Definitions
I dislike the term “awakening”. It has not been defined. It can imply superiority, as if all the so-called awakened people are cruising round in their flashy BMs, while the rest are groping blindly across the road, trying to work out the colour of the lights. And this is absolutely not true. God help us if that was ever the case! But yes, the realisation that the world is not as it appears to be can have a deeply transformative effect on people, not least ideologically, and this is something I will be Steeming about further down the line. And I will be using the term “conspiracy theorist”, too, just as a shared definition to make life easier.
Ned and Dan take note. Conspiracy theory has arrived and is firmly on the map. This will affect Steemit in the future, as it will have done already. I say this with no sense of triumph – it is simply a fact, a very important fact for any contemporary business to consider. And it is not likely that any of your consultants will give you these figures but we’re looking at at least 10% take-up of conspiracy theory in many populations, north, south, east and west – read on. Anyone familiar with Rogers and his theory of the Diffusion of Innovation should sit up and take note: in many countries the tipping points were passed years back. In 2011, scientists at the Rensselaer Institute calculated that it stands at 10%: if one in ten in a society holds a firm belief then that belief will inevitably, according to this research spread to the rest of the population at some point.
http://freakonomics.com/2011/07/28/minority-rules-why-10-percent-is-all-you-need/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diffusion_of_innovations
Ten percent might sound unnerving to politicians, whose jobs depend upon co-operative populations but how do you imagine 75% sounds?! Yes – in Greece, politicians are faced with a population, 75% of whom believe in the existence of a shadow government that collapsed their economy. Nearly 70% believe that a cure for cancer is being withheld from the public i.e. that their government wants to kill them! So how are these politicians going to feel? That was in 2014 and I doubt that many have changed their minds in the meantime:
http://greece.greekreporter.com/2014/07/18/survey-leading-conspiracy-theories-in-greece/
OK, so Greece has been having a terrible time with austerity. That would explain away these extreme statistics. But what about Poland? What happened there?! The trouble with the following statistics is that they have been framed in terms of anti-Semitism but the fact that in 2014, 63% of Poles believed that "there is a Jewish conspiracy to control the banking systems and international media" will not all be down to racial hatred.
http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/176725
Yes, there will unfortunately be some Jew-hating people involved for sure but a sizeable proportion of the Polish conspiracy population will be reading books by researchers like David Icke, who says:
“We need to drop the ludicrous, childish, labels of Jew and Gentile and Muslim and all this illusory crap and come together in the name of peace and justice for all. There is not a Jewish injustice or a Palestinian injustice, there is simply injustice."
Conspiracy theory in Poland ramped up after the 2010 Smolensk plane crash. The likely assassination of a premier sent Poles running for the internet. At which point many will have woken up and never looked back:
According to this research, from 2013, 50% of the French, 42% of Hungarians and 63% of Slovakians “did not know “who pulled the strings” in government:
And a highly significant 13% of the UK believe that a “small cabal rule the world”!
https://yougov.co.uk/news/2016/05/27/conspiracies/
I have not found any conspiracy-specific statistics for Australia and New Zealand but in 2016, just 8% of New Zealanders trusted politicians and the media:
and just 5% of Australians trust government!
https://theconversation.com/now-for-the-big-question-who-do-you-trust-to-run-the-country-58723
So you can bet that friends down under are surfing the conspiracy sites, too. And, love him or loathe him, David Icke was welcomed there with open arms last year, Icke's popularity in a country being a reasonable indicator of the extent to which its people have “awoken” (or so I find).
Over to Japan, where social mores to do with criticising government are probably a little different. Even so, Fukushima generated considerable mistrust and I have seen several surveys that are not reliable enough to link here suggesting that most Japanese know and understand the word “Illuminati” all too well – and not just the young ones, either. As far as reliable research goes, nearly one in three mistrust the Japanese government on vaccination – and that’s massive:
http://bmcpublichealth.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12889-015-1772-8
In 2017, the Moscow Times reports that 45% of Russians believe that a shadowy group controls humanity:
https://themoscowtimes.com/news/45-of-russians-believe-shadowy-group-controls-humanity-39516
And in the US, the conspiracy take-up statistics are off the scale. The survey linked here is just one of many to confirm that Americans are a highly conspiratorial people. 911 will just not go away: at last count, around 54% of Americans still believe that it was an inside job…..
http://www.livescience.com/56479-americans-believe-conspiracy-theories.html
This is not all: I could cite more statistics but will spare you for the moment. But you get my drift? There is indeed an awakening going on that appears to be global.
We are, I deduce, not meant to see all these statistics. They are like jigsaw pieces that you are not meant to put together, you are not meant to see the wider picture or use them in business plans. Why do I say this? Because I have been tracking them for years, and some are quite difficult to root out. If you were meant to see the whole picture, the mainstream media would be screaming in your face that the world is waking up – but it is silent. You will only see country-specific studies reported and never an analysis of the whole picture: this, I believe, is an information compartmentalisation mechanism of some kind.
Another reason I believe that these statistics are “no go” is the plethora of shadowy gatekeeping organisations that have been set up to “handle” them. These debunking organisations (such as deconspirator.com’s interesting list of funders) are peopled by spooks and academics who pitch themselves against conspiracy theorists as if the fact that some of the plebs they patronise wish to improve the world is an opportunity for baiting and mockery.
Whatever any of us thinks about conspiracy theories, whether we believe them or not, the fact is that in many countries, majorities or at least considerable minorities do believe them. And for any business or organisation to adopt an oppositional stance to them would, I believe, be retroactive and ineffective. The days are now over when Nanny State or Corporation could wade in and take the reins while the naughty children play at Growing Up games. I see these trends in a positive light: the growth of conspiracy theory in a society indicates that the individuals who make up its population are stepping into personal responsibility and no longer need to be told what to do by government. But I would not think that way if I was working in government. So one thing’s for sure: thanks to these figures, we should be seeing some almighty political compromises being made over the next few years.
Why can’t you see the awakening yourself? Because the world is a massive place and not everybody is the same: I know groups of occultists who have been working to neutralise the New World Order for years – and you won’t find them on the internet. I also know lots of senior citizens who are full-blown conspiracy theorists yet so easily confined to the trash heap because nobody takes any notice of what the oldies say. But the awakening is seeping up like groundwater, relatively unnoticed. We are currently at the stage of a few puddles collecting visibly in the yard. But those sensible will make a choice now: are they going to buy a little dinghy and go with the flow, helping others too? Or will they sit stuck like King Cnut on the shore, trying to shout back the waves singlehandedly?
Mine’s a Cat, thank you very much - ready about!