Labels are great! Labels guide our decision making from food to information consumption and tell us, in an instant, if we should engage with their particular contents or if it should be avoided completely. Labels are the ultimate summaries and for that they are very powerful and save us a ton of time. Labelling can be particularly useful in the realm of information, allowing us to quickly navigate through the vast sea of social media, news, ideas, opinions and ideologies out there and around us. For example, to hear that something or someone is right or left wing, is enough for the politically activated individual to know (without actually knowing the content) if their views are in line with that piece of information or person.
On a subtler level, however, in the less self-aware minds, labels may perform a more insidious function not very aligned with our personal and cultural growth. By consuming information through the filter of labelling, we are defining the boundaries of acceptable discussion, both on the personal and cultural contexts. These boundaries can become so rigid that as soon as a certain label is mentioned, we know immediately if it should be given any attention at all. We all like to think of ourselves as open-minded but when it comes to labels we all have immediate emotional, sometimes gut reactions leading to judgements of value as soon as we hear them. One of such labels (and the focus of this rambling) is conspiracy or conspiracy theory or tin foil conspiracy.
Somehow the label conspiracy has become associated with something born out of paranoia from possibly mentally unstable individuals. It is quite possible that some theories originate out of such mentality, whoever I strongly believe that this is an unwise and even dangerous assumption to make for all conspiracies. Without actually investigating the origins of each theory, we can not know for sure if it isn't in fact "a secret plan by a group to do something unlawful or harmful" worthy of our utmost attention.
Contrary to popular belief, conspiracies don't tend to generally form from out of thin air but out of facts that contradict the official narrative. One of the conspiracies with the strongest facts backing it is 9/11. To be fair, without investigation the 9/11 conspiracy theory label does sound very outlandish and surreal because if true the questions whom, why and how would have vast consequences on how we believe the world works. However if we don't jump to conclusions and simply try to look at some of the questions which make some people to stop and research, we'll be much better placed to honestly self-identify ourselves as truly open-minded.
If you're still reading, this is where I commit possible Hubksi social suicide by coming out and admitting that I have looked into the so called 9/11 conspiracy theories and I agree that there are some facts and troubling questions which until today have been unanswered. One of the facts is that besides the 2 towers, a 3rd building collapsed on that day known as building 7 of the WTC. There are currently 2200 (yes twenty two hundred) architects & engineers which believe building 7's uniform, free-fall collapse could not have happened due to office fires (as the official NIST report claims) since fires alone do not provide the high temperature necessary for steel beams to collapse simultaneously. This single fact alone has huge weight and a cascading river of implications if correct, considering how the foreign and domestic policies of most of the western world have been shaped since this enormous catastrophe.
So today, in the anniversary of 9/11 I have decided that the cost of social suicide was for once worth the potential of the truth being uncovered by associating myself with the 9/11 truth movement. If you read this far and feel like looking into this I encourage you to start with architect Richard Gage interview on C-SPAN below.
Thank you for reading and keeping an open-mind.