Chicago

To begin a narrative at what most people would think is actually the end, is a trick of frame and display. If one conceives that there are no clear distinctions between the beginning, the middle, or the end of what a tale or narrative should be, then the act of reassembling those components to get nearer to the meaning of events and people, shouldn’t be a source of apprehension. If such assemblage causes disquiet, the clarification offered, is that tales and narratives often don’t fit into neat packages of starts and stops; and to force such a thing, is perhaps dishonest. This is the end of the narrative. The inside the earth is hallow. There is a conspiracy to suppress this knowledge. Not believing in this conspiracy only aids the conspirators. 

What links most conspiracy theories together is the fact that they all believe in a unifying theory that explains historical, cultural and developmental change. The conspiratorial group is seen as continually altering history for their own ends. Their agendas are agreed upon internally, and their actions are often mysterious. They act in secret, and seem to undermine what is considered good and decent in the world. Corporations can be seen as sanctioned conspiratorial cells in action. Their aims and desires are aligned internally. Agendas and goals are not published. Their actions, from an outside perspective, often seem strange, inconsistent, or just plain odd. The actions of many corporations can easily be explained once a conspiratorial model is offered. However, few would call a corporation an active conspiracy. To do so, is to indict a larger system by deduction, which may not be necessarily accurate. There seems to enough similarities, however, to warrant more than just a passing look.

Like most meetings, it starts late. Slated for 3 p.m., it’s held in the large conference room on the east side of building. The view is breathtaking. A wall of windows frames the Chicago River as it branches through a canyon of buildings to the east. The view is inspiring as the sun reflects off the buildings, hits the river, and bounces back against glass walls. The entire canyon of buildings seems to shimmer and dance is an ocean of reflected light. The thirty attendees mill about. The usual banter permeates the room. Talk is about sports and weather. Hardly any glance outside. The view is old. 

The conference room is the largest, and is best described as Scandinavian modern in design. Clean lines, light in feel, attention to detail, and comfortable. The conference room suggests informal gatherings of like-minded individuals who get together to discuss things that are important. It’s part living room, part work area. It is in no way like conference rooms other businesses might have, dark, official, traditional furniture, where cabals plot and scheme. Conspiracies are vast networks set up to subvert and destroy everything that is decent and worth preserving in the world. It is unimaginable that abominable acts are regularly plotted or committed in this light and airy room.

In fact, the entire office is unlike most offices. This is a progressive company. True, it’s been around for close to a hundred years. However, in the last five years, it has taken on the task of reinventing itself. From outward appearances, the reinvention seems successful. There are no walls, only pods – the unofficial name for a cluster of four workstations. The same Scandinavian lightness and lines are found throughout. The President does not have an office, only a slightly larger pod. Attire is strictly business-causal. Suits and ties are permitted only when outside customer contact warrants it. The culture is open, friendly, and communication is valued. A walk down the halls, and the air of people enjoying their work smiles back at you. Greetings aren’t forced. They seem genuine. It’s an amazingly diverse group, where there are only two official designations for employees, Advocates, and Owners. Advocates make decisions and guide owners. Owners make sure things get done. Of course, there is another tier, the consultants. But consultants are welcomed as new employees, and are encouraged to enjoy and take advantage of the benefits the office offers: free health club, pool table, meditation rooms, catered lunches, free beverages. There are so many consultants that it’s not uncommon to attend meetings and have no actual employees present. 

Most meetings don’t start on time. It’s part of the culture. With arrival of R.N. the President, an intense, dark-haired, man in his late fifties, the meeting officially starts. It’s 3:30, and R.N. makes apologies, scans the room, and asks J.B. to open. J.B. is a tall man, in his early fifties, and has short, conservatively-cut hair. He’s dressed in chinos and a navy-blue sweater. He could just as easily be shopping, playing a round of golf, or standing in line with is wife to see a movie. His manner suggests ease, comfort, and honesty. J.B. is an Advocate, and he starts his electronic presentation with a series of bullet-points displayed on a drop-down screen at the end of the room. All thirty attendees politely listen while he reads the exact text displayed on the wall. J.B.’s presentation is about deadlines. He first describes how the data was collected, who collected the data, how it was assessed, and finally, what the data means. I sit at the other end of table from R.N. – the President. I am not expected to talk. Most of the attendees are not expected to talk. We’re here only if there’s a question about some aspect of the data, how we collected the data on our trip, and perhaps answer a technical question, if there is one. A quick scan of the thirty attendees reveals that over half are consultants. 

