They say it’s important to question everything. This urges people to challenge established notions, norms, and beliefs, which ingrains a healthy skepticism in us. It also improves our intelligence and drives innovation in society.
Recently, people in this thread were doing exactly that—discussing things that might not be what the general public is used to believing. From recycling being a myth to inaccurate rich lists, scroll down to find netizens’ opinions on the world's biggest secrets.
While you're at it, don't forget to check out a conversation with Stephanie Kemmerer, a former conspiracy theorist and an advocate for recovery from conspiracy theories and cults, who kindly agreed to tell us more about what happens when people reject certain truths.
#1
Criminality by the wealthy. It’s massive.
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Some people go too far with questioning everything. Sometimes even to the point where they start rejecting standard explanations for a phenomenon or an event and instead credit a group or organization with power for carrying out a secret plot or hidden agenda.
This belief is called a conspiracy theory and is more common than we might think. For instance, one in three Americans is convinced that global warming is fake.
Meanwhile, 49% of people living in New York believe that the US government was involved in the 9/11 attacks. And over half of America’s citizens assume that Lee Harvey Oswald wasn't acting alone in the assassination of John F. Kennedy.
In addition, 37% of Americans are certain that the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is purposely hiding the natural cures for cancer from the public.
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Curious about how these theories are formed and where they originate from, Bored Panda reached out to a former conspiracy theorist, Stephanie Kemmerer, who kindly agreed to tell us more about them.
She says that conspiracy theories (CTs) are generally broken into several categories of creation, one of which is based on real events but with added fictional elements. Others are completely made up, just like some UFO "evidence."
Some arise from misrepresented or misunderstood data, and 9/11 perfectly illustrates this. Essentially, any event that requires a level of some kind of expertise, like physics, engineering, or geography, can become the target of conspiracy theorists. "The real experts are not trusted, and the theorists create their own non-expert interpretation," explains Kemmerer.
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What drives people to believe such unsupported claims is to make sense of a nonsensical world. “Conspiracy theorists are not all likely to be simple-minded, mentally unwell folks—a portrait which is routinely painted in popular culture,” says Shauna Bowes, a doctoral student in clinical psychology.
“Instead, many turn to conspiracy theories to fulfill deprived motivational needs and make sense of distress and impairment.”
Meanwhile, Kemmerer mentions our need for answers. "More so, we need answers that confirm and conform to our belief systems. CTs give us that. You can pick from a buffet of beliefs and take as much or as little as you like, as long as it all tastes good."
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People who believe a certain conspiracy theory may create a community, like the infamous Flat Earthers, which provides a sense of belonging to individuals. They create a bond by sharing their insights and circulating these theories, leading them to feel like members of a family.
"People who feel helpless, powerless, and isolated are more likely to fall for these things," adds Kemmerer.
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Sadly, falling into an unhealthy rabbit hole of CTs can have negative effects on people. Side effects include dependent narcissistic tendencies; extreme and increasing paranoia; the Dunning-Kruger effect (overestimating one's abilities); a lack of boundaries between online and offline personas; and anger issues.
"It's impossible to grow as a person within that world of CTs," says Kemmerer. "You're fighting imaginary enemies. All that effort, time, and anger—for nothing. In the process of that fight, you alienate friends, family, coworkers and strangers. It's a sad, lonely, and powerless way to live. It robs you of joy and agency."
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#17
A lot of under the table quid pro quo stuff in politics. Not necessarily with each other, but if I do this, company X donates some more and if media Y says this, I let some information leak.
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#21
Where all the single socks go.
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Personal finance. Why are high school kids forced to take three years of math and chemistry but don't understand how a loan works?The unfathomable amount of wealth that is off the books and hidden by the wealthy and/or dictators.How much recycling is actually just thrown away.What absolute disarray the public school system is in. Unless you work in a school, you cannot even fathom how horrible it is. From insane behaviors to kids receiving diplomas and only being able to read at a first grade level, it is beyond broken.That we are currently eyebrows deep in a mass extinction event, and we should be much more concerned than we currently are. it's not anywhere on the news. insects are dying off at an alarming rate. so is sea life, and other life that depend on it. are you seeing less squirrels? what about lady bugs or dragon flies? i can't remember the last time I saw either of those. Butterflies... almost non existent in my area but i used to see them all the time growing up. crows... they used to be annoyingly everywhere, not as much any more. no one is mentioning how things we used to see all the time are slowly disappearing.How much the US relies on prison labor and how our for profit prison system synergizes with giant cartels.
