The psychological downside of conspiracy theory and too much information.

Calling All Jedi! - Pop Occulture:

"I have a sneaking suspicion that the more we consider dark arcane possibilities like that Dick Cheney hunts humans for sport, the more their power grows. For every evil act we believe the bad guys commit and get away with, another stone is knocked out from the wall of our resistance. We don’t become better informed or have our consciousness raised. We are instead indoctrinated further into the idea that evil people can do outrageous shit totally out in the open and get away with it - that there’s nothing we can do to stem the tide but whisper furtively in our chat rooms and holding cells. Oh, we’re spreading the truth all right, but who’s truth and why?

There’s a very real possibility that conspiracy theorists are not a thorn in the side of the Evil Empire, as they so adamantly believe. There’s a very real possibility that we inadvertently support the mythology of power and abuse we think we’re battling against. At this point, I think it’s safe to say that publishing more and more shocking photos of torture in Iraqi prisons doesn’t expose the abusers, so much as it gives them psychological power. “Look what we can do to you!” We’re spreading their propaganda viruses for them without even giving it a second thought. It’s a brilliant manuever - using the energy of your dissidents to fuel your machine.

The only way out of the trap, I think, is to collectively stop fetishizing the exploits of the Sith overlords. That’s what the want and need is for us to constantly spend our mental energy on them and their constructs. Doing so lends them legitimacy. Conspiracy theory is teetering on the brink of becoming just another form of celebrity obsession - people buying supermarket tabloids so they can gloat over how fat Britney Spears is today, or how strung out Angelina Jolie looked yesterday. There’s a Daniel Pinchbeck quote I like which I think could be applied here:

Steiner believed that the best way to oppose “evil” is not through strident protest and negativity (which tends to be the monotonous approach of the Left), but by simply creating what is “good.”