Thank you for an honest and open piece! It struck me as odd when I first encountered this mindset too, but afterwards began to make a lot of sense, as you’ve so eloquently pointed out.

The key thing to remember is that these narratives, true or false, exist for a reason. The distrust of the establishment elite is very much a prime reason. I believe there is a “conspiracy” at play, but I also believe it to be a wholly unconscious plot. It’s the “system” that was designed by humans to be self-healing and self-correcting (neoliberalism, market economics). Now we’re surprised to see it do exactly as was intended, maintaining itself by using the very humans that created it, often using their subconscious biases and assumptions that “this system is the only way things work”.

So is there any individual or group at the helm? No. We’re all complicit in this “conspiracy”, by accepting/mistaking what was originally social engineering and believing it to be universal fact, or “just the way things are”.

The new age thought is a great tool to break free of those assumptions and biases. But we still must remain vigilant that we don’t succumb to other phantoms, and also that we don’t become the demons we were trying to banish.