity to share his perspectives with our Ashworth University student community.  All kidding aside, there is a lot to be learned on Deconstructing Phil and we encourage you to visit and tell your friends about Seth’s blog as he continues spiraling out of control into Dr. Phil’s mind.  Thanks Seth!

While cases of religious ecstasy are hardly unusual, there are definitely examples that tend to stand out. In 1728, in the Parisian cemetery of St. Medard, a phenomenon began that quickly became the talk of France. Following the burial of a pious, Jansenist bishop named Francois de Paris in the cemetery, stories arose of miraculous cures being worked at the bishop’s tomb. Pious female parishioners, who later became known as St. Medard’s convulsionaries, were described as engaging in “contortions and convulsive movements, attended by cries, shrieks and groans, all of which were regarded as manifestations of divine power”. The adherents would work themselves into states of religious ecstasy and engage in acts of severe torture which they either inflicted on themselves or through the actions of assistants known as Secouristes. They would then reportedly work miracles and cure all forms of disease.

The massive hysteria that arose led to a crackdown by the police under orders of the King and the eventual closure of the cemetery in 1732. Thousands of convulsionaries were arrested and the movement was driven underground. It eventually split into different factions and faded into obscurity (although it would briefly reappear in Paris in 1759). The police action gave rise to a famous epigram: “De par le roi, defense a Dieu De faire miracle en ce lieu. (Louis to God: To keep the peace, here miracles must henceforth cease).”

The convulsionaries of St. Medard gained a literary immortality through the writings of Voltaire and Diderot. A less famous but longer-lasting example of religious convulsionaries occurred in the northern Spanish town of Jaca. This small town was known for centuries for the annual pilgrimage to commemorate its patron saint, Orosia (also spelled Eurosia). Different accounts of Orosia’s life exist (and she may have never existed at all) and it remains unclear why she was named patron saint of the demonically possessed but she became the patron saint of Jaca after her relics were brought there in the eleventh century.

               Thanks to Karen for permission to use this Photo.

From that time until the Church banned the practice in 1947, St. Orosia’s convulsionaries took part in a bizarre procession each year on June 25 (the Saint’s feast day). The procession involved the “demonically afflicted” (eg, epileptics, mentally ill, physically handicapped, and other stricken) and took place in front of the Saint’s sarcophagus. The pilgrims would gather to find healing for their various afflictions through participation in the procession and exorcism rituals. In a description of the procession by a medical observer in 1881 (and bear with me here since my Spanish is rusty), the bishop and retinue of friars would start off the procession accompanied by music and dancing. “Paralytics, madmen, epileptics and hysterics would gather during the night before the chest containing the saint’s relics.

Their infirmity is attributed to possession by a devil and they seek the devil’s elimination. Cramping, muscle contractions, spasmodic grins, and howling are the preamble of the convulsions. They would fall to the ground until they were black and blue, blood spurting from their mouths”. At this point, the exorcism would begin with multiple applications of the rosary and cross which the convulsionaries would kiss repeatedly. Once the demon was deemed to have fled, the newly healed convulsionaries would jump for joy and scream loudly.

It is doubtful whether any actual “cures” took place (there were certainly no follow-up studies) but the sight of the newly-exorcised praising the saint for their healing made for quite a spectacle by all accounts and drew pilgrims from all over the region.The banning by the Church in 1947 brought an end to St. Orosia’s convulsionaries and marked the last example of recurring mass motor hysteria in
Europe. Sadly, the use of exorcism in dealing with mental illness continues even today with tragic results When proper mental health care isn’t available and families seek for a cure for their loved ones, what solutions might they turn to in desperation?

Romeo Vitelli
Creator of Providentia
AU Contributing Blogger

*A man who has lived a fascinating life, Dr. Romeo Vitelli spent fifteen years as a staff psychologist in Millbrook Correctional Centre, a maximum-security prison run by the Ontario government. In 2003, he successfully escaped prison and went into full-time private practice and currently also serves as a Disaster Management volunteer with the Red Cross.  He is one of the web’s most respected and trusted sources in matters of psychology.  We here in the AUCJ community are honored to share with our students and would like to express our gratitude.  Visit Providentia to learn more about the life and work of Dr. Romeo Vitelli.

There seems no question that William James Sidis was a genius. Born in New York City in 1898, his parents, Boris and Sarah, were Russian immigrants and intellectuals who had fled to the U.S. to escape persecution. Boris earned his M.D. and Ph.D. degrees at Harvard University and taught psychology there. He was a close friend of William James who was his son’s godfather (William was also named for him). Sarah was an M.D. whose family fled the Russian pogroms ten years before William’s birth. She gave up her medical career to be a full-time mother to her son (and later daughter). They both held radical notions concerning early child education (radical for the time anyway) and encouraged William to learn without using the discipline that characterized education in that era.

