
An interview with the documentary filmmaker Adam Curtis - mpweiher
https://www.economist.com/open-future/2018/12/06/the-antidote-to-civilisational-collapse
======
seren
An anecdata on that topic.

I am working for a subsidiary of big company.

Six months ago, while other parts of the company were divested, the plan was
to keep us. Evey internal communications from the top management were saying
basically "we are proud to be a strong pillar of BigCo going forward"

Now, it seems the plan have changed and we are going to be divested as well.
Now the same top managers have all the same discourse (literally copy paste):
"This is a new chapter opening, we are all very excited, and this will open
new opportunities".

I don't blame top management or internal communication, but really you cannot
have two opposite strategies in six months, and in both case think that is the
best thing since sliced bread because it is basically meaningless.

So, top management knows they are repeating the empty official party line,
employees knows that it is essentially a smokescreen, but everyone pretends
everything is planned and this is working as intended, and everything's going
to be great. The reality is that no one as the slightest idea of what is going
on. If you step back, this is actually quite comical.

~~~
EliRivers
Apropos of simply chatting around the topic, I always (well, for the last five
years or so - took me many years to get to this point) say out loud in such
meetings that if there's no budget for it, the company doesn't really care.

In the last year, after the powers-that-be said they believed in training,
saying that out loud has won my team 5% of their time and some capital
expenditure for training (works out to a little over a day every month that
can be spent on the company dime explicitly reading, watching training
materials or other such), and when those same powers said they believed in
continuous improvement of the product, on the order of 15% of the team's time
can now be booked to just that; working on things that don't provide new
features or bugfixes for customers, but just make the software better in
general. I was surprised at just how much it turned out that the company
really did believe in continuous improvement of the product, when I challenged
the powers-that-be to put their money where their mouth is; I am a little
worried that if I hadn't opened my mouth, we wouldn't be doing it, but then I
suppose that's why people like me are employed - to open our mouths.

I'm not sure know I would spend budget in support of "being proud to be part
of BigCo going forwards", but I'd still ask for it and still say that if there
wasn't any, it wasn't true. Money seems to sharpen the corporate mind very
effectively and force people to actually confront the values they espouse.

~~~
slededit
If your in frontline management isn't that basically your job? To translate
company goals to on the ground action?

I suppose its a little surprising to hear upper management is not spouting BS,
but I now also wonder how much of that is frontline management simply not
acting on the vision.

~~~
EliRivers
_If your in frontline management isn 't that basically your job? To translate
company goals to on the ground action?_

Surely that's _everyone 's_ job? To know and understand the company's goals
and ensure that their actions are in support. I certainly try to ensure that
everyone on my team (is "software team lead", one among many, considered
frontline management? I honestly don't know where people draw the lines) knows
what the bigger goals are, and I routinely push questions and comment about
those goals back up.

I try to advocate that it is never wrong to pursue the company's goals, and
demand from directors that people who come a cropper while, in good faith
pursuing the direction that the directors have set, will not suffer for it. We
are quite a small company so it's quite easy to badger directors to provide
direction. Don't know how this would go in a larger company.

------
montalbano
Fans of Adam Curtis, particularly his characteristic use of 'historical
collage' to create a compelling narrative, might be interested in the book
trilogy 'U.S.A' by John Dos Passos. It's a great read.

A quote from Adam himself:

"The biggest influence I’ve ever had was actually a novel my father gave me to
read at the age of about 13. It was a novel called USA by John Dos Passos. At
that age, it just got me. You can trace back everything I do to that novel
because it’s all about grand history, individual experience, their
relationship. And also collages, quotes from newsreels, cinema, newspapers.
And it’s about collage of history as well. That’s where I get it all from."*

*[https://web.archive.org/web/20140116091402/http://filmcommen...](https://web.archive.org/web/20140116091402/http://filmcomment.com/entry/interview-adam-curtis)

~~~
ripsawridge
Wow, thanks for the recommendation...this interview is blowing me away. So
much insight.

------
hliyan
One of the more unique insights here:

"Its downside is that it’s a static world. It doesn’t have any vision of the
future because the way it works is by constantly monitoring what you did
yesterday and the day before, and the day before that. And monitoring what I
did yesterday and the day before and the day before that and doing the same to
billions of other people. And then looking at patterns and then saying: “If
you liked that, you’ll like this”."

