Adam Curtis on the dangers of self-expression (2017)

https://thecreativeindependent.com/people/adam-curtis-on-the-dangers-of-self-expression/

by greenie_beans • 2 years ago

218 177 2 years ago

myrloc• 2 years ago

Great read. Thanks for sharing. I am not familiar with Adam Curtis' work but will be looking for more!

000ooo000• 2 years ago

His 4-part Century of the Self series is on Youtube, IIRC. Interesting watch. Hypernormalisation didn't grab me as much.

aporetics• 2 years ago

I think “Can’t Get You Out Of My Head” may be of more interest, topically, to hacker news readers, because it converges on the use of computing as a means of controlling social unrest.

mhh__2• 2 years ago

Hypernormalisation is kind of a miss.

It might be true, but it doesn't work because Curtis himself is hypernormalising — he isn't a journalist, he tells stories and emotions rather than a left-brained truth.

optimalsolver• 2 years ago

As noted below, Century Of The Self would probably be the best starting point:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DnPmg0R1M04

krmboya• 2 years ago

Got started with the series "All watched over my machines of loving grace".

I think more engineers and technologists who build systems that affects people's lives at a large scale need to watch those.

tsunamifury2• 2 years ago

If there wa required viewing for entering big tech. This would be it.

mhh__2• 2 years ago

I'd go as far as saying that he's the only genuinely serious person in his domain (on TV at least) at this point .

Others have recommended "the century of self" for example which is great but I highly recommend his earlier stuff like "Pandora's box" and "The Mayfair set"

untwerp• 2 years ago

+1 for Pandora's Box. The conclusion sums it up nicely https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-FDrA7yUdFc&t=2466s

itsoktocry• 2 years ago

I am not familiar with Adam Curtis' work but will be looking for more!

You're in for a treat, then. He has hours of wonderful documentaries.

https://watchdocumentaries.com/tag/adam-curtis/

brakmic• 2 years ago

Adam Curtis Documentaries on YT: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m25q3it0rDs&list=PLtsknc8NVn...

Animats3• 2 years ago

Huh.

"Computers can see us as large groups, but they’re glum and only aggregate us to sell us stuff. In reality, the computers give great insight into the power of common identity between groups. No one’s using that."

That's from 2017. Unfortunately, that's no longer the case. From ISIL to Q-Anon to MAGA to LGBTxx, finding dispersed but like-minded people and using them to build a political movement is now common. Worse, automated blithering with LLMs works all too well.

"The history of modern self-expression dates from the hippies."

It goes back further than that. Find a copy of "Swing Kids". The "music is the weapon" concept of the 1960s and 1970s was mainstream for a while. Back when being in a band was a big deal. Before Live Nation got to decide who performs where. Now music is just a business. Even rap.

We have a huge problem trying to get society to go in useful directions. People have forgotten how to make democracies work. So we get autocrats.

surfingdino• 2 years ago

It goes even further back to the days of late 19th/early 20th century and artistic communes. The first time someone monetised it on a large scale was Bernays who repackaged Freud's psychoanalysis and sold it to US government and companies. His "torches of freedom" campaign tapped into the women's right movement and desire for self-expression. The tobacco industry was very pleased with the outcomes, because until then women did not smoke cigarettes. Bernays also wrote "Engineering Consent" and "Propaganda", which he renamed as Public Relations after WWII. Curtis has an interesting documentary on the subject.

badpun3• 2 years ago

Exactly. In the US culture specifically, in the XX century before the hippies, there were limited pockets of "self-expression" (discarding previous culture, really) as depicted by Henry Miller, and later the whole Beat Generation. Only after that, this tendency picked up enough steam so that the masses picked it up, in the form the Hippies movement.

chefandy3• 2 years ago

That wasn't true in 2017, either. Though the author makes some interesting points, he conflates catalysts, causes, and cultural movements and just calls it all self-expression, and casually makes some rather eyebrow-raising assertions in the process. This reads more like an idea he was trying to hash it for himself rather than a well-considered piece.

borgdefense2• 2 years ago

That pretty much sums up Adam Curtis to me and I would say I am quite a fan.

