Q-SPIRACY (Part III) : Seeing through the Delusion Before It’s Too Late
Part I is here and Part II is here.
I began this series discussing spiritual bypassing and how it leads to conspiracy thinking. In essence, spiritual bypassing is escaping into the imagination of false beliefs to escape pain and to create an alternate, feel-good reality.
Q is for Quack
If New Age beliefs and denialist Covid conspiracy theories are cocaine, then Q’Anon is heroin.
Q’Anon is a right-wing manufactured conspiracy theory that believes a secret, satan-worshipping left-wing pedophile ring has been sex-trafficking children and drinking their blood. There is no reliable evidence of this massive plot. It is a politically-driven story by the far-right to attack the democratic public and their political candidates, replete with the mention of “satan” to hook and further radicalize religious fanatics who fall to the right. Don Trump says of Q-types “good people.”
Q‘Anon, and some other associated conspiracy theories such as Pizzagate, are so far-fetched that I wonder if its adherents, deeper down, truly believe it. I wonder how much they instead choose to emotionally believe these wild tales in order to act out their own shadow-hurt created by not tending to their pain, as discussed in Part I and II.
Such conspiracies unfortunately distract from real occurrences of abuse and harm. Actual pedophilia and sex-trafficking, are a thing, a widespread atrocity. Conspiracy theories are a way to ignore the truly scary elephants in the room: their own shadow and distress they project onto others, as well as, for example, the rise of American fascism and widespread violence — which Q’Anon and Trump, ironically, promote. After all, Trump himself is misogynist and has openly stated that he would date his own daughter if he weren’t, well, his daughter. He also has been accused by no fewer than 26 women of sexual misconduct.
Others do seem to deep-down believe conspiracy theories. One man, believing that a pizza shop was actually a cover for a pedophilia operation, drove to the shop with his gun and shot into an empty closet where he wrongly believed children were being molested. No such thing was occurring, and he–ironically, again — ended up endangering children who were dining in the restaurant. As my friend Jessica Moore describes:
“If someone really cared about ending pedophilia they wouldn’t be following Q’Anon and accusing politicians (who are conveniently liberal) and accusing Hollywood stars (who are often Black) of that horrible crime without proof — they’d be working to stop the humanitarian crisis at the border (which has been entirely Trump’s doing) that has already led to over a thousand children going missing. Or they’d focus on the 80,000 children who go missing in the US every year, mostly kidnapped by family members or family friends.”
Symbolism and Delusion
New Agers’ obsession with numerology and symbology, including, sacred geometry — concomitant with their lack of critical thinking, lack of basic scientific literacy (understanding how science and the scientific method function), and propensity for emotional reasoning (coming to (il)logical conclusions based on intensity of emotion) — makes it easy for them to buy into Q’Anon and other conspiracy theories that also rely on numerology and symbology to make vast leaps of faith leading to outlandish conclusions.
For example, on a post of one Q-follower I know on Facebook, a Q-commenter posted a picture of a popular box store at the local mall and alleged it was involved in PizzaGate because its logo is a triangle and looks like a slice of pizza. True story—wish I had saved the photo!. This is how ungrounded and fantastical Q-adherents are.
The Q-reinvigorated PizzaGate conspiracy theory originally emerged in 2016 when alt-right Trump supporters believed they found evidence of Hilary’s pedophilic engagements in John Podesta’s (Hilary’s senior campaign advisor) emails. According to a NY Times piece, this is how conspiracy theorist’s reasoning goes:
“Some emails referring to Mr. Podesta’s dinner plans mentioned pizza. A 4chan participant then connected the phrase “cheese pizza” to pedophiles, who on chat boards use the initials “c.p.” to denote child pornography.”
This magical thinking follows the same pattern as New Age beliefs that rely on secret number schemes and shapes and sacred geometry to denote significance from which they derive wild conclusions, such as QAnon’s belief in a triumph of love over evil after massive bloodshed, or other prophecies such as the end of the world. It’s a similar pattern to the magical thinking of religious fundamentalists who rely on faith-based assertions about plagues, the second coming, sacrificing children, or stoning women to death. Or the more modern, everyday versions of emotionally-driven discrimination to believe that mass shooters suffer more from mental illness (they don’t), Black people are more dangerous and criminals (they are discriminated against, stereotyped, and/or marginalized to poverty in the first place). All these instances derive from a lack of critical thinking and emotional regulation that project fear (of death, ultimately) onto others.