"They’re constantly playing back to you the ghosts of your own behaviour. We
live in a modern ghost story. We are haunted by our past behaviour played back
to us through the machines in its comparison to millions of other people’s
behaviour. We are guided and nudged and shaped by that."

~~~
l33tbro
The obvious counterpoint is that much of civilization has been stasis.

Also, the sum total of years in the post-surveillence world we now live in may
be too small a sample-duration to conclude that it isn't subject to the same
fluctuations of disruption that have occured throughout history.

Tldr: history teaches us that it's only a matter of time before shit goes
bananas.

------
dmos62
Adam Curtis is great. He's been making films for about 30 years and has a
large fimography. Early in his career he's made some 20th century history
documentary series, very recommended. Lately he's been making great films
about contemporary phenomenon, I loved both of his last films, Bitter Lake
(2015) and HyperNormalisation (2016). Highly recommended, especially the
latter.

~~~
simongray
I love all the films I've seen by him, but I feel like Hypernormalisation was
a cut above the rest. Adam Curtis feels like a continental philosopher (yes, I
know he's British) making films instead of writing books and
Hypernormalisation feels like his Magnum Opus. This interview is probably a
great way to get the same in writing.

~~~
dmos62
I feel similarly. I try not to stress this point, so that people don't ignore
the rest of his filmography, which would be a great pity.

------
erentz
> “Everyone knew it was fake, but because no one had any alternative vision
> for a different kind of society, they just accepted this sense of total
> fakeness as normal.”

I don’t think there is a lack of vision out there, see the book Four Futures
for example. In the case of the Soviet Union speaking out about things not
working was a good way to get punished. Most of us have experienced the same
thing in corporate america. Everyone around the cooler says “this is broke”
one guy says as much and loses his head.

It seems we are just incapable now of agreeing to collective visions, which
require compromise, and supporting each other in making that happen. Something
has caused us to become incapable of compromise. Everyone is beaten down by
the past century and no longer want to trust each other, or something like
that.

Perhaps communication now is just too impossible to allow this to happen. It’s
become seemingly much much easier to attack and divide people than bring them
together. Hard to see how to change that without some really low level change
happening.

------
maxxxxx
"The problem I have with a lot of investigative journalism, is that they
always say: “There should be more investigative journalism” and I think, “When
you tell me that a lot of rich people aren't paying tax, I’m shocked but I’m
not surprised because I know that. I don’t want to read another article that
tells me that”. What I want is an article that tells me why, when I’m told
that, nothing happens and nothing changes. And no one has ever explained that
to me."

I think he is making a big mistake here. There are a lot of things we "already
know" that aren't actually true or we don't know the extent. We should
appreciate people who deliver data that we can then try to explain. there is
already way too much opinion going around that has no data to back it up.

~~~
kiliantics
While that may be true about misinformation/underinformation, it still seems
ultimately pointless if nothing is being done about it...

~~~
maxxxxx
It seems that way but nothing should be done without hard facts.

------
vanderZwan
> _The opposite of stability is a politics of imagination. There is a yearning
> that there must be something more than the repetition we hear every day that
> “if you like this you’ll like that”. I think it’s coming but I take your
> point, you are right, there is fear of that. But the job of a good
> politician is to say, “Yes, I understand your fears but look, it’s not right
> and we can do better than this”. I’m waiting for a politician on the left to
> come along and say that. So far, I haven 't seen one._

I'm very curious why he thinks Bernie Sanders doesn't qualify. Regardless of
what you think of his political views, the political _story_ he was selling
fits this description to a T.

I suspect it's not that these politicians don't exist, it's that the rest of
the political establishment _also_ is afraid of them and cooperates to keep
them out. Kind of like how managers never fire themselves.

~~~
rjsw
Seen from Europe, Bernie Sanders is just a mainstream centre-left politician,
he wasn't proposing anything particularly controversial.

~~~
vanderZwan
Of course, but that is not the point. The point is that from the American
point view his proposals were still something that they as a society could aim
for, not something they already have.

------
zzzeek
That's quite a piece where he simultaneously laments the common sense that
leadership is corrupt and everyone knows it, and at the same time dismissively
mocks "liberal hysteria" over Russian election interference and their
compromising of the president, which is literally the giant glowing core of
executive branch corruption in this administration.

------
flavor8
Russell Brand also interviewed Adam Curtis about this film also, on his
podcast - [https://www.podchaser.com/podcasts/under-the-skin-with-
russe...](https://www.podchaser.com/podcasts/under-the-skin-with-russell-
br-455708/episodes/003-adam-curtis-do-we-really-w-15260116)