He is an amazing propaganda film maker but have to take him with a huge grain of salt.

andybak3• 2 years ago

Is this your first day on planet Adam Curtis?

;)

I love his stuff but you really need to treat it as "thought provoking but utterly lacking in rigour". Treat it as a jumping off point for topics that might be new to you and as a nudge to view things from a different angle.

ChrisMarshallNY• 2 years ago

Cab Calloway was a pretty radical dude, in his day.

The Beats were proto-hippies. Many Hippies arose from the Beat movement.

The Hell's Angels were a bunch of pissed-off military veterans. They were into their own brand of self-expression.

SomeoneFromCA• 2 years ago

Now I got to read all the books, referenced in the article. Will start with Patti Smith. HORSES! HORSES!

keiferski12• 2 years ago

I follow the contemporary art world pretty closely, and a feeling I often get is that it's merely a giant collection of individuals expressing themselves in a way that fits into the market system of galleries, museums, auctions, etc. There are of course artists focused on political causes, but for the most part it is entirely devoid of any centralized ethos or ideal.

While this situation is freeing for the individual artist, I can't help but look at previous eras – say, the Italian Renaissance, or the high point of Ottoman miniature painting [1] – and admire the lack of complete self-expression. Instead, you had a much narrower focus of acceptable work and topics, with the result that artists were all engaged with basically the same art forms and the same topics, across the entirety of the artistic community. For example, both da Vinci and Raphael were painting Madonnas [2], whereas today you'd certainly never have two world-famous painters in direct competition working on the same type of painting – because their value is determined by their individuality and self-expression, not their expertise/skill.

This is a widespread post-modern culture thing and not limited to art, of course, and probably won't go away for a long, long time, or at least until you get a massive society-wide idea like Christianity to take root again.

1. The book "My Name is Red" by Orhan Pamuk is all about this. Great book. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/My_Name_Is_Red

2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Madonna_(art)

squigz3• 2 years ago

you had a much narrower focus of acceptable work and topics, with the result that artists were all engaged with basically the same art forms and the same topics, across the entirety of the artistic community. For example, both da Vinci and Raphael were painting Madonnas

Mightn't this have to do with the fact that most paintings back then were commissioned by rich clients, who were probably competing with each other in some way? "Aha, my painting of Madonna is better than yours!" sort of thing

(I know nothing about art history, so I'd be happy to learn why this is silly :P)

keiferski12• 2 years ago

That might have been a part, but it's more that the idea of self-expression as the prime value in art is mostly a 20th century thing. The falling off of skill, realism, and other similar metrics is also a 20th century thing and largely came from photography and mass manufacturing. There's probably an essay or book out there covering the two intertwining topics, but I can't think of any offhand.

It's also worth noting that artists themselves were more directly competitive. Da Vinci and Michelangelo had a bit of a rivalry, for example:

https://artrkl.com/blogs/news/art-history-feuds-michelangelo...

https://www.historyextra.com/period/renaissance/leonardo-mic...

You can't really imagine this happening between top contemporary artists today. "Gerhard Richter says he's a better painter than Takashi Murakami," is a headline that wouldn't make much sense.

verisimi3• 2 years ago

They didn't have cameras, either, back then...

smokel2• 2 years ago

I'm not sure if this trend will continue for as long as you fear.

Individual expression had had some boosts during the Renaissance, during Romanticism (perhaps due to atheism, as a first response to globalism, and due to scientific discoveries regarding the mind) and again after World War II (perhaps due to the "American Dream" propaganda, and perhaps even as a way to fight communism?).

A strange culture developed where narcissistic art critics praised even more narcissistic artists, supporting the notion that these artists were actually responsible for their amazing ideas.

