Theories Of 9/11 Conspiracy

After the horrible attack on the World Trade center on September 11, 2001, people began to analyze footage of the incident and make speculations about the “truth” behind 9/11. Conspiracy theories arose as people were seeking for a reason behind this attack. It seems totally absurd that people would believe that our own government planned an attack that devastated all of America, but according to Professor Quassim Cassam, a philosopher from the University of Warwick, out of 16,000 people less than half of those people believe that the attacks were done by the terrorist group known as al-Qaeda. We may put into question; why do so many people allow themselves to believe that there is a truth behind the truth? There is no simple answer to this

Because millions of Americans were affected by the tragic event leaving them in a state of shock, fear, and helplessness, the fear drives people to believes in conspiracy theories. Paul Whalen who is a scientist at Dartmouth College, studies the amygdala, which is an almond-shaped area of the brain that decodes emotions, determines possible threat, stores fear memories, explains that when we experience something we don’t have control over like the 9/11 terrorist attacks, the amygdala then” jump-starts” the part of our brain that is responsible for processing information and looking for patterns or explanations so it can assess any threats and to plan the next step. With this, we can see how people would be quick to believe what they are

Researchers say that this is due to the fact that people have “feelings of political powerlessness.” They believe that the government is such a powerful force that it would leave the regular people defenseless if they were actually conspiring. Because of this, people tend to blame and create conspiracy theories to make the people who are most powerful seem like they are at fault. When applied to 9/11, we can see use this information to understand how someone would be able to come to wondering if the government were behind the attacks. This falls back under Jan-Willem van Prooijen’s research that was mentioned, who found that people who believe conspiracy theories are those who feel that they lack control in their lives. These two studies tie into each other because feeling powerless is a feeling that usually is a primary reaction to feeling a lack of control over the things happening in your