No arguments with the gist of that. Yes, all that you mention is part of systems involved and needs to be taken into consideration. That’s the basis of a systems perspective — nothing gets to be excluded, off the top.

Fear is our strongest emotional contagion, by far. In a culture such as ours, designed around scarcity and hyper-individualism, fear for one’s survival is omnipresent and one is fundamentally alone in one’s plight. This is true for the billionaires and politicians as much as the ‘middle class’ and the impoverished.

In such a culture, people act from fear to preserve their perceived ‘security’— power, money, social status, etc. Whatever power one has at any level of society is used to defend against whoever might threaten one’s power (survival).

People will collaborate with others, based on mutual self-interest, if they think it ups their odds of retaining or increasing whatever power they have.

How much or often does that qualify as a ‘conspiracy’? Depends I suppose on how one uses the term. Here’s the etymology of the word. It is typically used as a pejorative, but the root meaning “to breathe together” carries no positive or negative implications. We can ‘conspire’ to create world peace or to start a world war.

I agree it could be a useful tool for understanding. I don’t see it being used that way at present. It is used to scare people, to blame others, to misinform or redirect, to confuse or otherwise generate dissonance. All comes down to generating fear, since fearful people are in a more easily manipulated state.

For me, using it for understanding involves questions along the lines of “what do you get from having, or creating, or believing, this story about a conspiracy? What is the payoff, what need does it meet? What does it get you, or give you, or protect you from, or do for you, or answer for you?”

Then there’s an opportunity to go beyond the conspiracy theory itself, and explore what’s really at stake for the person.