A lament for conspiracies

lessergood — Wed, 16 Jul 2008 13:32:11 +0200

What a poor, maltreated, and abused word conspire is. We all have an idea of what conspire and conspiracy mean, and a cloud of meanace and suspicion hangs over it:

1.	to agree together, esp. secretly, to do something wrong, evil, or illegal: They conspired to kill the king.

2. to plot (something wrong, evil, or illegal).

It is a beautiful thing that language can provide us with more than one word that means the same thing, yet have differing connotations. But - oh! - why did conspire have to be cast as co-operate's evil twin? The etymology of the word promised so much for this young Latin word:

conspīrāre to act in harmony, conspire, equiv. to con- con- + spīrāre to breathe

To breathe together... what an impossibly romantic, beatiful, image. Two people, or more, together, breathing as one. Who wouldn't wish to find the one with whom he could conspire with for the rest of his life? Together conspiring in harmony; conspiring until expiring and retiring as one.

But it was not to be. Such intamcy has no place among the English people. Breathing as one? It's indecent. Fleshy. Secretive. How can two people so close be trusted by anyone else? So the Latin word is disparaged, spurned, and turned into something to avoid, to uncover, to destroy.

And in its place we have solid, dependable, unassuming "cooperate". A word that doesn't bring to mind the organic, symbiotic relationship of two breathing as one, but the cold, hard, efficient whirring of cog-on-wheel. Everything shipshape and Bristol fashion, working together, but with clear definitions of what is what.

Ah, but true unity - that comes in destroying egos and clear definitions.

True untiy only comes when we conspire together.

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A lament for conspiracies