Teen heartthrob Justin Bieber was recently implicated in PizzaGate’s revival, championed by Q’Anon, because Bieber allegedly touched his hat during an interview, which conspiracy theorists believed to be proof — a secret signal — that he was responding to a random commenter’s request for him to touch his hat to indicate that he had been a victim of the PizzaGate sex-trafficking. There was no evidence Bieber ever saw the message to give the secret hat-tip, and he was not a victim of sex-trafficking. These are the bizarre leaps of faith of Q.
These leaps of faith share the same dynamics with New Agers’ beliefs in hidden interpretations of the Mayan calendar, secret messages from allegedly channeled spirit guides, or secret meanings in 11:11. Notice they are all hidden, secret, and privileged to those who are insightful, “awake,” and dutiful enough to do the “research” to discover these otherwise hidden truths. And if you believe the messages, you too can join the special, and ironically elite, club of myth-busters and soothsayers. If not, you are relegated to join me in the sheeple category.
Metaphorical and Literal Pain
When magical beliefs and bypassing derive from pain and trauma, it’s tough to give up these beliefs. After all, this is why the beliefs were taken on to begin with: to provide relief for what is overwhelmingly painful. It’s why conspiracy theories and spiritual bypassing aren’t largely a matter of lazy intellectualism. Some of these folks have worked quite hard to research and believe what they do, inaccurate as it is.
Rather, conspiracies seem driven by deeper forces, emotionally motivated by fear of facing and feeling pain. Yet, the fear of facing the pain is too damn overwhelming.
Or so they think.
In truth, it is scary to face our pain. But this fear is a fear of metaphorical death, not actual death. The fear fades when we bravely face our pain. So, conspiracy theorists and magical believers assert their wild stories with vehemence, as if faced with actual life and death. In reality, it is metaphorical life and death — ignoring pain makes one feel dead inside, and healing through it brings one more alive. Ironically, for us who fight and try to smack down these false beliefs, it truly is a matter of life and death! — because the false beliefs lead to needless suffering and actual death. Such is the bane of wrong information during Trump’s denial of truth during the pandemic (and yes, it’s okay to hate him for it).
This is why it’s so tough to change the mind of a conspiracy theorist. Challenging their beliefs threatens to bring them in touch with their pain and a misperceived fear of dying In reality. In truth, facing and embracing pain won’t kill but actually transform them into something more sane and truly compassionate.
Facing our fear of pain is crucial to live a grounded life in touch with reality. Fear of that fear is to deny pain, which leads to projection of violence via the dynamic “hurt people hurt others.” The untended pain that remains in us becomes weaponized against others through our projection and displacement of that stagnant, now-magnified pain.
Fearing helpful fear (of real dangers, like Covid or Donald Trump and Moscow Mitch, for example) immediately dissociates us from reality. This is why not fearing helpful fear is the linchpin for sanity. Denigrating fear with modern denialist memes such as “don’t live in fear” or “that’s fear-based” or “I refuse to live in fear” are actually a fear of healthy fear. Facing our fear of climate crisis, fascism, and Covid ultimately protects us. This is the biggest irony and tragedy.
I briefly discuss the many dynamics and consequences of fear, and our fear, here and in this video.
Fear of fear manifests in beliefs that deny reality and consolidate fear: anti-mask, anti-distancing, anti-shelter-at-homing, as well as, I propose, Q’spiracy. All these reactions have one thing in common: denying what is scary, sad, enraging, and despairing — a fear of feeling pain. They follow the same pattern of spiritual bypassing (and going down the Q rabbit hole): entrained thinking (discussed in Part II) unconsciously adopted as a lifestyle years ago to escape what seemed, or which actually was — as a helpless child or under-resourced adult — too much to handle.
The knee jerk belief behind fear of fear is believing that emotional pain will literally kill us instead of transform us. Obeying fear of fear is to become crusty and rigid, ideological and violent, because that’s what denied pain does to us when we don’t deal with it. Our pain is left untended and it eventually pains others via our unconscious projections, via our shadow.
“Waking Up”
Don’t ya hate it when they say this? It hurts in so many different ways! Ironically, waking up is not to believe conspiracy theories just because they are anti-mainstream. It is to equip ourselves with critical thinking but even more so with managing our fear so that we don’t commit atrocities in the name of truth and compassion. On the brink of Election Day 2020, our very lives are stake before a Q-driven witch-hunt on truth perpetuated by the same maniacs that have corrupted history and created untold suffering. Let’s stop them now before it’s too late: please vote the Trumpublicans out of office.
Jack Adam Weber, L.Ac., is a licensed Chinese medicine clinician, climate activist, organic farmer, and celebrated poet. He just-released book is Climate Cure: Heal Yourself to Heal the Planet, also available at Amazon.
