Saturday, October 13, 2012

Conspiracies all the way down


Maverick feminist Camile Paglia has joined the chorus singing paeans to capitalism on the op-ed pages of the Wall Street Journal. In her contribution, titled “How Capitalism Can Save Art,” she argues there is a simple reason why art has lost existential ground over the last couple of decades – what elese could you expect, if “the most talented college students are ideologically indoctrinated with contempt for the economic system that made their freedom, comforts and privileges possible.” This, of course, is a refrain of the conspiracy theory embraced by all sorts of cultural/social “conservatives” – and Paglia has swallowed it as self-righteously, though she describes herself as “a libertarian Democrat who voted for Barack Obama in 2008.” This fatal attraction of conspiratorial thinking is in fact quite curious.

Such an attachment to conspiracy theories is usually attributed to people who have grown up in fatalistic or marginalized communities – Serbs who think Western governments and shadier interests have combined forces to keep them down, African-Americans who believe the CIA deliberately inundated inner cities with drugs, etc. It seems, though, that the causal explanations spun by intellectuals can be equally unsophisticated. Why do rural whites in the US tend to support pro-capitalist Republicans? Why have young Americans become more liberal? Why has inequality increased around the world? Why has the collapse of authoritarian regimes in the Middle East failed to unleash universal admiration for Western policies and values? There is always a comforting explanation pointing to one conspiracy or another. It seems acknowledging the role of some systemic forces or imperatives would, indeed, be a lot more disconcerting to even some of the brightest minds around.