For anyone following the Debates. MUST WATCH VIDEOS!!

Midas Touch

Midas Touch

He who laughs, LASTS!!
Dec 20, 2008
1,902
45
0
Dave's World
These BBC videos will give some insight and background as to WHY & HOW things are and have become in our Modern World.


I know this will be remedial for those who actually keep up with and follow the psychology of society.


It will however serve to get those who don't, up to speed for following the crap being spouted in the debates.



The Trap 1: Fuck You Buddy
[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gZt2HhFXB3M"]The Trap - 1 - F*k You Buddy - YouTube[/ame]


The Trap 2: The Lonely Robot
[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WbRApO3k_Jo"]The Trap - 2 - The Lonely Robot - YouTube[/ame]


The Trap 3: We Will Force You to be Free
[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LFjCJFsbS0U"]The Trap - 3 - We Will Force U 2 Be Free - YouTube[/ame]
 


I finally got through the last of these today. Not bad at all... It's important work... But not as good as the same author's other famous BBC Doc: Century of the Self.

I'm now resigned to my fate of tracking down the rest of Adam Curtis' BBC docs and consuming them all. We all should.

What I liked about this one:

  • The parts about how Game Theory became a government agenda for the entire west
  • How the perfectly sane group of 20 ppl checked themselves into funny farms and couldn't get out for months
  • How big pharma became what it is today, and of course...
  • How in the last chapter they delved into the meanings of freedom & it's political history over the years very well. Lots of eye-opening history there, stuff I had no idea about.


What I felt uneasy about:

Several times he spoke of things like conflicts in banana republics that he attributed to the right people, (usually the US president) but emphasizing what I'd say is a minor reason. If you've read confessions of an economic hitman or studied well about american imperialism, then clearly there are bigger drivers than what he's talking about here for those conflicts... So he's not making stuff up, but he pushes this game theory agenda over territory which that just can't be as serious as he makes it out to be.

Also, the "Postive and Negative" types of Freedom they really drove home in the last chapter... I think that's kinda pathetic.

They kept skirting anarchy, (the positive form was willing to accept anarchy, but they believe it to be completely unstable) but it never seemed to explore anarchy at all. (Which is TRUE freedom, and this is a documentary about freedom, afterall.)

That seems like a serious flaw in their entire conclusion. I guess they're a bit like some of my haters around here; not accepting that anarchy can ever be stable... But something so important should be studied and tried and tested and perfected no matter the cost to ENSURE it can be made stable... Otherwise you just get what we have now... Forever.

So I think the ideas of "negative and positive freedom" is for limited thinkers with no imagination nor drive to succeed. They need to dig deeper and see that what they're calling positive freedom can go much, much further than it has the the past and made stable through acceptance of the NAP and admittedly a lot more education.


Still lots of awesome little tidbits in there though, thanks for the share Midas!


Edit: For a great rundown of this series, the wikipedia entry on it is very helpful.
 
Here are some others he's done:

Century of the Self (all 4 parts):
[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OmUzwRCyTSo"]The Century Of The Self - YouTube[/ame]

The Power of Nightmares The Rise of the Politics of Fear:

Part 1
[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xGo1DqmfHjY"]The Power of Nightmares - 1of3 - The Rise of the Politics of Fear-Baby It's Cold Outside - YouTube[/ame]


Part 2
[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o0kNNqZk3mg"]The Power of Nightmares - 2of3 - The Rise of the Politics of Fear - The Phantom Victory - YouTube[/ame]


Part 3
[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qATc5jRbVOA"]The Power of Nightmares - 3of3 - The Rise of the Politics of Fear - The Shadows in the Cave - YouTube[/ame]


The one I like the most is hard to find on youtube, but it's on vimeo from this site:

All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace | Watch Free Documentary Online

All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace

A series of films about how humans have been colonized by the machines they have built. Although we don’t realize it, the way we see everything in the world today is through the eyes of the computers. It claims that computers have failed to liberate us and instead have distorted and simplified our view of the world around us.

1. Love and Power. This is the story of the dream that rose up in the 1990s that computers could create a new kind of stable world. They would bring about a new kind global capitalism free of all risk and without the boom and bust of the past. They would also abolish political power and create a new kind of democracy through the Internet where millions of individuals would be connected as nodes in cybernetic systems – without hierarchy.


2. The Use and Abuse of Vegetational Concepts. This is the story of how our modern scientific idea of nature, the self-regulating ecosystem, is actually a machine fantasy. It has little to do with the real complexity of nature. It is based on cybernetic ideas that were projected on to nature in the 1950s by ambitious scientists. A static machine theory of order that sees humans, and everything else on the planet, as components – cogs – in a system.


3. The Monkey in the Machine and the Machine in the Monkey. This episode looks at why we humans find this machine vision so beguiling. The film argues it is because all political dreams of changing the world for the better seem to have failed – so we have retreated into machine-fantasies that say we have no control over our actions because they excuse our failure.
Click to expand...

While the stuff is interesting, and he presents it in a pretty cool way, I'd recommend seeing some of the things his critics are saying as well:

[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a9RciTSWLoE"]Century Of The Selfish Sheeple Part 1: Americans Are Obedient Work Slave Dogs - YouTube[/ame]
 
Sweet, thanks for those links, Ryan! I'll be checking out the others when I get a chance.

To anyone who hasn't seen Century of the self: DO IT NOW. You can learn more about marketing from that video than any guru online.



jryan21 said:
While the stuff is interesting, and he presents it in a pretty cool way, I'd recommend seeing some of the things his critics are saying as well:

Century Of The Selfish Sheeple Part 1: Americans Are Obedient Work Slave Dogs - YouTube
Click to expand...
Dr. Lapaulia here sounds like a mega-douche liberal moron who can't tell the difference between crowd thinking and individual thinking. I think he needs more time in school. Another eight decades should do it. :thumbsup:
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Top Bottom