The way information is presented in most corporate meetings has become an art form. Official corporate information offers the semblance of being information, when in reality it is pre-digested, edited, and condensed into bullet points. There is an observable absence of active verbs. Moreover, the reading level is usually kept to around the eighth-grade level. What is really lacking however, is the fact that information is often presented without context. This is based on the misconception that everyone is an employee, and therefore knows, or should know, the context of the information being presented. This is the fundamental flaw that most corporate writing, or business communications seminars, fail to convey. Often, employees have no idea what their colleagues are really doing. They have a vague understanding, but in reality, very few can know the entire scope of the different tasks that make up the day-to-day operations and planning of any large corporation. Thus, as information is percolated towards the top of any organization, it becomes more refined, less substantive, and freer from context. Time constraints and the need for indisputable facts limit the kind of context that can be presented. 

However, information without context becomes a spell on which major decisions are based. The bulleted information bit carries a weight all its own. It appears to have authority. It’s odd that most antagonists of conspiracies are thought to have access to secret knowledge and spells. Corporate decisions, based on context-free information, mirror in may ways, the cabalistic knowledge that proponents of conspiracy theories accuse conspirators of having access to: ancient, evil, or supernatural information used in varying degrees to affect change. The bulleted information bit often appears miraculously in a presentation, electronically cut and pasted from a colleague’s borrowed report, half-thought, and half read-somewhere-else. It’s a marvel that decisions are based on such strange creatures. 

J.B finishes his presentation with an indirect assessment. The question of Augusta is a 50/50 prospect. If they stay on schedule, and their software upgrade is successful, then the needed manpower can be transferred from the plant to the "Farm," as it is whimsically referred to. Phase I – the pilot project, can transform into Phase II, full construction and production of the genuine farm. If the plant cannot meets its tight implementation schedule, then the Farm becomes a loss, with more money going into hiring extra employees, time lost, and planned production-tables mapped further out into the future. Margins are always tight. At this level and scope, mistakes often translate into catastrophes, as cash-strapped corporations become easy prey for takeovers. 

R.N. looks at his watch, perhaps reviewing bulleted points in his mind’s eye. General questions about the data are asked of J.B. He gives more detail on particular points. It’s now close to 4:30 in the afternoon. Most attendees are indirectly looking at their watches. It’s plain to everyone that if the meeting goes long, commuter trains will be missed, calls home will have to be made, plans put aside, spouses will have to pickup kids, life’s routine, altered. 

"Well, Let’s do it. Tell them they have the go ahead with Phase II," says R.N. And with that, he stands up, says thank you to everyone, and makes a dash for the door to catch a train home. That’s it. The Augusta Bovine Growth Hormone plant will go live after the chemical factory implements its software upgrade. J.B. gathers his materials, says thank you to his team, and the attendees start to exit the conference room. The decision made, the work of implementing the decision is left for tomorrow. The spell worked. 
 
 
 
 

Augusta

Weeks earlier, like so many official communications, an email appeared. It was posed as a polite request to go to Augusta as part of a team that would perform an evaluation of a software upgrade. After making the assessment, all findings would be gathered and presented in a meeting. Contacts, timetables, and a list of hotels rounded out the email. 

Two golf carts greet the newly arrived at the Augusta Georgia airport. Golf put Augusta on the map. The Masters Tournament, founded in 1934 by Bobby Jones, is the major tourist draw. During the Masters, the town shuts down. People take their vacations to coincide with the tournament. Parties thrown, local taverns host contests, and some enterprising people rent out their houses or spare rooms to out-of-towners. Augusta is like many southern industrial towns; there is an old section – which more or less survived the Civil War, outlying strip malls, and tract housing. The town has a sullen air, but paradoxically, an air of perseverance. It is a uniquely southern phenomenon. 

The road from the town to the plant is a scenic drive; pine-covered foothills give way to the lowland farms of the Savanna River Valley. The occasional plantation-style home dots the landscape. It is the Deep South. It feels cut-off and left behind from the rest of the world, while at the same time a vibrant sense of community permeates the different homes and farms. No Northern town of equal size could accomplish such a mixture of solidity and buoyancy. One feels cut-off from the rest of the United States. But at the same time, a kind of dislodged memory gives rise to the feeling that this is what the United States was meant to be all along - a patch-work of family farms and small-town store-fronts from coast to coast, not the endless superhighways, strip-malls, and tract-housing that dominates every community. 