I sincerely hope that I'm not the only one who is no longer interested in this state of affairs. Aside from some misguided nonsense, the woke cancel culture seems to have provided some welcome balance here, and when the dust settles it may become preferable again to be a modest artist once more.

I for one am not so convinced that individual expression is worthy of so much praise. I'd rather see people care for the weak instead of for the wealthy. Perhaps Hacker News is not the best place to vent such ideas though :)

keiferski12• 2 years ago

I think it'll continue as long as high-end artworks are financial instruments. There is a lot of money invested in the idea that a painting by X well-known artist is worth millions and will continue to be worth millions.

That said, the art market is currently way down, and just anecdotally I feel like a lot of New Money (especially tech money) isn't that interested in art as much as the previous rich oligarchs were, so it may simply become less popular over time.

SebFender2• 2 years ago

If there's one critical thing we need is differences in opinion. Please continue sharing as it forces me to think differently - here and everywhere.

I'm all for helping others, and especially the weakest. But when I see students and other folks with full bellies and ideas considered the "weak" that's when I'm lost.

badpun3• 2 years ago

Individual expression had had some boosts during the Renaissance, during Romanticism (perhaps due to atheism, as a first response to globalism, and due to scientific discoveries regarding the mind) and again after World War II (perhaps due to the "American Dream" propaganda, and perhaps even as a way to fight communism?).

My understanding is that "individual expression" has been with us firmly since Romanticism (it was Beethoven who first promoted the idea that great artists are above kings). The whole "art for art's sake", artist as a high priest of culture etc. - these were all ideas that dominated the XIX century. They kind of withered in XX century after WW1, WW2 and Holocaust, and were replaced by post-modern modes of expression (i.e. we abandon search of the truth via art, because there is no "the" truth).

scruple• 2 years ago

I follow the contemporary art world pretty closely, and a feeling I often get is that it's merely a giant collection of individuals expressing themselves in a way that fits into the market system of galleries, museums, auctions, etc.

Same. Agreed. Where are you finding art elsewhere, then?

keiferski12• 2 years ago

In terms of fine art, I mostly just follow individual artists and read art history books about past art movements / art forms. I don't have any specific suggestions, unfortunately.

Daub3• 2 years ago

We can probably travel the first clear instance of such self expression to the romantic era. Probably Goya who was the Spanish court painter but whose uncomissined black paintings were uniquely personal.

keiferski12• 2 years ago

No I'm sure you can find clear examples of painting purely for self-expression much earlier than Goya. What's new-ish is that the structure of the art world/market is set up to incentivize self-expression.

TheOtherHobbes• 2 years ago

Ironically the "individual self expression" is uniform - a certain kind of tame depoliticised artistic creativity marketed as a hustle. It's there all the way down from Gagosian to Etsy.

And there are good reasons for it, and also good reasons why you'll find ab ex in bank foyers and very expensive homes.

https://news.artnet.com/art-world/artcurious-cia-art-excerpt...

There's always been a tight and complex relationship between art, money, and power, and there's always been a propaganda angle, or at least a statement of public values, to public imagery.

But so far as I know the 20th century was the first time state agencies began inventing new aesthetic traditions for political ends (socialist realism in the USSR, ab ex in the US).

BriggyDwiggs42• 2 years ago

Is it really depoliticized? Much of modern art has a leftist bent and art by oppressed groups is particularly celebrated.

spinach• 2 years ago

It's easy to look back at history and build a simple narrative, but during that time a lot of art was being made even by amateurs and people without much money. And the majority of drawings and paintings that are done are going to be lose to time and only the most well cared for survive. And then there are different types - pottery, basket weaving, etc. In several hundred years, the majority of art created now will be lost and people will be able to create a simple narrative about the art of our era as well.

detourdog• 2 years ago

I see art and religion as completely misunderstood in modern times. Art was the original science of materials. Early creatives simply manipulated the surrounding materials until they achieved mastery and understanding. This is what drives human achievement. Once a repeatable understanding is achieved the development effort morphs into science.