How much punishment is designed to encourage repeat offending on purpose. Just a few minor offenses can lead to becoming jobless, then homeless, etc.The degree to which the people in charge have no idea what they’re doing and are basically just winging it.The true extent of the Catholic Church's abuse/coverups of abuse.
:::UPDATE:::
Wow a lot of people liked this one. I wanted to acknowledge that while my point about the Vatican stands, the Roman Catholic Church is not the only religious community that, even just through tradition piety or shame, has to deal with people with religious authority abusing minors. This is of course abhorrent regardless of the source and anyone guilty of this should be locked up forever. I just wanted to play fair here.Acts of terror they catch, before completion.The amount of radiation and pollution that all governments are collectively allowing corporations to create. There's a reason cancer and other diseases have been on the rise for 70 years. Plastics, oil, carbon monoxide, things we know about, and things we don't know about.There were some pretty horrific crimes not being told to the public when I was police. It wasn't really in the public interest for anyone to know outside of law enforcement and the judicial system etc.
Some were either so indiscriminate and terrible and some would just cause too much panic.How horrifying our justice system is.?The cruelity of factory farm breeding and the toll on the animals.How unhealthy and unfit both the presidential candidates are to run for office.The reason a bunch of billionaires around the world started making doomsday bunkers all around the same time.
That to me seems like no coincidence and people who are that rich are definitely in inner circles of people that would know when something is coming and I feel is the reason these people started making these luxurious bunkers.The fringe right and fringe left are not an accident. They are molded and encouraged to grow. Money and power interests want to keep the general public divided because it is easier to control a divided people. Think about how easy it is to get someone behind a cause or point the finger at the other side, that's how you get votes. Why do you think there's only 2 political parties in the USA?
If we were actually united, we could get rid of money in politics, get rid of trash politicians that just want to get reelected and don't care about then welfare of the people.Most information regarding the urgency towards climate change.The amount of pharmaceutical residue is a pollution no one talks about that's in our water ways and oceans. Yes, states do their best to reduce other containments such as nitrates, mercury, trace metals and nasty bacteria. All of the d***s Americans consume and then get flushed into the sewers are not monitored. Smallmouth bass were developing male testes as well as female ovaries in the Susquehanna River in Pennsylvania. Most likely culprit was pharmaceutical residue from birth control pills found in the water. It all winds up in the ocean and it really makes you wonder about how safe our seafood really is to consume.The food and drink industry's role in promoting the fat acceptance movement.Military technology at the top level is definitely several decades ahead of what we’re even aware exists. All the technologies and sciences that you can think “I wonder if the military will find a way to use that” are definitely either already in prototype stage, being actively developed, or are already in limited production.The cover-ups and abuse related to charitable contributions.What happens with all our personal data that is taken from us on a daily basis.The state of our aquifers, specifically how polluted they are.How truly damaging it is to have Covid more than once. Having it two or more times is pretty much guaranteed to leave you with long-term effects.It's not so much things are being hidden, as the mass media are dominated by conventional thinking and beholden to vested interests, so they focus on superficialities, leaving most people woefully under-informed.
I think that our current levels of consumption are completely unsustainable, the world is horrifically over-populated (by a factor of 2 or more), and capitalism as it is now practiced is incompatible with the continuation of global civilization.
We are now entering a period of gradual or possibly rapid decline, as the Machine continues to grind through what is left of our ecosystems and resources.
The best thing we could all do for future generations is to commit to a 30-50 percent reduction in our standard of living. Cut right back on non-essentials as we transition to 100% renewable/recyclable society within strict demographic and production limits. Of course the cutbacks should fall mainly on the rich but the middle class would also have to take cuts. The poor are already on the edge so we should minimize the effects on them (as far as possible).
So who's going to vote for this? Almost no-one of course. Which is why we continue on the road to collapse. I hope I'm wrong about all this, maybe I'm just a pessimist. But we seem to have a strange ahistorical belief that our empire is somehow different from all the ones in the past, all of which eventually collapsed.How rampant the contamination in the air/soil is in disenfranchised neighborhoods. You can go to the hood and the soils there will test high in heavy metals/carcinogens generally due to the fact that cities will allow industrial plants to open up nearby and the regulations on them are super lax.The history hidden away in the Vatican archive. St. Peter's goes back to when the Romans had control of the city. I'd be most interested to see what information survived from Rome and Old St. Peter's before the current 1500's incarnation was built.
