Henrik Ibsen and Conspiracy Thinking: The Case of Peer Gynt

Henrik Ibsen's poetic drama Peer Gynt (1867) stands at a crossroads in Ibsen's dramatic career. It marks both the end and the apex of his great achievements as a poetic dramatist. At the same time, Peer Gynt signifies a new direction in Ibsen's work toward psychological and philosophical stories about individuals confronting life in the modern world. Ibsen's first break into philosophical drama came with his earlier poetic comedy Love's Comedy. Ibsenborrowed the theme of this play from the great Danish philosopher Soren Kierkegaard. Unfortunately, Love's Comedy was not a commercial success. It was 8rand, the story of a priest whose motto ”al1 or nothing” leads to his own destruction, that marked Ibsen's first great success, and many of Ibsen's contemporaries saw in this play an obvious Kierkegaardian influence. Ibsenfollowed Brand with his monumental companion piece, Peer Gynt, a play that now ranks with Goethe's Faust and Shakespeare's Hamlet as one of the great philosophical dramas of al1 time. More than any of Ibsen's other plays Peer Gynt is an expression of Kierkegaard. The great theme of Ibsen's play is its depiction of a common man who desires nothing more than to achieve his true self and live his life freely and fully. Mirroring Kierkegaard's remarkably modern psychological insights, Ibsen's Peer Gynt is also a universal story of tragic doubt or despair over choice, which Kierkegaard labels 'the sickness unto death', and which determines the whole course of Peer's life, casting him into the darkness of anti-heroism. The crux of what makes Ibsenand his plays-most notably Peer Gynt-relevant to the 21st century derives from the mid 19th century Kierkegaadian notion of modern freedom, the freedom to choose oneself. Religious fundamentalism is the contemporary antagonist of Ibsen. Fundamentalism traps existence in an endless mindless tunnel. It is not concerned with the individual or the Gyntian attainment of one's self. Fundamentalism and the religions that have spawned it are responsible for disemboweling choice; they are the single dead-end out of the modern world. Thus, now more than ever we need the plays of Ibsenin order to speak out against the global catastrophe of fundamentalism.

Creating Conspiracy Beliefs: How Our Thoughts Are Shaped

It is one of the least challenged suppositions of Ibsen criticism that Peer Gynt offers a satirical portrait of the titular hero's escapist flights of fancy.1 According to this canonical view, Ibse...

Editorial—The truth is out there: The psychology of conspiracy theories and how to counter them

It is often claimed that conspiracy theories are endorsed with the same level of intensity across the left‐right ideological spectrum. But do liberals and conservatives in the United States embrace conspiratorial thinking to an equivalent degree? There are important historical, philosophical, and scientific reasons dating back to Richard Hofstadter's bookThe Paranoid Style in American Politicsto doubt this claim. In four large studies of U.S. adults (totalN = 5049)—including national samples—we investigated the relationship between political ideology, measured in both symbolic and operational terms, and conspiratorial thinking in general. Results reveal that conservatives in the United States were not only more likely than liberals to endorse specific conspiracy theories, but they were also more likely to espouse conspiratorial worldviews in general (r = .27, 95% CI: .24, .30). Importantly, extreme conservatives were significantly more likely to engage in conspiratorial thinking than extreme liberals (Hedges'g = .77,SE = .07,p < .001). The relationship between ideology and conspiratorial thinking was mediated by a strong distrust of officialdom and paranoid ideation, both of which were higher among conservatives, consistent with Hofstadter's account of the paranoid style in American politics.

