Blairwatch Exclusive: Interview with Adam Curtis
Following on from the earlier syonopses of The Trap which you can read here and here, we have managed to get a short interview with Adam Curtis so we could discuss some of the issues he raises in the films. Here is the transcript.
Blairwatch: Okay, can I start by talking about the name, why The Trap?
Adam Curtis: Well, basically what the series is trying to say is that what we think of as the natural order, and that somehow this is what we call freedom, is actually a particular version of freedom and also a narrow version of freedom and by assuming that it is the only version of freedom we have led ourselves into somewhat of a trap. That is what it's about.
Blairwatch: I see, and what would you say the difference was between freedom then, say, pre Cold War and freedom now as we perceive it?
Adam Curtis: Well, the last film in the series goes and examines that, it looks at the other ideas of freedom. The point is that freedom is not just one particular narrow idea. What I'm trying to argue is that we have adopted, both our politicians and ourselves to an extent a narrow economic idea of what freedom means and that's based on the idea that the individual is free once his or her wants or needs are simply satisfied and is free just do what he or she wants.
Other Ideas of freedom are actually about changing the world both individually or collectively and transforming it and having the power to do that which is freeing yourself from the constraints, I don't know, scarcity or political oppression, all sorts of things. But really there are many, many different ideas, and much wider ideas of freedom. That's what I was trying to say.
Blairwatch: Would you say that politicians are consciously trying to limit freedoms using Game theory formula?
Adam Curtis: No, I don't agree with that at all. I don't think politicians are trying to limit our freedoms. What I think is that politicians have adopted a model of human beings and a model of how human beings behave in society which is a very limiting and narrow one and that, through unforeseen consequences, has led them into this rather limited world that we have today.
No, I don't think they are trying to control us at all. Politicians always try to manage things but I don't think that they're trying to limit our freedom. If anything, the irony of all this is that freedom is the mantra of our time, from Mrs Thatcher through to Tony Blair as I illustrate at the front of the films, they talk about freedom. And I think, to give them credit, to give them the benefit of the doubt, they genuinely do believe that they are going to achieve freedom, but what I'm trying to say is without realising it, because they haven't examined the roots of the ideas that they are using, it's a very narrow idea of freedom and I think actually it probably may have a purpose and function in times or war but now in a much more complicated world it's actually leading them to the very opposite of freedom which is a limiting thing.
For example, if you take the present government's obsession with mathematical managerial techniques, they adopted that because they thought it was an alternative to arrogant, elitist bureaucrats and others in power telling us what to do. They simply thought that this would be an objective system because it would be a way of defining what people should do for the greater good of the National Health Service or education, and then they could set those targets and that would be it.
In fact what happened was that it led to a very narrow and limited view of what they were doing but they genuinely thought it was going to be a better way of managing. Really what I'm saying in these films is that today's politicians have a very limited historical understanding of the ideological roots of the ideas they are dealing with. That's the real problem with New Labour. What's really fascinating about New Labour is it's a-historical. I think one of the reasons for that it so much wanted to define itself in the early 1990s as being against Old Labour so therefore anything that was historical was 'bad' but in the process of doing that they have neglected to look at the roots of the models of society and the models of human beings that they adopted and by doing that and just assuming that this is the natural way human beings are they've led themselves into a trap. That's what I'm arguing.
Blairwatch: So what would you make of, say, when Tony Blair talks of his third way, for example? How would you see that?
Adam Curtis: In the film I portray him as a sort of tragic character torn between two ideas of freedom; one is that idea of freedom which is the narrow one which the first two films of the series talk about which he and Gordon Brown adopted when they came to power which is a narrow economic vision of you and me.
They see us as primarily motivated by our own self interest, we may have a bit of sympathy for our nearest and dearest but that's about it - we don't have wider concerns. That's the model of freedom that he adopted. Blair is a very complicated character, obviously. He hankers after a wider, grander ideal. If you take him at his own words, he wants to spread freedom around the world, and that is another kind of freedom, and it's a revolutionary idea of freedom; it's saying "I can free people from tyrants and despots".
The only problem, which is what the last film says, is that when they then try and do that, the only thing they can offer, whether it be the Russian people or the Afghani people or Iraqi people, is a narrow economic idea of freedom which has no meaning or purpose if you are a complicated society divided along nationalist religious and political religious lines.
The thing that I find fascinating about the whole Iraq venture, which is really what I look at in the last film, is the way that they went into Baghdad with an economic plan which basically said that you get rid of all the elitist institutions that have ruled this society and spontaneously then people will rise up as these individuals in the marketplace. That was the idea, they had no other idea, and that's a very narrow idea of freedom. I see Blair's tragedy as a man who wanted to try and change the world but the sort of freedom he then tried to bring with him was too narrow and limited to cope with the complexities.
