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The Trap: What Happened to Our Dream of Freedom
2007 · TV series · documentary · 60 min episodes · 1 season
Individual freedom is the dream of our age. It's what our leaders promise to give us, it defines how we think of ourselves and, repeatedly, we have gone to war to impose freedom around the world. But if you step back and look at what freedom actually means for us today, it's a strange and limited kind of freedom.
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>Economics is such a funny field to me. The systems involved are incredibly complex, yet economists habitually speak as though their models are anything more than that: models.
It’s funny that you bring this up, because this idea that the the power brokers forgot that their models were simplistic models of human behavior instead now thought of them as full, bidirectional descriptions of behavior is the thesis of many Adam Curtis documentaries. I’m thinking about the The Trap in particular.
Watch everything by Adam Curtis. Century of the Self, The Trap and The Power of Nightmares specifically.
https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0193231/
> The inevitable nature of uncompetitive systems.
This is highly misinformed. The problem is precisely the introduction of competitiveness in a system which previously worked well. This is for example explained in Adam Curtis' documentary The Trap Part 2 [0] which you may find online in many places.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Trap_(British_TV_series)
> You hear this sentiment, in various wordings, from all levels of humanity - the poorest of the poor, and the richest of the rich.
This is true and false at the same time. In capitalist culture, that's the norm and you find this sentiment at all levels. However, most cultures across human history were not similar.
Compassion and mutual aid are cornerstones of human life (if not of the entire animal realm). If a bit outdated, i would strongly recommend to read Kropotkin's "Mutual Aid" on the topic. Also related: "The Trap", a TV series by Adam Curtis which explains the origins of modern individualism and neoliberal game theory applied to every field of life...
You may be surprised to learn in this documentary that at the time those theories were developed, only economists and psychopaths played by the "rational" (self-serving) strategy, while other people chose cooperation. Results done today after decades of brainwashing would of course be very different, but i'm still betting a lot of regions/cultures would not abide by the psychic laws of capitalism (fuck everybody before they fuck you).
I got the chain of connections. But I don't think he adequately presented evidence for the various links in that chain.
I mean, it all seems fairly plausible; but I felt after watching it that I wasn't convinced. I guess what I need reading material, with links to sources.
I just found "The Trap: What Happened To Our Dream Of Freedom" on iPlayer. When it came out I only managed to see episode 1, which I liked a lot. So now I'm (re)watching the whole set of 3.
I love Adam Curtis documentaries. The century of self, Power of nightmares, The trap and Hypernormalisation were all amazing. I might not agree with everything he says, but there is no denying that they are thought provoking, beautifully narrated and spectacularly well edited films.
If you haven't watched them yet, I would encourage you to do so.
Interestingly, the article makes no mention of the followup experiment where it seems a hospital invited a repetition and then claimed to have found 40 or so fake patients during the agreed period. Only to be told that the experimenters had sent none.
Or at least that's the version told in Adam Curtis' documentary The Trap (part 1)[1] which engages in Curtis's usual enthusiasm for fashioning a sweeping historical narrative out of somewhat sparse materials - in this case presenting the "Thud" experiment and its followup as a pivot point in the tale of how R. D. Laing's anti-psychiatry ironically led to the advent of the DSM IV era.
However that may be, if Curtis' account of the followup is correct it seems harder to argue the diagnostic prowess of the psychiatrists was not open to question, regardless of the status of the original experiment.
1: In the section beginning here: https://youtu.be/y97Ywl7RtUw?t=2204
Interesting thing is that antidepressant use rised despite antidepressant being mostly ineffective and their underlying principle of action being flawed.
This raises the question of why antidepressant use rised this way. Could it be that heavily medicated people are easier to manage and keep under control to prevent them from rebelling against the lives they're forced into by the societal system ? Could it be related to huge profits from pharmaceutical corporations ?
Then again Facebook and the computer as a machine middleman in human interaction is destroying social interaction and society fabric by replacing actual meaningful interaction that builds human ability to be human. Not the single cause but a recent and efficient accelerator of a trend that push us further apart from each other.
I recommend watching the following BBC documentaries by Adam Curtis:
The Century of the Self[1] The Trap: What Happened to Our Dream of Freedom[2] All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace[3]
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Century_of_the_Self [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Trap_(TV_series) [3]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/All_Watched_Over_by_Machines_of_Loving_Grace_(TV_series)
Having recently discovered Adam Curtis (from other HN posts), I'd highly recommend watching his documentaries. All of them. Absolutely riveting stuff.
HyperNormalization: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fh2cDKyFdyU
Bitter Lake: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VRbq63r7rys
The Trap: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y97Ywl7RtUw&list=PLsGiHTmHVDNlAc15kb23Q9Oz386MNXYIn
The Power of Nightmares: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dTg4qnyUGxg&list=PLtPP_-rkrT3CmuUxjezhbewL5C8fcI1Fv
The Mayfair Set: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tuqYbohCLFM&list=PLtPP_-rkrT3D-9HZkN0BAgMS1F1ODLQES
The Century of the Self: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eJ3RzGoQC4s
Strongly agree about values propagated into everything. Speaking of game theory, I highly recommend Adam Curtis' documentary The Trap. He talks about John Nash, the Cold War ethos and his struggle with schizophrenia, both of which highly influenced his work and view of humankind as utility-maximizing machines. Obviously lots of economic implications, kind of touches on "homo economicus", that sort of thing.
Adam Curtis has made quite a few documentaries that are really worth watching. A few that spring to mind are:
The Trap All watched over by machines of loving grace (Essential viewing for hackernews readers, I think this is his best work) Bitter Lake HyperNormalisation
They are not without flaws, and sometimes I think some of the connections made between events are a little far fetched.
However they are thought provoking and extremely well made.
Relevant excellent TV series [1]. After Raegan/Thatcher privatization there was a 2nd wave Clinton/Blaire of liberalisation. The idea was to dismantle "old hierarchy" / Big Government and replace it with market formed by everyone maximizing their individual self-interest.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Trap_(TV_series)
All his documentary series are worth watching. These are
Hypernormalisation
Bitter Lake
All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace
Every Day is like Sunday
The Power of Nightmares
The Century of the Self
The Trap
Pandora's Box
The Mayfair Set
Inside Story
Inquiry. The Great British Housing Disaster
The last one is particularly relevant after the Grenfell Tower Fire.
We aren't going to "get" a new left wing anytime soon. The neoliberal turn that most left-wing parties took was a direct result of the collapse of social democracy and citizen involvement in he 1970s, which resulted in the neoliberal market politics commonly attributed to Bill Clinton and Tony Blair.
If you want a new left wing, make it happen. Join a local board. Run for local office. Take part in your community. Be a part of something. But don't expect reading news or commenting on forums to change anything. After all, the shift from active citizen to passive consumer is what got us in this mess in the first place.
Adam Curtis has several phenominal documentaries regarding this shift over time. Particularly, "Century of the Self", "The Trap", and most recently, "HyperNormalization."
I'd point to the massive amounts of privatization of what was public infrastructure.
If you're into documentaries, I'd really recommend some of Adam Curtis's stuff on the topic; he covers the topics much more completely and eloquently than I.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Trap_(TV_series)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/All_Watched_Over_by_Machines_of_Loving_Grace_(TV_series)
Anyone who has seen Adam Curtis' documentary, "The Trap," will find this familiar.
Our society has become so obsessed with quantification that we have become blind to any other ways of understanding the world around us, and made us poorer in our analysis, instead of being more informed with more information.
It is like saying that if something cannot be measured, then it does not exist.
Exactly. I think trying to validate end-to-end is tail-chasing. Reminds me of Adam Curtis' BBC documentary "The Trap," whrein people create a limited theory of human behavior based on game theory, but the attractiveness of numbers results in the reformation of society to better fit those numbers, even if they don't fully represent human behavior and leave us worse off than before.
It's like trying to create an AI to play chess but the creators focus so hard on keeping it from making moves that result in its losing the queen that they forget that the objective of chess is to win.
Many of the problems are due to the internal market, with NHS staff encouraged to work in their own self-interest rather than in the interests of the patient, which in practice means they game the system. This, and the reasons behind it, are explained in a 3-part documentary called The Trap by Adam Curtis.
The NHS is good value for (taxpayers') money: it's about half the price of the American system for the same quality of care.
It's a fairly open secret that the Government is encouraging patient dissatisfaction and privatizing the NHS by stealth. It's only a matter of time before patients have to pay for treatment.
My experience of it as a patient is generally favourable. I usually get seen promptly, and it's free at the point of use. I've experienced the health services in two other countries (Hong Kong and Belgium).
Yes. I disagree with most of his points of view. Some of his statements are outright incorrect and a majority are at least questionable or wanting for references. In _The Trap_ he constantly uses the phrase "based on numbers" in a negative fashion, as if it were an inferior method of analysis. I find that particularly strange considering that if you just listen to his narrative without the images, there is no analysis and often no cogent argument.
One argument, if I remember correctly, was that game theory should no longer be used as a tool because it was largely developed during the cold war, which is over now.
And yet I'm utterly I'm fascinated by his movies. I probably (re)watch one every 2 months. Go figure.
edit: You can't miss this parody: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x1bX3F7uTrg
You are in for a treat! Watch "The Trap" and "All watched over by machines of loving grace", two documentaries also by Adam Curtis.
This is actually well overdue, Curtis is a genius whose work will appeal to a lot of people here.
It's not considered his best stuff, All Watched Over By Machines of Loving Grace is probably most relevant to HN and all three episodes are well worth watching.
IMO his best stuff is on the coincidence and movement of political power. Check out The Trap and The Mayfair Set. The Power of Nightmares is good too.
On the subject of capitalism, politics, power and liberty I recommend watching the documentary series "The Trap" by Adam Curtis:
[1/3] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gZt2HhFXB3M
[2/3] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WbRApO3k_Jo
[3/3] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LFjCJFsbS0U
Another series by Curtis, "The Century of the Self", explores similar themes in the context of psychology (Freud and Reich), propaganda (Bernays), and the rise of market-based democracy:
[*/4] http://vimeo.com/61857758
I think you're projecting a bit. You're talking about Curtis' The Trap. According to the wiki summary:
A separate strand in the documentary is the work of R.D. Laing, whose work in psychiatry led him to model familial interactions using game theory. His conclusion was that humans are inherently selfish, shrewd, and spontaneously generate stratagems during everyday interactions. Laing's theories became more developed when he concluded that some forms of mental illness were merely artificial labels, used by the state to suppress individual suffering. This belief became a staple tenet of counterculture during the 1960s. [1]
I don't remember Laing being particularly lambasted in the documentary as you do, and I don't recall Curtis simplifying things so much. If so, the above summary is being really charitable.
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Trap_%28television_documentary_series%29
Doctors tried something similar with paper forms in the 60s. It was pretty disastrous, given depression is such a complex, "3d" kind of issue. Adam Curtis explored this theme in perhaps his best series of documentaries, "The Trap" - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WbRApO3k_Jo
I agree, even if you don't agree with Adam Curtis's politics, his documentaries are very thought provoking and well worth watching. Some of my favourites include "The Trap: What Happened to Our Dream", "The Century of self", "Pandora's Box", "All watched over by Machines Loving Grace". If you enjoyed this particular blog post, check out "The Power of Nightmares".
I think yours is the best assessment. The only one of his films i've seen ("The Trap") was a bizarre viewing experience, because I agreed with most of his conclusions and found the filmmaking technique and music impressive, but thought that his arguments were specious.
For a contrary view on game theory, I highly recommend watching the excellent BBC documentary series "The Trap" by film maker Alan Curtis.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Trap_(television_documentary_series)
In the first episode, Curtis examines the rise of game theory during the Cold War. It discusses John Nash's paranoid schizophrenia and shows footage Nash in his later years acknowledging that his paranoid views of other people at the time were false.
Thanks for the links. This actually relates to a paper that I've been collaborating on.
BTW, Isaiah Berlin's concepts of liberty featured quite strongly in the Adam Curtis documentary series The Trap:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Trap_(television_documentary_series)
Beware of simplistic conclusions of very basic game theory, especially if it's coming from RAND.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tragedy_of_the_anticommons
This documentary enlightens a bit on the subject and is quite accessible. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Trap_%28television_documentary_series%29#1._.22Fuck_You_Buddy.22_.2811_March_2007.29
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=404227395387111085#
(AFAIK not released outside of Britain due to footage rights issues, a real shame.)
Also, check out the amazing documentary about libertarianism/government/game theory by the same guy who did the posted video, The Trap: http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-142285137762134414&ei=TtDGSbbXOJKurgLOpsDsAg&q=fuck+you+buddy+The+trap