This article analyses Deepan Sivaraman's 2012 production of Henrik Ibsen's Peer Gynt (1876) and argues that the production's scenography evoked scepticism toward the Indian nation-state. This scepticism came as a direct consequence of the scenography's ability to alienate the audience through the formation of dark ecological environments, with the help of three characters: the elf princess, the son of the elf princess, and a hell hound, a concept invented by Sivaraman while adapting the verse play of the Norwegian playwright into Malayalam and English. The dark ecological aesthetics of the production functioned like Bertolt Brecht's Gestus and Verfremdungseffekt, offering a dialectical point to the audience to reterritorialize their understanding of the Indian nation-state and its ecology. In the first part of the article, I analyse the Indian dramatic form of bhana used by Sivaraman to articulate the discourse of what Timothy Morton calls ‘dark ecology,' and argue that the bhana's satirical narrative remained central to writings of Otherness. In the second part of the article, I demonstrate how the production mounted imbricated narratives of ecological awareness on the stage through the figures of the elf princess, her son, and a hell hound that relentlessly witnessed the capitalist journey of Peer. By offering an active agency to these figures through the scenography, Sivaraman's production interrogated the Indian nation-state's definition of ecology. Significantly, in its choice of a non-human witness, the production destabilized the human centre and pointed towards a post-human ecological turn. Although Ibsen's aesthetics have been used countless times in India to stage the anxieties of the female gender and minority communities, this was the first time they were employed in India to stage dark ecology; Sivaraman's production began where Ibsen's play ends. In the first scene itself, the audience members found themselves face to face with Peer's spirit - rather than the flesh and blood Peer of Ibsen’s play - begging God for another chance at life so that he could become a better man. When Peer is offered a second chance, he uncannily uses it to become a non-resident businessman involved in mining. The performance showed how scenography could be used to articulate a dark and depressing ecological awareness.

Conspiracy, Complicity, Critique Peter Knight (bio) The coronavirus pandemic and the storming of the Capitol have created a perfect storm of conspiracism, especially visible on social media. Many commentators have returned to Richard Hofstadter's analysis of the "paranoid style in American politics" to make sense of the surge of conspiracy-minded populism and the spread of disinformation. Conspiracism is usually framed as beyond the pale of rational discourse, a symptom and a cause of the delegitimization not only of the media, scientific expertise, and democratic institutions, but also of the very idea of objective truth (see Rosenblum and Muirhead 2019 on the nihilistic tendencies of the "new conspiracism" of post-truth politics). But does Hofstadter's diagnosis of the paranoid style still make sense today, when, for example, President Trump himself was one of the most significant "superspreaders" of misinformation about the coronavirus and the 2020 election (Evanega et al. 2020)? Although Hofstadter acknowledges that the paranoid style is a persistent trait in American politics, he nevertheless insists that it is "the preferred style only of minority movements" (1996, 7). Hofstadter, like other consensus historians and sociologists in the 1950s and 1960s, wanted to explain but also to stigmatize what they regarded as mass political delusions (see Butter 2014; Thalmann 2019). In effect, they wanted to diagnose but also quarantine conspiracism as a dangerous tendency, to put clear water between conspiracy thinking and more respectable ways of making sense of historical causality. Either you believe that nothing happens by accident, that nothing is as it seems, and that everything is connected (Barkun 2013), or you think that way of understanding historical causation and collective agency is a delusional fantasy. In contrast, this essay will explore the territory between conspiracy and not-conspiracy, focusing on notions such as collusion, complicity, and critique, which are neither the same as conspiracy, nor simply its opposites. The question is whether it is possible, under conditions of neoliberalism that make it harder than ever to trace lines of corporate and governmental accountability, to talk about problems of collective action and occluded power without lapsing into a conspiracy theory. Only by recognizing the affinities and disavowals between the rational mainstream and its marginalized, irrational counterparts can we begin to understand the seductive appeal and expressive functions of conspiracy theory as an act of communal political [End Page 197] identification, rather than merely a "crippled epistemology" (Sunstein and Vermeule 2009, 211) whose mistaken propositions can be combatted through fact-checking corrections. To do so, I'll first sketch out cock-up, complexity, and contingency theories, before going on to consider how conspiracy theories constitute both a distorted critique of neoliberalism, while at the same time also distracting and diverting their believers from more concerted forms of political opposition. The Conspiracy Theory of Society What is the opposite of a conspiracy theory? One common answer is what might be termed contingency theory, the assumption that there is no underlying plan or meaning to history. Another—closely aligned—possibility is the cock-up theory (as it is termed in the British colloquialism; see McKenzie-McHarg and Fredheim 2017), the notion that things rarely go to plan, often as a result of incompetence rather than intention. A third, related option is complexity theory, the idea that order emerges spontaneously out of a complex system without there being anyone behind the scenes secretly in command. All three answers assume that there is a clear divide between conspiracy theory and its opposites, with conspiracy theory viewed as an unsophisticated, inaccurate, and harmful mode of thought. Although the expression "conspiracy theory" had been used from time to time in the late nineteenth century, Karl Popper provided the first explicit definition of the phenomenon and its opposites (Thalmann 2019; McKenzie-McHarg 2020). He began to formulate what he called "the conspiracy theory of society" (2002, 94; his italics) in two lectures delivered in the late 1940s, before working this argument into the American edition of the second volume of The Open Society and Its Enemies in 1950. It is "the view that an explanation of a social phenomenon consists in the discovery of the men or groups who are interested in the occurrence...

