Survival Instinct: A Critique of Deficit Models of Conspiracy Thinking

Abstrakt

This paper offers a philosophical critique of the prevailing deficit models of conspiracy
thinking, which reduce it to psychological pathology or epistemic failure (Douglas et al. 2017;
Cassam 2019). Drawing on the concept of the "anti-anti conspiracy theorist," I propose an
alternative framework grounded in the interdependence of trust and control. I argue that
conspiracy narratives are not an escape into a "psychological paradise" of certainty, but rather
a manifestation of an "anxiety hell" that individuals enter upon losing trust in the system. Using
the analytical metaphor of the Matrix, the dialectic of trust and control, and a typology
distinguishing identity-based and reactive types, I demonstrate that conspiracy thinking can be
a comprehensible response to perceived institutional dysfunction and alienation from power.
The paper concludes with an open question: is the restoration of trust possible without a
fundamental reassessment of the current arrangement of control and bureaucratization?