The results were nothing less than spectacular: William could read the New York Times by the age of 18 months and taught himself eight languages by the time he was eight (he also invented a new language and a new logarithm table). At the age of 11, he entered Harvard as part of an experimental program along with other promising prodigies including Norbert Weiner and Buckminster Fuller. He excelled in higher mathematics and language and a brilliant future was predicted for him. Intelligence testing was still in its infancy (and Boris dismissed IQ tests as “pedantic and misleading”) but later estimates would put William’s IQ in the 250 to 300 range. He graduated with a Bachelor of Arts Degree with full honors at the age of 16.

And then things went downhill from there…

His lifelong feud with the press began with an interview before graduation in which he stated that he planned to remain celibate and that women did not appeal to him. Publicity over the interview may have been the cause of his being threatened by a gang of Harvard students and which led to his leaving Harvard to go to Rice University in Texas. After some time, he abandoned mathematics and enrolled in Harvard Law School in 1916. He withdrew three years later without finishing and became involved in political causes including being a conscientious objector to the World War I draft.

His arrest in 1919 for participating in a socialist rally that turned violent caused him to be sentenced to 18 months in prison for rioting and assault (there is some question concerning the legitimacy of the charges). His father made a special arrangement with the District Attorney to keep William out of prison by having him sent to his private sanatorium instead. This seemed to be an especially dark time of William’s life and he never forgave his parents for “kidnapping” him and holding him against his will for more than a year. He accused them of subjecting him to various forms of “mental torture” including scolding and nagging for hours at a time. He was frequently threatened with transfer to a regular insane asylum where his prospects for an eventual release would be slim.

William eventually managed to escape in 1921, but he never reconciled with his parents. His experience in the sanatorium had left him “scared of his own shadow” and his parents’ efforts to have him returned to their care made him extremely paranoid about his privacy and intrusions into his life. He spent the rest of his life apparently drifting between menial jobs although he continued to publish a range of eclectic works (mostly under pseudonyms) that still attracts a cult following.

He especially resented intrusions into his life by the press (who regularly presented him as being an unhappy and burned-out product of his forced acceleration) and even sued one paper for what he considered to be a libelous article about him that caused “grievous mental anguish and humiliation”. The stress from the lawsuit may have contributed to his death from a cerebral hemorrhage in 1944.

What do we make of William Sidis? Despite his early death and failure to live up to his early potential, his case is still followed in educational circles. Would things have turned out differently had his parents not intervened in his jail sentence as they did? Some questions can’t be answered.

Romeo Vitelli
Creator of Providentia
AU Contributing Blogger

*A man who has lived a fascinating life, Dr. Romeo Vitelli spent fifteen years as a staff psychologist in Millbrook Correctional Centre, a maximum-security prison run by the Ontario government. In 2003, he successfully escaped prison and went into full-time private practice and currently also serves as a Disaster Management volunteer with the Red Cross.  He is one of the web’s most respected and trusted sources in matters of psychology.  We here in the AUCJ community are honored to share with our students and would like to express our gratitude.  Visit Providentia to learn more about the life and work of Dr. Romeo Vitelli.

The nuclear explosions that devastated the city of Hiroshima on August 6, 1945 and the city of Nagasaki three days later resulted in massive destruction and loss of life. Although the precise number of casualties has never been determined, it is estimated that 70,000 died in Hiroshima due to the immediate effects of the blast with an additional 50000 in Nagasaki (mostly civilians).

Estimates of the lingering effects of radiation exposure are even more problematic although it has been suggested that many thousands of casualties occurred in the decades that followed. It would be the only time that nuclear weapons would be used in war (so far). Another legacy of the bombings is far more subtle but just as devastating for the survivors.

Since 1945, there has been a lingering stigma attached to survivors and their descendants that led to them being frequently ostracized by mainstream Japanese society. Termed the hibakusha (meaning “radiation-affected people” in Japanese), there are over 200,000 that have been formally registered with the Japanese government (registration being necessary to receive compensation) although many hibakusha also live in neighbouring countries such as South Korea (there were numerous Korean and other foreign nationals living in Hiroshima and Nagasaki at the time of the bombings).

