I look at conspiracy theories from a systems perspective. A lot of systems identified as 'conspiracies', and thus attributed to 'secret' intentional design and control by some small number of humans, are too complex to be designed, and far less able to be controlled, by a handful of mere humans.

Empirical evidence includes all the actual attempts at conspiracy that are exposed on an ongoing basis. A common thread in these failures is complexity of the attempted conspiracy, and inability of perpetrators to manage that complexity.

We humans do insist on making 'sense' of our experience. We want explanations of what is happening in our lives. Conspiracy stories are one way we do this. Evil cabals or secret societies or 'deep states' provide simplistic linear cause and effect explanations, to substitute for our lack of systems understanding.

Consequences are real, but causes are seldom as simple as conspiracy theories allow for. Simply going about our daily lives based on our cultural beliefs is enough in most cases.

We complain about traffic jams; about crime; about unaffordable housing and medical costs; about crooked politicians; about selfish billionaires. And, we refuse to change our designs and behaviors that generate and perpetuate all these and more.

Are these conspiracies, or simply systemic consequences of doing our same behaviors and expecting different results?