Plots

[matrixmann]

Looking back into history and seeing how much kings and nobles plotted against each other, you may come to the question if it wasn't very much different then with what you call "conspiracy theory" these days? And, the other way round, is that what mankind knows and openly admits about the past a mirror of what current ongoings are like? If you knew the whole extent and not just the glimpses that reveal themselves?

Comments

[mandarinsun.livejournal.com]

It's true. You get the feeling that even back then the royal families knew you can't trust anyone.

I forget where I read it, but I saw recently somewhere that human beings both have a huge capacity to lie and huge capacity to be trusting. Weird. It's true! Facebook exists because people lie a ton, but still have this compulsion to trust others. It's like "look at me mommy!"

[matrixmann]

It was more meant into that direction - if you know the past of politics, can you imagine the same for current politics?
Was that what you call these days by the term "conspiracy theory" also a thing that existed then and was it called like that then also?
You know, you just don't get the impression like it's very different these days than back then, but you get told things are conspiracy theories which don't match with the official version of a subject. Even though in the past, there sure are a lot of things which are only known these days through historians and not by following the official version of back then.
- And I'm not talking about the really hard conspirational stuff, just about getting your own opinion.

[mandarinsun.livejournal.com]

I think though that in the past, royal families knew both that you cannot trust people, but that you have to show that you trust some people to show that you are not a bad ruler and untrusting. It does seem odd.

Yeah, it does seem like it shows that a lot of things people say are conspiracy theories are true. It depends which ones you mean though. A lot of people that believe in conspiracy theories believe in real dumb ones like the government knows that ten percent of the population is secretly aliens and that the clouds in the sky are chem trails that the government put there to poison the population.

[matrixmann]

I don't know if it's "knowing", I'd better say it's a policy. You cannot trust people because you should not trust them. You're the monarch, you're above them. You're worth a thousand times more than them and this ought to stay this way.
But - you cannot let the peope you want to reign know that. If they know you think of yourself as something higher and they're just maggots, you don't need to think that far when the moment is that they come around and try to get you.
You rather need to let them know you do something for them, you're well-suited for that job and that you give them alms from time to time and that's a God-given grace they actually wouldn't deserve.
Lots of psychology, I'd say...

That's a way how I come to this. A lot of things you're officially told "that's nonsense", but in the end it is true even though. And I kind of wondered "has it ever been any different?". If you told somebody in the Middle Ages the king is a wastrel and doesn't use the taxes for anything meaningful, he only takes from the people because he wants to live life in the fast lane - I think, they would have told you the same "How dare you?!". But about those times it's known these days that "How dare you?!" sometimes was the truth in fact.
Who knows what they're going to write about this epoch a hundred times later? People who say this these days that are answered with "How dare you?!" might experience the same result.