It’s probably no mystery by this point that I think documentaries are really valuable. In fact, I think their value will steadily rise over the next decade or so, now that the Internet has opened up film distribution in amazing new ways. One such example is the duo of Zeitgeist (2007) and its sequel, Zeitgeist: Addendum (2008). These “cult favorites” are only distributed via the filmmaker’s own web site, where viewers can stream the films or download as a torrent. Aside from the incredible distribution capabilities, I think documentaries will become more important because they provide context, perspective, and explanation for what’s happening in the world. They are usually more credible than television shows, but they employ the engaging audio/visual style that many people prefer over reading long documentary-style articles or stories. In other words, it’s a lot of information obtained with little time or effort.
A week or two ago, I heard that the rock band …And You Will Know Us By the Trail of Dead actually named their newest album after a documentary. The film is Adam Curtis’ The Century of the Self, a four-part BBC miniseries from 2002. The series is one of three that are forging a strong reputation for Curtis; the other two are The Power of Nightmares (2004) and The Trap: What Happened to Our Dream of Freedom (2007). Century and Power are both available for free download at Archive.org (here and here, respectively). The Trap, however, is not, so I had to procure a copy through…other means — but still via the Internet. And The Trap was the one I found first, so it’s the first one I watched.
All three documentaries have an IMDb rating over 9.0, so I expected them to be spectacular. The Trap was enlightening, and so densely packed with information that I found myself taking notes during the three hour-long portions (it was originally aired over a stretch of three weeks). Curtis’ filmmaking style is definitely different than most American documentaries I’ve seen. He didn’t try to convince the viewer that his argument was indisputable. His edge was having a historical perspective that most people just don’t have. The Trap covers 1950 to today, starting with the first part, entitled “Fuck Your Buddy.” This tells how John Nash’s economic ideas based on Game Theory went on to create a narrow view of human beings as entirely rational creatures. (Even that one sentence is dense!) In this scenario, Game Theory was used to suggest that the logical choice in human interaction will always be to act out of total self-interest (what is called a “betray” move in the game), as opposed to acting in cooperation with others. This mentality was heavily influenced by the oppressive atmosphere of the Cold War, but also by Nash’s battle with paranoid schizophrenia. But instead of helping society run more efficiently and promoting human freedom, this led governments and institutions to try and fit people into that narrow mold of suspicious, paranoid, psychologically damaged individuals that Nash and his RAND Corporation had described.
That’s all in part 1. Part 2 starts with Clinton’s economic advisers, who said he should let the market read and respond to the needs of the public, because it was more efficient than having government do it through the democratic process. This is naturally tied to the way that companies seem to own and operate everything these days. It also seems closely tied to the banking bust of fall 2008. Part 2 elaborates on the psychiatric discussion from part 1, namely that human emotion became medicalized, and the public was made to think that there was some kind of perfect human that no one was capable of being or becoming. Furthermore, Nash’s Game Theory ideas kept echoing through society, leading to decreased social mobility, the development of an entirely new kind of social stratification, and corruption in business and politics (especially in America).
Are you still with me? There’s another part left! Part 3 starts with Isaiah Berlin, who published a paper in the 1950s about two kinds of liberty: positive liberty and negative liberty. Positive liberty is the kind that happened in the American Revolution; it’s frightening, dangerous, volatile, and uncontrollable. This idea of liberty has been suppressed, but people are still inspired by the idea that we can improve the world and its inhabitants. Specifically, people want to be given the opportunity to reach their full potential. However, Western governments have favored negative liberty, which may seem like freedom on the surface, but it’s actually a very narrow kind of freedom, with ridiculous costs that are incurred around the globe. America has been pushing negative liberty for a few decades now, since Nixon and his Secretary of State Henry Kissinger began supporting violent dictators who agreed to help suppress anyone who caused trouble (i.e. – communists, revolutionaries, etc). And obviously this has continued with every president since.
In summary, The Trap was probably the best description of the Post-War Western world I’ve ever seen. It also made me think more than ever before that there is just no correct way to run countries or the world. Of course that’s not true, but it’s strange to see, as Curtis points out, that ideologies no longer rule the world. In fact we are living in a world that is ruled by the opposite of ideologies. We are ruled by pointless decrees set forth by politicians, who are now controlled by corporations. We are seeing what Isaiah Berlin warned against: if negative liberty is viewed as an unalterable goal, it leads to the corruption of freedom, not the protection of it. With each stage in this progression, things became more concrete and hard to change. Efforts at improvement usually backfired, or they were used by the institutions to manipulate and control the public.
So even though this is a lot to take in in three hour-long sittings, I do feel like I have a better understanding of why our world is so messed up. The only comforting idea in all this may be that negative liberty is dying on its own. The American-sanctioned Western world of negative liberty is falling apart without any revolutionaries fighting against it. I do think the Internet will hasten the process, and help us bridge toward a sustainable version of positive liberty, where more people are able to live up to their potential and contribute more to society. But it’s going to take a long, long time.
Here is the introduction to The Trap for your viewing enjoyment:
