I share what I see in power dynamics, and some days, mid-sentence, I hear how the description sounds: like conspiracy talk. For years, hearing this resemblance was enough to make me soften everything. Not anymore.
These Notes walk straight at the resemblance: what a conspiracy actually does with your questioning, who was ever allowed to ask, and the one difference that decides whether a truth divides you or leaves you whole. The test at the end is one I now run on every certainty that asks to be believed.
The Counterfeit Question and Who Holds Your Knowing
I have been aware for a while of something that I share from my exploring, especially within power dynamics.
I start describing an invisible structure made of the assumptions installed before conscious choice kicks in when we are children. The structure also includes the arrangements somebody benefits from. The system that works best when nobody sees the system.
And somewhere in the middle of my own sentences, I hear how the description sounds: like conspiracy talk. Somebody built this unseen something which somebody unnamed benefits. You cannot see the whole thing, and the not-seeing is the point.
For a long time, hearing this resemblance in my own voice was enough to make me soften everything. Maybe the structure is not so bad. Maybe I am the problem after all.
And then I saw what the softening was: the structure, working. The edges where I start disbelieving myself are exactly where the structure earns its keep, because the whole arrangement is geared toward me disbelieving myself.
The structure carries a brilliant built-in defense: any accurate description of the structure can sound unhinged. The structure never has to argue its case. The structure just says obviously. Obviously this is the way things are. Obviously nobody built anything.
And obviously is a word doing quiet work, because obviously wants me doubting myself instead of seeing the certainty I am living within. The person who begins to see gets offered two exits. Stop seeing. Or stop being believed. I took the first exit for years and called the exit humility.
Now I no longer back away from the resemblance. I walk straight at the resemblance instead. Because the difference between questioning the assumption and believing a conspiracy theory is real, and the difference is not in the first place you might look.