~~~
smcl
Just adding to the Adam Curtis podcast appearances - he was also on Chapo Trap
House: [https://soundcloud.com/chapo-trap-house/episode-65-no-
future...](https://soundcloud.com/chapo-trap-house/episode-65-no-future-feat-
adam-curtis-121216)

~~~
pizza
Good interview with Adam Curtis and comedian Tim Heidecker (yes, _that_ Tim
Heidecker from Tim and Eric) here, too:
[https://soundcloud.com/thetalkhouse/tim-heidecker-with-
adam-...](https://soundcloud.com/thetalkhouse/tim-heidecker-with-adam-curtis)

------
samizdis
From the article, this is so incisive:

The problem I have with a lot of investigative journalism, is that they always
say: “There should be more investigative journalism” and I think, “When you
tell me that a lot of rich people aren't paying tax, I’m shocked but I’m not
surprised because I know that. I don’t want to read another article that tells
me that”. What I want is an article that tells me why, when I’m told that,
nothing happens and nothing changes. And no one has ever explained that to me.

------
gedy
This is very insightful: "Every morning Donald Trump wakes up in the White
House, he tweets something absolutely outrageous which he knows the liberals
will get upset by, the liberals read his tweets and go “This is terrible, this
is outrageous,” and then tell each other via social media how terrible it all
is. It becomes a feedback loop in which they are locked together. In my mind,
it’s like they’re together in a theatre watching a pantomime villain. The
pantomime villain comes forward into the light, looks at them and says
something terrible, and they go “Boo!!”. Meanwhile, outside the theatre, real
power is carrying on but no one is really analysing it."

~~~
ForHackernews
The President of the United States wields real power, full stop.

He is not an absolute monarch, and other powerful forces may have their own
designs, but it's disingenuous to suggest the head of government in the
world's largest economy and biggest military power is purely a sideshow to
"real power" carrying on elsewhere.

~~~
TheOtherHobbes
Why is it disingenuous? Trump can barely make plans minute to minute, never
mind day to day or year to year. If he wasn't insulated by his inherited
wealth he'd either be a homeless bum or in jail.

When has Trump ever contributed to a detailed industrial or economic strategy
for the US?

That's never been his job. His job has always been to be the dummy in the
window display, while the shop behind him is sold off and looted.

~~~
Hoasi
> Why is it disingenuous? Trump can barely make plans minute to minute, never
> mind day to day or year to year. If he wasn't insulated by his inherited
> wealth he'd either be a homeless bum or in jail.

Quite the contrary, he has a unique talent for naming things and people for
example that will get people to talk about for months or years. Think about
his liberal use of expressions like _fake news_ for instance. That seems to
come to him naturally, not to mention his particular brand of original
taglines and scornful epithets. Many of these words had an impact, in his
election, in the first place, but also in the shaping of American politics.

The failure to recognize his talent is actually what hinders his opposition
the most.

You may not like his unique form of marketing genius, but it's a creative
force to be reckoned with. After all, this is a man who dubbed himself a
_stable genius_ , no less. Then you could say marketing BS is not a talent, or
rather talk about creative destruction and fraud—but that wouldn't be very
effective against it.

Believe it or not, naming is a field that supports added value. Some companies
would pay good money for some of the gems he produced over the years. If Trump
wasn't insulated by his inherited wealth he would probably do very well as a
copywriter (short copy).

~~~
dragonwriter
> Quite the contrary, he has a unique talent for naming things and people for
> example that will get people to talk about for months or years. Think about
> his liberal use of expressions like _fake news_ for instance.

But he didn't introduce that term into wide discussion, his critics did to
label the phenomenon closely resembling the m.o. of Russian state propaganda
that was deployed in favor of Trump (which it is increasingly obvious
resembled that because it largely _was_ a Russian state propaganda effort.)

The practice of adopting and widely using such a term that has been deployed
by critics to neutralize the criticism is not unique to Trump, it's a fairly
standard, well-established reaction in politics.

While it's true the front business that is used to justify his wealth has been
more about brand marketing than real estate, that doesn't mean he's a
marketing genius. His real secret of success has been willingness to corruptly
funnel money while cultivating a playboy image with a superficially plausible
business front.

------
frabbit
> know very well that in 200 years the world > won’t look much like the world
> we’re living in now."

This will happen not because of AI or nuclear fusion reactors or space travel
or lab-grown meat.

I love Curtis's documentaries and agree with the central thesis that the
models/stories to describe the world leave us trapped and need to be switched
for better ones, but I think he is underestimating the potential for Climate
Destruction to force a reconfiguration.

Politicians have always been mountebanks surfing on the wave of change
initiated by either physical realities or collective imaginings... they don't
create new models, they just latch onto whatever seems opportune.

