9/11 was a conspiracy, so I am told. Appearantly, the U.S. government decided to kill off a large portion of those citizens living in New York for some undetermined reason.

Of course, 9/11 was just one of the more recent conspiracies that the U.S. government has been involved in. There are many people disappearing every day, leaders being killed, and there are even aliens running experiments on humans on a routine basis. All of these things and more are being done either with the consent of the U.S. government, by a secret society who acts through the U.S. government, or with the tacit approval of the U.S. government.

Why do so many people, a large portion of whom are extremely intelligent, argue like this? Why do conspiracy theories continue to thrive?

The fact is, there is a conspiracy. Indeed, the government is very much involved. It is bigger than that, in fact. Much bigger.

There is a great conspiracy plotted against the individuality of the person. It was set in motion by the first society, and has continued ever since.

Society has always conspired against individuality. In any gathering of people, there is a determined effort to enforce conformity to established norms. Deviance is seen as a defect.

In today's world, the idea of equality is another method of forcing conformity. If you are to be equal to everyone else, than you must be just the same as everybody else.

Of course, to those who live against the established norms of a given society, there is a feeling that someone is actually trying to hurt you. It can lead to feelings of paranoia, and more.

Thus, there comes a need to direct those feelings. What becomes needed is a person, an organisation, someone who is responsible for everything that goes wrong. When you cannot find the reasons, when you are looking for answers to questions you cannot ask, or when you cannot quite face reality, you might be pushed to change things. But you cannot make the necessary changes, you cannot alter history. So you pretend. You make things up, and pretend that they are so.

Thus, there is a conspiracy to fake the landing on the moon. It's the only way to explain the fact that your high school gym teacher failed to acknowledge your genious. The government killed President JFK, which explains why the kids on the playground taunted you so mercilessly.

It's all make-believe, it's true. But to some people, it has to be true. It's all they have left to help them make sense of the world.