Blairwatch: In the films you suggest that this narrow idea of freedom and the economic theories used stem from game theory…
Adam Curtis: They stem from right wing economists like Friedrich Hayek, that's the sort of utopian vision as an alternative to communism. What Game theory provides is what seemed to be scientific proof that this vision would work because what Hayek is saying is instead of having planning we should just allow people to behave as they wanted and out of that would come order. That was his vision. What Game theory suggested was, well, that's true… and that's what I try and say.
Blairwatch: Game theory, starting as a mathematical formula seemed to be spread into so many other areas of research, from genetics to economics to war planning etc.
Adam Curtis: It seems to offer an explanation of how you can have complexes, create stability without having to have elites that guide them and so it explains how the natural world creates stability.
Blairwatch: And were there other Game theories that didn't assume that people were naturally selfish?
Adam Curtis: Well, the real problem with Game theory is that its fundamental assumption is that human beings are self interested. I mean they only did that to make their models work to begin with. People like Nash (who was one of the originators of all this) didn't actually assume that that's what people were like; he made that assumption in order to make his mathematical models work. What then shifted towards economists is they began to assume that really is how human beings are and actually in my second film I show that Nash has now recanted or believed that things are much more complicated than that.
Blairwatch: Yes, I was fascinated by that.
Adam Curtis: It was a shift towards that assumption, but the really interesting story, I always felt the key to all this is that when they tried to play on these games with the secretaries at the Rand corporation, really early on I think in something like the early 1950s, none of them behaved as one predicted, they just co-operated. And actually, there have been people subsequent to this who have done research in Game theory where you that if you play it over and over again (particular games) people very quickly learn that co-operation is by far the most efficient way of doing things.
But no, the fundamental assumption that Game theory brought with it was that people are self interested. This is what I'm trying to show in these films; that behind our everyday world are certain basic assumptions about human beings and the fundamental one is that we are what economists call 'rational utility maximisers' and we pursue rationally what we want, and that's it.
Blairwatch: When this was brought into economics, I think it's in the second film, you mention the perceived breakdown of the British public services. What would you attribute to this perceived breakdown other than the obvious financial stresses that were around at the time in the 70s?
Adam Curtis: There was obviously an economic crisis in the 70s which was leading to chaos, but also within that failure of that post war project, people had no goals any longer in their bureaucracies and they began to pursue their own self interest. The question then is whether that then means that you then create a world totally based on self interest because you think that's what human beings are like or whether actually things are much more complicated than that but if you actually have an organisation where morale is low people do become rather self-interested because they haven't got any one else.
Blairwatch: So would you say that we were (or are) sleepwalking into a nightmare or waking up from one?
Adam Curtis: No, I think you're trying to put words in my mouth…
Blairwatch: Oh no, I'm not, really…
Adam Curtis: What I'm trying to do in these films is show that behind the way you think about yourself and the way those who govern you think about you, there are ideas. There are specific ideologies… What I'm really trying to say is that the world we experience both personally and politically today is not the natural order. Many people think that, but maybe they think "oh this is it, we got there" because there aren't alternatives, and what I'm trying to say is "no, hang on. The way we think and the way we feel and the way those who govern us think and feel comes from very specific ideologies" and I was trying to dramatically share those conclusions.
Blairwatch: I see, and how would we get out of the trap?
Adam Curtis: That's not my job. I'm not a politician. My job simply to as best I can to analyse and dissect and show people, make people step back and look at it and hopefully people will start to think what are the alternatives, but that's not my job, you know I'm as much in the trap as everyone else.
Blairwatch: I was just wondering if you had an idea of where we went from here.
Adam Curtis: Personally I think there is just a mood around at the moment of disquiet. Slightly incoherent, at the back of people's minds, there is this "is this all there is, is this it?" and they're beginning to question that and I'm just trying to give a little more articulation to that.
Blairwatch: Thank you very much for your time.
Excellent, really excellent
Excellent, really excellent work.
The man is as mixed up and
The man is as mixed up and confused as the rest of them.
"Them" being whom?ÂÂ
"Them" being whom?
Adam's fundamentally
Adam's fundamentally confused. Sure, business elites and politicians use the word freedom in the restricted sense he's talking about - bascially the freedom to make a profit and exploit people and resources. This is sometimes referred to as 'the fifth freedom,' within the context of Anglo-American imperialism. The rest of the population have a slightly broader conception that includes their hard won civil liberties, control over work, access to resources, social justice and equality.
