The Trap: What Happened to-Dream of Freedom-Adam Curtis-DVD in paper sleeve-NTSC

Description: The Trap: What Happened to Our Dream of Freedom by Adam Curtis (DVD in three episodes) Part 1. 'F**k You Buddy' (So Long, Sucker). The Nobel Prize was given to a mathematician named John Nash for his Game Theory, based on the axiom that human beings are primarily suspicious, selfish and calculating. This became the basis for "strategic thinking" during the Cold War. It later became clear that Nash himself suffered from paranoia and his theory did not even remotely describe normal human behavior, which is characterized by empathy and the search for win-win outcomes. Nash's theory was also applied by Margaret Thatcher to push "free market theories" by alleging that the state was inherently a selfish clique and not interested in public service at all, or else that those who do believe in altruistic purposes are dangerous "zealots." Curtis also tells the story of R D Laing and the Rosenhan experiments, which showed that psychiatrists had no better than a random chance of telling which patients were mentally healthy or ill. Part 2. 'The Lonely Robot' Because of the lack of insight of practitioners and dependence on questionnaires and computers, millions of people have been administered drugs like Prozac, which are being used to normalise behaviour and make humans behave more predictably, like machines. Vast numbers of Western people have had their behaviour and mental activity modified by drugs without any strict medical necessity. Curtis then tackles Richard Dawkins' theory that human beings are really just expressions of "the selfish gene" trying to express its DNA, competing with other genes for survival. Life had no other meaning. This monomania was at least as ridiculous, simplistic and mechanistic, dehumanizing and degrading as game theory, and it was likewise used to support militarism and laisser faire free market theories, and any other dog-eat-dog and devil-take-the-hindmost, anti-social theories of "society". In a section called 'The Death of Social Mobility', Curtis describes how the theory of the free market was applied to education, and how this has led to increasing extremes of inequality. Curtis concludes that the only people who behaved exactly according to the mathematical models created by game theory are economists themselves, and psychopaths. Part 3. 'We Will Force You To Be Free' This part focuses on the concepts of positive and negative liberty introduced in the 1950s by Isaiah Berlin, negative liberty being freedom from coercion and positive liberty as the opportunity to strive to fulfil one's potential. Curtis shows how political movements that tried to impose their idea of freedom often ended up using violence and tyranny to achieve it, for example during the French and Bolshevik Revolutions. He also explores the post-Soviet experience of economic freedom under "shock therapy" which destroyed the social safety net and caused enormous suffering of the common people, while a few oligarchs became billionaires by privatizing state companies. This led to the current regime of Vladimir Putin, which balanced "market freedom" with people's need for basic dignity and living standards. Post-war Iraq suffered an even more extreme "shock therapy" with the wiping out of the existing government, leading to civil war and the disintegration of Iraqi society. The neocons claimed they would spread freedom and democracy by armed force, for instance by overthrowing the Sandinistas with the Contra death squads. Here again, the result was suffering and increased inequality. *** NTSC region-free format. PAL region-free version is available at https://www.ebay.com/itm/273803291356 This item is posted and managed courtesy of Bonanza

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End Time: 2024-08-09T16:48:50.000Z

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