Almost 10 years there was a tragic car accident which claimed the lives of three young people. All accounts suggested the driver of the car was racing along at a very high rate of speed, clipped another car and spun out of control. Information then emerged that the driver was intoxicated, with high blood alcohol levels, and had also been taking medications which may have potentiated the effects of the alcohol. This kind of tragedy happens with unfortunate regularity. Several times a year, the local papers report on car accidents involving intoxicated drivers and the tragic deaths of young people. In most cases, the story ends there. Families, friends, and school mates grieve; programs to combat drunk driving briefly make there way back into the news, and life goes on for the survivors.
The particular accident from ten years ago was different, however. It did not disappear form the news and for a great many people became a source of ongoing distress. As so often happens when a loved one is lost, there was disbelief and eventually a refusal to accept that such an idealized person could be lost in such a mundane way.
I am referring here to Princess Diana, perhaps the most notable recent example of the "cult of celebrity" that seems to have gripped Western culture in the last decades. Princess Diana's powerful influence was undoubtedly caused by her mythic qualities. She was a young "every woman" who became a Princess. She was Cinderella made flesh and blood.
When a person is idealized, their flaws are minimized or discounted. She became the embodiment of the dreams of so many and was loved as a result.
Following her death, as happens whenever an iconic figure dies, conspiracy theories emerged. The British government has just finished a three year investigation into the crash and the conspiracy devotees have been disappointed:
Report Rules Diana's Death an Accident
LONDON (AP) - A British police inquiry released Thursday concluded that the deaths of Princess Diana and her boyfriend in a 1997 Paris car crash were a "tragic accident" and that allegations of murder are unfounded.
"Our conclusion is that, on all the evidence available at this time, there was no conspiracy to murder any of the occupants of the car. This was a tragic accident," said Lord John Stevens, former chief of the Metropolitan Police, who led the investigation of the deaths of Diana, 36, and Dodi Fayed, 42.
The couple was killed along with chauffeur Henri Paul when their Mercedes crashed in the Pont d'Alma tunnel in Paris on Aug. 31, 1997, while being chased by media photographers.
Paul was drunk, with a blood-alcohol level twice the British legal limit, and driving at twice the local speed limit before the crash, Stevens said.
A report on NPR this morning revealed that fully one-third of British respondents remain convinced that Princess Diana was murdered. (Approximately 40% believe it was an accident, which leaves more than 25% of the British public who apparently are unable to understand the question.) The conspiracy theories bandied about are rather prosaic:
• Dodi's father Mohamed al Fayed has always insisted the deaths of his son and the princess were the result of foul play.
According to the Harrods boss, Diana was pregnant with Dodi's child and was killed by British agents to prevent her embarrassing the Royal Family. He has accused MI6 and the establishment, focusing much of his anger at Diana's former father-in-law, Prince Philip.
• Diana's former butler Paul Burrell revealed he had a letter from her expressing her fears that her brakes might be tampered with on the orders of the Prince of Wales. The letter was handed to the inquiry as evidence and heir to the throne Charles was later interviewed as part of Lord Stevens's investigation.
• Another conspiracy claims chauffeur Henri Paul was actually an informer for the British intelligence service and that he had large amounts of money which came from MI6 in a number of bank accounts.
Among the several other theories, my favorite blames, who else?, the Jews:
• There were also claims that Diana was killed by undercover agents from Israel. It was alleged that Mossad agents working with a French intelligence officer in the white Fiat killed her because they did not want her to marry a Muslim and adopt the Palestinian cause.
Conspiracy theories are non-psychotic analogues of paranoid delusions and serve many of the same purposes. In my post on The Reparative Function of Paranoid Delusions, I made the point that for the young Schizophrenic, his delusions are a way to make sense out of an increasingly chaotic world produced by his escalating mental disturbance:
When a young patient develops Paranoid Schizophrenia, a most devastating Psychiatric disorder, there is a typical prodrome during which they become more and more dysfunctional over time. Their thinking becomes disordered. If they are in college, they begin to lag in their courses and eventually start to fail and typically drop out. They have more and more trouble making sense of their world until they experience a sudden moment of clarity, when their delusions crystallize: They are not sick and damaged, they are actually powerful and important. Some believe they are Jesus Christ returned to rescue mankind; others, with less grandiosity, believe they are being followed by the CIA or the FBI.
Suddenly, out of the chaos of their minds, everything makes sense!
For the non-psychotic, conspiracy theories can offer the same kind of balm. Our world is increasingly chaotic. At its best we experience the world rushing into the future sweeping us along in a rapidly changing dynamic equilibrium; those of us who are most adaptable can surf the bow front of the wave of change; many more are able to follow along just past the crest, but for those who have less agility, such rapid change is disorienting and anxiety producing. Because of the increasing complexity of the modern world we all are constantly at the mercy of strangers. We rely on strangers to keep our electric flowing and our lights on; we rely on strangers to get food to our markets and onto our tables; we rely on strangers not to kill us through inadvertence or malfeasance. We depend on strangers stopping at red lights! In such a complex world, we are as out of control as the most primitive and superstitious Caveman, whose life was at the mercy of events both large (storms, lightning bolts, earthquakes and tsunamis) and small (smilodons, infections, broken bones). In such a terrifying world, our anxiety leads us to imagine that some all-powerful individual (at one time thought to be God, but he has been devalued by modern, secular sophisticates who keep themselves unaware of the primitive nature of our minds) or individuals, are actually in control.
A random world is not only terrifying but poorly comprehensible; a world controlled by secret cabals of Jews, Americans, the CIA, multinationals, or some other nefarious grouping, may be frightening, but at least it is understandable. That Princess Diana, loved by so many, could be killed simply by the random vicissitudes of existence is too disturbing to contemplate. How much better to imagine she was killed by powerful, hidden forces? If the world is filled with uncertainty, we are all at risk; if there are hidden cabals controlling the world, we can feel safer by either staying out of their sights, or by attacking them as the cause of our problems. Either way, we can feel less anxious and uncertain.
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