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The Psychology of Conspiracy Theorists; Plus: The Disappointing Mystery of the City of the Caesars

10/29/2015

24 Comments

 
It’s been a big week for research into why people believe weird things. Yesterday I reported on the Chapman University survey of American fear, which found that more than 1 in 5 Americans professes a belief in ancient astronauts. I read in the Pacific Standard that some new psychological research confirms that the people most likely to buy in to fear-mongering conspiracy theories, such as governments hiding evidence of ancient astronauts, are people who have a combination of low self-esteem and a strong sense of identification with a specific subculture or demographic group. 
While different groups were associated with different conspiracy theories, it isn’t hard to connect this finding to the tendency of fringe historians to “discover” that ancient history’s greatest actors happen to be people who share the same racial, ethnic, religious, or cultural background as the investigator and his audience.
 
Meanwhile, in Canada, a professor of cultural geography has begun studying paranormal communities, such as UFO believers, to try to find out why people make the jump from a passive interest in the paranormal to becoming an active “investigator” of things like aliens, Bigfoot, or ghosts. “Despite the secularization and rationalization of western cultures, I’ve noticed there has been an increase, in the past decade, in paranormal cultures,” Prof. Paul Kingsbury said. I’m going to say that there probably isn’t really an increase overall, and I’m pretty sure there have been large paranormal cultures for most of the past half century. The difference, as Kingsbury alluded to in an interview, is that today there are more cable TV channels broadcasting paranormal programming. But that’s as much a function of the economics of niche programming in a saturated market as of increasing belief, and it’s odd that a professor would take TV coverage for a reflection of reality.
 
Unfortunately, though, Kingsbury doesn’t have anything interesting to say about the investigators just yet, and to judge from his interview, where he praised UFO hunters for their rigorous methodology and ghost hunters for their concern with their clients’ welfare, I’m going to guess that the results will be more ethnography than exposé. I hope he finds something useful to report beyond the truism that communities exist because their members feel they benefit from belonging to them.
 
Meanwhile, I had a disappointing time investigating what I had hoped would be an interesting “lost city” I had only vaguely heard of, the City of the Caesars, a supposedly gold-drenched metropolis somewhere along the Rio de la Plata in Argentina, allegedly seen in the time of Sebastian Cabot. The name of the city made it seem like the Europeans were looking for a Roman city, but I was gravely disappointed to learn that the city’s name derives from the fact that the company that allegedly reached the city was under the command of Francisco César, a deputy of Cabot’s, after whom his band took the name of the Césares, or in English, the Caesars.
 
His story was first told by Pedro Cieza de Léon in his Wars of Chupas, written in the 1550s but not published until the nineteenth century. He knew César and his men, and he wrote in chapter 85 that “I have often heard them talk, and affirm with an oath that they saw much treasure and great flocks of the cattle we call here Peruvian sheep, and that the Indians were well dressed and of good mien. They said many other things that I need not write of” (trans. Clements Markham).
 
This was apparently sufficiently mysterious a reference to treasure that later writers tried to expand on it. Thus, decades later Ruy Díaz de Guzmán, writing in La Argentina 1.9 (1612), claimed that he heard from one of the last survivors of the expedition the real story of what happened. I translated the whole chapter, but the highlights only take a few lines:
They continued their journey back to the south, where they entered a province of great size and with many people, rich in gold and silver, who had together a large number of cattle and sheep of the land (llamas), whose wool they made into a great amount of tightly woven clothing. These natives obey a lord who rules over them, and for greater safety the Spaniards sought his protection and determined to go where he was. They arrived in his presence, and with reverence and respect they gave their embassy, in the best way possible to them, giving him redress for their coming, and asking friendship on behalf of His Majesty, who was a powerful prince who had his kingdom and dominion on the other side of the sea, not because he needed to acquire new lands and estates, nor for any other interest than to have him as a friend, and to preserve their friendship, as he does with many other princes and kings, and for his zeal to let him know the true God. In this particular the Spaniards, with great modesty, did not fall afoul of that gentleman, who received them kindly and treated them well, really enjoying the conversation and manners of the Spaniards; and there they tarried for many days, until César and his companions asked him permission to return, which the lord gave them, liberally presenting them with many pieces of gold and silver, and loading them down with as much clothing as they could carry, and he gave them Indians to accompany and serve them…
It’s not exactly the lost city of legend, even in this more detailed form. It’s not even the story of a city, for that matter. Indeed, it’s rather a boring story to have based a legend on. Yet somehow, this story turned into an enchanted city populated by a lost race of Patagonian giants located by a mountain of diamonds. All of that, though, was a later invention, added onto the original version in the 1700s and after.
24 Comments
Tony
10/29/2015 02:59:39 pm

"But that’s as much a function of the economics of niche programming in a saturated market as of increasing belief, and it’s odd that a professor would take TV coverage for a reflection of reality."

