Page 55 - Psychoceramics and the Test of Fire

Cabalocracy and the Hall of Mirrors

But what if the theorist is determined to confirm his theory, no
matter the cost, and the anonymous inquiry has not borne fruit?
Then he is engaged in the cat-and-mouse game of Capra’s second
scenario. Here the knower risks being known. The possibilities are
finite, their relative probability calculable. The least likely is that the
hall of mirrors has been avoided or solved, the CT is correct, and the
plotters brought down with salutary consequences—although the
latter is not a foregone conclusion, given the likelihood of another
embryonic cabal out in the wilderness, slouching toward Washington.
Almost as statistically insignificant is that the CT again is correct, but
is rendered nugatory by the conspiracy’s organs of defense: as Capra
described, this may look to outsiders like anything from accidental
death of the theorist to his being publicly discredited, fiendishly
chilling further CTs. The most likely denouement is that the CT is
wrong, but error has many causes: the researcher’s bias, the
inaccessibility of key data, the smokescreen generated by the real
conspiracy. And the more publicity garnered by an erroneous CT, the
better for the cabal it failed to discover. The temptation for the
masterminds of the plot to create false CTs is great in the
contemporary media environment, where information overload leads
to leveling, trivialization and oblivion of yesterday’s news.
Thus Curtis Capra laid out the wisdom of his decades of
intelligence gathering, providing his contemporaries a blueprint for
carrying on the good fight. If his view of history was bleak, he had to
be optimistic to some degree even to publish the thing. Or was it
simply another manifestation of megalomania? If he couldn’t uncover
a conspiracy himself, he at least would make his mark by showing
others the pitfalls along the road to success. In that respect he had
presented a generalized CT, and could expect a reaction if any
kleptocrats felt threatened by it. This eventuality he anticipated, as
well, claiming in his final pages that a dispassionate observer might
try to judge the validity of his work by what happened to it and to
him after publication. But, he cautioned, beware of the hall of
mirrors! His own stated expectation was that his meta-CT would be
ignored intentionally, as it did not name names and that a negative
response to such a theoretical tome or its author would only draw
attention to it. He therefore felt safe—or so his last words explained.
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