What’s a conspiracy theory you actually find believable?

What’s a conspiracy theory you actually find believable
I don’t really do conspiracy theories. Chemtrails, flat earth, lizard people running the world — none of that has ever tempted me. I’m a science student. I like evidence. I like things I can trace back to a source.
But there’s one theory I can’t fully shake, and it’s not the kind you’ll find on a forum somewhere. It’s this: the school system, as we inherited it, was never really designed to produce thinkers. It was designed to produce compliance.
Hear me out.
Think about it. Sit still. Raise your hand before you speak. Memorize this, regurgitate it by Friday, forget it by next term. Bells that tell you when to move, when to eat, when to stop thinking about one subject and start thinking about another. It’s eerily similar to a structure built for something else entirely — a factory floor, a shift schedule. And historically, that’s not far from the truth. A lot of modern schooling was shaped during the industrial era, built to produce workers who could follow instructions reliably, not necessarily people who could question, create, or lead.
I’m not saying there’s a secret committee somewhere plotting to keep us small. I don’t believe that. But I do believe systems, once built, tend to keep reproducing their original purpose long after that purpose stopped serving us. And nobody has to conspire for that to happen. It just… persists. Quietly. Generation after generation.
I think about this a lot, honestly — partly because of medicine, partly because of the Foundation.
In med school, the amount of information we’re expected to absorb is enormous. And so much of our training rewards the ability to recall, not necessarily the ability to reason from first principles or sit with uncertainty. I’ve had to fight, deliberately, to stay curious instead of just compliant. To ask “why” instead of just “what’s on the exam.” It’s a discipline, not an accident.
And through the Eze David Education Foundation, working with secondary school students in Benin City, I see it even more clearly. These kids are bright — genuinely, sometimes shockingly sharp. But so many of them have been trained to wait for permission before they think. To ask “is this what you want me to say?” instead of “here’s what I actually believe.” That’s not a flaw in them. That’s a system doing exactly what it was built to do.
Here’s where my faith comes into this, because it always does. I don’t believe God designed any of us — not one single person — to be merely compliant. Scripture is full of people who questioned, wrestled, pushed back, even argued with God directly. Job did. Moses did. Habakkuk practically demanded answers. Faith was never supposed to mean the absence of thought. It was supposed to mean thought surrendered in trust, not thought switched off.
So maybe I don’t believe in a conspiracy in the classic sense — no smoky room, no secret handshake. But I do believe in something quieter and, in some ways, more dangerous: inertia. Systems that were built for one purpose, in one era, still shaping people who were made for something far bigger than obedience.
That’s part of why “Catch Them Young” matters so much to me. It’s not just mentorship. It’s an attempt to interrupt inertia — to hand a teenager permission to ask why before they’re taught to stop asking altogether.
I don’t think there’s a villain in this story. I think there’s just a system that’s overdue for a redesign. And I’d rather spend my life helping build the redesign than complaining about the design.