What is Conspirituality?
What is Conspirituality?
And how does engagement in conspiracy beliefs and conspiritual practices impact the way we communicate with others?
Last week, Julia and I were guests on the podcast Conspirituality, hosted by
and Julian Walker. Matthew and Julian explain the context on Conspirituality on their website:“As the alt-right and New Age horseshoe toward each other in a blur of disinformation, clear discourse and good intentions get smothered. Charismatic influencers exploit their followers by co-opting conspiracy theories on a spectrum of intensity ranging from vaccines to child trafficking. In the process, spiritual beliefs that have nurtured creativity and meaning are transforming into memes of a quickly-globalizing paranoia.”
Matthew introduces our podcast episode with this video
Check out our full episode on Spotify:
What does Conspirituality look like in 2024?
Remski, Walker, and their co-collaborator Derek Beres describe how antivax activist Kate Shemirani injects misinformation about the impact of beauty products and non-organic foods on the quality of breast milk. They write in a 2023 Boston Globe article:
“Sherimani is one of many COVID dissident influencers who are heading for a new front in the culture war now that the pandemic is receding into the past. Activist networks that fought social distancing, masking, and vaccines are adrift, and their anxieties about bodily identity, choice, and medical care need a new target.”
They share the heartbreaking story of a family seeking treatment for pancreatic cancer, which has an extremely low survival rate; the Pancreatic Cancer Action Network reminds us that the five-year survival rate is 12%. This family (and many other families) chose to work with faith healer Joe Dispenza, at a rate of $2300 per healing event. Remski, Walker, and Beres summarize on the Canadian website The Walrus:
“If Dispenza’s meditation had simply been religious in nature, if it had been about accepting death or gratitude or setting one’s moral affairs in order, that would have been one thing.
But pseudoscience isn’t honest in that way. It’s one thing pretending to be another. Dispenza was promising healing, spontaneous remission. The former chiropractor, who calls himself a doctor, was giving Louis cover for giving up on real doctors. Dispenza was also giving Louis permission to pretend he was healing himself, with some kind of dignity, even while he was saying goodbye.”
And then there’s presidential nominee RFK Jr., whose social policies are commonly informed by misinformation. Let’s let John Oliver have a go at him:
Who is most likely to be influenced by Conspirituality?
The obvious answer is “Anyone.”
Conspiritual leaders tend to rely on the personal charisma involved in telling stories and experiences of individuals to sell their products and ideas, at the expense of scientific data, historical precedent, or other practices of critical thought.
Conspiritual leaders commonly use basic logical principles (for instance, if A=B, and B=C, then A=C) to market their products, while ignoring important contextual information, like culture, human/relational development, and sociodemographic info.
And ultimately, conspiritual leaders often provide simple, rational answers to existentially difficult issues and fears, such as aging, death, and sexuality. In the sex therapy world, this messaging may look like, “Take this supplement. Meditate in this particular way. Don’t masturbate for a week. Receive sexual health.”
As folks who study the science of sexuality and relationships, sexual health is way more complicated than that.
But in a culture that seeks easy solutions to participate in the American Dream, and in an economic and technocratic market that often favors presentation of a product (i.e. marketing) over the product’s quality, we are all prone to the whims of conspirituality.
Conspiritual organizations often begin with a conspiracy belief. In legal terms, conspiracy is “an agreement between two or more people to commit an illegal act, along with an intent to achieve the agreement's goal.” Conspiracy beliefs look beyond the legal spectrum, of course. Information is being withheld from you that could otherwise make your life better. Further, you’re being lied to about the products that you’re being sold, and the people holding secrets are intentionally trying to harm you and wrest power for themselves.
A conspiritual belief is not necessarily a lie. For instance, Sexvangelicals operates with, on its face, a conspiratorial idea: The sex education the church didn’t want you to have. In our case, however, we have consistent research from multiple government agencies, academic settings, and non-profits that describe the harm of Purity Culture on the relational, sexual, and emotional development of at least two generations of people (Gen-X and millennials). Conspiritual organizations often use folk wisdom, axioms, or cherry picked data to prove their point.
Conspirituality responds to conspiracy beliefs: “I have the solution. Use my product. Participate in my program.”
