I feel like a corollary to Hanlon’s Razor (“Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity”) is that one should never underestimate the amount of damage and suffering that can be caused by stupidity.
We look at terrible things happening and we think “There’s no way this can’t be deliberate” and then we go looking for some master plan behind it. When we don’t find one, our brains want invent one to fill in the gaps.
And yeah, sometimes there actually is a plan but even then it is almost always stupid plan.
More often, though, there is no plan. It is just a bunch of greedy and ignorant people whose interests happen to align. It is always easier to knock stuff down than to build it up, though, so even a little bit of greed and ignorance by a small number of people can go a long way toward wrecking things for everyone else.
The problem is that our brains seem to want to connect everything together in some sort of narrative structure. We want reasons for everything; we want to find motivations and motivators. To make matters worse, we read books and watch TV shows and cinematic universes that are all interconnected and full of intricate world-building, and so we come to expect that same sort of thing in real life. We make jokes like “The writers this season have really gone crazy.”
Sure, it’s a joke, but I think it is based on the assumption—conscious or otherwise—that there are, in fact, writers of some sort. I think this sort of thinking (or feeling, more like) is rooted in the same need for structure that fuels conspiracy thinking.
If there is some master plan (and therefor someone in charge of said plan) behind all the crappy stuff in the world, it makes it easier for people to hold it in their heads. For conspiracy theorists and New Age types, it gives them the gratification of having access to secret knowledge. For right-wing bigots and xenophobes, it gives them a group—the Jews, the blacks, the Catholics—to scapegoat. Liberals and progressives can point to some political class or dysfunction—big business, money in politics, income inequality, education—a specific lever to be pulled that will fix things.
(And no—just to be clear—I am not trying to say that all of those things are the same or equally bad or harmful, but rather that there are parallels.)
I kind of wonder if thinking about the world in this way—that there is someone with a master plan—doesn’t make it easier for people to go about their day-to-day lives, even if that master plan is awful. If someone else is in control, it gives you a either single point to attack or a reason not to do anything.