The past year has been a roller-coaster of a ride for conspiracy theories.

First and foremost, the Covid lab-leak scenario is back with a bang. There is now hard evidence of a clandestine coordinated effort among a group of high profile scientists to manipulate the public debate on the origins of the virus. In March, an opinion piece published by The New York Times stated that `we were badly misled` on this topic, going so far as to say `perhaps we were misled on purpose.

Also, in March, the US government declassified thousands of documents pertaining to the assassination of the then-president, John E Kennedy, in 1963. One of the most popular conspiracies to date, this huge data dump only created more questions. Over the past six decades, the majority of Americans have largely doubted the official lone gunman story. A reinvestigation by a US House Select Committee in the 1970s actually concluded that there was a genuine conspiracy behind Kennedy`s killing.

And every few years, the 9/11 saga takes a new twist. This April, the 60 Minutes show on CBS showcased recently unsealed video footage, featuring a foreign national and close associate of the 9/11 hijackers likely an intelligence service operative from a prominent US ally country undertaking detailed filming of sites in Washington DC prior to the attacks. Among his belongings, investigators recovered sketches and equations to calculate the descent of airplanes to hit a potential target. Families of 9/11 victims have requested his extradition to face justice.

Alternative narratives are also piling up. UFO sightings no longer raise eyebrows. Earlier this year, a former US security official entered a report in the Congressional Record, describing secret decades-long Pentagon programmes study in gextrater restrial life. A formal Congressional hearing on the topic in 2023 featured eyewitnesses to UFO encounters.

An international study from March added further intrigue, featuring complex organic compounds suggestive of life, discovered by Nasa`s Curiosity rover on Mars. In April, Nasa shared an image of a 300-foot wide pit on the surface of Mars, speculating that such pits could lead to underground caves, which might be `relatively good candidates to contain Martian life.

And Italian researchers recently created an uproar with claims of a vast network of structures beneath the pyramids of Giza, what they describe as `a true underground city`, including massive vertical shafts, spiral staircases and water channels. They speculate these structures may even include the Hall of Records, a legendary library rumoured to house ancient Egyptian wisdom perhaps even linked to fabled Atlantis.

The weirdness only escalates.

Recently declassified documents show the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) employed psychics in the 1980s in a bid to locate the Ark of the Covenant, the mystical Jewish artefact supposed to house the Ten Commandments, the centrepiece of the Raiders of the Lost Ark movie.

THE PSYCHOLOGY OF DISTRUST All these mind-bending news stories are just from the last five to six months. We are not even counting fake news or misinformation here. A wildly disorienting new normal has emerged where the very notion of objective mainstream truth now seems up in the air. Doubt, distrust and conspiracy thinking have become part of the fabric of reality itself. It can be deeply unsettling.

How does one keep up? Unfortunately, there are no hard rules when it comes to these things. Conspiracy theories can be outlandish and fantastical,distasteful and disturbing. They can fuel a climate of distrust, erode trust in government and institutions and create rifts in society.

On the other hand, conspiracy thinking can be wildly exciting, entirely plausible and gloriously liberating. Distrust of power is a critical antidote to social complacency and holds institutions to account. And thinking for one`s own self rejecting group think aligns with the highest ideals of the Western Enlightenment era.

The single biggest argument in favour of conspiracy thinking is that world history is replete with wild and elaborate conspiracy theories that actually turned out to be perfectly true. Intelligence agencies often spy on their own people. Scientists and politicians can do immoral and unspeakable things behind the scenes. False flag operations are a reality. Foreign powers interfere in the affairs of other countries.

Media manipulation is entirely normal. Elections are routinely rigged. People are not saints. And power corrupts.

Several of these conspiracies were not fringe phenomena but world-changing events that affected our everyday lives and exacted immense costs. Pakistan`s own history is chock full of examples, inconvenient questions and perennial black holes.

NAVIGATING CONSPIRACY CULTURE There are no easy answers here, but there is a way forward. Sharp minds have wrestled with the question of public distrust and left us with hints and suggestions.

At the communal level, a deliberate culture of transparency is essential. French intellectual Jacques Ellul wrote that a measure of distrust was inevitable, given how modern institutions are structured and how they operate. Citizens and civil society should push for legislation on right to information, funding disclosures, sunshine laws and the like. We need to set up open forums for discussion and debate.

At the individual level, we must resist obvious psychological traps.

There is an allure to contrarian thinking a distinct thrill to dealing in esoteric and `forbidden` knowledge the same kind of thrill one gets from being part of a secret club. It can be a heady feeling to be different from others.

On the other hand, it can also be psychologically comforting for many people to subscribe to mainstream narratives, to sidestep hard questions, steer clear of challenging power and to just go with the flow.

Over the decades, a crude vocabulary has evolved for doubters and believers to mock and ridicule each other. Alternative thinkers are `deluded`, `wackos`, wearing `tin foil hats`, whereas regular people are `sheep` or, rather, `sheeple`, reflecting their complacency and lack of critical thinking.

Critical thinking actually holds the key here for all sides. It is a vital survival skill in these trying times.

We have to learn to identify not just reliable information sources, but also logical fallacies. It is an immense help to be able to clearly state axioms, to differentiate between inductive and deductive reasoning, to shift from straw man to steel man interpretations and to define falsifiability criteria for arguments.

The fact that these concepts are alien to us is because our school systems have largely failed us. There is significant research literature which argues that education and reasoning ability can be an antidote to conspiracy thinking, propaganda and misinformation alike.

A trick I have found very useful is to swallow my discomfort, bite my tongue and deliberately engage with unconventional, far-out views, not merely to battle, debate or convert but with the express intention of challenging and fine-tuning my own thinking.

This exercise goes beyond mental acrobatics. Good faith engagement requires a deliberate element of will and a fundamental respect for the other side researchers refer to it as epistemic or intellectual humility.

SKELETONS AT HOME This is a very tall order. Emotions can flare when it comes to talking about these things. It can be distressing to step out of one`s comfort zone, to have one`s own views deeply challenged. And this brings us to the nub of the problem.

Courage, integrity and personal values are more fundamental than critical thinking, but are also in precious short supply.

Maybe one day we will work up the courage to grab this bull by the horns.

Maybe, God willing, one day we might even face the multitude of skeletons in our own closet. Maybe, one day, we will excavate the facts about the assassination of Liaquat Ali Khan, the travails of Fatima Jinnah, the hard lessons from the fall of Dhaka, the truth behind Gen Ziaul Haq`s plane crash, Benazir Bhutto`s assassination, Osama bin Laden`s killing. Maybe, we will finally make peace with our long history of political interference, foreign and domestic, of rigged elections and more.

One can hope.

The writer teaches at the NUST School of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, Islamabad.

He can be reached at taha.ali@gmail.com