Low blow or am I overreacting?

[solarion]

He had a job in that thread...lack of ambition didn't seem to be the issue. As to BFs belief system and the dismissive term "conspiracy theory" well, suffice to say that imo the movies "The Matrix" & "1984" are more reality than fiction. The vast majority of Americans are absolutely clueless about nearly everything macro-economic and don't want to know about world events in my experience. We live in a bubble in this nation, where everybody is trained to seek out "money" and almost nobody has a clue what "money" is, where it comes from, or what the future of "money" holds. There's a disturbing lack of critical thought, and instead we exist moment to moment, and paycheck to paycheck. Those with differing viewpoints are quickly labelled and dismissed as crackpots, loners, nuts, or "conspiracy theorists", this is easily accomplished when normalcy bias is the order of the day. Nearly everyone knows SOMETHING is very wrong, they just lack the ambition or courage to figure out what it is. Eastern culture, where hard money(commodity money) with zero counterparty risk is still recognized and appreciated, is far more pragmatic(and enlightened) in this regard.

[TheEvilJester]

Don't misunderstand. I may not know much about all that myself, but I don't deny the fact that this world is and can be a pretty insane place. There ARE legitimately crazy things that people either just flat out accept, or that they just don't know about and can't be bothered to learn about.

The thing is, there are also nut job conspiracy theorists who make a mockery of actually informed and intelligent individuals. There are also negative people who can find blame for their hard times in anybody and anything as long as it is not them. In their own world, they are the picture of perfection. In reality, nothing could be further from the truth, and they use their "conspiracies" as a crutch and an excuse to refuse to accept that they are to blame for their situation.

To me, there is a big difference between them and folks who actually know what they are talking about.

Big distinction in my book.

[solarion]

Agreed. There's a world of difference between someone playing the blame game(victim complex), which is usually embraced from a first person perspective and an informed "conspiracy theorist" who seemingly believes what he/she is saying. I submit that BF was portrayed as primarily the latter in the OP's previous post.

The term "conspiracy theorist" fascinates me, because it is always intended in a derogatory + dismissive fashion, yet there's nothing judgmental in either word individually. A conspiracy is merely more than one individual "conspire-ing" which is normal human behavior(we are social creatures by default) and a theory is simply a working hypothesis...like the "theory" of evolution. Put these two innocuous words together though and they = crackpot. It's an interesting case study in the manipulation of perception.

Conspire = con-spirare(from latin - literally "together with breathe")

[TheEvilJester]

I guess maybe, in part, that is because when most people talk about a "conspiracy theorist," they more so mean somebody who finds a conspiracy in everything, and it is always just a load of bull plop and self-important ranting. Again, the type of person who uses their so called "conspiracies" as a crutch so they can delude themselves into thinking nothing that happens to them is their own fault, when 99 times out of 100, it all is (in their case, that is).

So, when people typically say "conspiracy theorist" they aren't including actually informed people in that group. To me, due to the negative connotation that term has, I wouldn't call somebody like that a "conspiracy theorist" even if, taking the term at its face value, it would technically be true. I don't really know what I would call it, though.