Why are Illuminati believers all over the place?----Holes in the logic

Well, for starters there would need to be multiple competing Illuminati groups, rather than a single Omniscient Council of Vagueness. In the alternative, there is a single Supreme Council, but the members constantly fight and conspire against each other. Competition among competing conspiracies is both more believable and provides for a better story.

Second, you'd need to identify who the top ranking people are. Are they important public figures, or are they The Man Behind the Man? Sure, anybody can name the President of the United States, but if there's a conspiracy behind him, who is it? Would the identities of the true holders of power be generally known or discoverable, or are they so secretive that very few people actually can name them?

Which leads to the third point: How do the true conspirators control their underlings? I'm ruling out Sufficiently Advanced Aliens and Magic, because I'm imagining a world much like our own. So how do they keep control? Blackmail? Bribery? Assassination? Or sheer loyalty and devotion?

And probably most importantly: How does it remain a secret? Why doesn't one Conspirator expose another one? Why haven't secret records surfaced detailing first hand how the world is actually ruled? Human beings can only cover up so much. And honestly that's the point with the biggest possible Plot Hole. You can only Hand Wave "it was covered up" so far before it gets unbelievable.

So each nation/region has a different branch and while the different branches serve one large council some of them have their own agenda? Makes sense. Humans are prejudiced against others even if they are technically part of the same organization.

Well I think the actual figures being in charge would make more sense. They're probably less likely to turn on the others. The identities of the main council would probably be unknown to most of the underlings. Heck the council itself might not even know who the other members are.

I don't know much about the plausibility of brainwashing or mind control but perhaps that? If it's (I don't know if it is) they could do something to people that makes them physically unable to tell about the conspiracy unless they're certain nobody else will hear. They might also indoctrinate their children like a cult would in which case revealing the secret or betraying the leaders would be impossible for them.

If we're going with them making the conspirators unable to reveal it then that. Maybe they never keep records. If all their information is transmitted orally or in code then there would be no records to trace.

edited 5th Dec '12 2:25:45 PM by Kostya

I think a good piece of fiction could be done surrounding the conspiracy, and that when the heroes begin to unravel it, they are expecting the big grandiose and organized works that are in popular fiction, only to find out that it's something slightly more innocent, just a bunch of people so rich and out of touch that they make decisions sociopathically, with no real regard for the human costs of people getting in the way. That way they don't have any real major goal, but just seem like a bunch of sad and out of touch billionaires who throw their weight around a lot, and when the heroes tear their empires down to the ground, you have a bunch of crying, frantic old men honestly wondering "Why did you do this?!"

Aka... something that resembles what's been the case for thousands of years?

I was actually thinking something more like a Government Procedural, but from the point of view of the conspirators. It would have to be either very tongue-in-cheek or very dark.

My personal views, for what they are worth:

In every civilization, in every century, there are groups of people who fancy themselves to be an Illuminati of sorts; they believe they are elites, ivory tower philosopher kings, and gods. In truth, most of them are legends in their own minds; hardly fit to run a post office, let alone the world. Those who are presently running things are less like the fabled Illuminati and more like the dimwitted and officious Vogons from Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy. Narcissistic morons and power junkies, that's always the sort of people we have at the helm, and that is very unlikely to ever change.

To add to my previous thought, it's a fact that politicians and people in authority lie. A LOT. It's not necessarily because their up to anything nefarious (although there's always an outside chance a rare few might be), but more often it's because they've royally fucked up somewhere and, instead of having the moral fiber to own up to their errors and face the music, they desperately try to cover their asses. Believe it or not, this is a losing strategy in the long run as the more you lie to people, the more "bookkeeping" you have to do. You end up having to keep track of who you've lied to and what you've lied to them about; and since it's not always so easy to keep such things straight in your head, each new lie escalates the probability for disaster.

They lie a lot. What's most distressing is how infrequently it gets exposed. And when it does get exposed, nothing really happens to them. Or when things do happen, it's completely arbitrary. One person spits on the sidewalk and is forced to resign. Somebody else is caught getting a Carlsbad Grimple from a dozen underage Thai prostitutes and gets a slap on the wrist.

I just looked up what "Carlsbad Grimple" means, and...O_o

Yeah, that is some depraved stuff right there.

I think Lawyerdude, Ace of Spades, Barkey and others have touched on some of the problems that arise when examining conspiracy theories. And Lawyerdude basically summed up my opinion on the matter with the following:

"That's the thing about these sort of theories; examine them in even a slightly critical way and they fall apart."

