Note: While the majority of my writings showcase musical works, I occasionally divert to touch upon other forms of media which are important to me and which strike me as culturally relevant. This was the case with Weapons of Math Destruction by Cathy O'Neil. This afternoon I want to share another new work, a web miniseries whose final episode has just been published.
My favorite independent documentary filmmaker, Kirby Ferguson has just completed production of his follow-up to the enormously satisfying,
Everything Is a Remix web series, (which I cannot recommend enough!), with his informative and well-paced new venture,
This Is Not a Conspiracy Theory.
From religion and the natural philosophy of the ancient Greeks to the Middle Ages, colonial America, on to the Enlightenment and beyond, the early episodes explore mathematical and technological innovations like calculus and the printing press and their profound impact on human thoughts and perceptions. Ferguson outlines the search for patterns in the animal kingdom and in the society of man, and the impact of media and pop culture in all its forms, from political ideologies to the birth of conspiracy theorism.
Episode four offers the impacts of the Kennedy assassination and The Warren Report, as well as Watergate, MK-Ultra, and other events on the public’s formulation of conspiracy theories. Episode five touches upon Roswell, the moon landing, and other cultural phenomena which further fueled the notion of conspiracies.
Ferguson progresses chronologically to explore the subcultures of emerging talk radio and VHS communication, and then on to the impacts of 911 and the world-wide web, InfoWars, and flat Earthers, and debunks many of the misconceptions which were the fundamentals of major JFK assassination conspiracies. He examines how WMDs, the US economic bail-out, and the Trump era perpetuated the psychological appeal of conspiracy theorism for the masses.
The final two episodes, parts six and seven explain how the game of Life demonstrates the unpredictability of complex systems like societies and economies and how complexity can emerge from simple rules. Self-organizing simple systems lead to emergence, as exhibited by ant colonies, beehives, and the neurons in the human brain.
The final episode expounds the powerful impact of emergence and explains that we can introduce simple rules in our own smaller systems to yield positive outcomes through emergence. But Ferguson also cautions us about the potential large-scale and unforeseen negative forces of emergence, such as climate change, economic catastrophe, and pandemics. He professes that it is our responsibility to remain skeptical of ourselves and of our misconceptions, (quoting American physicist Richard Feynman), and to foster positive emergence from the bottom up rather than projecting our struggles as being the malicious intent of an external enemy from above or of a force otherwise beyond our influence.
Ferguson explains the error of viewing complex living systems through the lens of the mechanical paradigm as was appropriate in Newton’s age and instead suggests that we need a new perspective for the speed and complexity of non-”clock-like” living systems - a network paradigm to perceive society.
This Is Not a Conspiracy Theory is an engaging examination of the history and origins of conspiratorial thought. Highly recommended for those who enjoyed
Everything Is a Remix or for anyone who embraces skepticism and rationalism.