The contemporary art world was birthed from the financial industry. The financial art world can be very different than an individual's study of materials and the surrounding culture.

The financial art world of today may have no relevance to what is deemed art in 2054.

leetrout• 2 years ago

The financial art world of today may have no relevance to what is deemed art in 2054.

People with both money and art will not let that happen

dgellow• 2 years ago

Lots and lots of artists recreate the same pop-culture characters over and over, with their own style. Doesn’t that count?

We even have remakes, reboots, prequels, sequels of movies, books, comics, games. Evolving universes and styles.

olsonjeffery• 2 years ago

Capitalism and atomized market actors have subsumed the feudal patronage arrangements of the ancien regime.

Would you say that you love this current system, but hate the outcomes?

orwin3• 2 years ago

Agree, but i don't think postmodernism can go away. One thing i find fascinating about postmodernism is how antagonistic it is.

As it core, it's deeply anti-metanarrative, and i think that it's main structural characteristic. Which is, in a way, a bit anti-intuition, as we like to understand the world with meta-narratives.

I won't go into politics (basically, all parties create metanarrative, all use postmodernist arguments against each others), but one sign the world is really becoming postmodern is the state of particle physics, where physicists are more and more critical of theories seeking to unite general relativity and quantum mechanics. Once string theory and other "unifying" theories are completely abandoned (probably won't happen, but i'll never know), postmodernism will have become mainstream.

kelseyfrog2• 2 years ago

I don't disagree, but post-modernism's anti-meta-narrative and anti-institution sensibilities are a response to the failings of meta-narratives and institutions as they exist within modernism. Specifically the gaps in meta-narratives and institutions in terms of what and who they don't apply to are self-evident and their mere existence is a powerful critique of modernism.

Post-modernism too can't escape critique embodied today in the constellation of meta-modernism's ideas.

jahewson• 2 years ago

Is it just me or is that not an even grander meta-meta-narrative?

zmgsabst3• 2 years ago

Counter-point:

The countries that adopted postmodernist beliefs collapsed within a few generations because postmodernist ideas are incoherent mindrot incapable of leading to human flourishing — and will be gone in under 150 years from their conception, due to their own defective nature.

In the US, for instance, we’re seeing a rejection of precisely that — and the accompanying collapse of media companies steeped in a postmodern ethos.

ganzuul2• 2 years ago

It uses past art as fuel for its irony and it has run out of fuel.

specialist• 2 years ago

Great comment, thanks.

Yes and: What of all the non-famous artists?

I know nothing about (contemporary) art. But my SO attended Gage Academy, an atelier model org intent on training working artists. (Versus most higher-ed art studies which train degrees in art.)

...but for the most part it is entirely devoid of any centralized ethos or ideal.

The Gage artists give a lot of thought to balancing individual expression and earning a living.

If there is a shared ethos or ideal among this local community of artists, I'd guess it's: how to keep making art.

https://gageacademy.org

lifeisstillgood2• 2 years ago

The “art world” is wildly divorced from the tastes of the majority of people in society - one could uncharitably but not inaccurately characterise the modern art world as a means to arrange for low cost materials to be purchased for vast sums in tax advantageous ways.

If we look at an art form where there is a lot of validation by the majority of people, tv and films, we see people “painting the same thing” all the time because that’s what the “zeitgeist” is interested in

500 years ago there were very few books and the west European zeitgeist was mostly the bible anyway.

glitchc• 2 years ago

This. The modern art world is predominantly a tax evasion and racketeering scheme, designed to transfer assets outside the influence of national and international law.

mymythisisthis2• 2 years ago

If feel that with Youtube you get a touch of the Zeitgeist. There are some milquetoast channels like 'Hoovie's Garage', 'Rich Rebuilds', that tap into what average people are interested in watching.