~~~
jules-jules
Based on his repeated mention of climate change in the interview, I wouldn't
conclude that he is disregarding the possibility of climate change
reconfiguring human civilization, rather, I'd venture that it is perhaps so
obvious, that he failed to mention it?

~~~
frabbit
I'm not sure. Although it is an excellent interview it feels like some follow-
up would be good on a couple of points, one of them being whether he believes
that climate destruction is going to leave anything resembling a civilization
behind. There is a slight suggestion that he believes that liberal pessimism
is ignoring some wonderful new opportunities inherent in the complete
destruction of a stable, predictable climate.

Also he completely ignores that the Corbyn manifesto and recent speaking tours
have emphasized that a reshaping of the UK economy to emphasize green jobs in
a low-growth, post-Brexit world is exactly the sort of inspiring leadership
which claims is lacking.

I suspect he just does not want to look at what the left of the Labour Party
is proposing.

------
olivermarks
I'm a huge Curtis fan and have seen and read just about everything he has
done, even his early appearances with talking dogs on That's Life!
[https://youtu.be/ajsCY8SjJ1Y](https://youtu.be/ajsCY8SjJ1Y)

I flew to NY to see Massive Attack vs Adam Curtis in 2014 and it was probably
the best live event I've seen this century so far
[https://youtu.be/25g6ShHtzWo](https://youtu.be/25g6ShHtzWo)

Excited to hear Curtis is back in action and doing more films, presumably
still for the BBC where he seems to be a lifer.

I thought this was a great, thought provoking interview. He did tackle the
darker side of banking he briefly discusses in relation to UK economic
austerity in this short Newswipe piece 'oh dearism'
[https://youtu.be/3UstNBrmJFc](https://youtu.be/3UstNBrmJFc)

An interesting aside though - before Hypernormalization Curtis literally
disappeared online for about 14 months - no news stories or Google alerts and
quite a few links about him disappeared. Glad he's back and looking forward to
seeing the new material.

------
Comevius
"If you take climate change, which is a serious issue, it’s been co-opted by
pessimistic baby-boomers and turned into a dark nightmarish scenario, rather
than saying that we need to restructure power and resources in a way that
could make the world a better place. That would have been a really good way to
deal with climate change. Instead, it got possessed by a dystopia which I
think reflects that generation’s fear of mortality because they can’t see
anything going on beyond their own death."

Ultimately this is true, we preach dystopia because we cannot see beyond our
lack of power (ability, influence), our fear of instability, fear of death. We
cannot even begin to imagine what such restructuring would look like.

All the while the dystopia is steadily becoming reality.

And that's the hard part, and imagination, especially political imagination,
and very especially progressive political imagination should be the antidote.
Less static, and less managerial. Let's feedback management.

I guess he is right that dystopianism and right-wing populism (racism and so
on) are governed by (the same kind of) fear and anger.

This interview certainly gave me things to think about.

~~~
davemp
> “ ... it’s been co-opted by pessimistic baby-boomers and turned into a dark
> nightmarish scenario ... “

Similarly, this is how Christianity's public image was killed in the West.

~~~
rorykoehler
Can you explain what you mean by this? Priests raping kids did it for me with
Catholiscm....and people like Blair and Bush murdering people en masse to
serve their fairy overlord sealed the deal for protestantism. Not sure how
this ties in?

~~~
davemp
It's certainly multifaceted. I could write a pretty substantial article on
this topic.

My comment was mostly alluding to the unsupported imagery of a fire and
brimstone pit of eternal torment for all non-believers. There's also excessive
pessimism about the implications of Christian values not being mandated by
legislature (ex: abortion).

For your concerns, I would attribute those to the collapse and corruption of
internal governance systems. Without much exposition, churches do a pretty
terrible job of ensuring their leaders are moral and capable of conveying
responsible interpretations of doctrine. Again this is more or less due to
fatalism. EG: "Humans are inherently sinful, therefore there's nothing we can
do about awful leaders"

If anyone is actually interested in a related article, send me an email. I'll
assume that, if a few people spend the effort to send me an email, it will be
worth the effort to synthesize a responsible article.

