h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

>>There are no "secret puppetmasters" and no long-term hidden plans. <<
zagreb... you are living in a fairy tale . furthermore you twisted what she said... you are all such slackers

"zagreb... you are living in a fairy tale ."

No I'm not. Obviously, there are plans for say the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Iraq, the Koreas etc etc. What I mean are secret plans of the illuminati variety. They don't exist because the world can't be ordered. Even the "real" illuminati, the Bilderberg Group, turned out to be a bunch of Euro-American politicians all desperately trying to deal with a chaotic world they can't control (see Jon Ronson's excellent series "The Secret Rulers Of The World" if you get the chance - it's one of the most illuminating insights into conspiracy theorists and the often-astonishing truth behind alleged secret societies).

People who think secret cabals run the world are living in a fairytale and they need their beliefs in the same way the religious or the politically crackpot do (Karl Popper notably claimed that the extremist ideologies of left and right essentially base their ideas on the "fact" that a tiny elite controls the world) - a need to create order out of chaos and explain-away uncomfortable facts.

"furthermore you twisted what she said... you are all such slackers"

Saying that the world's richest are deliberately delicately balancing the world to stop us questioning the reality of our situation is classic first-form David Icke. Sorry. I can credit businesspeople with all sorts of terrible things (much of it true) what I can't credit them with is controlling the world.

Conspiracy theory... Someone mentioned such a theory to me recently.

Apparently some people have computed dates of eclipses which have happened in the past and observed discrepancies between the theoretical dates and reported dates in various historical accounts. Now one guy inferred from this that ancient history as we know it has been actually invented and written up around the 11th century AD

I'm sorry I'm not being extremely precise here but I don't really know much more. Has anybody heard of that one?

"Apparently some people have computed dates of eclipses which have happened in the past and observed discrepancies between the theoretical dates and reported dates in various historical accounts. Now one guy inferred from this that ancient history as we know it has been actually invented and written up around the 11th century AD weird

I'm sorry I'm not being extremely precise here but I don't really know much more. Has anybody heard of that one?"

Can't say I have. I did wonder a while back how we can *know* history happened. There's actually two main answers to this. In relation to things such as "Was there ever a Roman presence in Britain?" or "Was there a Holy Roman Emperor called Charlemagne?" we have these confirmed by archaelogical evidence (dated coins bearing heads and so on) more and more of which keeps cropping up. The other question is of the "How do we know that Nero was a tyrant?" variety and this is more delicate. Generally, most historians agree that in order to *know* something happened we need confirmation from several sources. So, for example, if we uncover an account by a Roman historian of Nero's excesses and the Chinese discover an account by a Chinese diplomat of similar excesses at the court of the same Emperor then we have a strong basis for it being true. Much of history is continually challenged. The history of many Roman emperors (for example) has been reconsidered since so much of it was based on accounts of Christian writers who were obviously biased so their accounts are taken with a pinch of salt even if they're the only ones we have. As a good example, the accounts of Caligula's reign are constantly being hummed and hawed over because they were likely written by the senatorial class who had good reason to hate him due to the way he treated the senate.

So, generally, yes we can clarify that things happened in such and such a year based on much more than just hearsay. What we can't do, most of the time, is know for certain how accurate the written accounts are.

That's the guy with the, er, different theories (see under 'Historical work'):

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fomenko

For instance:

"He asserts from this that all of ancient history (including the history of Greece, Rome, and Egypt) is just a reflection of events that occurred in the Middle Ages and that all of Chinese and Arab history are fabrications of 17th and 18th century Jesuits."

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Suicide bombing is a choice, and an evil one. We Brits did some terrible things during the Raj, but the guy leading the independence movement against us prohibited violence under all circumstances. He proved that there is never any necessity for it.

It's *not* all the West's fault. There are problems with the way Islam is being interpreted by many Muslims at the moment and it is fruitless to deny this. Unpleasant elements have been brought to the fore, e.g. the chauvinism in which non-Muslims are treated as somehow inferior and the idea that you are a traitor if you leave the religion. Other elements are being ignored, such as the fact that suicide bombing is in no way pardonable to a true Muslim. Part of the solution lies in Muslim hands, whatever the West does.

"Suicide bombing is a choice, and an evil one. We Brits did some terrible things during the Raj, but the guy leading the independence movement against us prohibited violence under all circumstances. He proved that there is never any necessity for it."

There's also a strong element of hypocrisy in the way some people look at terrorism. If the West is attacked, to even contemplate using force in retaliation is regarded with the utmost contempt and yet third world terrorist groups are often excused deliberately targeting civilians because they're "frustrated" or "angry".

"It's *not* all the West's fault. There are problems with the way Islam is being interpreted by many Muslims at the moment and it is fruitless to deny this. Unpleasant elements have been brought to the fore, e.g. the chauvinism in which non-Muslims are treated as somehow inferior and the idea that you are a traitor if you leave the religion. Other elements are being ignored, such as the fact that suicide bombing is in no way pardonable to a true Muslim. Part of the solution lies in Muslim hands, whatever the West does."

People are always going to fit world events to their own arguments, though. I know that Islamism isn't something the West created and attempting to fit its every manifestation into a jigsaw of Western Imperialism is at best self-serving simplification and at worst fantasy. There are situations were the West *does* have a historical responsibility for the environment that has created it (the Palestinian Territories being a prime example) but there are other places (Afghanistan) where its roots are in the Islamic far-right's reaction to a liberalising of society and percieved decadence.