Glenn Beck, Jan Utzon, and the joy of a tasty conspiracy theory

From all over the world, the signals are coming thick and fast, and they're so strong, they can easily penetrate the aluminium I daily wrap around my head in a futile bid to stop them.

I date it from the moment when fluoride was introduced into the water supply. Sure the holes in my teeth were reduced, but then came the hole in my head. It was compounded by a brief moment when my father dabbled and dallied with freemasonry. Sure he came to his senses, but the damage was done. Then came the moon landing that wasn't, and I knew I could trust no one.

Of course the early influence of the papacy and nuns has to be taken into account, not to mention the Lutheran zealotry of the German side of the family.

If you go back further, perhaps Darwin started it all. He certainly led to Nazism. Of course there was once a time when there was a flat tax and a flat earth, and all was good. But that was before government became big and ruined everything, and started tracking me through my gold fillings, and the bar code I only recently discovered on my bum in the form of a bunch of pimples.

Fortunately there are sages who can warn me of all the perils I face. One such is Glenn Beck, sadly remote from the antipodes, but still his warnings resonate. It seems the United States is facing Recession, Depression or Collapse (see the blackboard above for totally convincing evidence), and he has strategies for all three.

The first is to become a filthy rich wealthy commentator making a fortune out of preaching loonacy, depression and despair, in much the same way as religious quacks did in the nineteen thirties, knowing that the only alternative way to get rich quick is to publish books telling people how to get rich quick.

Sorry, got that wrong. In the case of recession, get out of debt and save, in the case of depression, build a fruit cellar for the fruits sure to come calling, and in the case of collapse, do both, plus throw in god, guns and gold.

Well god will be as useful as he or she has been in recent mass disasters, such as world war 11, the guns will be useful for shooting anything that moves, including yourself, and the gold will be exceptionally handy for trading with everybody else carrying gold. Not so sure about exchanging it for food. Pity the farmers stopped farming during the total collapse, but hey, if you want only the best dental work, the gold will look mighty flashy (you can see more incredibly wise advice from Mr Beck here).

But even though I now feel fortified for the collapse soon to come - no doubt the first step to armageddon and the rapture - I still worry about one of the great mysteries of our time, and I'm not talking about the sphinx, the pyramids, Stonehenge, the work of aliens in South America, or the rise and fall of civilizations gripped by mad hysteria promoted by crazed, deluded members of whatever commentariat was going around at the time (any decent court has its fools, jesters, wizards, witch doctors, seers and prophets of the Rasputin and Nostradamus school of doom).

Yes, the real and pressing issue for these times is what brought down the twin towers and other buildings on 9/11. I used to think that I was in bed watching television when I saw live footage of hijacked aeroplanes crashing into the towers, and I watched in horror as they burned and collapsed and people died in all kinds of ugly ways, and I credited the acts to mad fanatics acting under most dangerous delusion of all, the god delusion which promises them eternal life for being crazed fruitcakes.

But I got it wrong, it must have just been a dream. It seems that the United States government was somehow involved, and controlled detonations were the real cause of the various collapses, and what's even more remarkable is that this kind of thinking reportedly infects the likes the likes of Jan Utzon, son of Joern Utzon.

In another life - so many lives, so little time - I had more than a passing acquaintance with explosives - oh yes I could mix a slurry with a fringe on top, the finest ANFO ever brewed - and I have some idea of the degree of difficulty of wiring busy, working, downtown skyscrapers with sufficient explosives to do a decent controlled detonation, unnoticed by anyone until the fatal day.

Only someone trained on conspiracy theories or Hollywood movies - or both - could conjure up a decent conspiracy, which both absolves al-Qaeda and implicates the US government. Me, I prefer the Bourne trilogy, but for some, it ain't a decent movie unless it's happening in real life.

Well you can read the story about Jan Utzon and the matter of 9/11 in the Herald, under the header Utzon's son signs up for September 11 conspiracy theory, and being clever at stretching its juicy conspiracy theories to an unseemly tabloid depth, the Herald also manages to extract double the juice by printing Rick Feneley's denialism of the deniers in Fire, not a government plot, felled third tower.

Well I don't need any convincing by Feneley, as only recently I wandered through the local town square and saw conspiracy theorists preaching the gospel up close. They seemed normal, and perhaps were in many ways, but in one fundamental way - the particular 9/11 conspiracy theory that held them in its icy stare - they were barking mad, and it was only by supreme self effort that I didn't go up and bark at them.

I mean the intertubes is the place for barking mad conspiracies, not the town square as sedate shoppers go about their materialist promenades.

It got me to wondering why the modern generation of conspiracy theorists don't go back to the really tasty conspiracies like the assassination of John F. Kennedy as an alternative to stamp-collecting.

What interests me is how people get bound up in conspiracy theories and turn into Sherlock Holmes types who gradually lose connection with reality - as shown by the BBC program on the conspiracy theories surrounding 7/7, where they start off giving credence to the theorists, then slowly peel away the layers of the onion to reveal the nothing at the middle (here for the ABC background on that show, which also links to the BBC site). If you google 7/7 conspiracy, you'll get plenty of video to while away the hours.

Now what I find befuddling is that between a muddle and a conspiracy, a muddle wins every time. And sometimes the muddle and the hysteria surrounding it can lead to straight out naked tragedies, as happened to Jean Charles de Menezes when he got blown away in a train. That's the real cause for alarm, not the notion that the UK government set up 7/7. But somehow that's too nakedly obvious for a decent conspiracy theorist intent on uncovering secrets - what's to get excited about if someone gets blown away in public, or aircraft crash into buildings and bring them down? On such mindless fodder did the alchemists and the Rosicrucians build their empires.

My best guess is that it's something to do with obsessive compulsive behavior, paranoia and, once a conspiracy theory is given exposure and gains traction, mutual reinforcement in social settings for those alienated from society or from others (Dr. Patrick Leman only scratches the surface of the psychology of conspiracy here).

As usual, wikipedia is an interesting starting point - you can take your digital content Chairman Rupert and shove it - with a neat introduction to conspiracy theory here, and a link to a list of conspiracy theories which could keep you going all week or all year.

Whatever, while the world might run more smoothly without either conspiracies or conspiracy theorists, it would be a disaster for loon pond, which cherishes every absurd theory that comes its way, and these come from the highest to the lowest. Former Prime Minister Thabo Mbeki's denialism on Aids is still resonating in South Africa (here) while I can assure you without blushing that it's the mind parasites in my brain which causes my addiction to chocolate.

Yep, the news that Jan Utzon and Glenn Beck have something in common is somehow strangely reassuring. We can all be barking mad, north by north west, as a hawk is to a handsaw, and others will listen, and here at loon pond, we can jot them down as a record of the times.

What a pity it will all come to an end in 2012 ...

Oh and how remiss of me. Go here if you want an antipodean blast of the 911 'truth'. But don't get too worried or excited ... remember you've only got three years, and we're counting ...

(Below: more xkcd here).