Very good point. And this also caught my eye:

"... the city’s name derives from the fact that the company that allegedly reached the city was under the command of Francisco César, a deputy of Cabot’s, after whom his band took the name of the Césares, or in English, the Caesars."

Any relation to the 1980's garage/punk band, Thee Mighty Caesars? ;-)

Reply
Only Me
10/29/2015 04:29:56 pm

At least they didn't call it Caesar's Palace.

Reply
Shane Sullivan
10/29/2015 05:12:00 pm

I would have gone with Little Caesar's, personally.

Or is that joke a little too... saucy?

*rimshot*

Reply
tm
10/29/2015 07:03:20 pm

It takes a lot of crust to make a comment like that. :)

Nobody Knows
10/29/2015 08:17:30 pm

Conceited conspiracist tm

tm
10/29/2015 11:32:26 pm

Poor Bobo. Did somebody step on your floppy shoes? Yawn...

Shane Sullivan
10/29/2015 11:49:50 pm

Hey you two, there's no need to be pepperoni... err, I mean acrimonious. =P

tm
10/30/2015 04:00:04 am

Pepperoni? Me? No, never... It's just that with someone like Bobo it's so tempting to honk his nose. :D

Pam
10/30/2015 12:15:03 am

I'd like the study to address the distrust of academia. Where and why did it begin?

Alternative theorists use that distrust to their advantage. The "everything you've been taught about history is wrong " only works when universities and scholars are as demonized as the government.

Lost city: I enjoy seeing how these stories grow and morph over time.



Reply
An Over-Educated Grunt
10/30/2015 08:44:50 am

With the caveat that this isn't really my field or interest, it comes and goes in waves. The current wave can probably be traced to the failure of the immediate post-Soviet era to live up to the promise of "the end of history." The '80s were a period where, at least in the United States, we could trumpet technological advances that promised a new golden age - computers small enough that a person could own one! a reusable space rocket! stealth airplanes! When that optimism faded, distrust of the instruments that made it possible led to both a combination of conspiratorial thinking - the Kennedy assassination! the lizard people! the X-Files! - and the rise of belief in alternative explanations as a way of reintroducing wonder. Same thing happened in the '60s and early '70s, where the technological promise of the Boomer years got sprayed with Agent Orange and there was a general wave of turning away from traditional institutions. Heck, same thing happened in the 1880s and 1890s, the 1920s... I'd go out on a limb and say the earliest version of this that comes to mind handily is the immediate aftermath of the Peloponnesian war, where Athenian society turned into a circular firing squad and anti-intellectualism ran high. The common theme is "victory has a thousand fathers; defeat is an orphan."

Reply
Pam
10/30/2015 11:40:29 am

So people pin their hopes on various institutions for a better world, and when that better world is not realized, they blame something or someone for the failure.

Do you think a society can be depressed? I mean, look at France after the Battle of Verdun or the demoralizing of Germany after the Treaty of Versailles which led to Hitler. People latched on to a mythic history to reclaim their self esteem that in the end only led them to the horrors of WWII.

We in the USA looking back on our own history and feeling guilty about the actions of our ancestors, so some grab at the stupidity of theories like those on AU to make themselves feel better about the treatment of the Native peoples or whatever group of people that was treated poorly.

Perhaps people who feel this guilt, or whatever it is, hates the scholars who bring them the information.

Maybe I'm heartless, but I've always viewed the actions of humanity in the context of the times in which they live. I've never felt the need to justify any of the beliefs and actions that people of the past had and inflicted on one another. From the perspective of modern hindsight, it was barbaric perhaps, but it was the way societies conducted business back then.

Uncle Ron
10/30/2015 01:04:58 pm

Thank you, Pam, for that last paragraph! I am sick and tired of being asked to accept blame and shame and make amends for something that I didn't do and that wasn't done to anyone living today. I am also sick of having great men and women of the past demonized for the societal norms of the times in which they lived.

Pam
10/30/2015 01:31:11 pm

Uncle Ron:

Context is everything. There were no perfect people or societies in the past nor are there today. That's why real history (in my opinion) is important. There are no simple answers for why events unfolded in our collective histories as they did. There are recurrent themes of course such as greed and power, but we do a disservice to the past, present and future when we try to oversimplify and reduce the people and events to cardboard characters in a bad novel.

V
10/30/2015 06:41:54 pm

Pam, I think that there's more going on than simple "we feel guilty about our past," but I do think that our society could be considered "depressed," in the psychological sense. Much like depression in individuals, it's not just one thing, it's many things that feed into it. Some of it may be racial guilt (or racial anger, depending), but there's also fear of the future, a sense of stagnation, declining religion, increasing costs as a percentage of income (not just in hard money terms), etc. etc. etc. And speaking as someone who has suffered depression in the past, sometimes you will latch onto anything that makes you feel even a little better--and other times, you latch onto things that make you feel worse, as if that's somehow justifying your depression in the first place. That may also be playing into things--some people grab at stupid theories like those on AU because then they can justify feeling depressed, omg, look at how screwed up our past is. And they're also latching on to say, "Look, those Others deserved it, if white people were here first and then were displaced, that means those Natives were terrible conquerors," for example.

