Thimbron

I heard somewhere (probably some podcast) that the CIA originated the term “conspiracy theory”, but that turns out to be a “conspiracy theory.” In fact, “conspiracy theory” is an older term than I’d thought. The first use of it in English I am aware of is from 1863 and is described here.

It is used in the context of dismissing a popular theory as to why the anti-slavery British would have sided with the pro-slavery South. The New York times, now best known for some of its Pulitzer prize winning journos, such as Walter Duranty and Russiagate conspiracy theorist Maggie Haberman¹, published this correspondence on the subject from Monadnook² in London:

Furthermore, it is the belief that before many months there will not only be division, and perhaps civil war, in the North, but that the Government will be overwhelmed by one of the most terrible financial explosions ever seen in a civilized country. English political economists look for a monetary [illegible] that will paralyze the government, if it do not utterly destroy it. They believe that America is on the brink of a terrific precipice, or over the crater of a volcano which may at any moment burst into an eruption. Why, then, should England interfere? It would be to hinder the very disasters that are a cause of rejoicing. Whatever may be the feelings or the motives of France or Russia, there can be no doubt of those of England. The Government, which is simply the organ of the aristocratic power, looks upon America as the rival and the foe of England, and still more upon American principles as dangerous to British Institutions.

And a reply from C. A. Bristed:

Now, when we look for the cause of this, any man who has made European politics his study at home, or, being abroad, has known merely so much of them as one cannot help knowing, from daily perusal of the French and English papers, sees fast enough that since 1849 (to go no further back) England has had quite enough to do in Europe and Asia, without going out of her way to meddle with America. It was a physical and moral impossibility that she could be carrying on a gigantic conspiracy against us. But our masses, having only a rough general knowledge of foreign affairs, and not unnaturally somewhat exaggerating the space which we occupy in the world’s eye, do not appreciate the complications which rendered such a conspiracy impossible. They only look at the sudden right-about-face movement of the English Press and public, which is most readily accounted for on the conspiracy theory.

Of Monadnook, I can find nothing. Mr. Bristed was perhaps the great grandson of John Jacob Astor³, and a Yale educated writer.

This obviously can not be the coinage of the term. It must have been floating about long before in perhaps conversations, or books not referenced or readily available to anyone interested in the subject. I am not surprised that it could have been first used unselfconsciously by a Yalie. Maybe he’s right but you know, what the fuck isn’t a conspiracy theory? Maybe he was one of those writers that never conspired with anyone.

1. Alumni of Sarah Lawrence College [↩]
2. This is my best reading - the print is blurry. [↩]
3. Made his money in the fur trade and later NY real estate. [↩]

This article is an attempt to salvage something useful from a rabbit hole that must be filled in. I was introduced to the concept of the gamma by Vox Day¹. Vox describes gammas succinctly and in context here:

The introspective, the unusual, the unattractive, and all too often the bitter. Gammas are often intelligent, usually unsuccessful with women, and not uncommonly all but invisible to them, the gamma alternates between placing women on pedestals and hating the entire sex. This mostly depends upon whether an attractive woman happened to notice his existence or not that day. Too introspective for their own good, gammas are the men who obsess over individual women for extended periods of time and supply the ranks of stalkers, psycho-jealous ex-boyfriends, and the authors of excruciatingly romantic rhyming doggerel. In the unlikely event they are at the party, they are probably in the corner muttering darkly about the behavior of everyone else there… sometimes to themselves. Gammas tend to have have a worship/hate relationship with women, the current direction of which is directly tied to their present situation. However, they are sexual rejects, not social rejects.

Some other aspects of the gamma personality type that Vox describes that I cannot find references for (and may only exist in video format for all I know) are:

• Intense emotional pain when publicly humiliated resulting in unproductive spiraling
• Of all male personality types, most similar to that of women
• Tend to end up doing technical work and obsessing over the details of some particular subject matter (otakuism)

I am writing about this because I exhibit several aspects (though not all) of the gamma personality type, and because I believe there is a strong relationship between gammas and Being an Engineer². I definitely did the obsessing over women thing when younger. I’m obsessed with certain foreign languages for no particular reason. My relationships with women are not good. ³

One of the conclusions I must come to if I consider myself to be a gamma, is that until I figure out how to not be a gamma and although I know I should contribute, my motivations are probably wrong⁴, and I may ultimately do more harm than good for any cause such as #ossasepia I join, after reading example after example of how they can poison an organization and must be ejected.

Some things I’ve started doing to try to break out of gammaism are:

• working out (this gets me out of my head into the physical world)
• writing humiliating articles
• quitting listening to Stefan Molyneux podcasts⁵
• quitting watching Vox Day videos and reading Vox Day’s blog⁶

Some things I’m planning on doing:

• earn income using non-technical skills⁷
• quitting reading Twitter
• leaving the US - I find that speaking other languages puts me in a different mindset (this won’t happen for at least 2 years but I’m working on it)

1. Is his blog a trap? I don’t know. He makes money through his own publishing company and through video game design, has been living in Italy for many years, and has been banned from Twitter. His blog is hosted on Google, but he apparantly has several backups and merely continues to allow Google to host it because “let the enemy pay, no retreat, etc.” I urged him to publish a gpg public key (which was kind of a gamma move considering he clearly knows about it based on the title of a song in one of Psychosonik’s albums - PGP), but he ignored me and with good reason because who the fuck am I. [↩]
2. I have read this article a few times, but I find it quite challenging to understand. Part of it is the terminology, another part is probably that a part of myself really doesn’t wanto to understand. Nonetheless the people in the Gamma and Engineer categories do seem largely to intersect. [↩]
3. Although I’m still married, I’ve figured out that the partnership idea was a scam, someone has to be in charge. I’m not entirely sure how to get out of my current arrangement. It’s going to be expensive one way or the other. [↩]
4. ego, narcisism vs. cause [↩]
5. At this point it’s become an addiction. People on his show are working through their problems, but I’m not. [↩]
6. I’ve gotten some great insights from him but I don’t have anything to show for it and I’m not getting anything new out of continuing to follow him. [↩]
7. Inspired by Diana Coman [↩]