Page "Conspiracy theory" Paragraph 24

Humanistic psychologists argue that even if the cabal behind the conspiracy is almost always perceived as hostile, there is often still an element of reassurance in it for conspiracy theorists.

This is due, in part, because it is more consoling to think that complications and upheavals in human affairs are created by human beings rather than factors beyond human control.

Belief in such a cabal is a device for reassuring oneself that certain occurrences are not random, but ordered by a human intelligence.

This renders such occurrences comprehensible and potentially controllable.

If a cabal can be implicated in a sequence of events, there is always the hope, however tenuous, of being able to break the cabal's power – or joining it and exercising some of that power oneself.

Finally, belief in the power of such a cabal is an implicit assertion of human dignity – an often unconscious but necessary affirmation that man is not totally helpless, but is responsible, at least in some measure, for his own destiny.