Conspiracy thinkers tend to display what psychologists call “hyper-agency detection”. They see agency in every structural force. But this is the mistake of all traditional thinking. Everyone tends to project a subject-predicate structure on everything they are trying to understand. It is better to see that every force is also a type of agency. It is just not necessarily the kind of agency we imagine in our generic thinking, biased as it is by our linguistic structure (which thinks in terms of subjects performing an action or intention, being acted upon, or imbued with some essential qualities).
It matters less whether someone is literally intending the type of agency that gets objectified, because literal to me is just another metaphor. The important point is that there are forces working towards some rather dystopian scenarios in the world right now. How conscious any agent is of their role in this process is a difficult question since people understand their actions in different ways. How to evaluate which interpretations are of the most value is what is of most interest. Conspiracy theory tends towards the melodramatic to be sure. I would frame things differently. But most people can’t fathom high level structural forces without some kind of subjective narrative.
The melodramatic frame is common for people attracted to big-picture, synthesizing thought because it allows a kind of religious narrative of good vs. evil to structure these higher level forces. By higher level, I mean logically more abstracted from specific circumstances. Analytically minded people tend to shy away from making any kind of leaps beyond what can be generalized from specific accepted circumstances. But they can have their own religious narrative of truth vs. falsehood, concrete vs. vague or ambiguous. It is better to frame any thought as a sacrifice–both analysis and synthesis abstract from other generalizations and abstractions. Even the supposed concrete facts are just abstractions that have passed into consensus.
It gets difficult talking about abstract ideas and forces having their own agency without sounding like an occultist, but I am fine with that. If we don’t use any agency language then the tendency is to take structure for granted as an objective certainty. So I still retain the occultist tendency to talk of structural forces as having their own agency. I would just keep in mind that by agency I don’t mean this is what someone thinks they are doing. So while I think it makes sense to say there is a drama playing out for world domination, I don’t mean to imply that anyone thinks they are trying to take over the world. Maybe a few do. I don’t know. People tend to have complicated reasons for what they do. But the fact remains that globalization is a contest to determine the structure of a planetary society and there are many players using circumstances in aligned ways that appear to conspiracy-type people to be planned.
Are they all planning together? Certainly not. There are definitely power blocs that have meetings and organize. But just because a lot of world leaders are part of the same groups does not mean that these groups are controlling the world, except metaphorically.But metaphors are all we have. I would just frame them a bit differently than a conspiracy theorist. I would mostly just emphasize a narrative that doesn’t paint such a cartoonish picture of good vs. evil, though I do think there are some forces at work in this world that are predatory on humanity.
But as a good Nietzschean, I don’t blame the predator or adopt the narrative of the prey. And I certainly would not frame these forces as being all that powerful. They gain their power from our consent. So while it may sound silly to analytical thought when someone says that some people are trying to control the world, I would just say:Everyone is trying to control the world, some are better at it, some people demonize the better players, but we all should try to see the larger pattern without succumbing to demonization.
As for what people call demons, the conspiracy-right lives talking about Lucifer. But Lucifer isn’t really a classical demon. Ahriman was the more traditional devil figure. Lucifer was mostly an invention of the middle ages. I do like the way Steiner uses the name Lucifer as a name for the high level force/being that pulls humanity away from the body into the disembodied mind. And Steiner uses the name Ahriman to describe the being/force pulling humanity into base materiality. Their agendas overlap in trying to pull us into a matrix-like alternative earth evolution Theosophy calls the 8th sphere, where we get stuck in illusion and arrest our material evolution. Obviously people like Bill Gates probably just assume they are helping the world and have no idea that technocracy is actually a means for some high level entities to consume the energy of others. But our film mythology shows we sense the danger.
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