Saverio Roscigno, PhD student at the University-California, Irvine, also studies conspiracy-driven cultures. In his article “The Status Foundations of Conspiracy Beliefs”, published in April 2024’s Socius, he asks over 2,000 people to respond to what extent they agree with conspiracy based statements, such as:
“The one percent of the richest people in the U.S. control the government and the economy for their own benefit.” (54% of folks agreed with this.)
“Jeffrey Epstein, the billionaire accused of running an elite sex trafficking ring, was murdered to cover-up the activities of his criminal network.” (51% of folks agreed with this. I actually believe this.)
“School shootings, like those at Sandy Hook, CT and Parkland, FL are false flag attacks perpetrated by the government.” (16% of folks agreed with this.)
“The number of Jews killed by the Nazis during World War II has been exaggerated on purpose.” (15% of folks agreed with this.)
Click on the article link and scroll down to Appendix Table A1 for a full list of the conspiracy beliefs. Pay attention to which ones you agree with. (For instance, I also agree with the item “There is a “deep state” embedded in the government that operates in secret and without oversight.” Although I would explain that there are systemic reasons for its existence, such as gerrymandering, the appointment of judges without a corresponding ethics process, and the result of Citizens United, which allows businesses to operate as people and donate to political candidates.)
Roscigno then asks participants to give sociodemographic information, such as age, income, education level, and race/ethnicity. While all categories of people are prone to engaging in conspiritual practices, either due to the charisma of the leaders, the desire for connecting with others, or the intensity of pain/desperation, Roscigno observed that some categories of people are more prone to engaging in conspiracy beliefs and conspiritual practices:
Folks with less than a high school education.
Folks with post-graduate education.
Folks who make less than $25,000 per year.
Folks who make more than $150,000 per year.
In fact, Roscigno notes that white men with post-graduate degrees were the most likely to hold conspiracy beliefs. Disturbingly, 42% of White men (regardless of degrees) agreed with both the school shootings and holocaust prompts, while 40% of White men disagreed with both. 38% of these men described themselves as “very liberal”, while 22% described themselves as “very conservative”. Not surprisingly, a much lower amount of women and BIPOC people agreed with these topics.
Roscigno also links conspiracy beliefs with participation in two forms of community:
4Chan and 8Chan. 60% of folks who agree with a high volume of conspiracy beliefs visit 4Chan and/or 8Chan multiple times per week. Roscigno didn’t assess for other social media sites, but others, including Adam Enders of the University of Louisville, Christine Abdalla Mikhaeil and her team at Scientific America, and Michael Wagner, collaborator at the Brookings Institute, have talked about the link between conspiracy beliefs and social media consumption.
Religious services. 42% of folks who agree with a high volume of conspiracy beliefs attend religious services multiple times per week, which aligns with numerous studies that we’ve referenced on Sexvangelicals and Relationship 101.
How does conspirituality impact communication with loved ones?
We’ve noticed, although anecdotally, that while folks may leave religious organizations—most notably Evangelical, Mormon, and Pentecostal spaces—they haven’t necessarily moved beyond the all-or-nothing, black-and-white nature of conspiracy beliefs, and are thus prone to engaging in other forms of conspirituality through the wellness and New Age world.
This fall, in our series, “How to Do Social Justice Without Being a Jackass This Election Season”, we’ll talk with Matthew Remski and Julian Walker about how participating in conspiritual practices informs the ways that people communicate, both with people inside the conspiritual community, and more importantly, with outsiders, such as dissidents on social media or, more heartbreakingly, partners and family members who don’t participate in the same conspiritual practices.
While we don’t have specific research about how conspiritual participants communicate with partners, most documentaries about conspiritual organizations (i.e. cults, MLMs, and niche yoga practices) have sections where either participants or family members discuss one of four things:
Competition from within the organization.
Displays of loyalty to the organization and/or its practices at the expense of individuality.
Evangelism and other attempts to market the product and ideas to loved ones, so that the relationship becomes about the conspiritual organization rather than the relationship itself.
Distrust of the outside world, including family members and partners who “don’t get it”.
We’re super thankful for Matthew and Julian’s work. For more info, check out their book Conspirituality: How New Age Conspiracy Theories Became a Health Threat.
And please subscribe to Relationship 101 and share this post with others!
Let’s heal together!
Jeremiah and Julia