It would take years of activism and public awareness campaigns for the Japanese government to pass legislation subsidizing basic medical treatment for hibakusha in 1957.  (the United States government was formally absolved of any responsibility for compensation in a treaty with Japan in 1951). Due to the misinformation surrounding radiation exposure including fears of it being hereditary or contagious, many hibakusha face ongoing job and housing discrimination and non-affected families even object to their children marrying into a hibakusha family. To avoid discrimination, many hibakusha conceal their status to “pass” in mainstream society.

               Thanks to Nancy for permission to use this Photo.

The psychological scars involved with being a hibakusha are considerable although research into the psychosocial impact of being a survivor has been relatively neglected. In addition to the expected posttraumatic symptoms for those who survived the bombings, there is also considerable survivor guilt and a “conspiracy of silence” surrounding hibakusha discussing their experiences (although this has started to change as survivors become better organized). Survivors who emigrated to other countries after the war (including the United States) began organizing local support chapters. Despite attempts to encourage survivors to tell their stories, the lingering stigma has resulted in many hibakusha refusing to “out” themselves and sharing their experiences. As the elderly survivors die, their stories often die with them.  

Stigma can take a variety of forms and people can be ostracized for all sorts of reasons. Having the wrong skin colour, creed, place of origin, medical diagnosis or sexual orientation has been used to justify horrendous discrimination over the years. Simply being in the wrong place at the wrong time seems sufficient for some. It can happen in a flash of light.

Romeo Vitelli
Creator of Providentia
AU Contributing Blogger

*A man who has lived a fascinating life, Dr. Romeo Vitelli spent fifteen years as a staff psychologist in Millbrook Correctional Centre, a maximum-security prison run by the Ontario government. In 2003, he successfully escaped prison and went into full-time private practice and currently also serves as a Disaster Management volunteer with the Red Cross.  He is one of the web’s most respected and trusted sources in matters of psychology.  We here in the AUCJ community are honored to share with our students and would like to express our gratitude.  Visit Providentia to learn more about the life and work of Dr. Romeo Vitelli.

I have to admit that I do this with some trepidation. I can already feel the assault on my inbox. But after a good long think about potential time and energy being lost by our entire community to senseless and ultimately inconsequential musings, I have to come out and say it: the alternative theories about 9-11 are wrong. Worse, the endless theorizing and speculation about trajectories, explosives, military tests, fake airplane parts and remote control navigation actually distracts some of our best potential activists from addressing the more substantive matters at hand.

Yes, I believe that 9-11 theorizing debilitates the counterculture. It robs us of some potentially creative thinkers. It replaces truly important questions with trivial ones. It marginalizes more constructive investigation of American participation in the development of Al Qaeda as well as its subsequent aggravation. And perhaps worst of all, it is precisely the sort of activity that government disinformation specialists would want us to be involved with.

9-11 theorists are unwittingly performing as the unpaid minions of the administration’s propaganda wing.

(At least most of them are unpaid; no doubt, some of the loudest are working as contractors for the same agencies whose activities they pretend to deconstruct.) That’s why, instead of nodding along with their long-winded, preposterous yarns under the false belief that any critique is better than no critique, we—the informed, intelligent, and reasonable members of the war resistance—must instead disassociate ourselves from this drivel. In other words, we must draw the line between the kind of analysis done by Greg Palast and that done by Pilots for Truth. If we don’t apply discipline to our thinking, we risk falling into the trap that even some of our best intellectuals have—like Harper’s editor Lewis Lapham, who on reading a bit too much 9-11 conspiracy, has concluded that it all has some merit.

I’m all for supposing. It’s how the best science fiction gets written, the best science gets speculated, the best innovations get developed, and the wildest thoughts get hatched. But forensics is a different beast. As any detective will tell you, the most straightforward solution is usually the right one. As one NYPD detective explained to me, “Nineteen hijackers took four planes and crashed them at different places: WTC 1, 2, the Pentagon and a field in PA. These accounts broadly correspond to all that was observed and heard that day, who was on the flight manifests, where they came from and what they claimed to want to do, and yet do not involve vast US government conspiracies and do not need the coordinated, perfect lying of tens of thousands of people about the mass murder of their fellow citizens and those they gave their oath to spend their careers protecting.”

True enough, these huge incidents have produced many unexpected details. The plane in Pennsylvania scattered its parts differently than we might have expected it to. Lamp posts near the Pentagon got knocked over when we wouldn’t have thought were vulnerable given the altitude of the approaching plane. Building number 7 fell hours later, even though it was never directly hit by a plane. Video photography of the collapses show the towers falling quite neatly, as if in a planned detonation.

