Armed Liberal's Unsettling Los Angeles-area Dinner with an educated Iranian friend whose world view was impervious to evidence touched a real chord. Some great responses, and the Comments section of that thread is still open. If the subject really interests you, I recommend 3 additional blog posts:
- Dean Esmay's dissection of conspiracy theories;
- Kamil Zogby on The Arab Media as a reflection of their current culture; and
- Dean Esmay again on the brain teaser that changed his world, and taught him to question his opinions.
Here's a model that may help us get a handle on the "Dream Palace" phenomenon: memetic epidemics.
Some societies are indeed more prone to this behaviour than others, and conspiracy theories have a more "contagious" environment there. There's also a societal correction factor, which we might define as the "immune response capability" or "Fisk Factor." When contagiousness is high and immune responses are low, conspiracy memes can and do go epidemic quickly.
Malcolm Gladwell may give us a way of getting a handle on the phenomenon, as most members of a society are really passive players in this little drama. As he notes in his book "The Tipping Point" and in some of his articles, the people who really matter are a sequence of:
You also have the choice of attacking contagious environments directly (drain standing puddles to remove mosquitoes), and/or building response and immunity capabilities (vaccinations and/or a system of readily available counter-medication).
If we work from that common framework, a number of potential strategies and approaches open up aimed at one or more of these nodes. Try it, use your imagination, and post your ideas!