Conspiracy Friday

 

It is yet another Friday. Here is the dose for the day.

When I joined college in 2010, the world was not as open as it is now. While we had phones, smartphone were not as common. As such, the spread of information largely depended on the mainstream media. Fast forward to 2021, everyone has a smartphone in their pocket. Everyone has an android this or Apple that in their pockets and the availability of phones has made communication very easy. What that has done is also to create a pandemic of misinformation as we are continually bombarded with chain messages filled with misinformation and things we are not supposed to see.

In the thick of the elections cases last year, we found ourselves feasting on court documents which I am 90 percent sure were not for our consumption. The spread of documents on the social media became so prevalent that it was normalized and people did not know what to spread and what not to. In a certain instance, there were memos that made their way to the social media before getting to the intended source. That is the sort of world we live in in the modern day.

Back in time, one strong religious organization held a two-week series of special gatherings in which the center message was about the end times in our neighborhood. Among other things, there was a very strong message about the mark of the beast and the new world order. The preachers that came in shared a lot about the antichrist, mentioning other political and religious leaders by name in the process. It was a contentious moment which saw others leave their denominations to join church in question. There were tensions when others tried to question the teachings that were being peddled around but for me the interesting thing was that the prophecies of doom that were given never came to pass. Before you go on to criticize my faith, you need to understand that the prophecies were time bound and by this time if you had not bowed down to something or someone you would not have been able to read this because some of your body parts would have been missing and you would not have been permitted to buy the Itel S13 you are using.

Around the time in which I joined college, messages like the one we heard in those community denominational gatherings were common. There was one particular example of how the music industry was under evil influence and how we all needed to refrain from listening to secular music. There were people who spent time analyzing music videos and isolating vocals from audio tracks to convince us that some rappers were dragging us to hell. While the videos may have had a good point, some went on to give time bound prophecies of doom about the new world order or something of the sort. These are not things I can dispute as my knowledge in these things is limited. What I found surprising is that these videos went on to label other gospel musicians as occultists based on their genres, music videos and twisted versions of their lyrics.

The world is filled with conspiracies and conspiracy theories and I believe that this is an area around which we should all tread carefully. Now there is a difference between the two things but for some reason some view them as one and the same. A conspiracy is a secret plan to so something harmful while a conspiracy theory is more of an explanation around such secret plans. While conspiracies do exist, some conspiracy theories are far-fetched and based on wrong interpretations of facts and paranoia.

When I look back at the time bound prophecies of doom that were linked to theories about the new world order or something along those lines, the people who talked about them were knowledgeable. They quoted Bible verses and added their interpretation to give us exact dates on when the end would begin and names of the people who were going to catalyze it. Biblical numerology took center stage and considering the authority of the people in question, it was easy to believe and follow their teachings. Somehow, they did not materialize and the first instinct by a lot of people is to mock. I personally do not believe in mocking such people as I believe that some of these do have a strong conviction that whatever they teach is the absolute truth.

A couple of days ago the world received the news of the passing of Tanzania’s president, John Pombe Magufuli amidst the rumors of his ill health. Prior to that, there were rumors that he had been secretly flown out of Tanzania to Kenya for treatment and some had gone on fly to India for the same. We cannot be too sure as to whether the rumors were true but after the death we have seen conspiracy theorists pushing theories that Magufuli’s death was at the hands of the “whites” who did not like the way he governed Tanzania and his foreign policy. Some have added on that his death was part of spiritual warfare owing to his firm stance that he resisted worldly measures of preventing the negative effects of the coronavirus pandemic. Result? There are chain messages going around the social media with the message that Magufuli’s food was poisoned with the Astra-Zeneca vaccine which then made his blood clot leading to his demise. Again, I am not knowledgeable enough to agree or to disagree but some of these things that are being spread around are far fetched and inaccurate because if all of them were right, we would not have had different versions of the same story.

If you are to ask me, 2010 was a better year. We had our TNM Tiagos and those Airtel ZTE phones with orange backlights. In those days when the best phones around were the likes of Nokia N95, no one bothered to send a chain message full of lies because it was not practical. You either had to hold a crusade in a village for two weeks or to print a million tracts with your message to get your message across. Nowadays all you need to do is to record a video clip and post it on your family group and within hours the message will have travelled halfway across the globe. That is the bad combination of things we have now; conspiracy theories and the means of spreading them. What we have now is a generation of an elite “pan-Africanist” young adults who are overly cautious about everything western based on things we read either in the social or misinformed mainstream media. The “woke” generation dismisses everyone who questions their conspiracy theories as brainwashed and colonized to an extent that we do not know what the truth is anymore.

What then, shall we do in this world which is so filled with conspiracies, conspiracy theories and misinformation? What shall we believe in? Which authorities shall we side with? These are tough questions to answer but they are very important to ask.

Perhaps we have a starting point in Socrates’ triple filer of information. Socrates advocated for testing information for truthfulness, goodness, and necessity before sharing. In other words, if you cannot verify that something is true, if it is not good and if it is not necessary then perhaps you should resist the temptation of carrying a megaphone and spreading it to the world. Only then can we curb misinformation.

Coming to the question of whether we should get the Astra-Zeneca jab, here is what I have to say. While it is a personal choice to make, I would encourage you to get vaccinated as I do not believe that it is a way of eliminating the African population. Knowing what I know now,  I have a gut feeling that if someone wanted to eliminate us a vaccine would not be in the top 5 of the tools. My opinion, eti?

I will leave this without a conclusion knowing how divisive the opinions shared herein are. I did now want to write this, anyway. I was only forced to do it because some of you threated to make my blood clot if I didn’t. Knowing your abilities, conspiracies and conspiracy theories, I have decided to give you a Conspiracy Friday.

Signing out.