#FreeBritney and the Pleasures of Conspiracy

Why did the third World Trade Center building (WTC7) collapse on September 11th , even though it was not struck by any aircraft? * Why did Princess Diana's drunk driver look sober as he climbed into the car minutes before their deadly accident? * Could a slender birch tree really have caused the plane crash which killed the President of Poland in 2010? 'Conspiracy thinking' - the search for explanations of significant global events in clandestine plots, suppressed knowledge and the secret actions of elite groups - provides simple and logical answers to the social doubts and uncertainties that occur at times of major national and international crises. Contemporary social psychology seeks to explain the human motivation to create, share and receive conspiracy theories, and to shed light on the consequences of these theories for people's social and political functioning. This important collection, written by leading researchers in the field, is the first to apply quantitative empirical findings to the subject of conspiracy theorizing. The first section of the book explores conspiracy theories in the context of group perception and intergroup relations, paying particular attention to anti-Semitic conspiracy stereotypes. It then goes on to examine the relationship between an individual's political ideology and the degree to which they engage in 'conspiracy thinking'. The concluding part of the book considers the explanatory power of conspiracy, focusing on the link between social paranoia and digital media, and highlighting the social, political, and environmental consequences of conspiracy theories. The Psychology of Conspiracy will be of great interest to academics and researchers in social and political psychology, and a valuable resource to those in the fields of social policy, anthropology, political science, and cultural studies.

Humans seem drawn to dark conspiracy theories, often in favor of the simple truth In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, misinformation and conspiracy theorizing have surged President Trump, for example, praised the antimalarial drug hydroxychloroquine as a "game changer" despite scant empirical evidence of its efficacy and safety for the treatment of SARS-CoV-2 Others in the administration have promoted the unsubstantiated theory that SARS-CoV-2 originated in a Chinese lab, despite scientific consensus that the virus likely originated in an animal source before zoonotic transfer and that no evidence indicates that the virus emerged through deliberate lab manipulation of a related virus Here, Friedman discusses why humans are vulnerable to conspiracy theories

Understanding conspiratorial thinking (CT) within public relations research: Dynamics of organization-public relationship quality, CT, and negative megaphoning

IntroductionConspiracy theories are popular during the COVID-19 pandemic. Conspiratorial thinking is characterised by the strong conviction that a certain situation that one sees as unjust is the result of a deliberate conspiracy of a group of people with bad intentions. Conspiratorial thinking appears to have many similarities with paranoid delusions.ObjectivesTo explore the nature, consequences, and social-psychological dimensions of conspiratorial thinking, and describe similarities and differences with paranoid delusions.MethodsCritically assessing relevant literature about conspiratorial thinking and paranoid delusions.ResultsConspiratorial thinking meets epistemic, existential, and social needs. It provides clarity in uncertain times and connection with an in-group of like-minded people. Both conspiratorial thinking and paranoid delusions involve an unjust, persistent, and sometimes bizarre conviction. Unlike conspiracy theorists, people with a paranoid delusion are almost always the only target of the presumed conspiracy, and they usually stand alone in their conviction. Furthermore, conspiracy theories are not based as much on unusual experiences of their inner self, reality, or interpersonal contacts.ConclusionsConspirational thinking is common in uncertain circumstances. It gives grip, certainty, moral superiority and social support. Extreme conspirational thinking seems to fit current psychiatric definitions of paranoid delusions, but there are also important differences. To make a distinction with regard to conspiratorial thinking, deepening of conventional definitions of delusions is required. Instead of the strong focus on the erroneous content of delusions, more attention should be given to the underlying idiosyncratic, changed way of experiencing reality.DisclosureNo significant relationships.

