It is tempting to suppose that any social trend must be directed by someone, or at least by some organisation, and that none is truly spontaneous. All social trends benefit someone, after all, and it is a short step to believing that such-and-such a person, or that such-and-such an organisation, must have arranged the trend in advance for it to happen. We want explanations and we want them simple: conspiracy theories fulfill both these desiderata.
In a world grown ever more complex and difficult to understand, where almost everything in our lives lies beyond our comprehension, the simplifications of conspiracy theories grow ever more attractive, and proliferate like fungi.
If I were tempted in such conspiratorial directions, I would wonder if there is not a conspiracy afoot to render people, especially young people, ever more emotionally and psychologically fragile.
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Theodore Dalrymple is a contributing editor of City Journal and a Senior Fellow at the Manhattan Institute.
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