Sunday, February 3, 2013

The Trap: What Happened to Our Dream of Freedom (2007)

Writer & Producer: Adam Curtis

The series consist of three one-hour programmes which explore the concept and definition of freedom, specifically, 'how a  simplistic model of human beings as self-seeking, almost robotic, creatures led to today's idea of freedom.

The first episode, 'Fuck You Buddy', focuses on John Nash's game theory and how it was used in psychiatry to define what normal behavior is for people. The second episode, 'The Lonely Robot', is mainly about game theory applied in biology (Selfish Gene) and how this was taken to mean human beings as rational, predictable beings looking out for their own self interest all the time. Based on this the liberal governments in US and UK started changing public institutes by introducing a system of incentives which only led the public officials and staff gaming the system. The third episode, 'We will Force you to be Free', is mainly about Isaiah Berlin's concept of positive and negative liberty. This concept was new to me in its definition form but had an inkling about it from my readings. It essentially means that if people believe something to be the absolute truth or mechanism for Utopia, it will always lead to repression as End always justify the means. The attitude of Western Governments to regimes in the third world and their affairs are explained in this context.

Some of the arguments are presented in a one-sided way. I don't see what the problem is with the thinking that humans are self-interested. We are self-interested but the problem was introducing a simplistic model based on this view. As is explained in Richard Dawkin's brilliant book, 'Selfish Gene', we follow a 'Tit-for-Tat' policy for most of our decisions which makes it a bit more complicated way of following self-interest. If the technocrats and politicians introduce some stupid incentivized system ripe for gaming, it is their problem and not a slight on the concept.

Still it is  a great watch on the whole.

Rating: 4/5

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