Preface Acknowledgments 1. Exploring styles - Bond's Saved, Brecht's In the Jungle of Cities and Weiss's Vietnam-Discourse 2. The Brechtian approach to the classics - Schiller's Intrigue and Love and Goethe's Torquato Tasso 3. Theatre structures old and new - Bond's Early Morning and Middleton and Rowley's The Changeling in Zurich, and the move to the Schaubuhne, Berlin 4. Theatre of revolution - Brecht's The Mother, Worker's Theatre and Vishnevsky's Optimistic Tragedy 5. The myth of bourgeois individualism - Ibsen's Peer Gynt 6. From bourgeois past to bourgeois present - Kleist's Prinz von Homburg, Labishe's Piggy Bank, the Antiquity Project, Gorky's Summerfolk, Handke and Botho Strauss 7. Confrontation with Shakespeare - Shakespeare's Memory and As You Like it 8. Conclusion - Stein the explorer and the Schaubuhne as model Bibliography Index.

Conspiracy

WHO TO TRUST? Christian Belief in Conspiracy Theories by Nigel Chapman et al. Victoria, Australia: ISCAST, 2022. 164 pages. Paperback; $12.99. ISBN: 9780645067156. ebook/discussion paper. https://iscast.org/conspiracy/. *Conspiracy theories (CTs) have existed for as long as humans have been able to record them for posterity; however, due to the exponential growth of electronic media, the proliferation and popularity of CTs have made them ubiquitous. Western societies have been particularly affected by CTs in recent decades through our ability to communicate unfiltered diatribes at the speed of light, by the seductive influence of CTs as a form of mass entertainment, and by unabashed populists who use them to tar their political rivals. Though they still frequently draw ridicule, conspiracy claims are now a mainstream form of grievance, spread by people--rich, poor, weak, and powerful--across the political spectrum. This is largely why academics in the behavioral and social sciences, concerned by the harmful impact of CTs on public discourse and social behavior, have begun to treat them and the people who promote them as objects of serious study. *Sadly, committed Christians are no strangers to the conspiracy mindset, and not only those who belong to fringe communities obsessed with end-times prophecy and creeping authoritarianism. Hence, learning to identify the common elements of conspiracist thinking and guarding themselves, their relationships, and their faith communities against its corrosive influence, is a timely and urgent issue for those who claim to be followers of Christ. *This short book (or long "discussion paper," as its authors describe it) is the product of fifteen science and theology authors who are committed Christians and associates of the Institute for the Study of Christianity in an Age of Science and Technology (ISCAST), an Australian organization that promotes dialogue on the intersection of faith and science. The central goal of this work is to harmonize the academic research on conspiracy thinking with biblical ethics in order to help Christian leaders and their communities address the phenomenon of conspiracism in a socially constructive and spiritually uplifting manner. *The book contains five main chapters--two of a theoretical nature and three of a practical nature. The first two summarize the ideas of leading academics (Barkun, Brotherton, Douglas, Dyrendal, Uscinski and Parent, van Prooijen, etc.), with a special focus on political polarization and populism, and the ways these shape, or are shaped by, conspiracy theories. The third chapter examines popular vaccine and COVID-19-themed conspiracy theories in Australia, North America, and Europe, and it highlights the exaggerated suspicions many Christians harbor toward government, media, academia, and other mainstream epistemic authorities. The last two chapters discuss the ethical, psycho-social, and organizational challenges that conspiracism poses on the way Christians live and think, admonishing them--as individuals and faith communities--to examine conspiracy claims in an epistemically responsible, socially constructive, and biblically grounded manner. *This book presents several strong arguments. First, because some conspiracy claims turn out to be true (Watergate, Iran-Contra, etc.), there is need to exercise careful discernment, engage in charitable exchanges, and consult appropriate expert sources when considering the credibility of specific CT claims. Real conspiracies generally turn out to be less ambitious in scope than the more elaborate theories that flourish in alternative media (JFK, "deep state," flat earth, deadly vaccines, etc.) and are usually the product of organized criminal networks, political graft, or fraudulent business deals. *Second, implausible CTs are often promoted by fringe media, non-experts, and subversive political movements, all of whom habitually traffic in speculation rather than hard evidence, blame vague or invisible enemies