The Trap: What Happened to Our Dreams of Freedom?

[Mr S]

Excellent Series!

http://www.youtube.com/view_play_list?p ... of+freedom

The Trap: What Happened to Our Dreams of Freedom?

The Trap: What Happened To Our Dream Of Freedom? 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. Politicians promised to liberate us from the old dead hand of bureaucracy, but they have created an evermore controlling system of social management, driven by targets and numbers. Governments committed to freedom of choice have presided over a rise in inequality and a dramatic collapse in social mobility. And abroad, in Iraq and Afghanistan, the attempt to enforce freedom has led to bloody mayhem and the rise of an authoritarian anti-democratic Islamism. This, in turn, has helped inspire terrorist attacks in Britain. In response, the Government has dismantled long-standing laws designed to protect our freedom. The Trap is a series of three films by Bafta-winning producer Adam Curtis that explains the origins of our contemporary, narrow idea of freedom. It shows how a simplistic model of human beings as self-seeking, almost robotic, creatures led to today's idea of freedom. This model was derived from ideas and techniques developed by nuclear strategists during the Cold War to control the behaviour of the Soviet enemy. Mathematicians such as John Nash developed paranoid game theories whose equations required people to be seen as selfish and isolated creatures, constantly monitoring each other suspiciously -- always intent on their own advantage. This model was then developed by genetic biologists, anthropologists, radical psychiatrists and free market economists, and has come to dominate both political thinking since the Seventies and the way people think about themselves as human beings. However, within this simplistic idea lay the seeds of new forms of control. And what people have forgotten is that there are other ideas of freedom. We are in a trap of our own making that controls us, deprives us of meaning and causes death and chaos abroad.

http://www.youtube.com/view_play_list?p ... of+freedom

[Winston]

I don't think there's any such thing as freedom and there never was. Wherever we are, we have to obey the authority and society we are in. They control us and we are forced to conform to them. From the moment you are born, someone around you, in one way or another is always ALWAYS trying to control you, whether its your parents, school, teachers, society, institutions, employers, spouse, government, etc. I don't know why anyone thinks that they are free. Most people who go to work are slaves in a private dictatorship. Then at home they are slaves to their spouse. They have no freedom. Someone is always controlling them and forcing them to conform to something. Real freedom means being able to do whatever you want with your life. Most people are not able to do that most of the time, except for the very rich and lucky.

I just wrote an essay on this and will be posting it soon.