------
subsubsub
The is an excellent 3 min deconstruction of Adam Curtis' work on YouTube [1]

[1]
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x1bX3F7uTrg](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x1bX3F7uTrg)

------
baybal2
A great article. This is pretty much summarises everything I an raging about
on HN. Every citizen of a self respecting nation has a personal responsibility
to fight wrongs, and be sensible and rational in how he treats others.

Western society has become greatly desensitised to idiocy and wrongs.

Today's popular culture celebrates the "war on reason." We should reject and
destroy it.

~~~
zaro
> Every citizen of a self respecting nation has a personal responsibility to
> fight wrongs, and be sensible and rational in how he treats others.

I think everybody already does so. But right and wrong are very subjective
things and this fighting the wrongs is contributing a lot to the global mess.

~~~
homarp
>But right and wrong are very subjective things

is "the earth is flat" a subjective wrong ? is "climate changes unless you
change" a subjective wrong ? is "poverty" a subjective wrong ? is "education
is important" a subjective right ? is "rules of law" a subjective wrong ? is
"same gender, same pay" a subjective right ?

~~~
malvosenior
_is "the earth is flat" a subjective wrong?_

No.

 _is "climate changes unless you change" a subjective wrong?_

Yes. Define "change". Also, climate changes without individual change. Also,
individual change _isn 't_ going to impact climate change.

 _is "poverty" a subjective wrong?_

Do you mean the source of poverty or how to deal with it? Either way, yes both
of those are subjective.

 _is "education is important" a subjective right?_

Yes, this is subjective. Many people have massive student debt and education
that doesn't offer them any sort value in the employment marketplace.

 _is "rules of law" a subjective wrong?_

Yes, how it's carried out very much so.

 _is "same gender, same pay" a subjective right?_

Yes, because a lot of people would say we've already achieved that in the west
and a lot of people feel the opposite.

I think you've picked some of the most subjective issues of modern times as
your examples of things that are objective in nature.

~~~
homarp
>individual change isn't going to impact climate change.

Each individual not changing is not going to help either. Inaction makes it
worse.

> Do you mean the source of poverty or how to deal with it? No, I mean
> "poverty is a bad thing and we should work to eradicate it". As for 'how to
> deal with it', it's a polical choice.

>"education is important" Yes it is. Both for basics (democracy, "being able
to make an 'educated' choice when I vote", ) and "AI is coming to get you"

>people have massive student debt This is mostly a US problem, no ? The world
is bigger. (see
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9656905](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9656905)
)

>education that doesn't offer them any sort value in the employment
marketplace. But at the same time, the "learn to code in 30 days" business is
booming, because there are jobs there. And education is used at least as a
proxy when hiring.

>is "rules of law" a subjective wrong? Business can only prosper if rules of
law is enforced. So I see "rules of law" as an objective 'right'. "How" is the
essence of "rules of law".

>I think you've picked some of the most subjective issues of modern times as
your examples of things that are objective in nature.

Actually, I voluntarily selected the ones where it makes people uncomfortable
to acknowledge they are on the wrong side of the "right and wrong", to
illustrate what I see as the parent point "every citizen of a self respecting
nation has a personal responsibility to fight wrongs".

~~~
malvosenior
You picked a bunch of partisan issues then claimed your side is "right" and
the other side is "wrong". I'm not even commenting on what's right or wrong,
I'm just saying it's subjective.

~~~
homarp
Thank you, I think I understand your point about subjectivity now.

I have another question, if you can: can you comment on what is right and what
is wrong in absolute, if anything is ?

~~~
malvosenior
I think you can be correct or incorrect about facts (such as the earth being
round) but that human society is too complex and there are too many individual
and conflicting desires to say that there's a one dimensional scale of
good->bad that you can judge it on.

Take that remote island tribe that recently murdered a Christian missionary.
Was it good or bad that he went there? Was it good or bad that they killed
him? Is it good or bad that anthropologists are trying to keep them isolated?
Is it good or bad that they want to stay isolated?

I don't think those questions can be answered. Society is an emergent behavior
built up from individual wants, desires and compromises. There's stability and
instability at a macro level but I don't think there's good or bad. There's
just different.

It strikes me that a lot of modern political thought has embraced pieces of
post-modernism but at some level has almost reverted to fundamentalism. "Good"
vs. "evil" doesn't sound like the options we should be discussing in a post-
religious society.