who cannot be prosecuted, berate official narratives rather than present a consistent counter-theory, ask rhetorical questions that invite the hearer to distrust experts, and make bombastic claims that reinforce anxieties of impending doom, furtive enemies, secret patterns hiding in plain sight, social marginalization, and political alienation. *Third, CTs negatively affect social relations by "building isolation, paranoia, anxiety, or depression in some individuals, [...] splitting friends, families, churches," disrupting communities, and "undermining [legal, political, and academic] institutions through cynicism and mistrust" (p. 6). Not only is the impact of strong conspiracy beliefs detrimental to healthy social relationships and responsible citizenship, CTs also undermine the New Testament's instructions not to slander, not to proffer angry judgments and insults, nor to engage in strife and partiality but rather to live in harmony, love, respect, patience, and forbearance in accordance with Christ's example. *Fourth, these considerations should lead Christians who feel drawn to conspiracist explanations to exercise humility in their search for truth, and to nurture a predisposition to healing rather than attacking relationships and institutions. "A Christian conspiracy theorist should understand themselves to be seeking truth and justice" (p. 6), cultivating awareness of the biases and self-victimizing tendencies that especially affect Christians (e.g., through divisive biblical and pseudo-biblical doctrines), and fostering dialogue rather than fractious debate. "Conspiracy theories may be true or false. But if we want to avoid spreading untruths, injustices, and strife, then we must cultivate a reasonable and peaceable impartiality in the way that we assess or discuss them" (p. 114). *Finally, "inoculation is better than cure" (p. 131). By sensitizing believers to the challenges of cognitive biases and disinformation, we can help them guard their hearts and minds against disruptive CTs and the unhealthy behaviors they elicit. "We should train Christians to hear diverse views; have good conversations; debate ideas; hear from Christians who work as experts or authorities in public life; demand consistent democratic values in public life; and have the emotional maturity to be generous in spirit toward their opponents (p. 6)." *This book/discussion paper serves as a useful and well-rounded survey of academic literature on conspiracism and as a primer for practical discussions on trust, responsible research, and Christian ethics. It contains useful definitions, summaries, and suggestions for further reading that make the text easy to read and to follow. Its language is accessible to most, though its content is less balanced in its accessibility to a mass audience. The information presented in the first two chapters may be complex to those with little knowledge of psychology and political science, while the second half, strong in biblical references, requires the reader to have some level of familiarity with the scriptures and (it goes without saying) a belief in their moral authority. Inversely, well-versed readers may find that the overview presented in the first half of the work lacks depth of analysis. Readers will also notice a lack of cohesion (and some repetition) between chapters, but this is unsurprising in a 163-page discussion paper written by fifteen authors divided into four working groups. Like the old adage that a giraffe is a racehorse designed by a committee, so too does this work end up lacking some unity. Nevertheless, it still serves as a useful guide for church leaders seeking greater theoretical and/or practical understanding of conspiracy thinking, and for small groups wishing to improve communications, counselling services, and ministry to the politically and socially disaffected within their church or wider community. *If we reformulate the title of this text to "Whom Should Christians Trust?," and distill it through the clichéd but effective rhetorical question "What would Jesus do?," we might then ask ourselves, "Whom would Jesus fear?" The answer to this question, of course, is "no one," because his kingdom is not of this world. This maxim encapsulates the central message of this discussion paper, which admonishes its readers not to fall prey to worldly anxieties but to have--and to guide others toward--the confidence that Christ has already won the battle against all evil plots. His followers need only guard their hearts against despair and pursue the truth with love. *Reviewed by Michel Jacques Gagné, a historian, podcaster, and the author of Thinking Critically about the Kennedy Assassination: Debunking the Myths and Conspiracy Theories (Routledge, 2022). He teaches courses in critical thinking, political philosophy, and ethics at Champlain College, St. Lambert, QC.