Citations:prospiracy

English citations of prospiracy

Noun: A secret plan to do something good

• 2019 March 19, Chase Mielke, The Burnout Cure: Learning to Love Teaching Again, ASCD, →ISBN, page 146:

  In my positive psychology class, I have student mentors who help lead small groups. One of the challenges I give each mentor is to create a "prospiracy" for someone in their group who could use a boost. You're familiar with conspiracies, which are organized, secret commitments to do wrong. A prospiracy keeps the organized secrecy part but swaps evil for good.

Noun: "A conspiracy without clear lines of authority and membership and instead relying on the memetic logic of shared positions and ideas"

• 2002 November 14, Eric S. Raymond, “Conspiracy and prospiracy”, in Armed and Dangerous‎^[1], archived from the original on 2022-10-27:

  Prospiracy scales better than conspiracy, and thus can be far more dangerous. Because anyone can join simply by buying the “secret” doctrine, people frequently recruit themselves. Because the “secret” isn’t written on stone tablets in an inner sanctum, it’s totally deniable. In fact, members sometimes deny it to themselves (not that that ultimately matters). What keeps a prospiracy together is not conscious commitment but the memetic logic of its positions.

Noun: "A transparent and open plan to do something beneficial"

• 2011 March 31, Daniel Pinchbeck, “Daniel Pinchbeck: 10”, in Dazed‎^[2], archived from the original on 2021-01-25:

  To counteract conspiranoia, we can construct a parallel myth, of prospiracy. Where conspiracies are secret and nefarious, prospiracies are transparent and open. They are efforts to transform society in a direction that serves the greater good. According to this narrative, we are part of a vast ancient prospiracy to awaken humanity to its spiritual greatness and create a movement of solidarity that brings about a next age of conscious evolution. When we study the potentially ravaging effects of accelerating climate change and peak oil, what we need to do now is get creative by developing new social, political, and economic arrangements that can take over as the empire of control continues its slow-motion breakdown and collapse.

Noun: "A plan to do good without secrecy behind actions and explicit membership"

• 2015 February 21, Skip's Testing Range, “Prospiracy Theory”, in Wordpress‎^[3], archived from the original on 2023-04-24:

  Let’s call it a prospiracy. And let’s call the participants delightists – the opposite of terrorists. These would be folks who, in Anne Herbert’s marvelous phrase, go around practicing “random kindness and acts of senseless beauty.” Such folks might also, unlike their conspiratorial counterparts, eschew any ambition for trying to control or orchestrate events, but instead would recognize the utterly illusory nature of such attempts, and become experts at body-surfing the waves of change.
  I’d be willing to bet that many of the people reading these words are already involved in this delightist prospiracy. And it’s easy enough to join. There are no secret handshakes to learn, paintings to decode, or puzzles to figure out—although if you know someone who likes puzzles, you might make one up for them and leave it on their doorstep.

Mentions

• 1989 March 11, Alan Peterson, “Guilty Parties”, in The Sydney Morning Herald, page 84:

  The notion of plotting evil in secret prompted Mr Stuart Hansman, of Cronulla, to write to Dr W. S. Ramson, editor of the Australian National Dictionary. He felt that there was a huge potential for good in practising the opposite of a conspiracy, that is, a meeting of two or more people to achieve worthy objectives. ¶ He could not think of an English word to cover this. He put forward the idea of prospire, prospiracy and prospirator.

• 2010, Зацний Ю. А., Янков А. В., Нова розмовна лексика і фразеологія: Англо-український словник.: Довідкове видання‎^[4], Нова Книга, →ISBN, page 161:

  prospiracy, n приховані форми благочинної діяльності

  prospiracy, n pryxovani formy blahočynnoji dijalʹnosti

  prospiracy, n hidden forms of pious activity

• 2021 February 23, Pat Manser, More Than Words: The Making of the Macquarie Dictionary‎^[5], Macquarie, →ISBN:

  Innuptuous – meaning strange, unfamiliar, perplexing – and prospiracy – meaning a good conspiracy – met similar fates because they appear to have been invented by individuals and have little or no currency.

• 2020 Oct, Anthony Judge, “Inspiration, Conspiration, Transpiration, Expiration: Towards a universal model of conspiracy theories”, in ResearchGate‎^[6]:

  For the purpose of this argument preference is given to "inspiracy" over "prospiracy", despite the relatively limited ranges of reference to it. It has the advantage of being more meaningfully related to "inspiration" in contrast to "prospiration" (with its questionable relation to prosperity theology).

???

• 1897, Gelett Burgess, chapter 5, in Vivette: Or, The Memoirs of the Romance Association, 2nd edition, volumes 1–3, Boston: Copeland & Day, page 141:

  Prospiracy. A Sheep in Wolf's Clothing. [Page heading]

• [1897, Louis Antoine Godey, Sarah Josepha Buell Hale, Lydia Howard Sigourney, Godey's Lady's Book, and Ladies' American Magazine, Volume 136‎^[7], volume 136, Godey Company, page 103:

  The page-headings have an interest of their own. They include certain good words of the portmanteau sort, like folly-syllabic, prospiracy, satinalia, and versiflage. The style is a quaint mixture of archaism and modernity. To me there is one of the utter-most tests of genius in the ability to ravish the reader with a deep content and, without often making him uncomfortable with laughter, .to send long series of chuckles down to his very toes.]