Without going too far off-topic, this was something I kept thinking about when I was watching The Dark Knight Rises. I love the movie, and I've watched it several times. However, the League of Shadows, as a fictitious multinational organization, runs into some logistical concerns that don't make a lot of sense if you apply them to strict reality. Their command structure, mobility, funding, recruitment, and ideological structure work well enough (with various degrees of willing suspension of disbelief), but I have doubts as to whether or not and/or for how long such a powerful rapid-response force like them could operate while remaining relatively unknown. They seem to be more like an international junta, but as others have suggested about illuminati, it is very likely that the League of Shadows, if it existed, would be passively accepted or at least tolerated by major authority figures with only minor disclosure.

Barkey pretty much ninja'd me on the paramilitary makeup of the League of Shadows or some similar organization. A large army like that would be extraordinarily difficult to keep secret. Not impossible, but very difficult.

edited 10th Jun '13 8:39:07 AM by Aprilla

It's Deus Ex that originally got me thinking about it.(Not human revolution, though they revisited the same concept)

The more people that you let in on a secret, the more of them talk. People love to talk about things they feel privileged to know, even soldiers. See how many SAS/SEAL types have written books when they shouldn't.

The more people you let in on a secret, the less it will stay a secret. Soldiers have families, and soldiers need recreational time to go do shit and have lives that aren't training and guard duty. You couldn't have a paramilitary force of the size needed for most conspiracy theories(for even small surgical operations) without something getting out eventually from the soldiers themselves. You would need to find single people with no lives, who essentially didn't question why they did things, or were completely let in on what was going on and were zealous supporters of it.

Having a legit army of paramilitary troops that nobody knows about? Where do you store all those tanks and shit? Where do you give your troops time to train with them? How do you transport them to a place to train with them, without anyone knowing?

It just isn't plausible. The greater the army comes, the bigger the chances are that someone will blab to their family, even if the intent isn't to blab. People are proud of feeling privileged to do secret shit, and bits and pieces always come out to the families of those people. What about when the IRS eventually audits one of them? Or if one of those troops dies and it has to be explained? Do they just become a missing person?

So barring those concerns means the actual government knows about it. And if people in government outside of the organization itself know about it, the chances of it getting out increase dramatically. More importantly, the budget has to be there, which means senators get involved, and all senators love to do is blab to eachother about shit to get political handies.

I think real conspiracies probably do exist. Not likely aliens or that kind of shit though.

And of course, there's this...

edited 15th Jan '13 1:37:16 AM by TenTailsBeast

Real conspiracies do exist. If two or more people agree to commit a crime, you have a conspiracy.

And government conspiracies and secrets have exists since governments have. The Manhattan Project is a good example. Thousands of people working on a single project, many of whom didn't even know what they were working on. Of course, the whole thing became public knowledge in August 1945.

I suppose a large enough conspiracy can be kept secret of most of the people working for the conspiracy don't know that they are. I'm reminded of a book I read years ago where a person who thought he was working for a super-secret US Government agency eventually came to suspect that he was actually working for the USSR.

Are their conspiracies? Yes.

Do goverments and corporations get together and make evil plans? yes.

Is there a council of jewish/masonic/illuminati/lizar people secretly controlling the world behind the shadows and manufacturing world event to further their secret agenda that was handed to them 2000 years ago by a Roman emperor?

No.

Adam Smith.

edited 16th Jan '13 7:01:03 PM by Baff

I just think the conspiracy behind knowledge manipulation is true. Look at how music has changed dramatically for the worse after the turn of the millenium. Look at how American and European youths are behaving. Look at the rise of 'Idol' shows and how fast Gangnam faggotry came to be. Things with STANDARDS were dropped in favor of fast-food like brainwash crap that lowers the general bar of acceptance.

Thats not a conspiracy do, thats just trial and error. Its darwinistic really.

Full error, no trial. Correction made.

Crap gets produced because that's what people want. The fact that we live in a world where Here Comes Honey Boo Boo, Bridezillas, Jersey Shore and Fifty Shades of Grey exist isn't evidence of a conspiracy. It's evidence that people are morons. People have always been morons.

There was never a cultural golden age. We only think there was because the good stuff lasted, and the crap was forgotten. But if you want to turn the clock back a few decades, go right ahead. I'm a white hetero male, I have nothing to lose.

edited 18th Jan '13 6:51:52 AM by Lawyerdude

Nostalgia Filter: Older Than Dirt.

I present an argument to that: what if crap is not what people wanted, but authorities paid massive amounts of money to astroturf them into stardom?

The Monkees. Heck, the Bach family. <shrugs>

Nah people will listen to what they want to listen.

What you are talking about does exist, but is not a conspiracy, its just a natural development that arises from the institutions of capitalism.

If you want take a non conspirational approach I recommend this movie: Manufacturing consent; tought control in a democratic society.

edited 18th Jan '13 7:39:49 AM by Baff

Yeah. That's the one thing I notice in my life that I absolutely hate.

By manufacturing consent, the people responsible can use 'consent of majority' as an excuse to bypass 'right through logic' and pass what is most agreed on, even if it's wrong.