You can also see the small changes in the medium; everybody at once adopting click-bait titles once one person was successful with it. As soon as a channel gets some success like 'Hand Tool Restoration' then everyone starts doing the same thing.

whilenot-dev2• 2 years ago

Additional to this, there's also the industrialization making tools more affordable, the globalization questioning the hetero-/homogeneous structure of the "zeitgeist", and an exploration into the unlimited possibilities of what an artistic medium could be.

I would say it's even more fascinating that despite the richness in today's world that we can still find some common ground at all.

Neil44• 2 years ago

The tastes of the majority of people in society are for things they have already seen. It does not follow that we should only produce things that are similar to what has gone before.

Almondsetat2• 2 years ago

The “art world” is wildly divorced from the tastes of the majority of people in society

Is this supposed to be a bad thing? Because, if that's what you're saying, then what is your idea of "art"? Something that you can buy, have promptly delivered and hanged on a wall to decorate a space and get compliments from passers-by?

Would you like if all music was something designed to be played on the radio or in malls to decorate musically the environment?

lifeisstillgood2• 2 years ago

Some relevant links / reading

- https://www.rusi.org/publication/understanding-art-market-an...

- https://www.fatf-gafi.org/content/dam/fatf-gafi/reports/Mone...

creer• 2 years ago

Why / how do you admire this lack of self-expression? What's so interesting about that specifically?

lordfrito• 2 years ago

I think the best art is done within constraints -- namely because it forces the artists to be creative within those constraints. Their creativity is what is inspiring.

When anything goes, you get splatters of paint on a canvas, which is much less interesting as it's much less creative. That, and the market forces as you said -- it's not creative, it's just signaling and marketing.

It's not high art, but what I admire about the original Star Wars film is that it was so difficult getting it made -- it took passion, talent, and craftsmanship to make a movie like that possible -- they had to literally invent new ways of doing things for that to be possible. Seeing the same kinds of movies today, where it's all done on computer -- requires less craft, less creativity -- and that's why these modern movies all feel uninspired.

Creativity within limits is where it is at.

whilenot-dev2• 2 years ago

Interesting take on Star Wars, because I think it should rather be used as a counterexample: Star Wars was made during the starting era of the "Blockbuster"-movie[0]. Just after movies like Jaws (1975) were a huge success at the box office two years earlier, studios were willing to throw money at directors to counteract any creative constraints.

Far better examples would have been The Blairwitch Project (1999) or Following (1998).

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blockbuster_(entertainment)#Bl...

coldtea3• 2 years ago

because their value is determined by their individuality and self-expression

Rather by their conformity and tame-expression

keiferski12• 2 years ago

Can you name me five well-known contemporary artists that you would consider conformists?

JohnFen• 2 years ago

Art is creativity expressed under a constraint. That constraint can be the medium, the style, or even something as arbitrary as writing a novel without using the letter 'e'.

I've noticed that most of the truly great works of art (in my opinion) have been works produced under unusually restrictive constraints.

bjornsing• 2 years ago

Curtis expresses disdain for our generation’s reluctance to form groups and struggle for power. But I’m more inclined to think this is a good thing. Power struggle between groups is a zero sum game, while individual freedom is not. It’s true that individual freedom also leads to power structures, and that those can be oppressive to certain groups. But I think that problem is better addressed with individual and universal human rights.

trinsic22• 2 years ago

Yeah, I see some good points in what you just said. I see certain ideologies like patriotism, seem to isolate us into camps, and then people that desire power through these ideals, use those constructs to control populations in each of the countries of the world.

65• 2 years ago

When everyone is individualized and alienated from each other, you wind up with a deep emptiness in a population looking for community and organization to fill the void. This is exactly the methodology Stalin and Hitler took to get people on board with totalitarianism. People are fundamentally social animals who need community and social structures, and making everyone into an individual creates instability and allows for sociopaths to rise to power to fill those gaps.

I suggest reading the book The Origins of Totalitarianism by Hannah Arendt.

badpun3• 2 years ago

Power struggle is always there, the question is only if your group pushes back. If it largely doesn't for a couple decades, you eventually get results like young families cannot afford a basic place to live in 2024 in some of the wealthiest societies in the history of the planet.

