[Help me graduate!] Research. X-Files, conspiracy, and your experiences.

[RangerWickett]

I'm writing my final paper for college, and if I get it in by 5pm Tuesday, and pass, I get to graduate. Yay.

I need some help with research. It's for a class on conspiracy and paranoia, and how people perceive the world based on their fears or on beliefs that some consider outlandish. As this is a rather cool class, I get to write a final paper about The X-Files.

I want help from those here who were or are fans of the show, and from those who believe in the sorts of conspiracies the show deals with. If you both watched the show and believe in conspiracies, even better. Now, I want to be up front and say that, while I don't think much of the stuff presented on The X-Files is really going on, I'm interested in hearing why others might believe them. Whether you just follow the UFO-based conspiracies, or the government wrongdoing conspiracies, or the Millennium-style cult conspiracies, I want to treat the subject objectively and get the opinions of people with many different beliefs.

If you liked the show, I'd like to just hear your thoughts and opinions on how much truth you think was in the show, and whether your opinion changed during or after the show's run. Did the show increase your interest in these sorts of things, or desensitize you and make you disinterested? Were you interested in some aspects more than others?

If you are a current active believer in any sort of conspiracy theory, I'd also like to hear from you on how you feel the media portrays the topic you believe in. Would you consider your beliefs fringe or mainstream? Do you have any places online where you discuss these topics, or do you know of places where others do?

Please, if you want to say something that might be particularly political or religious, which goes against the policies of these forums, please email at rnock@learnlink.emory.edu. Also, the main thread for this topic will be in the OT forum, but feel free to reply here if you've got a comment more concerned with the show than with my topic. *grin*

Thank you in advance for your help.

 

[Alzrius]

In terms of the X-Files, I think that the shows main theme, a wide-ranging governmental conspiracy, is basically the part that can be translated over to real-life...the rest of it is for entertainment value. In that sense, the parts of the show that featured the recurring investigations into government conspiracies interested me most (and because that was the only real recurring and advancing plotline...the rest was entertaining filler).

The idea that the government is keeping information from us, information that is not only something we'd be concerned about, but would potentially affect us, is something of the new vogue in terms of distrust of power. I personally believe that, in terms of applying this distrust to the U.S. government as a faceless whole, that at least part of this can be blamed on the scandals of the recent decades, particularly Watergate, and the assassination of JFK.

I personally do believe that the government is keeping information from us...the question is simply about what, and how much? To say that the government is being completely truthful with us all the time is, quite honestly, naive. We know that our intelligence and counterintelligence agencies are conducting clandestine operations that the general public simply will not and cannot be informed of. The problem is wondering where to draw the line. Clearly, any group that has both power, and an agenda, will be subject to some form of mistrust...it's just a question of how much you mistrust them.

In terms of what conspiracies I believe in...this isn't a conspiracy, per se, but I eschew the traditional ideas of alien visitors. Rather, I think the ideas presented in The Mothman Prophecies (the book, not the movie) are more correct - that in fact, the paranormal phenomena we're witnessing is not extraterrestrials...rather, they're unknown entities which, like us, are native to this world...but they exist in some wildly different fashion than we do (different dimension, same planet perhaps). The UFO theory is just a new take on the same weird things that have been happening for thousands of years...centuries ago, we saw lights in the sky and called them angels and wrote biblical tracts about them; now, it's not vogue to say that God is at work in the contemporary world, so we call them flying saucers - only the mass consciousness has changed. In essence, the X-Files in regard to aliens is only reinforcing the wrong idea, presenting disparate theories when most paranormal phenomena is more holistic than anybody thinks.

Hope this helps, and good luck with your paper!

 

[WayneLigon]

Man, I wish I could have had cool classes like that I'm very interested in that very thing: how and why people come to beleive such things.

I was a big fan of the show for a long time until it became apparent that they were never really going to wrap anything up or explain anything until they were forced to. I dropped out around, oh, season five I think. Until then, I loved every 'Mythology' episode, the episodes where they dealt directly with the ongoing conspiracy they were slowly uncovering.

The show itself really didn't present anything I wasn't already aware of from reading various books (I'd already heard of MJ-12, the various 'Old White Men Who Secretly Own The World' theories, the Men In Black, etc; I was a big UFO nut for a time and eagerly devoured stuff on UFO's, ancient astronauts, Bigfoot, etc) but I enjoyed the spin they put on things. If anything, it made me more aware of how things had 'changed' since the period in time when I was a UFO nut: now the MiB's didn't just harass or stalk you - they killed people. The perception of conspiracy theorists had changed somewhat since my period of peak interest.

 

[The_Universe]

Conspiracy

While I find conspiracy theory/UFO stuff VERY interesting, I believe almost none of it.

