The Brahma by Ralph Waldo Emerson and All-Embracing Conspiracy Theories

Here are the first three verses of "The Brahma", by Ralph Waldo Emerson. There's a fourth verse but it's not relevant here.

If the red slayer think he slays,
Or if the slain think he is slain,
They know not well the subtle ways
I keep, and pass, and turn again.

Far or forgot to me is near;
Shadow and sunlight are the same;
The vanished gods to me appear;
And one to me are shame and fame.

They reckon ill who leave me out;
When me they fly, I am the wings;
I am the doubter and the doubt,
And I the hymn the Brahmin sings.

This is the poem I always think of when I encounter the people who see everything as a vast conspiracy, all opposition as controlled opposition, every apparent coincidence as news management, all politics as a puppet show, psy-ops are as common as cabbages, and so on.

It's like all those dystopian novels where the hero realizes at the climax that the underground resistance to the dystopian government was actually planted by the dystopian government and he's been a pawn all along. There's a certain pleasurable frisson in this moment of despair, that can't be denied.

What is there to say about such theories, except that they seem unlikely on the face of it? History has no example of such a thing. Yes, the KGB had spies and informers and double agents everywhere. Yes, there was omnipresent propaganda. But there was also a genuine resistance and ordinary people had a pretty good fix on what was actually going on. We also know from the history of totalitarian regimes that, far from resistance being futile or fabricated, resistance is greatly feared and obsessively monitored.

Also the theory is unfalsifiable because any evidence presented against it can be discounted by the same theory. Chesterton famously wrote about this in the first chapters of Orthodoxy, although he was using the principle of criticize philosophical materialism instead of conspiracy theories.

I think the kind of fatalism that is spread by such theories is lamentable. Indeed, if there was such a panoptic, omnipresent regime in power, spreading such fatalism might be exactly what they would do. What if the controlled opposition is inside your head?