The Subjective Truth of Conspiracy: Logic as a Foundation For Truth in Dan Brown's "Angels and Demons"

Truth may not be entirely subjective, but the definition constantly changes as more facts are discovered and understandings are made. Conspiracy theories tend to be constructed around undetermined or highly complicated situations, with plenty of room for theory and imagination to thrive. In situations where there may not be enough facts to disprove such theories completely, can logical interpretations of conspiracy theories not exist as subjective truths?

Written by: rue.gall

Image 1. Robert Langdon (left - Tom Hanks) and Vittoria Vetra (right - Ayelet Zurer) in Angels and Demons (2009)

In our last article, xofxiza built off of my previous article, which focused on how our online written words curate a digital representation of both who we are and who we desire to be, further clarifying it and their subject with the phrase “the real debate isn’t what’s true, but who gets to define what truth looks like.” This concept of subjective truth plays a large role in conspiracies, which tend to have few and generally vague truths, leaving much room for interpretation in a desire to comprehend. 

In James Bridle’s New Dark Age: Technology and the End of the Future (2018), he

Image 2. James Bridle in a blue shirt, giving a public speech.

discusses conspiracy and its role in helping humanity define the world. He considers how when we are “faced with the roiling tide of information, we attempt to gain some kind of control over the world by telling stories about it: we attempt to master it through narratives.” By nature, humanity does not enjoy an absence of awareness and knowledge, which is why we spend so much time in pursuit of it. As Bridle explains, in situations when we simply cannot know of or comprehend something in its entirety, we try to fill in the gaps with whatever makes the most logical sense. Even without support for such logic, unified belief and support from others can help solidify such “gap-filling” to become a generally accepted “truth”, or more accurately, theory. In cases where certain gaps are filled out of fear and paranoia, the beliefs may become more far-fetched and unlikely, but cannot always be entirely disproven. Bridle states that “paranoia in an age of network excess produces a feedback loop: the failure to comprehend a complex world leads to the demand for more and more information, which only further clouds our understanding – revealing more and more complexity that must be accounted for by ever more byzantine theories of the world.” Rather than contributing to a more positive understanding of reality, these theories, conspiracy theories, tend to breed further paranoia and skepticism, more generally of governmental systems and secretive organizations than particular individuals or things.

One such theory is the conspiracy theory of the Illuminati. The Illuminati was once a very real secret society in the mid 1770s, originating in the Electorate of Bavaria. They initially had completely logical goals, which were to remove the connection between religion and

Image 3. An artistic version of the Illuminati symbol, of an "all-seeing" eye on the cap of a pyramid.

the state, and to regulate the state to better benefit its people. Through the Catholic church's encouragement, the Illuminati, the Freemasons, and other popular secret societies were outlawed in the late 1780s. Despite this, Freemasonry is still relatively prominent in the modern day, contributing to the belief that the Illuminati may still exist and have grown to possess secret political sovereignty. Thus, in the modern day, the Illuminati is considered in a more vilified light, as an extension or representation of the New World Order (NWO). The NWO is a conspiracy theory that has antisemitic origins, but now widely applies to organizations desiring totalitarian control. Due to the prominence of the Illuminati in their time and their secretive nature, the conspiracy theory of its current existence has been highly popularized. 

One such popularization is through the organization’s portrayal in written and visual works, such as Dan Brown’s Angels and Demons, the prequel to his more popular work, The DaVinci Code. Without spoiling the plot of the book, which is truly a stimulating read,

Image 4. The official movie poster for The DaVinci Code, portraying DaVinci's Mona Lisa being pulled back to reveal all sorts of symbols.

Brown’s Angels and Demons considers the existence of the Illuminati and the myth of their “path to enlightenment,” which has been theorized to be both a physical and metaphorical path to knowledge and power. Brown weaves an entirely believable narrative, utilizing logic and artistic freedom to the extent that it forces the reader to confront the fact that the book is simply a work of fiction, rather than written fact. He connects the holes in the conspiracy’s arguments to things that exist in reality, changing them only slightly from how they already exist to make the entire story that much more believable. While an entirely fictitious work, it is through authors like Brown that we can truly see how one can become invested in seemingly illogical false beliefs as though they are truth. Even if the argument itself is not definitively true, if argued with a certain level of persuasion, anything can become believable. 

If we consider this alongside last week’s article concerning truth’s definition rather than appearance, can this openness lead to subjectivity as the only definable truth?