SebFender2• 2 years ago

Great read - and exactly my thoughts when I started seeing my kids and all their friends get a bunch of tattoos... Around the pool they all now look the same. Oversimplified, but that made me laugh.

katmai• 2 years ago

are you mental cuz? imagine trying to get everyone connected to the oxygen supply cuz the air is running low, and a bunch of idiots running around knocking into everyone else, start raving about the "dangers of self expression" and miniature painting.

i mean, yes.

Karellen2• 2 years ago

There is another definition of freedom which simply says, “In whose service is perfect freedom.” By giving yourself up to the Lord, you free yourself of the narrow cage of your own desires and your own selfishness.

...and that's where they lost me.

greenie_beans• 2 years ago

i don't think he's evangelizing, that's more meant to be an example.

tsunamifury2• 2 years ago

And even if it’s not it would be like saying all of Lord of the Rings is garbage because I found out Tolkien was a catholic.

justanotherjoe• 2 years ago

Yeah, that is literally doublethink passage. I get the appeal though. Real freedom is hard cause you can make mistakes. There is no guarantee of anything. Being dictated feels safe cause you never have to make your own choices. That's the appeal of things like fascism and why it's really filled with weak men, despite posturing strength. Weak men beg for their freedom to be taken away.

e4325f2• 2 years ago

It doesn't have to be "the Lord". Replace that with running for example and it reflects a quote from the greatest marathon runner of all time Eliud Kipchoge - "Only the disciplined ones in life are free. If you are undisciplined, you are a slave to your moods and your passions."

e4325f2• 2 years ago

It doesn't have to be "the Lord", that's just an example, albeit a poor one. Replace that with running and it reflects a quote from the greatest marathon runner of all time Eliud Kipchoge - "Only the disciplined ones in life are free. If you are undisciplined, you are a slave to your moods and your passions."

Karellen2• 2 years ago

It wasn't just "the Lord", it was that combined with the Doublethink of the wording.

But that quote from Kipchoge does put it in a more comprehensible framing. Thanks.

trinsic22• 2 years ago

I could be reacting from my bias towards individuals, self expression with this response.

I'm not seeing this is a problem of individual self expression. At least in the way it's described in this article, which I understand is to be, we're all over the place expressing ourselves in different ways and we can't come together on singular, or central topics.

I see trends, in art, specifically movies where the writers are definitely clued-in on the troubles of the time.

I think the actual problem is politics itself, which is kind of an artificial construct that puts people together for causes that are not their own, or even not directly supporting the common causes.

Because political movements end up getting co-opted by people that have vested interests in profiting off of, and controlling society for some specific benefit that does represent the will of the people.

I see local Grass-roots movements that are not politically motivated by some particular political party to be more representative of the truth and moving toward actual resolution for societies problems.

Maybe I'm talking about the same thing I just don't like the idea of politics itself, at least in the perspective of a party based system.

A great example of this is EFF podcast: Open Source Beats Authoritarianism [0]

[0] https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2024/02/podcast-episode-open-s...

jgalt212• 2 years ago

a wise man once said, art without aesthetic appeal is just commentary.

backtoyoujim• 2 years ago

"Capitalism is about self-expression" is a garbage statement that made me wish I hadn't read that far into the article.

hi-v-rocknroll• 2 years ago

Hyperindividualism lends itself to the footguns of narcissism, entitlement, and drama while diminishing empathy, solidarity, and community.

jongjong• 2 years ago

Our system is characterized by increasingly divergent experiences due to fundamental problems in its design. Self-expression is how we can fix that. Unfortunately many parts of the system are working to suppress self-expression and hence prevent the fix.

Self-expression is only dangerous for the individual who possesses it. For society, it is always a positive. Contrarians are the heroes of free society, this is true regardless of how vile their views are. They are essential for maintaining the right level of chaos to have a free, functioning society. Extreme contrarians define the boundary for freedom within which everyone else can roam without fear. Contrarians are a minority by definition so they are not a threat to a functioning society.

