In the early 1980s, I had an acquaintance, Shahzad, who at the time seemed to be one of the most fascinating characters in our group of friends. We were all in our mid-teens at the time. He used to tell us the most fantastical stuff in the most convincing manner. For example, if we were all lying around and listening to a rock record, he would tell us that if we listened to that same record backwards we could hear ‘hidden’ and often diabolical ‘messages.’ If we were smoking cigarettes and they happened to be mentholated, he would explain that menthol cigarettes were specifically formulated by Western tobacco companies to make black and brown smokers unable to procreate. Shahzad had a fantastic theory about almost everything. And most of these theories had to do with some nefarious grand plan to subjugate or harm certain groups of people.

Being teens, and often in woozy states of consciousness, we would simply lap up what Shahzad was saying without ever bothering to ask where on earth he got all his information from. However, one day a mutual friend did exactly that.

I remember he questioned Shahzad only because he was feeling agitated; his girlfriend had dumped him. But even for this, Shahzad had a theory: “It’s because of her father,” Shahzad announced. “He’s an important employee of XYZ bank…” I forget which bank it was, but clearly remember him adding, “XYZ is run by an important tribe of Jews.” But what did this have anything to do with a Pakistani teen’s girlfriend leaving him? Nobody cared.

Most young minds are susceptible to believing fantastical theories as this makes them feel knowledgeable about concepts they do not have the patience or the training to actually grasp

Perhaps anticipating that his distinctive position in the group may come under some duress if more of us began asking him awkward questions (instead of simply nodding in awe), Shahzad introduced us to books by Erich von Daniken.

This Swiss writer had become a sensational bestselling author in the late 1960s and ’70s, especially among the purveyors of counterculture and New Age spiritualism. Most of his books were about how ‘ancient astronauts’ or extraterrestrial beings from far away planets had visited Earth and helped ancient Earthlings shape various religions and technologies.

We were awed, so much so that we began to question the science being taught to us at school.

For example, Haroon, another common friend, once stood up in our O’ level history class and told the teacher lecturing us about the Egyptian pyramids, that the pharaohs were instructed by aliens on how to build those massive structures. Interestingly, this very theory can be found in 2004’s Alien vs Predator film. Some science fiction is made of this fascinating stuff, but it is neither history nor science.

But Haroon, who was a rather wretched student, had found something that he thought (and we thought) made him sound smart. He knew something that even our respected history teacher didn’t know. Beat that.

Eventually, as we entered our late teens and early 20s and expanded our reading and thinking beyond what simply sounded ‘awesome’, each one of us would giggle about what we had so easily believed to be fact. Shahzad’s spell was broken and he now seemed to be nothing more than a nut.

But to his credit, to shake off this label, he went on to become a productive physicist in Belgium. But to become that, he had to graduate from reading Daniken to learning Einstein and then Stephen Hawking.

Most young minds are susceptible to believing and reiterating fantastical theories because this makes them feel knowledgeable about things they do not have the patience, the discipline or the training to actually grasp in a more substantiated manner. But such a disposition becomes a problem when it mutates into becoming a widespread phenomenon affecting the thinking of adults.

In the age of ‘fake news’ being digested by millions of adults — of widespread panics about supposedly tainted vaccines; of ‘scientists’ claiming they can extract energy from jinns; or cure cancer with cow dung/urine; and increasingly warped and unsubstantiated political and historical narratives — psychologists and sociologists have begun to take more interest in the whole phenomenon of fantastical theories and claims than ever before.

According to professor of psychology Chris French (BBC, February 12, 2019), “We see coincidences around big events and make up a story out of them.” Such stories find traction because they contain ‘goodies’ and ‘baddies’ — the latter being responsible for all the things we don’t like. We need to create villains to explain away our many failures.

In a December 2003 essay, Meera Nanda, the Indian historian of science writes that the glamourisation of the whole post-modernist narrative about how the ideas of modernity were tyrannical because they rudely sidelined ‘local knowledge’ encouraged Hindutva nationalists to make fantastical claims which saw ancient Hindus in possession of whatever the modern sciences discovered centuries later.

The same thing happened in certain Muslim quarters when, in 1976, Maurice Bucaille, a general physician serving the Saudi royal family, was funded by his employers to write a book which tried to demonstrate that the many cosmological and biological discoveries made by science in the 20th century were mentioned in Islam’s holy texts! Whereas 19th-century Muslim scholars, such as Sir Syed Ahmad Khan, implored his compatriots to appreciate God’s many creations by understanding them with the help of science, some 20th-century Muslims claimed there was no need for ever visiting a lab or thoughtfully gazing at the stars.

Two in-depth studies conducted in 2018 and published in the Journal of Individual Differences identified ‘schizotypy’ as a prominent reason behind the growth in the acceptance of fantastical claims and conspiracy theories. According to professor of psychology Joshua Hart (in Live Science, September 2018) the word schizotypy, though derived from the condition called schizophrenia, does not imply a clinical diagnosis. According to Hart, people with schizotypy have an elevated need to feel unique, but at the same time take refuge in a community of like-minded individuals. Such an individual or community was more likely to judge nonsensical statements as profound. They often believe in things for which there is no empirical evidence. The most recent psychological term for this is actually ‘Bull***t Receptivity.’ The higher this is in a person the more likely he or she is to believe in conspiracy theories, fantastical claims and fake news.

Published in Dawn, EOS, May 5th, 2019