~~~
homarp
>[list of good or bad question about what happened in North Sentinel Island ]
> I don't think those questions can be answered

I don't understand why not. More exactly, if we decide that there is nothing
"right" or "wrong", just "dimensions and scales and we can't decide without
offensing someone", isn't that a bleak state of mind (and of society) ?

>"Good" vs. "evil" doesn't sound like the options we should be discussing in a
post-religious society.

So only religion can define "good" and "evil" ?

Not society as a whole ? or the law - would you agree that the law is just a
slowly written process to write down the current state of mind of a society ?

What about "Universal Declaration of Human Rights" ? Also just an opinion ? or
it's a "religious"-like text and therefore we can talk about "right" and wrong
?

~~~
malvosenior
> _I don 't understand why not. More exactly, if we decide that there is
> nothing "right" or "wrong", just "dimensions and scales and we can't decide
> without offensing someone", isn't that a bleak state of mind (and of
> society) ?_

Not at all! You can have your own personal moral code that you live by. It's
also not about not "offending someone". It's just acknowledging that people
have different perspectives and that even if you believe 100% in something,
there's someone out there that won't agree with you and their lived
experiences will justify that position for them.

> _So only religion can define "good" and "evil" ?_

I'd say yes as those are religious concepts. You can have non-religious
empathy that compels you to not "hurt" other people but I wouldn't say there's
an objective "good" or "evil".

> _What about "Universal Declaration of Human Rights" ? Also just an opinion ?
> or it's a "religious"-like text and therefore we can talk about "right" and
> wrong ?_

I would say this is a religious like text. It just so happens that many people
agree with it. Back to logical facts though, if one posits that there is no
higher power then it's definitely a fact that society has been built up from
individuals imperfectly communicating over time and not some objective truth.

------
lunchladydoris
Adam Curtis is amazing. If you don't know his work, I would highly recommend
checking it out [0].

[0] [https://thoughtmaybe.com/by/adam-
curtis/](https://thoughtmaybe.com/by/adam-curtis/)

------
bogomipz
The director states:

>"With the rise of that hyper-individualism in society, politics got screwed.
That sense of being part of a movement that could challenge power and change
the world began to die away and was replaced by a technocratic management
system."

I understand that in the US, election campaigns are data-driven but beyond
that are either of the two major political parties platforms managed and/or
guided by a "technocratic management system"?

------
frabbit
Love Adam Curtis's work but he is completely wrong about a lack of
story/vision being presented by current leaders: under Jeremy Corbyn the
Labour Party is poised to present a complete re-envisioning of manufacturing
and employment, based upon a Left-exit from the European Union: something
anathema to majority of "educated thinkers" in the U.K.
[https://novaramedia.com/2018/06/24/financial-
globalisation-h...](https://novaramedia.com/2018/06/24/financial-
globalisation-has-been-a-disaster-brexit-gives-us-a-chance-to-resist-it/)

------
polskibus
Why was the title changed? Will all interviews be changed like this?

------
everdrive
This is very interesting, and Curtis has a lot of great insights, but it seems
like moves from accurate insight to hyperbolic and emotional conclusion many
times during the interview.

For example:

"No one is really sure what Trump represents. My working theory is that he’s
part of the pantomime-isation of politics. Every morning Donald Trump wakes up
in the White House, he tweets something absolutely outrageous which he knows
the liberals will get upset by, the liberals read his tweets and go “This is
terrible, this is outrageous,” and then tell each other via social media how
terrible it all is. It becomes a feedback loop in which they are locked
together. In my mind, it’s like they’re together in a theatre watching a
pantomime villain. The pantomime villain comes forward into the light, looks
at them and says something terrible, and they go “Boo!!”. Meanwhile, outside
the theatre, real power is carrying on but _no one is really analysing it._ "

I think this is a great insight, and it's true: but is "no one" paying
attention to any other news? Surely many organizations are provably doing so
every day. Why don't they count as "someone?" Presumably because they don't
fit Curtis' definition of the cultural mainstream. But, Curtis (at least in
the interview) never defines the cultural mainstream. What is inside it, what
is outside it, and why? Would two individuals define the cultural mainstream
the same way? What if my cultural mainstream does include people who are
"analyzing the real power?" It seems that the conclusion based on his insight
is meant to be emotionally powerful and impactful, except that anyone should
be able to think of counterexamples.

He makes this mistake the whole article. Here's another extraordinarily
brilliant insight: (I'm not being sarcastic here, I think this is genius and
he's really onto something)

"I think the old mass democracies sort of died in the early 90s and have been
replaced by a system that manages us as individuals. Because the fundamental
problem is that politicians can’t manage individuals, they need us to join
parties and support them and let them represent us as a group identified with
them. What modern management systems worked out, especially when computer
networks came into being, was that you could actually manage people as groups
by using data to understand how they were behaving in the mass, but you could
create a system that allowed them to keep on thinking that they were
individuals."

He expands on this idea, adding more insight and precision until finally
stumbles into this:

"They’re constantly playing back to you the ghosts of your own behaviour. We
live in a modern ghost story. We are haunted by our past behaviour played back
to us through the machines in its comparison to millions of other people’s
behaviour. We are guided and nudged and shaped by that. It’s benign in a way
and it’s an alternative to the old kind of politics. But it locks us into a
static world because it’s always looking to the past. _It can never imagine
something new._ "

I can't possibly see how this can be true. Creativity is dead? We can't
imagine new things because facebook (or the internet, or modern media) exists?
I'm being a bit dismissive here, but I don't see how he can support this
claim. People are coming up with new ideas all the time.

Again, his insight about how the internet and algorithms allow systems to
cater to and control individuals was genius. But, the conclusion he draws from
that insight is deeply emotional, catastrophic, and not very well constructed.
It sounds like the sort of emotional mistake someone might make in therapy:
"I'll never find another girlfriend again," or "I'll always be socially
unpopular," etc.