The enjoyable drive to the plant is abruptly cut-short just outside the gate. Lines of protesters, each holding a hand-lettered sign, block the road. County police immediately signal to stop and pull over. There are number of the cars ahead. A County police officer talks to each driver, speaks into his radio, and then signals to his companion officers to guide the vehicle through the throng of protesters. The plant makes a number of different chemicals, but the main product is aspartame – known to U.S. consumers as NutraSweet. Along with the three shifts of aspartame production, there is a single shift of Bovine Growth Hormone (BGH) produced on the pilot farm. Most of the protester’s signs scream warnings about BGH. The warnings and slogans range in tone and clarity, "Stop F***ing with Mother Nature," to "End the Conspiracy - Come Clean Now." 

Definitives are never offered by conspiracy theorists. Their theories are always in a state of change. New events and actions are added as evidence. It’s an adaptation to the lack of context we often have to the information we have in front of us. As new, unexplained events appear, those events are assessed, and either included or excluded to the ever-growing conspiratorial explanation. Perhaps these protesters had good reason to picket the plant. 

Bovine Growth Hormone is a synthetic hormone injected into dairy cattle. It works by tricking the cow’s body into producing more milk, sometimes increasing an individual cow’s milk production by forty percent. The process seems simple enough. Inject a cow with hormones, get more milk. However, hormones are subtle substances, and act like chemical switches in the body. By increasing the levels of one hormone, the production of other hormones is often triggered. When BGH is injected into a cow, it often increases the levels of another growth hormone, IGF-1, in the cow’s milk. The milk is then laced with IGF-1. The bovine growth hormone IGF-1 is identical to human IGF-1. In humans, IGF-1 has been linked to breast and colon cancer, acromegaly, hypertension, diabetes, and gynecomastia. 

In addition to the health risks, the most persistent economic problem facing the dairy industry today is overproduction. The U.S. government, at a cost of close to a billion dollars, routinely buys dairy surpluses. Increasing the production of milk causes an increase in price supports, which equates to a higher percentage of tax dollars going to support the dairy industry. As large corporate-owned farms increase milk production, small family-run farms suffer; unable to sustain the tight margins corporate farms routinely absorb. They are simply drowned in a sea of cheap milk. 

The assignment was clear. Go to Augusta and do a technical documentation assessment of their current software upgrade. Roll all findings up into the general report. Such assessments are routine, and are often the precursor to more work. The formula is simple, review existing documentation, assess and review assumptions about their documentation needs, and then write up a findings report - basically, consult. The conclusion to many such reports is often a proposal of sorts: more user-guides are needed, more training manuals to help in-house trainers, more quick-reference cards for the men on the factory floor to help transition to the new system. To be blocked at the gate by a swarm of protesters in the middle of rural Georgia was unplanned. 

As the County officer slowly makes his way along the line of cars stopped at the factory gate, the first good look at the protesters reveals not the stereotypical student protester, but old men and women dressed in working clothes. There are a few student-protester types, but even these individuals have a workmen like air. It’s unlike most protests one would see in the North, well-planned and controlled, with a designated speaker making points through a bullhorn. This protest is angry, uncontrolled, with no designated leader. Yells and catcalls accompany each car as it enters the gate. 

If it wasn’t for the fact that unionized labor is a rarity in the South, one would think it was union strikers yelling at scabs, considering the amount of venom and anger directed at each car as it makes a fast break into the safety of the plant. The dawning realization, as the line of cars waiting to enter the plant slowly diminishes, that these protesters are family farmers, is sobering. Clearly, these men and women are working farmers, taking the morning off, to protest at the plant. Behind the police line, one can just make out the protester’s vehicles parked on either side of the road. It is an odd assortment of old sedans, pickup trucks, and a single tractor. 

The complex of buildings that make up the plant come into view. It is not a single building, but a haphazard collection. Interconnecting pipes, giant gas cylinders, metal shacks, giant valves, and a low, long, single-story brick building, make up the plant. A high chain-link fence surrounds everything. A short distance away, sitting adjacent, is a dark scar of land. On top of the scar sits a large, new, white, barn. The fence surrounding the white barn is newer, taller, and more formidable looking. A maze of metal pens extend from the large double-door at the of end the barn. No cows walk the pens, but the earth is freshly dug, trampled, and black. The thought that the cows are only let out at night, perhaps one at a time, with three or four attendants carrying esoteric instruments, flashes, originating perhaps from reading a protester’s sign. 

