Do you wish you were wealthier? Healthier? More successful? Whose fault is it? The oppressive government’s, of course. The government overtaxes you to keep you at the poverty level. The government keeps you sick by providing inadequate healthcare, covering up miracle treatments, and perhaps even spreading germ agents. The government suppresses technologies and discoveries that could help you. It’s all done in the name of power.
Notice how much fiction has been written about the concept of an overreaching government: Brave New World, Fahrenheit 451, 1984, Atlas Shrugged, The Handmaid’s Tale, The Hunger Games . . . These books and other fiction found online feature governments that have grown so powerful that they control people’s everyday lives. It is a theme that is deeply attractive to us at a gut level. Why? Well, this fiction satisfies our idea of something called agency detection, the evolved trait that favors a certain amount of natural paranoia to help protect us from threats. Overgrown government control is the ultimate validation of our native paranoia.
What does all of this mean? It means it’s natural for all of us to believe that the powers that be have a hidden agenda to persecute us . . . but conspiracy theorists take this idea and run with it. They assign the ideas undue importance and alter their lives to avoid these perceived threats, which gives us some interesting theories about the various ways the government is supposedly out to get us. Let’s take a look and debunk some of these extreme theories.