But strange and unexpected details don’t necessarily point to the fallacy of the central premise—especially when the alternative involves the active coordination of thousands, if not tens of thousands of citizens in a conspiracy to attack the United States. We must look at what each intriguing detail or inconsistency actually says about how the crime took place. Again, in the words of my favorite member of the NYPD, “These explanations are principally based on the fatally flawed idea that any confusion or misinterpretation or differing accounts in times of crisis must be the product of purposeful lies. They neglect the idea that in crises, and when there is mass confusion, people do not have specific recollections, only general ones that are highly subjective, such as what direction a plane sounded like it was coming from. Their stories seek to poke holes in prevailing truth, yet offer no alternative that could be seen as remotely plausible.”

For example, the Pilots for 911 Truth website explains: “Why was Capt. Burlingame, a retired Military Officer with training in anti-terrorism, reported to have given up his airplane to 5 foot nothing. 100 and nothing Hani Hanjour holding a “boxcutter”. (Exaggeration added for size of Hani, he was tiny, lets just put it that way). We at pilotsfor911truth.org feel the same as his family in that Capt. Burlingame would not have given up his airplane unlike what is reported in this linked article from CNN.”

What, exactly, is this supposed to mean? Was Captain Burlingame murdered? Or was he the willing participant in the government’s effort to sell the invasion of Iraq to America—so much so that he chose to enter into a suicidal pact? Or was the hijacker bigger than his passport suggests? Or is it implausible that a small dark man from an undeveloped country was able to overpower a big, trained, white man from a Superpower?

And that’s where I suspect all this theorizing really takes us: to the heart of a racist jingoism worse even than the triumphalism justifying our foreign policy to begin with. They can’t bring themselves to accept that our big bad government can really be so swiftly outfoxed by a dozen relatively untrained Arab guys. And rather than go there, they’d prefer to maintain the myth of American hegemony. On a certain level, it feels better to believe that we are only vulnerable by our leaders’ sick choice—not by our adversaries’ increasing strength and prowess.

But maintaining this comforting illusion comes at a price. It paralyzes our ability to do the real work necessary to parse what is going on. I mean, on a certain level, what does it matter whether Osama Bin Laden, a CIA-trained former ally is currently acting on his own or as an operative of some covert semi-governmental organization or corporation? We can’t even begin to ask these questions when the people who might be most qualified to look into them are instead crippled by their own ethnocentrism.

The cultivation of a critically aware public is too important right now for us to entertain this silliness any longer.

When a full 40 percent of the American public believes that Saddam Hussein was responsible for 9-11, we can’t afford the luxury of this delusional behavior. We are the alternative to the FoxNews version of events, and we must strive to present a more responsible alternative to Karl Rove’s disinformation.The war profiteers are absolutely delighted that so many of us are still distracted by this phantom menace. And they delight in our belief that the central government is really powerful enough to pull something like this off. I’ve been interacting with intelligence people for the past three years, going to conferences and writing articles promoting an open-source approach to national security. After these encounters, I can assure you—anyone who knows anything about our government knows that a conspiracy on this order is well beyond their capabilities. Hell, the administration couldn’t even “find” weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. They can’t even reveal a Valerie Plame or fire the few remaining honest US attorneys without a complete backfire. Conspiracy is not what these folks are good at.

Our government excels at doing its really bad stuff out in the open. They break laws in order to spy on citizens, and refuse to acknowledge objections from lawmakers or justice. They take taxpayers money and give it to the companies they run. They acknowledge the many billions of dollars that go missing, and offer not even a shrug. They put the people who formerly lobbied on behalf of industries in positions running the agencies that are supposed to be regulating them.

By looking under the rug for what isn’t even there, we neglect the horror show that is in plain view. In the process, we make it even easier for the criminals running our government to perpetuate their illegal, unethical and un-American activities.

In fact, the most logical conclusion I can draw from the existing evidence is that 9-11 theorists are themselves covert government operatives, dedicated to confusing the public, distracting activists from their tasks, equating all dissent with the lunatic fringe, and provoking the counterculture’s misplaced belief in the competency of its foes.

That’s the real conspiracy.

Douglas Rushkoff: www.rushkoff.com
Special Guest Blogger

*We would like extend a special thanks to Douglas Rushkoff for openly sharing his perspectives with the AU community.  Throughout his brilliant career, Douglas Rushkoff’s actions have demonstrated time and time again that he truly stands behind the open-source/open-internet principles that have always inspired his work.  We are honored to have the opportunity to introduce the ideas of Douglas Rushkoff to the AU student community.*