An nescis, mi fili, quantilla prudentia mundus regatur

Conspiracy theories are often used to explain things that do not have any simple explanation - at least not simple enough for the speaker. Or they can be used to replace an explanation that does not fit one's ideas of what the world should be like.

Here is one theory for example: The present riots in Tibet are started by the Taiwanese government. The reason is that the riots will badly affect the Chinese stock market, which will go down, thus slowing down the economic development and inflation, which long term is good for the Chinese economy. It is in the interest of the Taiwanese to have a neighbour with a healthy economy, as that is good for their export market.

Is that a likely theory? Of course not. But all the steps individually are logical, even though the sum of them is ridiculous.

For most events in the world, it is easy to make up a "theory" like that, which may explain what you do not understand.

However, a lot of things happen without anyone wanting them. Some examples:

The first World War, 1914-1918, was in no one's interest. The state leaders who started it thought it would be a short affair, but no one had anticipated the importance of the Chauchat and other machine guns, the air forces or the tanks. In 1914 no one could have anticipated the Russian revolution or its consequences for the rest of the 20th century. It was development that happened on its own, without any conscious decision taken by any single individual. The entire war was just one big blunder.

The Russian revolution in itself was a strange case of things happening without anyone understanding its consequences. The members of the first polite bureau during the October revolution 1917, the people who kicked it off, were Lev Kamenev (Лев Борисович Каменев), Nikolai Krestinsky (Николай Николаевич Крестинский), Andrei Bubnov (Андрей Сергеевич Бубнов), Grigory Sokolnikov (Григорий Яковлевич Сокольников), Leon Trotsky (Лeв Давидович Троцкий), Josef Stalin (იოსებ სტალინი, Иосиф Сталин) and of course Vladimir Lenin (Владимир Ильич Ленин). Out of these all but Lenin were killed off by Stalin in different ways. In other words, five out of seven initiators were killed due to the event they had themselves started. Out of the 1,966 delegates to the 17th Communist Party Congress, which confirmed Stalin's power, more than half were later arrested by him, and most of them died. Clearly, they had no idea what they were doing - just like so many decision makers today.

When Osama bin Laden (أسامة بن لادن‎) and al-Qaida (القاعدة) blew up the World Trade Center in 2001, they cannot possibly have had any idea what the effect would be. They could not know if the American response would be bigger understanding for Islamic issues with American policies, the deposition by the Americans of the Saudi government or mass conversion to Islam. Neither could they have predicted the irrational attack on Iraq, which, as we know now, was completely unrelated to al-Qaida. Here we had a case of an irrational action from al-Qaida that was followed by an irrational action by the USA.
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In spite of this the world moves forward. The state of affairs was well put by the Swedish 17th century statesman Axel Oxenstierna. His son doubted his own abilities in taking on an important diplomatic mission. Axel Oxenstierna replied:

An nescis, mi fili, quantilla prudentia mundus regatur?

Or in English:

Do you not know, my son, with how little wisdom the world is ruled?