~~~
abledon
Yeah hes a good public speaker and story weaver. Its 'exciting' to listen to
his words, even though the subject matter may be bleak. He has a flare for the
dramatic and that sells.

------
baybal2
It is good to note that they passed over Ayn Rand. Many Americans are
surprised when I tell them that so much of Ayn Rand's maxims are a direct copy
and paste from different communist manifestos.

Maligned societies look much like each others once you scrape off their
ideological facades.

Best quote:

 _> I often think that one of the reasons why there is so much pessimism
around, especially among the baby-boomer generation, is that they cannot face
the terrible fact of their own mortality. So what they have to do is project
that onto the whole planet._

~~~
claudiawerner
Which maxims are those? It doesn't help to ccompare societies on the basis of
rhetoric (appearance) rather than logic (essence), so I'm skeptical of your
point.

~~~
baybal2
Then it will be her maxims like "family is legalized prostitution" (literally,
the same quote from either Lenin or Trotsky and her,) statement on "setting
man free from men" and on and on and on with her equating any social process
to material/financial interaction. No wonder, some reasonably suggest that she
might have been an actual cryptocommunist as the "objectivism" she birthed is
strikingly similar to whatever rationalisations communist regimes around the
world made for their existence.

The biggest selling point that second world country regimes had for the masses
was the material abundance out of nowhere, second to "liberation" of common
men from moral norms and duties.

Back in twenties, the unwashed masses did genuinely believe that they are
instating the communist system for their own rational self interest

------
buboard
A lot of his points are echoes of what the economist Mark Blyth uses to point
out the lack of narratives in politics of today. While it is true that people
do respond to narratives, it's questionable how far that goes. Both brexiters
and Trump offered narratives (of some vision of britain and an american
economic rennaissance) , and it did work. Yet the majorities were feeble, not
overwhelming (especially considering the lack of narrative on the other
sides). Even trump could not motivate the US today to go on another space race
like in the 60s. It is thus possible that democracies have transformed away
from the collectivist spirit irrevocably. Indivudualism has been on the rise
since forever, and (apart from an alien invasion) there doesnt seem to be any
major forces countering it. Today's collectivist politics are either
identitarian (the easy solution / instead of endless politics, vote by color)
or mildly globalist, like climate change politics. While both have fierce
supporters and detractors, the main mass of voters says "meh" to both.

Then again, even the mega monolith called China will not be able to control
its well-trained citizenry when the hypergrowth stops. Despite remarkable
progress and optimism, the chinese don't seem to be going for "space races",
instead those megaprojects appear to be more driven by personal ambition of
their leader. Maybe bowling alone is the future of politics, more
personalized, individualized and decentralized societies. The republics of
large narratives may already belong to history and maybe we should stop
expecting the "return of religions".