I think the reason people like this dislike and distrust academia, though, is much, MUCH simpler than guilt. Scholars tell them that they are wrong. NO ONE likes being told that they're wrong. Some people dislike it so much, NEED to be right so much, that they decide that whoever tells them they're wrong must just be jealous or hateful or conspiring or whatever.

I see that tendency strongly in Scott Wolter, and also in most of the fringey types that show up to blast the comments. Like our troll friend that's been hanging around--he hates the rest of us because we've told him that we think he's wrong, and his reaction has been irrationally aggressive. I don't think he con tolerate the concept of "being wrong," and would benefit significantly from some counselling.

Oh, and Uncle Ron, I also have to add, I hate as much the aggrandizing of historical figures to the point where saying, "...they were fallibly human, too" gets violent reactions. I do think it's NECESSARY to point out, for instance, that George Washington was a slave owner, not to diminish his accomplishments (though I have other reasons to think that he was less "great" than he's been made out to be), but to illustrate the times in which he lived and just how different they were. Particularly when you're discussing post-Revolution, such as the Three-Fifth Compromise. Making that compromise would be unthinkable to a George Washington raised in our society, because our society has "Slavery Is Wrong" as a fundamental value.

An Over-Educated Grunt
10/30/2015 06:57:59 pm

Thing is, we don't need apocryphal white settlers to make the locals bloodthirsty conquerors. The Lakota started in Michigan but were pushed out, and they made a bow wave displacing the local tribes. Some submitted, some were absorbed, some were displaced, probably some were effectively exterminated. Same with the Apache, they didn't start in the southwest. The Aztecs didn't start in Mexico City. Point isn't that they were conquerors, it's that they were people, not idealized noble savages.

Shane Sullivan
10/30/2015 07:42:05 pm

"And they're also latching on to say, 'Look, those Others deserved it, if white people were here first and then were displaced, that means those Natives were terrible conquerors,' for example."

In Scott Wolter's case, it's, "the Templars, kindhearted Aryan Supermen as they were, warned the Ojibwe to head west ahead of the ravenous hoards of bloodthirsty Spanish butchers!"

"NO ONE likes being told that they're wrong. Some people dislike it so much, NEED to be right so much, that they decide that whoever tells them they're wrong must just be jealous or hateful or conspiring or whatever."

I've long thought that that was probably the case even with the hucksters who didn't buy into their own garbage. They know their ideas are bullshit, but they don't want to hear that they're STUPID, half-baked bullshit.

bkd69
10/30/2015 03:37:37 am

I rather suspect that there's a correlation between declining adherence/subscription to traditional religion, and increasing belief in various woo. Which is to say, belief in woo is constant among a population, it's just the particular woos that change. There's probably a good sociology paper there.

Reply
Pam
10/30/2015 11:56:31 am

Thank God I don't have to write it ! I think you're correct, though. Humans have demonstrated a need to believe in something beyond themselves and when they rejected "traditional" religions they turned to other things. Those "other things" have always existed.

Nothing has filled the hole in people or answered all their questions. Nothing has given the certainty they are looking for and they seem unable to cope with that lack....of course, that's only my opinion.

It's interesting, though, how the same stuff gets rejected and then accepted again in an endless cycle of sorts.

Reply
Mike Jones
10/30/2015 09:27:02 am

Let's not forget that the Victorian era was rife with the woo. Spiritualism, fairies, Theosophy. It comes in cycles. Currently, stagnant wages and a decline in the "American Dream" has led to a mistrust of once ubiquitous truisms like "work hard and you will succeed". Once the social promise is determined to be false, hey, why not other things we've been told?

Reply
Pam
10/30/2015 12:10:16 pm

I love the Victorian Era, but only at a distance. The belief in woo was held by some very famous people. It was fashionable and "progressive" but, for the most part, the common guy didn't fall for it. They were too busy working hard in the real world.

I think you're right about the connection with the decline in the "American Dream" and level of distrust. It's one part of the puzzle .

The way we, as a society, define success needs a major overhaul.

Reply
V
10/30/2015 06:20:52 pm

"The common guy" absolutely did fall for it, Pam, or circuses and side shows and magic shows never would have been popular. What the common guy didn't do was make it the total focus of their lives, that's all. They still believed most or all of it, depending on the person. It's not like they had some way of knowing better, after all.

Pam
10/30/2015 10:43:33 pm

Yes, of course. I'd forgotten about the side shows and what not. :)

Bob Jase (busterggi)
10/30/2015 02:42:20 pm

Now a city devoted to Ceasar Romero - that would be worth investigating.

Reply
Pam
10/30/2015 02:52:28 pm

Especially if it was dedicated to his "Joker " persona as the local deity. I got my fear of clowns from him.

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