GENIUS FORUMS

Adam Curtis is an interesting BBC TV maker who made some way above average documentaries which raises a lot of questions about our society, culture, politics and media, or should anyway, in an age where many have stopped asking these kind of things.

Here's a recent interview with links to his documentaries online.

Here's additional material.

Some quotes in case you want to know if it's worth your trouble of clicking

what bloggers are is bullies. The internet has removed a lot of constraints on them. You know what they're like: they're deeply emotional, they're bullies, and they often don't get out enough. And they are parasitic upon already existing sources of information - they do little research of their own.

So what we're living through is a period of intense conformity. It is the great paradox of the age.

This was pointed out to me once by a man who ran a focus group, and it's the reason I made The Trap.

He said, "Everyone out there" - and we're looking through the mirror - "thinks they are an individual. But actually more and more people are exactly the same. Not only in how they dress, but how they feel about themselves and about each other." They talk in the same language.

And I researched it, and it's true - he's completely right. We live in an age where we think we're completely individualistic, but actually, we're more conformist than we have been since the 1960s.

We should be saying to people "I'm going to take you out of yourself and show you something you haven't thought of, which is either awesome, or incredible, or will inspire you". But we don't. We've instead an equivalent of a Victorian book of etiquette. We've simply reinforced those simple definitions of what is ordered and disordered.

Groups have done incredible things. What's strange about this is that we have a group system here, but it's not doing anything. It's not changing the world. It's not taking the place of old views. It's stopped.

What people suffer from is being trapped within themselves - in a world of individualism everyone is trapped within their own feelings, trapped within their own imaginations. Our job as public service broadcasters is to take people beyond the limits of their own self, and until we do that we will carry on declining.

Media as Shaman? Here's where I part with Adam, I think the medium itself, no matter the content, has an import role to play in the trap, the seduction and implosions. But the moment Adam realizes that he has to quit the job he loves and believes in and start doing some real philosophy.

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Sure, these "public service broadcasters" are funded (their paychecks) by government handouts, grants, foundations, and the corporations -- at least it is this way in the USA. A tax deduction is in the pipeline for the IRS (big brother).

Of what quotes provided, this Adam goes on about is pretty much the way it is... just don't bite the hand that feeds you.

It's like what David Quinn's comments about the young policeman and religious fundamentalist - you come to the fork (the split) in the road - the high road or the low road? The wide road (worldly pleasures, life of ease, comfort) or the narrow road (integrity).

The thing about the policeman and the religious guy tho is they don't work for a paycheck (in the corporate-business sense anyways) one is a government mooch (taxpayer handout) and the other a spiritual mooch (offering plate-tithe).

Adam? He's gonna keep the media paycheck (payoff) and continue to be smug, do as i say not as i do...



Tomas (the tank)
VietNam veteran - 1971

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In any case, as Dr. Freud noted, you can talk to neurotics forever without getting anywhere. Mr. Curtis' message may resonate with a rational mind, but its the majority that selects the leadership and buys the crap the mass media sells.

The Right worries about Big Brother, but broader perspective of the world shows us its time to watch out for transnationals like Ma Bell. She, after all, owns the government, and hence the IRS. Big Brother is her boy, and works for her.

As for morality- whose morals? The Stoics had the highest moral standard yet devised, yet I dont see anyone asking that we use it to take the moral ground? And why not? cause sheeple are too fucking stupid to actually get around to reading it. They have been told by the current owners of the moral high ground that Stoicism is not attainable. And since they are too stupid to find the time between football and beer to read it, the received authority is correct.

Think about it. Christianity is based on the Passion Play. And what a good move that was. It has sold really well; an all time hit. Everyone has a bible, but nobody has to actually read the damn thing.