How to live with contingency? The Greeks elevated Fortuna to the status of a goddess and worshipped her in order to diminish arbitrariness. The Middle Ages managed to separate the contingent from the necessary by creating a solid theological framework. In these times, people could retreat, whenever facing contingency, into a quiet center of necessity guarded by God. Today, too many “necessities,” many of them complex, incomprehensible, not necessary at all, or simply fake, invade our lives. In our consumer-oriented societies, more than in the Middle Ages, we are overwhelmed with so-called “necessities.” These “necessities” are not as fixed and well established as they were in the past but are rather fleeting and impermanent. They are no longer rooted in a lifestyle transmitted from generation to generation following traditional, unchanging structures. In the past, the quietude of a religious center could overlap with the law-bound and purposeful environment of the almost universally rural communities, from which contingency was largely excluded. In modernity, both necessity and contingency are fluid phenomena and less clearly distinguishable.

Contingency is feared more than ever, as the loss of central authority and the multiplication of relationships between individual elements lead to disorientation and anxiety. The conspiratorial mindset “solves” the problem by creating transcendental or imaginary unities. However, it does not establish “real” necessities, nor does it manage to cope with existing contingencies. In the end, unwarranted conspiracy theories lead to even more stress and ressentiment. Similarly, merit-oriented societies treat individuals as though they could be in control of everything, when obviously, way too many things are beyond our control. In this way, meritocracies create new anxieties.

Conspiracy Skepticism

At the same time, the conspiratorial mindset does not have the serenity of Greek Pyrrhonians, who strove to live in a state of eternal suspension of judgment in order to avoid all obligations that could reach them in the form of necessities. Skeptical thought was initiated in Greece by pre-Socratic philosophers such as Xenophanes and Theophrastus; Democritus can be seen as a proto-skeptic, and Pyrrho of Elis (c. 360–270 BCE) molded skepticism into a subtle form of psychological philosophy.