Easily the easiest conspiracy to believe is the one involving the Kennedy Assassination. Unfortunately, even that commonly-held belief falls apart when you look at the real evidence. For the conspiracy side of THAT argument, nobody is quite so vehement (or entertaining) as Jim Marrs, who wrote the book Crossfire, upon which much of the film JFK is based. The book is laborynthine, and purposely confusing...he sets up all the sarcastically named "coincidences" and then lets you draw your own conclusions. He continues the theme in his later books, Rule by Secrecy and Alien Agenda in which he insists that space aliens rule the world through organizations like the Council on Foreign Relations, and the ever-so-threatening Freemasons (AKA Shriners--you know, the ones with the silly hats that ride tiny cars in parades....). For a more balanced (and very logical) approach to the assassination, one that presents real evidence, I recommend Gerald Posner's Case Closed. It really clears up some of the crap around JFKs death that has accumulated over the years.

In general, conspiracy literature considers lack of evidence as evidence, which is a little troubling as a scholar. If I can't find anything that talks about the CIA plotting to kill my dog, it must be because the CIA is HIDING the evidence of their plot to kill my dog--the mindset prevents people from considering that there may be no plot, at all.

I tend to think that this is a quasi-religious movement in human society. We search for direction and purpose in things that may simply crimes of opportunity, and dark coincidence. At some level, isn't it more comforting to imagine that a dark conspiracy gathered to kill a President than to imagine that a lone nut-job with a crappy rifle did it because he was insane? As more and more people fail to see God and the Devil in the modern world--whether They are real or not--the more they will see some other unseen force manipulating the world. That's where UFOs, new age psychic overlords, and shadow governments come in--they're the new invisible hand of fate, the new control, and the new devil.

Just my two cents. BTW, I really recommend you read all of Jim Marrs' books when you get a chance--they're hilarious. The one where he claims that the biblical Abraham was a general who led an army of aliens against a rebellious egyptian genetics lab is too good to pass up.

 

[Mistwell]

http://www.blackvault.com/

http://www.coasttocoastam.com/

 

[The_Universe]

Awesome sites, mistwell. That's propably more what everybody's favorite ewok was looking for.

 

[Hand of Evil]

Check out the Enterprise Mission: http://www.enterprisemission.com/index.html

Also look into the Bible Code: http://www.biblecodedigest.com/

 

[takyris]

Ditto the "it's a religion" standpoint. It's something for people to believe in, since even a cruel and merciless higher power (aliens or a corrupt shadow government) is at least something you can get angry at, as opposed to an uncaring universe. The idea that someone cares so much about what you personally think that they'd organize a mass conspiracy to fool you and people like you is very attractive, because it means that your opinions matter.

While I believe in extra-terrestrial life, extra-dimensional life, and all that good stuff, I never thought that the X-Files was a great representation of it. After the first few seasons, it seemed to get too muddled up, and when some stuff was finally laid clear, it didn't wow me. I don't know if that's because nothing would have wowed me (and thus, the best solution would have been to avoid ever revealing anything), or because it wasn't done well.

One thing that was attractive, though, was the notion that the Evil Old White Guys were not totally in power -- they were desperately afraid of the aliens and got bullied around on several occasions. Some part of that seemed very egalitarian, a conscious destruction of the "White Guys in Charge" motif. "You think they're in charge? They're just the desperate henchmen, the lieutenants trying to act secure! If you stand up to them and make yourself a player, they have nothing to scare you with." Again, that's actually an empowering idea, the idea that the evil overlord is actually afraid of you, insignificant mortal -- and it's an idea that runs big in classic fantasy stories.

The sad part is that this adversarial sort of belief system seems destined to result in adversarial relationships in real life for the believers. (Skirting religion here) If you believe that the rulers of the universe are gentle and loving, you're more likely to believe that being gentle and loving is the right thing to be, and if you believe that the rulers of the universe are cruel and manipulative, you're more likely to be cruel and manipulative, just to take care of yourself and survive, as you see it. That's kind of a bummer of a life-pattern when it comes to friends and family.

 

[The_Universe]

Way to go, Tacky--you really pegged some stuff I was thinking, but that my post was just hinting at.

At it's core, people who believe in this sort of conspiracy--REALLY believe it--are no more or less sure of their beliefs (or as prone to interpret ANY fact in such a way that it will seem to support it) as any other "True Believer."

 

[Desdichado]

I'm fascinated with conspiracy theory stuff. X-files and other shows/movies/books like it only serve to increase my fascination with it.

But I don't believe a word of it. It's all entertainment to me. Do I believe there's stuff going on in the government that they're trying to cover up? Absolutely. Do I believe aliens crashed at Roswell and have been hidden by the Army or whomever since the last 40s? Absolutely not.