It has been said in the introduction that the conspiratorial mindset very often creates its own alternative world. Just as superstitions were part of the medieval lifestyle, in modernity, for many, the unwarranted conspiracy theory has become a way of life. And like all lifestyles, conspiracism is often not a matter of epistemic representation but of acquaintance, repeated perception, and habit. The term “belief” is here justified to some extent. Beliefs are often created not on a scientific or factual basis (believing that) but on a cultural basis (believing in). Many overarching assumptions about how the world works are acquired, not through analysis, but through acculturation. That this is a matter of mindset and not of rational cognition is evidenced by the fact that people who believe in one baseless conspiracy theory do very often also believe in many others. They can even believe in theories that mutually exclude each other. Hagen (2022: 158–60) believes to have shown that writings by Wood et al. (2012) and Goertzel (1994), which attempt to demonstrate that such contradictory beliefs exist, are scientifically flawed. The problem is that both the former and Hagen’s argumentations are purely epistemological. In aesthetic terms it is rather normal that somebody is attracted by two theories that are not entirely compatible. Just like I can like two types of music that “exclude” each other. Unwarranted conspiracy theories are therefore not only false theories, but also cultures, subcultures, or tastes that develop a dynamic of their own. And just like the latter, they cannot be opposed by working with “true” and “false” as criteria, but, at best, with the criteria of “likely” and “unlikely.”

What is the conspiratorial mindset more precisely? Before delving into problems of contingency and necessity and their relationship with conspiracism, it is useful to identify the functions and the particular places that unjustifiable conspiracy theories occupy in the lives of modern citizens. Are these theories against any “enlightened” way of thinking, are they compatible with it, or perhaps even products of modernity and Enlightenment? The preliminary argument that I formulate in this chapter is that “Western Enlightenment,” as broadly understood as possible, has always produced a non-Enlightenment thinking or an alternative Enlightenment movement in its margins, and that the unwarranted conspiracy theory is a quintessential product of this development.