Game theory has virtually no significance in explaining major changes in global capitalism. The ideologies he's referring to are really just a reflex of economic changes. These changes have nothing to do with 'RD Laing' or John Nash, with game theory or the break down of post war bueraucracies. The roots of the changes he's talking about can be found in the power of corporations and in deregulated financial markets, along with the role of debt and military force in maintaining a global order amenable to US investors. Planning for this goes right back to the end of World War II.
Wake up Adam, this world is ruled by the violence of the powerful, with 'respectable' intellectuals providing the predictable apologetics. Only the masters define freedom in your terms, and always have. So what.
Interesting interview,
Interesting interview, interesting series of programmes.
One point that occurred to me whilst watching is that the theorists who contructed these ideas, specifically about the (im)possibilty of identifying "the public good" versus self-interest, seem to have overlooked the possibilty that they themselves were (unconciously) motivated by their own self-interest. For example, the chap (I forget his name) who was refering to politicians with a clear idea of "the public good" as <i>zealots</i>, is <i>himself</i> a zealot, but doesn't seem to realise it.
I also think that it's not entirely wise to take politicians at their word when they talk about spreading freedom and democracy.
"That's not my job. I'm
"That's not my job. I'm not a politician." Sorry but I really don't think that today's bunch of politicians are going to think about the wider meanings of freedom and how they can be realised. Today's politicians work within the context of the political and economic forces that exist. They accept the definitions of freedom defined by those forces, and spouted by The Times or the Daily Mail. They're afraid to stand up and say "there are other kinds of freedom". It is up to the rest of us (including artists like Adam) to take this forward, because politicians aren't going to do it.
I also think that Adam gives too much emphasis to Game Theory. The ubiquity of the models in Game Theory is a symptom, not a cause. The assumptions in these particular models are the same as those of strong political and economic forces in our society today: that competition is good, that cooperation doesn't work or leads to stifling bureaucracy. These models are therefore accepted, even though they don't fit with a lot of what happens in the real world and doesn't help us to solve pressing problems like climate change. Elinor Ostrom and her school have developed other models that include some elements of cooperation and these models can also be thought of as "Games" because there are various players involved with their own agendas. She has shown that they do fit certain circumstances in the real world, eg where different players are competing for water resources but come to realise that they need to cooperate to ration the water before they use all the water up. We need to think more about these various types of models (or Games) where people collaborate and take collective action and not assume that all Games involve dog-eats-dog competition.
I have to say, It's great
I have to say, It's great that Blairwatch got this exclusive, but I tend to agree with some of the criticism over at Medialens about this.
Personally, I only watched the first programme, and that was enough. I think that Curtis manages to use a broad impressionists brush to paint a reductionist pictured. This was evidenced for me in his wish to drag anybody who has been in any way influnced by Game Theory into the fray. I speak particularly of Laing, who wrote in a field of which I have some knowledge, and who I have found to be very insightful. Someone once told me that if I wanted to get a sense of how distorted the media is then I should look for news articles about an event or topic where I was there or with which I am very familiar. The degree of distortion or variance of understanding found in those instances tells you a great deal about the general level of distortion or lack of understanding. I was disappointed in this case.
In all the work I have seen by Curtis, he seems to like to present some sort of 'grand narrative'; the key to it all. As interesting or inspiring as his work is, life is actually far more complicated and cultural change can't be reduced to a single causative element.
excellent interview. for
excellent interview. for we americans, the first two episodes of THE TRAP are on YouTube:
here are the links:
episode one: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YOEB05_3-p0
episode two: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=srPp0-Ybv8Q
Curtis is wrong. The
Curtis is wrong. The politicans ARE limiting (and HAVE limited - quite strongly) our freedoms.
I am flabbergasted he said otherwise!
Politicians,
Politicians, unchecked, will always try to limit our freedoms.
The whole basic principle of democracy is about PEOPLE participation to make sure that they aren't able to do this - or at least that any such moves are only temporary and in the public's interest (NOT the same as "the public interest", which usually means "the government's interest").
One of the biggest ironies of our time is that Blair's government sought to overthrow the Ba'ath regime in Iraq whilst implementing Nu Labour in a similar totalitarian way (minus the violence - media pressure seems to be enough) here in the UK.
I think Curtis is probably trying to use an elaboarate set of mirrors to convince people that Tony Blair's Nu Labour means well, but just gets it wrong in implementation. Thanks to Blairwatch for exposing "the trap"
Curtis' Trap convincingly
Curtis' Trap convincingly makes a mockery of the Post-Ideologues. As for Blair: WATCH THAT MAN!
