Back in 1985, of course, conspiracy culture was small and difficult to find and the authors didn't address it. It appears to me, at least, that conspiracy culture has become a compelling and perhaps dominant audience cult. And that it is conferring a vague impression, not of heaven, but of hell. And that the "dangerous and unpleasant levels of anomie[s]" are becoming more evident...
I think this perspective may be helpful in understanding recent contentions re Sandy Hook and the Boston Bombing. See what you think:
The Future of Religion: Secularization, Revival, and Cult Formation
Rodney Stark with contributions by Wm Sims Bainbridge
University of California Press, reprint, illustrated 1985
Pages 209-211
Audience cults are even less close to being religions. Usually they display little or no formal organization. Most who take part in audience cults do so entirely through the mass media: books, magazines, newspapers, TV, astrology columns and the like. Somewhat greater, but still minimal, organization exists among those who attend occult lectures, frequent occult bookstores, or take part in informal discussion groups on occult topics.
Sometimes audience cults make rather grand claims about the nature of the world and of the human species. Books on biorhythms tell us that three inflexible sine waves determine our physical, emotional and intellectual state from day to day. In books, movies and TV programs, Erich von Daniken entertains his audience with the idea that all human cultures derive from ancient contact with extraterrestrial astronauts. Notions such as these-including belief in ESP, astrology, pyramid power and the intelligence of plant life- have great implications for our view of the world. Thus they may encroach upon territory reserved for the most general compensators, but this fact does not audience cults into true religions. There is no organized group committed to a particular dogma.
One of the hallmarks of audience cults is that the typical audience is interested in several of them simultaneously and does not have a secure faith in any one of them. When an audience of 121 college students was shown a movie about von Daniken's theory and then given a questionnaire asking their opinions of other audience cult, those who tended to believe the movie also accepted the reality of flying saucers, the existence of ESP and the truth of astrology. Another audience of 114 students revealed that those who accept von Daniken also tend to accept biorhythms. But these occult and psudoscientific notions are not part of one's religious creed; they float freely and independently through the occult milieu.
One general but very vague compensator is communicated through all audience cults: diffuse hope. If extraordinary things are possible, then one may hope for anything and everything. Audience cults proclaim the existence of cracks in the structure of the mundane world through which any imaginable marvel may suddenly appear. Although each audience cult makes a relatively specific fantastic claim, thus providing a specific compensator, collectively, the entire range of audience cults implies the very general compensator that all things are possible. If each audience cult projects a narrow range of hope, then, together, audience cults project a broad if dim spectrum of hopes combining to form a vague impression of heaven. Thus, although each audience cult is far from being a religion, collectively, they communicate a pale reflection of the religious.
Psychiatrists often interpret neurosis as a state of free-floating anxiety- the constant presence of fears that have no particular object. We might say that audience cults are connected to a state of free-floating optimism- something less than true belief in the notions of the cults- the diffuse feeling that all things are possible but that nothing is certain to be true. Although sociologists imagine that such a state would mean dangerous and unpleasant levels of anomie, for many people it may instead produce a feeling of freedom and hope. Rather than thrusting people into a storm-tossed sea of confusion without an anchor or life-raft, it may compensate for an all too rigid, mundane life. Rather than demanding belief, audience cults may require only the “willing suspension of disbelief for the moment, which constitutes poetic faith,” in the familiar words of Coleridge. This interpretation may explain why audience cults seldom solidify into cult movements. To the extent that any one of them solidifies into a formal organization, it begins to demand true belief and can no longer function as an antidote to order, regulation, rigidity, and the demands of consistency that may inspire people to seek modest solace in audience cults.
http://books.google.ca/books?id=lTzPyvT ... lt&f=false
