New Adam Curtis documentary series (only on iplayer)

[UndercoverElephant]

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episodes/ ... of-my-head

[PS_RalphW]

Watched the first 3 episodes. All good stuff linking just about everything that happens in the world to how the human mind works and how the unscrupulous (which is just about everybody) use that knowledge to bamboozle people, get them following cults and conspiracy theories, and always for their own financial benefit or geopolitical power.

A good watch for the likes of LJ who needs to get his feet back on the ground. We are not rational beings, we are random electrical signals spinning round in squishy grey stuff, and we are all deluded if we think we have any control over our own decisions, let alone have any democratic input in anything that happens.

[UndercoverElephant]

A good watch for the likes of LJ

Oh yes.

All good stuff linking just about everything that happens in the world to how the human mind works and how the unscrupulous (which is just about everybody) use that knowledge to bamboozle people, get them following cults and conspiracy theories, and always for their own financial benefit or geopolitical power.

Yes. It also runs deeper than that. There was part of the story not fully covered. "Operation Mindfuck" was largely the brainchild of Robert Anton Wilson, who was the editor of Playboy at the time. And Wilson was interested in much more that just financial benefit and geopolitical power.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Anton_Wilson

The rabbithole is bottomless.

[Potemkin Villager]

Curtis clearly first saw the fnords years ago!

[UndercoverElephant]

I have now finished watching this. All 7 and a half hours of it. It is a masterpiece. Ultimately it is about how hard it has become to change "the system", and yet it is also about how change is coming anyway.

[Potemkin Villager]

According to The New Yorker:-

"As a storyteller, Curtis is drawn either to revolutionaries, who want to change the world, or to engineers, who plan to stabilize and control human society with the help of machines. (He generally takes the side of the revolutionaries, even though he acknowledges that they are often wrong.) “The battle between those two things is the defining thing,” Curtis told me."

[kenneal - lagger]

According to The New Yorker:-

"As a storyteller, Curtis is drawn either to revolutionaries, who want to change the world, or to engineers, who plan to stabilize and control human society with the help of machines. (He generally takes the side of the revolutionaries, even though he acknowledges that they are often wrong.) “The battle between those two things is the defining thing,” Curtis told me."

That sounds like it comes from someone who doesn't understand engineers or engineering to me. I've never met an engineer who wants to do anything other than make or build things or find out how something works. The people who want to control us are usually the sort of people who end up as journalists, artsy people or philosophers. How many of the worlds great dictators or even just politicians have been engineers?

[Potemkin Villager]

Now on youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MHFrhIAj0ME

Well I think we have to expand "engineer" to more generally include scientists and anybody embracing the laws of nature
whilst the revolutionaries would include politicians, lawyers, and I would include economists etc, who primarily embrace laws
and ideologies made up by man without reference to the natural world.

Politicians with a scientific back ground would include, off the top of my head, Jimmy Carter, Thatcher and many in China, though apparently this is declining. Angela Merkel is an interesting case I believe with A PhD in something called Quantum Chemistry.

Whatever you think of his ideas Curtis is a fascinating character who succeeds in making people think about things even if they disagree with huge chunks of his narrative. His pale appearance would appear due to long hours put in scouring the Beeb's windowless and no doubt fluorescent lit, film and tape archive. I have an image of him simultaneously fast spooling 16mm news rushes on a Steenbeck editing table whilst an ancient noisy 2" Ampex VTR plays 70s television out takes.....