Home | Business News | Browse by Publication | A | Arena Magazine

'The Trap': how freedom took over the world.

Article Excerpt
I have been watching a remarkable documentary series shown on BBC2 in Britain earlier this year: 'The Trap: What Happened to Our Freedom?' Made by Adam Curtis, whose previous work includes 'The Power of Nightmares', about Al-Qaida, and the outstanding four-parter, 'The Century of the Self', it is a real pity that it is unlikely to be broadcast in Australia in the near future.

'The Trap' is an account of how a particular theory of human nature has so successfully seeped into the cultures, traditions and institutions of the English-speaking world that it is almost impossible to consider the world in any other way. Essentially, it is about neo-liberal economics forming a partnership with game theory--the theory made famous in A Beautiful Mind as the work of the tortured genius John Nash--to forever banish from our minds the idea that altruism is anything other than a marketing tool. Watching it, I was reminded of reading Max Weber's The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism as an undergraduate. I was amazed at the breadth of Weber's thinking: how he could pull together strands of historical, economic and sociological accounts of the world and produce a coherent story. Even if the details weren't always correct, it was a story that made sense and showed that studying sociology was worthwhile. In a similar fashion, this is a series about the way ideas are fundamental to how we view society and live in the world. And it gives a lot of academic sociology a run for its money in the way it shows us how ideas and concepts can be conveyed in fascinating, multi-mediated ways.

The series is in three parts, each linked by the idea of freedom and each working within a historical chronology. Like the 'Century of the Self', the narrative operates through voice-over and interviews, linked by short edits and jump-cuts. One brief scene that stands out is of a man being pulled back into a building from a balcony by a group of soldiers. Ominously, when the french doors are slammed behind him, a bullet from inside shatters the glass doors....

View this article FREE - Now for a Limited Time, try Goliath Business News
Free for 3 Days!