Sick of the Grand Conspiracy?

[Nymdok]

Originally Posted by alexondria

Why does this have to be the case?

I apologize. Poor choice of words on my part. I said enteraining when I should have said compelling. There are people in the real world who legit believe in shadowy organizations secretly running the world. I know some of these people.

Here on these fora, due in large part to the Principia, conspiracies are all fnord and cheeky fun. Sadly for all the world this is not the case. That was what I was refering to. I was NOT refering to the ability of a conspiracy to be an entertaining plot device in fiction. I was refering to real people who sincerely believe that there are real conspiracies that are running the world and , almost invariably, those shadowy hands are somehow keeping them from some happiness.

Apologies for the confusion.
Nymdok

[Icelander]

Originally Posted by jeff_wilson

If you bother to check, you will find Tammany Hall is exactly the textbook definition of conspiracy, complete with secrecy and illegality.

To me, it looks much more like a unifying label attached to thousands of seperate conspiracies, by hundreds of different people, united only by geographic location and meeting place, more or less similar goals, and by being constrained by more or less the same factors, i.e. the workings of the political and legal system in place, the power blocs, the risks, rewards and suchlike.

Both the First Triumvirate* and any individual conspiracy you can name from Tammany Hall or the Atlantic City machine are very much small 'c' conspiracies, in that they are believable, realistic examples of humans cooperating, to some extent at least, with other humans, to their own benefit and against the interests yet other humans. And they share more or less awful records of long-term successful cooperation along with even worse records of keeping the secret from anyone who wants to know.

*Which is simply the most famous of the several thousand short-term allegiances that Romans formed during their constant electioneering and intriguing. They didn't rule Rome and their tactics were neither more nor less conspirational or criminal than typical Late Republican political maneuvers.

[Johnny1A.2]

Originally Posted by jeff_wilson

If you bother to check, you will find Tammany Hall is exactly the textbook definition of conspiracy, complete with secrecy and illegality.

Um, no. Just no. (Except in a nit-picky technical sense.)

Tammy Hall did some things in secret, but it was a conspiracy only in the sense that any illegal organized action can be called a conspiracy. It was just a political machine, nothing remotely like the grand conspiracies of popular mythology. The sort of conspiracy that people think of with regard to the Illuminati or the like is quite a different beast than Tammany Hall or the Mafia or that sort of activity.

Maybe we could express it by saying that Tammany was a conspiracy, but not a Conspiracy.

[Johnny1A.2]

Originally Posted by Irish Wolf

The Bene Gesserit aren't quite along the same lines as the Grand Conspiracy of which the OP has grown weary; they aren't shadowy, they're no more secretive than any other religious order, and the only thing they seek is to create the Kwisatz Haderach (apparently under the impression that if they bring him to be, he will obey them. Didn't work out well for them in the long run). Also, everyone's already suspicious of them.

The Bene Gesserit are not religious fanatics by any stretch. In fact they're more like the opposite of that, they look at religion as a complex and manipulable social phenomenon that they use toward their own ends. They are fundamentally quite cynical about religion, to the point that it becomes a blind spot of their own (that Leto II takes ruthless advantage of).

The BG conspiracy fits the Conspiracy mold, in that they are far more powerful than even those who fear them suspect, have vast webs of secret power reaching all over the Empire, and multi-tiered ulterior motives. To make all this work, though, again requires something more than ordinary human abilities, i.e. the BG 'race memory' ability that gives them access to the memories of previous Reverend Mothers over thousands of years.

The Kwisatz Haderach project isn't based on prophecy, it's an attempt, based on the BG's understanding of genetics, biology, paraphysics, and other things to breed a prophet and someone with access to the full race memory (the BG only have access to the female side). In theory, as the BG understanding goes, a male with the race memory ability could get access to both sides, but paradoxically most males have no race memory ability at all.

Thus the breeding project. As for the issue of control...well, the BG are not the first group, in fiction or reality, to not think through what they wanted.

[jeff_wilson]

Originally Posted by Johnny1A.2

Um, no. Just no.[...]Tammany was a conspiracy, but not a Conspiracy.

That is the sense that I used, because that is the sense the OP asked for ("If we turn down the Grand Conspiracy, what are we left with?").

[ak_aramis]

The Bene Gesserit are a grand conspiracy - they've been coopting religions since their founding, according to the later Frank Herbert books. They introduce messianic myths for later use by the BG. They can conspire with the dead, by continuing projects and policies unmentioned by any living soul aloud. They can share memories of those conversations without speech (but requiring the sharing be done by two reverend mothers under the effects of the spice drug). They even manipulated scions of the great houses by use of younger sisters as concubines and/or wives. Count Fenring is drawn into their service by his wife...

[digoraccoon]

Without a grand conspiracy... yeah we'd have just the little potatoes. Maybe a few conspiracies that don't exist but many people think they do.

[jeff_wilson]

Originally Posted by digoraccoon

Without a grand conspiracy... yeah we'd have just the little potatoes. Maybe a few conspiracies that don't exist but many people think they do.

You can still have small-c conspiracy with global scope, in particular the LBJ and Nixon administrations' exposed manipulations of domestic and world opinion. Watergate is also a textbook example of under-coordinated conspiracies, where indeed a relatively minor crime leads ultimately to the involvement of most powerful men in the world.