Nice interview, but I wish
Nice interview, but I wish you'd asked him why he changed the name of the series from the initially announced "Cold Cold Heart". The original synopsis said that the series would be about "the death of altruism". Well, I've not seen part three yet, but the series hasn't given me anything that suggests Curtis is especially concerned with altruism. The idea behind "The Trap" appears to be the unwitting results of politicians enacting well-intended(?) but ultimately unsuccessful policies that are based on an oversimplified and often plain wrong model of human behaviour. Was the initial announcement simply a mistake by the beeb or did Curtis change course during production?
I would not take any of his
I would not take any of his documentaries lightly, nor do I think that he is confused; there may be incongruities in his 'big picture' but I think his reluctance to tell the politicians how to do there job (evident in the interview) is an acknowledgement of the fact that, as a critic, his job is far easier than that of the criticised. Indeed, if Curtis wanted to change the world, he would dumb down his work so that even the voting masses would respond to the message - it's not like he hasn't got a cogent grasp of of PR!
As for Game Theory, it is intrinsic to any system of indiviuals with motivation. To say that the leading theorists at that time were 'influential' is perhaps my biggest gripe but Game Theory is key to economics and human geography; every politician has a working knowledge of it and how much it has acheived as a simplification of systems. Curtis rightfully attacks this simplification when it is applied to a nation's constituents and their motivations.
Adam Curtis may also be doublethinking a little when he says "benefit of the doubt" above, but I just see that as a little joke which further ingratiates him to me.
Jackpoupart@yahoo.com
I feel that it is important
I feel that it is important we have people prepared to analyse and critique what is going on. There is such little talk of ideology now, but with films and analysis like this it can be a start in the direction of creating something new. For an alternative future- breaking out of "the trap", analysis of the present in light of the past, however flawed and brush stroke the arguments, is vital. I for one feel a sense of relief to have some deeper ideological debate in the public domain. Thankyou Adam Curtis and everyone who is thinking and debating these issues!
A whole number of people on
A whole number of people on this forum seem to argue that politicians haven't got time for this intellectual discours or that this is all irrelevant because everything is ruled by economics anyhow. I think they are wrong.
Firstly, I believe that politicians consciously search for ideas and a worldview to stabilise and clarify their intuitions and simplify them in a way so that they can be used for policy making.
But secondly and maybe more importantly, I think that politicians are inevitably and strongly influenced by the zeit-geist. And the zeit-geist can be defined exactly by the kind of intellectual arguments Adam Curtis has been putting forward in this series.
I believe philosophers are capable of intuitively foreseeing to some degree what the future will be like. To what extent they actually guide the social processes (as Adam Curtis is saying) or whether they simply predict them is a matter of debate. To me it is more a process of mutually influencing change for which you can never identify a clear causal chain of events. In any case, you can pinpoint the relevant ideas and mechanisms that are at work, as this series exemplifies.
I watched the series with great interest and fascination. Adam Curtis shows a very underestimated side of why politicians act the way they act. He demonstrates the complexities and the multiple interests of politicians (and of every other human being for that matter), It makes you understand why there is no simplistic unidimensional explanation of why Blair went to Iraq for example.
watch all three episodes of
watch all three episodes of THE TRAP by clicking <a href="http://adamcurtistrap.blogspot.com">HERE</a>
Here is a summary of Adam
Here is a summary of Adam Curtis' worldview, taken from the following interview: http://www.errolmorris.com/content/interview/believer0406.html This may help to explain the viewpoint that shapes his work.
"Where people do set out to have conspiracies, they don’t ever end up like they're supposed to. History is a series of unintended consequences resulting from confused actions, some of which are committed by people who may think they're taking part in a conspiracy, but it never works out the way they intended."
I tend to agree with Curtis and prefer this nuanced POV rather than the conception the idea that people can somehow consciously manipulate all of the variables of something as complex as society. Time and again experience demonstrates the opposite to be true.
This is my favorite documentary by Curtis so far, it really seems to be a distillation of all his work to this point. He does a wonderful job of interpreting so many issues and attempting to capture the Zeitgeist of the times.
Politicians are neither
Politicians are neither trying to fence our freedom nor involved in strange and hidden conspiracies. They're just trying (in general) to do their best. And that's precisely the most worrying and fearful question. Both Bush and Blair (like our unforgettable clown, Mr. Aznar) are comitted to spread democracy all over the world. Their concerns aren't about natural resouces (say, petrol, gas, etc.) but about ethics. And this kind of comittments are, always, the origin of totalitarism.
Coud be that Mr. Curtis give as an overview too simple when dealing with topics as complex as game theory. But you must think that the Blair's or Bush's insight about this theories is not equally narrow as Mr. Curtis one, but probably the tiniest. And in spite of that, they behave (and take decisions) like masters.
The real fact is that they're acting from underlying ideas may be without knowing it; Mr. Curtis goal is to uncover them.
(I'm sorry if any grammatical mistake has slipped up)