Anxiety + Conspiracy Theories

I’m noticing a pattern in my anxiety… when I spend a lot of time on say Facebook, or various news outlets and I read reports of states opening up even as deaths are on the rise, or how wearing masks is now a political statement, or how the spread of misinformation is the new pandemic… that’s when the anxiety starts to rise. This is a recent thing as I had thought I was doing great once the dust sort of settled, but feelings of anxiousness have really picked up the past week.

Truth has never been more subjective than it is right now. When trying to cite a reputable news source recently a FB friend countered, “We can’t trust the media anyway because they’re all owned by big pharma!” I was and remain confused… We can’t trust any news source? No journalists are reputable? And while I certainly have mistrust of certain news outlets and journalists, I’m not sure how an entire industry of fact checkers and truth diggers, can be construed as to all having an allegiance to the drug companies. (I’m sure there’s a YouTube video that explains it all.) We can only trust, as she said, “those on the front lines.” But only certain people on the front lines as she was referring to the 2 doctors in California who released another controversial video, as if they don’t have their own biases and agendas. Of course it doesn’t help–nay, IT HURTS US AS A COUNTRY–when we have a President who contradicts himself on the regular, says he’s joking when he’s not joking about ingesting bleach and then has his press sectretary say it was all taken out of context.

But back to the anxiety… it has intensified as the more I look around and the more I see people are all essentially looking at the same thing–a worldwide pandemic the likes of which we have never seen before–and yet drawing wildly and even catastrophically different conclusions.

Of course, I understand that people have different backgrounds and that we’re all in different situations in life, and therefore some things are always going to be subjective. I get that. I feel that all the time in my life. But that is not the kind of subjectivity I’m talking about.

Some things like death rates, whether or not wearing masks protects the public more than not wearing masks and so on, should not be subjective.

But when I think about it, that is how it has always been right? Court cases in particular come to mind. How many times have we watched a court case where we all saw the same evidence, but we came to wildly different conclusions? OJ Simpson? Casey Anthony?

But for many of us it goes back a LOT further. Like before the dawn of time.

The interesting thing about Mormonism is that when speaking about our purpose on earth we have something called “The Plan of Salvation.” And we start with the pre-mortal life. Yes, we don’t just believe in life after death, we believe in life before life. (ba-boom!) And in that story there was a war in Heaven. See, God told us about coming to earth and how it was going to be a test. And in this test we weren’t going to remember anything about our time in our pre-mortal existence, and we would come to earth and we could choose for ourselves right or wrong. The choosing for ourselves is important. Like super duper triple scooper important. It’s called agency and us Mormons make a big deal about agency.

See agency was God’s plan. But with agency came death and sin. Two things we couldn’t overcome on our own. But Jesus was the answer. He would fulfill the laws of mercy and justice by paying the price for our sins–because they had to be paid for because that’s justice. But we also couldn’t pay them ourselves. Kinda a no-win situation if ever there was one, so he was also the mercy. But once on earth we would have our agency and only by freely choosing to follow Him could Heaven really be Heaven. Confused? Keep reading.

Because Satan’s plan wanted to take away our agency. Satan wanted to FORCE us to do the right thing so we would all come back to live in God’s presence. And not only was that a bad idea, he also wanted all the credit. (Naturally Jesus was giving all the credit to God.)

Anyway, the rightness and the wrongness of these plans comes down to agency. Our right to choose.

So get this… even with this plan and GOD and JESUS CHRIST right there telling us what we should do, the story goes that one third, 1/3 of ALL the spirits in pre-mortal life said, “Nope. I don’t want to.” And they followed Satan, the actual DEVIL. Which means they didn’t get to come to earth and they didn’t get bodies.

Agency. Amidst all the facts (can you get more factual than the voice of God himself?) people chose to go a different way.

Again, even this is a different scenario than what I feel like we’re experiencing now as I’m assuming the Devil couldn’t really go on a propaganda spree in the spirit world, but maybe he did? Maybe that’s why people followed him??? I don’t know for sure (because none of us do) but I always thought the idea was that they knew what they were choosing and chose it anyway.

But maybe the difference doesn’t matter… because as I look around now as friends, family and rando’s post crazy conspiracy theories I find myself questioning my own sanity. But now that I think about it, if I was in Heaven and witnessed people following the Devil while peacing out on the possibility of eternal life, I was probably questioning my own sanity there as well.

The point is, sometimes the truth doesn’t matter. No matter the facts, no matter the choices laid before us, people are going to go their own way… and remembering that helps me feel a little less anxious. It’s not a problem specific to the pandemic, it’s a problem (or interesting quirk?) specific to humans–either pre or currently mortal.

And while I used to imagine that the war in Heaven’s lines were clearly marked, and that if it were playing out today my fellow members of the church would clearly be the ones following God, things have shifted–if only in my own mind. There was a comfortable sameness to our beliefs, we were all on the same page more or less. And now I see that I look around my fellow church members and wonder, “Are you my people? You don’t feel, sound and act like the people I once thought you were.” And likely they think the same about me.

Which is the same for the current digging of truth. I am aware that as I type this, there are people who are going to think I’m the one being deceived, I’m the lemming following blindly and blithely along as I unknowingly get in line to jump off a cliff while effectively saying, ho-hum.

I’m fine with that. Think what you have to think.

Also, I came across this article recently that has given some perspective and some hope among all these conspiracy theories.

I was reminded that conspiracy theorists have agendas, often financial, and therefore they have something to gain from getting people to disbelieve truth and reason. Also, it’s very common during times of great stress and turmoil for people to turn to answers that seem a little more cut and dry, when the truth is often more nuanced.

And then there’s this, a doctor, Dr. Halazun, on the front lines, dealing with this pandemic directly, who has also been questioning his own sanity at times as well. He says,

“We’re limited in our emotional capacity. I’m not going to spend whatever I have left after a long day of work trying to convince a conspiracy theorist,” Halazun said. “They’re immune to any evidence. You’re not going to change their mind.”

As Halazun stepped outside after his Facebook experience, he heard the bang of pots and pans and whoops and hollers. It was 7 p.m., and New York City residents were participating in their nightly salute to health care workers on the front lines of fighting the coronavirus pandemic.

“I just started crying,” Halazun said. “I thought, ‘What do I believe here?’ It almost made me question myself. Some people are out there who are sitting in their homes, going on these videos and then telling us it’s fake while we’re saving lives.

“I felt like ‘What are we doing this for?'”

Deep breath out. This felt good to put out there. My anxiety the past week with the spread of all this crazy information on FB has had a real affect on my anxiety. Just like when the pandemic was first happening and we were all GLUED to our phones and the news, I have been like that a lot this  past week and I need to somehow get a break. I’m really thinking I need to get my hands into some dirt–literal dirt, not gossip–and plant a patio garden and/or get my hands into a project to help manage all this craziness. But what about you? Are you also feeling the strain of misinformation? Have you felt extra stressed, less stressed, the same? I’d love to hear your thoughts!