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Conspiracy? Don't be silly. The Diana Inquest.

And so the Diana Inquest has given its verdict and, to the surprise of nobody with half a brain, it turns out that the Princess of Wales was killed in an accident caused by dangerous driving. The only surprise is that the jury was brave enough to poin tthe finger of blame; at the papparazzi whose rabid pursuit of the profits to be made from selling pictures of Diana to the tabloids set the context for the bad decisions made that evening; and at Henri Paul, the driver, who was over the drink-drive limit and who was driving dangerously. Chance then palyed its part as the car careered headfirst into a pillar with fatal consequences.

These facts have always been obvious. Whis begs the question, how has the conspiracy theory which, even for a conspiracy theory was particularly full of holes, survived so long? Part of the answer is that it has been underpinned by Mohammed al Fayed's very well funded media operation, in alliance with the selfsame tabloids who's appetite for salacious stories about the Princess of Wales and other inhabitants of the celebrity world created and succoured the papparazzi in the first place. Those tabloids weren't going to let the small matter of Diana's death upset the gravy train and the conspiracy allowed them to keep her on the front pages. It was certainly cheaper than doing any real journalism.

Mostly though, the survival of the Diana Conspiracy reveals our vulnerability to such narratives which seem to provide meaning to random events. Human society is such a complex thing that it often defies explanation. Inconsequential decisions have enormously significant consequences. People make mistakes and do things for reasons understood and anticipated only by themselves, out of panic or fear or desire or greed or any other reason that you can think of. In other words, there doesn't have to be a plan. I'm not sure our culture is very comfortable with that idea.

It makes it very easy to find discrepancies with the official record - why did somebody do this or that when, in the cold light of day it seems that a different course might have made more sense. The real explanation is almost always that somebody just panicked, or rushed, or simply made the wrong call. But it is easy to suggest design.

Humanity also contains every possible tendancy and opinion and lifestyle. No matter what crazy idea you can think of, you can be sure that somebody somewhere has been there before you and had a go. Which means that it's possible to find evidence for almost anything - so long as you are willing to ignore all the other, contradictory evidence. You can normally rely on people's ignorance to do the rest. And it is only in rare cases such as this that the conspiracy theory is ever tested.

Belief in conspiracies has been part of human history for a very long time, whether it was heretics or witches or jews or the King's evil counsellors or whatever who were supposed to be plotting in the shadows, so we shouldn't kid ourselves that this is anything new. It is still pretty depressing though.

Posted by andrewwhaley on 2008-04-08 16:16:27 | Rating: