Imaginary Worlds

The origins of the making of a new consensus often seem to be clouded and obscure. Like a dove out of the magician’s top hat it appears as if from nowhere. The filmmaker Adam Curtis specialises in uncovering the secrets and the cast of characters who have rather miraculously cooperated in the new creation.

Last night on BBC 2 was the first part of his new film, entitled, The Trap – What Happened to Our Dream of Freedom? His previous films have included, The Century of the Self, highlighting the amalgamation of Freud’s psychoanalysis, advertising and modern consumer capitalism; and The Power of Nightmares, painting a picture of those terrible twins, neo-conservatism and global jihad.

In the current offering he brings together:

• Cold war paranoia

• Game theory, the work of the mathematician John Nash

• The economic/psychological theories of Friedrich von Hayek

• The anti-psychiatry of R D Laing

• Margaret Thatcher

The result as I watched it was the devastating realisation of how apparently disparate ideas, thinkers, and intentions can combine to produce a new paradigm. A new consensus that magically fits into the gap that already existed in our minds. Is the ground prepared by our constant grumbling, our constant minor dissatisfactions?

Our notion of freedom is heavily coloured by the wild (and wide) frontier of American legend. When we hear President Bush referring to freedom we are right to feel uneasy because it is a usage stuffed full of dangerous allusions. Yes, the wild frontier, thousands of years of philosophical tinkering, and yes, American hegemony: ingredients that Adam Curtis unpacks for our enlightenment.

Last night was the first of three programmes–thank you Adam Curtis.


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