Everything that comes into view of a conspiracy theory often becomes evidence or supportive material. Disconnected facts and events are interpreted as part of a larger pattern, a pattern that proves the theory true. The mindset that allows disconnected events and human actions to become evidence is indicative of a mind that observes. No real action takes place. Instead, as one of the chosen that know about the conspiracy, it becomes one’s duty to maintain a vigilant watch. Action is relegated to information gathering, watching, to gazing upon the events around one. The affect is to make a character, an actor, of oneself. Some would call this trick of the mind, of making oneself a character in vast conspiracy, egomania. Possessed with secret, interpretive, knowledge about the events around one, results is a new framework of explanation, a kind of grounded understanding for the seemingly disconnected events that are the miseries and injustices found in the world.

That these farmers choose to act on the conspiratorial supposition is unique. Usually conspiracy theorists play the waiting game, watching and gathering evidence. However, it is not uncommon for conspiracy theorists to ape the conspiracies they strive to expose. An odd parallel group of sorts is often set up in order to expose the conspiracy. A cottage industry soon becomes a factory of ideas, with it’s own hierarchical members, secret knowledge repositories, and initiation rites that weed out non-believers from believers. The reasoning goes something like this, "If that group can do it, perhaps a group set up in direct opposition to stop them, has a chance of preserving what’s good and right in the world before it’s too late." Excellent examples are the paramilitary militias scattered throughout the United States. Many of the militias believe in a worldwide Zionist conspiracy to overthrow the government of the United States. This belief has lead them to create armed cells that wait for the coming threat. Whether there is, or is not, a global Zionist conspiracy becomes moot by the time the group has set up their own secret network to combat the threat. They now pose a danger and a threat. In essence, they’ve completed a self-fulfilling prophecy.

After successfully running the gauntlet of protesters, finding a parking space, and walking the entire length of the large parking lot, a giant, life-size cardboard cutout of a cow greets visitors in the plant lobby. The cutout cow smiles, showing a row of human-looking teeth. A cartoon bubble extends from the mouth, up, and over the head, and reads, "Phase II starts November!" As someone’s idea of change management, or public relations, it fails to convey the most basic of information. What is Phase II, why the cow, and is it November of this year? As the routine of signing-in, showing identification, and issuance of a temporary visitor’s badge gets underway; through the window, four County squad cars roll up to the knot of protesters on the road. The County officers exit their vehicles, and with much arm waving, gesturing, and yelling back and forth, the protesters slowly back up from in front of the gate. Some throw their signs over the fence onto company property. Others hug their signs, as if they were precious things, home-made, valuable, or perhaps as shields against blows the County officers threaten to make as the protestors are cajoled off the road and into their vehicles.

"It’s just a shame the way some people have to spoil such a beautiful day," the receptionist says in a friendly southern accent. A colleague acts as an escort into the plant. 

Large software implementations, such this one, often employ hundreds of computer consultants. Consultants are routinely rolled onto, and off of, projects that sometime extend as long as three to four years. When a multinational corporation upgrades a software system, every computer desktop, file-server, and database is handled, inspected, assessed, and upgraded. Every site around the world is subjected to the same scrutiny. When such a massive, global, undertaking starts, there is the real temptation to assess business processes and goals as well as computer software and hardware. It’s a recurring theme to seasoned computer consultants. Internal business leaders ride the software upgrade, pushing pet projects, settling old scores, and carving new kingdoms for themselves. It’s not uncommon to see whole departments "automated" out of existence, their business processes and staff split up among different departments as the company "aligns" itself with the new software. The process of aligning business to new software is not like separating the wheat from the chaff, it is more akin to a game of musical chairs. Those perceptive, or lucky, enough to see their areas survive an upgrade, often have a new, powerful tool at their disposal. Those individuals that don't survive an upgrade often manage departments half their former strength, or are laid off outright. Implementation schedules allow little time for reflection. It’s a curious tug-of-war between new software and a business, as both modify to meet each other’s needs. At the end of such large, long-term, implementations, neither are same. The result is that companies discontinue some products in favor of others, based on the new software/business model. What the company actual sells becomes a blur to most consultants, as all things simply become "data." 