Self-expression and individualism are critical because it's the best mechanism that humans have to prevent their political systems from declining into totalitarianism and poverty. Without self-expression, we get total compliance, an entire society fully compliant to all the whims of the elite; if the elites are good, then lucky for you, until the next regime change. If the elites are bad, then you're in for a miserable time. Not to mention that the people who seek power and who are willing to take irrational risks to attain it aren't usually the friendliest bunch on average.

With self-expression and individualism, society can protect itself against idol worship. The intentions of the elite doesn't matter as much because they can be easily replaced.

Without self-expression, society will fall into one delusion after another... By the time it wakes up from its current delusion, it will be too late, the backlash will be so sudden and massive that it will guarantee that it will fall victim to yet another delusion in the opposite extreme.

navaed01• 2 years ago

I highly recommend Adam Curtis’s documentaries for anyone who has not watched.

kemitchell• 2 years ago

I recommend only with three serious reservations: Viewers should be well aware of the Kuleshov effect. Viewers should understand that Curtis is highly selective in what he takes and puts together. Viewers should carefully consider any decision to watch while under the influence of substances that tend to make you suggestible or impressed.

The amount of archival footage Curtis riffles through for his pieces is an impressive part of the story of his storytelling. It should also be its own implicit warning. The runtime of the footage he watched and did not include dwarfs the runtime of any single piece of his you might see. To be well read on any particular event, much less time period, that he jaunts through would take a stack of books and a lot of serious attention.

zoogeny4• 2 years ago

I want to disagree with him and I want to agree with him in almost equal measure, I think that is ambivalence. My cynicism says that people like him, people who create psychologically dense pieces for the BBC, are actually on the side of conformity. I've felt since I was young that we are being sold our revolutions. They've firmly commoditized the opposition.

I'm tired of the politicization of everything. Even in this piece, there is an implicit call to political action underneath his attempted reframing of individualism. He wants us to see the power in being a member of a group. It is some kind of call to group-think, to pretend you are an individual and yet still act within a political body seeking power.

The real question I have is much deeper. Sapolsky has been on the podcast circuit pushing his new book that insists we have no free will whatsoever. Žižek claims that we are locked inside our ideologies. But I keep going back to ancient Greek philosophical ideas that entreat me to "know thyself".

I heard on a podcast recently that Sartre's lament that "hell is other people" is best interpreted as the observation that our instinct to mimic others invades our own freedom. When our peer group expresses strong virtues we are pressured to conform by threat of ostracization. This leads to anxiety as our own sense of virtue may be misaligned according to the group.

Yet I have a growing belief that finding my own virtue, something that completely originates within myself independent of external influence, is the real key. And Curtis here is suggesting that technology can be used to that purpose, to unite like-minded individuals based on their genuine virtues.

I suppose it is the power-seeking aspect of this piece that sits poorly with me. That I would (or should) seek other like-minded people for the purpose of exerting some political influence. It seems to me that just identifying and remaining true to virtues that I feel originate within myself is hard enough. To also consider the political consequences of grouping up with others and combining our resources to affect societal change is more than I want.

It reminds me of the conversation Jesus is said to have had with Pontius Pilate. He asks Jesus if he is trying to raise an army to overthrow the Roman order and Jesus responds that the Kingdom he is interested isn't of this Earth. There is something to that religious language which I think we've forgotten.

perfmode3• 2 years ago

i wholeheartedly resonate with that quest for inner origination.

thanks for sharing

keane• 2 years ago

I shared a similar impression. I think there's a Tim Keller talk somewhere that mentions "being skeptical but not being skeptical enough". You put to words quite well a frustration I had with Curtis' take, though I enjoyed it as well.

inbetween• 2 years ago

Beautifully said! However, in my experience, finding your own virtue requires interacting with others, and adjusting our view depending on how it went. Ie it takes both the grouping with others, and the inner quest.

