GlesgaKiss

Adam Curtis documentaries... has anyone watched any of them? What did you think?

When I first read the description I was quite interested in watching it, but after half an hour or so I was left quite puzzled. Seems quite a lot like propaganda to me. He seems to misinterpret the views and systems he is opposed to, and tries to paint almost a caricature of them. Rather than just letting you know what happened (cause and effect), he blows out of all proportion and at times almost completely fabricates a story - the sinister picture painted of silicone valley and Ayn Rand, for example (that she was pretty much the source of modern society's 'downfall'). I didn't know that many people even took her seriously; certainly not serious enough to form this conspiring cult which would destroy societies all over the world - mainly through free trade with the world's largest economy, the U.S. To complement his assertions, he had interviews with balanced individuals of all shades, whether it be the crazed Ayn Rand fanatic or the economist Paul 'there is never enough spending' Krugman. Interesting what he did there: getting an irrational, cult-following lunatic on the one hand (accompanied by the obligatory sinister soundtrack, of course), and an award winning, reasonable sounding economist - and one of the best proponents of left-leaning economics - on the other (no soundtrack this time strangely enough).

After a while listening to his retelling of the latter part of twentieth century history, I was left thinking "wtf?" All this sinister stuff has happened and I didn't have a clue about it up until I watched this program. But it all makes sense now: Ayn Rand and her followers are even to blame for Obama's election victory.

The central theme which keeps coming back again and again, of course, is the assertion that 'we've all been fooled into believing that we can just sit back, do nothing, and let the machines take care of things!'. Now he's rewriting reality again and telling us something that has never even happened/doesn't exist as a problem. No one thinks the free market is some mystical computer system that will organise itself ffs.

The whole thing comes across as annoyingly misguided. I struggled through the second one to give it a chance, trying to keep an open mind, but, needless to say, I'll be giving the last one a miss!

warrenm2

Yep, makes unfounded connections with events that dont bear scrutiny. The Rand one, for example would have you believe that the idea of self fulfillment lead to programmed market trading (and onto recent market crash). Nope. He completely ignored (or mentioned in glowing terms) the role of Bill Clintons policies in starting the CDO market.

Biased historian rewrites history to suit agenda - no news there

GlesgaKiss

Yeah, this is it in a nutshell. If life shouldn't be about self-fulfillment then what should it be about? This sort of propaganda is worrying (and annoying) because you can see where it's leading! These types always make unfounded connections and they always seem to overstate some elements. To say that it was a free market where people thought they could organise themselves, which then failed, is not remotely accurate for a start. Almost all of the 'moral hazards' were created by authority, to say nothing of the ease with which credit was available and what it was made available for.

Which brings us back to the key point: that what he was saying had never actually happened. The government has always had the final say, and our systems are pretty rigid and well defined... hardly anarchy.