However, this particular pharmaceutical/chemical company has a long, if somewhat sordid, history of products. Among those products at the top of the catalog is Agent Orange, the petroleum-derived herbicide used during the Vietnam War as a defoliant, and linked to health problems in thousands of servicemen. Demulen, is an oral contraceptive linked to estrogenic pollutants, which increases the risk of breast cancer. Flagyl, is an oral, synthetic antibacterial, linked to convulsive seizures. Aspartame, an artificial sweetener, is linked to high levels of aluminum and magnesium deposits in the brain, the long-term effects of which are yet to be determined. It would be unfair to list only the harmful products. The company sells many products that are beneficial: insect resistant seed used in developing nations, environmentally friendly herbicides, and anti-inflammatory arthritis medication that enable many to lead normal lives after years of debilitating pain. No list could be representative, and any list created would point out an individual’s bias. The company simply makes many different things, some of which are harmful, some helpful.

The plant tour starts promptly at ten in the morning. In order to get a sense of the supply chain and scope involved, a tour is a good starting point for any software assessment. Hardhats and protective eyewear dispensed, the tour starts at the loading dock. Our tour conductor is a friendly, good-natured man in his late thirties. He shares the receptionist’s friendly accent and is keen to point out the plant’s engineering achievements. Volumes, numbers, and schedules are articulated from memory. This is process chemical engineering on a grand scale. Ingredients are added or subtracted over time through a vast, interconnecting maze of pipes, vats, and containers. Batches are extracted for testing. Product readiness is based on time instead of completeness. There is no assembly line in the true sense. It is more like a giant chemistry-class experiment where ingredients are replenished at the beginning and aspartame (NutraSweet) powder is poured into bags ready for shipment at the end. 

The end of the tour finds us at the same loading dock. Our guide then makes a curious admission. He points vaguely to the white barn and says with a mixture of pride and energy, that it is the pilot plant for a new BGH product. The facility just successfully completed trail testing, and as soon as the software upgrade was complete, groundbreaking for a new farm-factory would start. The new farm-factory would be about the size of the plant we just toured. His tone implied the supposition that if we gave a favorable assessment, the sooner they could get back to real work, and not have to waste time giving tours like this one. The rest of the day was spent in the factory offices, pouring over volumes of data, getting a handle on scope and capabilities, and interviewing personnel. 

The plane home was a distracting split between writing the findings report and thinking about the family farmers protesting outside the plant gate. It was clear they thought of the corporation as a conspiratorial group, bent on undermining their way of life. From their point-of-view, the actions of the corporation seem to warrant such a position. How else to explain building such a farm for a product no one seems to need, and which directly undermines their economic stability. The Georgia farmers really believed there was an active conspiracy, and that at the root, it was the corporation who built the pilot-farm everyone could see from the road, that was responsible. 

However, as far as conspiracy theories go, it pales. For example, there are nine different, actively fought, conspiracy theories about whom shot Abraham Lincoln. They range from simple Confederacy plots to grand schemes involving the Rothschilds’ British plot to take over the United States economically. The number of different theories about whom really shot JFK equal the number of days the man was actually in office; the big three perpetrators being, the government, the Mafia, and the Cubans. UFO conspiracy theories are by far the most numerous. Men-In-Black, Area 51, and the Roswell incident make a trinity of sorts, feeding off each other, quoting each other, and using each other as supportive evidence. A casual search over the Internet reveals an overabundance of sites dedicated to tracking, uncovering, and reporting on conspiracies. Some random title include, U.S. military radiation experiments, The Ebola virus plot, domestic terrorists - Earth First, High Energy Weapons Archive, Satanic connections between missing children and the apocalypse, the Mars Pathfinder Hoax: Where is Pathfinder...Really, the CIA and Crack Cocaine connection, the Oklahoma Bombing Conspiracy, Demolay International - tracking the movements and actions of Knights Templar around the world, the Illuminati Home Page - tracking old European secret societies, Paul McCartney's death, and the Whitewater/Vince Foster connection to Bill Clinton. This is a short list. 

The Roman Catholic Church is a favorite villain among conspiracy theorists. The Church, until the recent ascent of unidentified flying objects and aliens, was by far the most commonly cast criminal in most conspiracies. The list of acts and conspiracies supposedly committed by the Roman Catholic Church, especially the Jesuits, reads like a parallel, alternate, history of the world. If it had not been for the advent of unidentified flying objects and aliens, the seemingly natural progression, and volume, of Roman Catholic Church conspiracy theories, would have seen explanations for crimes and injustices dating to before the birth of Christ. 

But by far, the grandest conspiracy theory of all, the one that manages to include aliens, sinister cabals, strange science, and old-style secret sects like the Masons and Knights Templar, is simply known as the Hallow Earth Conspiracy Theory. The hallow earth theory starts out slowly, drawing from Russian, Scandinavian, and Inuit folklore, evidence that at the north pole there exists a lush, green, Garden of Eden. The theory then diverts into scientific explanation of magnetic and gravitational anomalies recorded by established scientists over the years. Setting aside interpretations of the anomalous evidence, the narrative of the theory then grounds itself in specific evidence found in Admiral Richard E. Byrd’s secret and suppressed diary. Byrd was the first fly over the North Pole during the Navy’s 1956 expedition. The heart of the theory is that Byrd, upon flying over the North Pole, was detained in midair by an unseen force field, forced to land, and upon landing, was taken to a secret alien city. The alien city is peopled by aliens and Germans, because the aliens, upon detecting the first atomic weapon explosions on earth’s surface, tried to contact the United States, but were met with hostilities, so instead contacted, and reformed, 1940-era Germans. The alien city sits next to the hole that leads to the hallow earth. The true base of alien operations is inside the hallow earth – where no human is allowed. The reason why the aliens are here, they tell Byrd, is to guard us against ourselves, due to our "atomic insanity," and our destruction of the environment of the earth. They then let Byrd go, to warn others. 
 
 
 
 

Chicago

Back in Chicago, the findings report written and assimilated up into the general report weeks earlier, a friend, M.P., stops by my "pod" before the 3 p.m. meeting. We are like minded, share jokes, and often laugh at the tasks and chores we are asked to do by the corporation. We both enjoy reading Rilke. M.P. is not a consultant. The corporation recruited him right after he finished his Masters in Communication Theory. 

M.P. is curious about the protest at the Augusta plant. The protester's side of the story was instantaneously transmitted over the Internet. It was then picked up by a host of other conspiracy watchers. What started out as minor confrontation is now being referred to as the "Battle of Augusta.". A few southern newspapers have made formal inquires about the incident. The story is picking up steam. He’s been tasked with producing an action plan of sorts, which is going to address the corporation’s side of the events. We chat about what I saw. He asks a few more questions. From his line of questions, I can tell that he is not addressing the fundamental reason why the protesters where at the plant in the first place, namely, the pilot-farm that produces BGH. Instead, he asks about details, time of day, and numbers of protesters and police. Finally, I ask him if his action plan is going to include an item relating to BGH. 

Flatly, "They don’t see the two as being related," he says. 

Obviously, he and I think the two are completely interconnected. But there’s really nothing to be done about it. We’re silent. 

I then tell him an old joke that explains why sometimes businesses proceed with such obviously bad business ideas, "Why did the billion dollar buggy whip factory escape cancellation, because somebody’s brother had the fence post contract."

Like most meetings, it starts late. The thirty attendees mill about. With arrival of R.N., the meeting officially starts. J.B. opens with an electronic presentation. Each bullet-point displayed on a drop-down screen at the end of the room is a condensed version of each team member’s work. One hundred and twenty hours work, three weeks, condensed into a single sentence. 

All thirty attendees politely listen while he reads the exact text displayed on the wall. After J.B finishes his presentation, the question Augusta hangs in the air. Consultants don’t really have a say in such matters. The few Advocates in the room ponder what they just saw. R.N. looks at his watch. General questions about the data are asked of J.B. He gives more detail on particular points. Close to 4:30 in the afternoon, the other question lingers in the air; "Will life’s routine be altered if this meeting goes any longer." 

"Well, Let’s do it. Tell them they have the go ahead with Phase II," says R.N. And with that, he stands up, says a general thank you, and makes a dash for the door to catch a train home. That’s it. J.B. gathers his materials, says thank you to his team, and the attendees start to exit the conference room. The decision was made without much context. No mention of the protesters was made. And no mention of other, outstanding, economic or social implications. It was simply a question of tight margins. 

Immediately, the thought of the protesters in rural Georgia springs to mind. When they learn of the decision made today, it would easily fit into their already expanding pool of evidence concerning the conspiracy to undermine their farms. The meeting attendees would be cast as evil, inhuman, superhuman, and/or non-human. We would have access to secret knowledge that allows us to control historical and cultural events. Our secret agendas will continue to subvert. We will be cast as the other, the outsider, and foreign. Sitting inside the conspiratorial group, the view looks no different from the outside. It’s a wonder how decisions are made at all, sometimes, considering the shallow nature of most corporate information. What both sides seemed to lack were the necessary tools needed to read, understand, and judge information. Without a context, and without the tools to judge the merits of the information presented, a despondency of sorts develops. It’s business decisions based on bullet points. It’s conspiracies based on photo captions