And once you're grouped with others, why not interact also group to group, rather than just individual to individual, and profit from both higher order learning and influencing the world -- which I think is similar to what you describe as "power seeking aspects".

That said, the piece about finding "like-minded individuals" remains elusive, if one is serious about pursuing one's own values and way of being in the world.

lukeasrodgers• 2 years ago

You may enjoy CS Lewis’ Abolition of Man, and Alisdair MacIntyre’s After Virtue. Nietzsche too but I reckon you are familiar with his work. Not necessarily endorsing these books fully, just sharing some things that bounce around in my head alongside some of the ideas you mention.

zoogeny4• 2 years ago

I've heard of "After Virtue" but I wasn't familiar with its argument. From a brief skim of the Wikipedia article, it appears aligned in the direction I've been meandering for the last couple of years (in subject and reference at least, perhaps not its conclusions). Specifically, Aristotelian virtue ethics is a subject that is high on my list to more deeply investigate. I got about half way through Nicomachean Ethics a couple of years ago before setting it aside and moving on to other subjects. Even the sketch of his critique of Nietzsche seems to resonate with my own recent thoughts.

arduanika• 2 years ago

Adam Curtis? Commoditized?? You clearly haven't seen this short clip:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x1bX3F7uTrg

encapsulating his work.

rexpop3• 2 years ago

Yes, yes, and it was Marx himself who said the following in his 1852 "Eighteenth Brumaire":

Men make their own history, but they do not make it as they please; they do not make it under self-selected circumstances, but under circumstances existing already, given and transmitted from the past. The tradition of all dead generations weighs like a nightmare on the brains of the living.

I think it's an inarguable fact that our values are majorly, if not entirely, influenced by "regional" culture and ideology. I'm not sure there is any space "inside myself" that hasn't been reached and adulterated by both the lies and earnest claims of others. All my direct empirical observations are shelved on a (somewhat) common ontology.

Zizek gives me the creeps, but I think you've been subject to too much anti-collective propaganda and are locked inside your conservative ideology. The early Christians were not radical individualists, they were a collective of idolotrous dianysian Judean.

They've firmly commoditized the opposition.

Yes, this is called "recuperation", per Wikipedia:

In the sociological sense, recuperation is the process by which politically radical ideas and images are twisted, co-opted, absorbed, defused, incorporated, annexed or commodified within media culture and bourgeois society, and thus become interpreted through a neutralized, innocuous or more socially conventional perspective.

zoogeny4• 2 years ago

you've been subject to too much anti-collective propaganda and are locked inside your conservative ideology

I'm not so sure about that. In fact, most recently I've been consuming a lot of Walter Benjamín and Hannah Arendt - and if they aren't considered progressive then I'm not sure what could be. I've also been trying to catch up on American Pragmatism from the likes of Peirce, James and Dewey (and a bit of Rorty too I suppose) - again, about as progressive a bunch as I think you could reasonably ask for. I would also argue that both Žižek and Sartre fit into the progressive.

But it is fair to say that I'm balancing that out nowadays with the likes of Kierkegaard and even Spinoza. My actual opinion is that an atheistic existentialism (in the form of guys like Sartre and Foucault) went too far. Exactly as Curtis laments in this post, I feel that we've lost some of the enchantment that we used to have. If a yearning for the re-introduction of that enchantment, and perhaps letting go a little of the seeking of political power, is being "locked inside [...]conservative ideology", then I will accept that charge.

I believe we can desire a kind of collectivism that is separate from the desire to wield political power. It just so happens that almost all modern collectivist philosophical theory (that I am familiar with) is centered around the desire to affect social change through political power.

austin-cheney• 2 years ago

You are never more free than your availability to offend other people. Everything else is anti-stoic posturing to retain tangible and social stature.

throwaway924385• 2 years ago

I can’t imagine a more tedious definition of freedom

Adam Curtis on the dangers of self-expression (2017)

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