The Trap: What Happened To Our Dream Of Freedom? (Episode 2) - The Lonely Robot

Adam Curtis continues his series of films explaining the origins of our contemporary, narrow and limited idea of freedom.

This episode tells the story of how, in the 1990s, politicians from both right and left tried to apply an idea of freedom modelled on the freedom of the market to all other areas of society.

Behind it was a scientific model of ourselves as simplified robots, rational calculating beings whose behaviour and even feelings could be predicted by numbers. Out of this came today’s systems of management - from performance targets to the new categories of mental disorder, and reading the genetic codes buried inside us.

view complete program description here.

The Trap: What Happened To Our Dream Of Freedom? (Episode 1) - F&#k You Buddy

Individual freedom is the dream of our age. It’s what our leaders promise to give us, it defines how we think of ourselves and, repeatedly, we have gone to war to impose freedom around the world. But if you step back and look at what freedom actually means for us today, it’s a strange and limited kind of freedom.

Politicians promised to liberate us from the old dead hand of bureaucracy, but they have created an evermore controlling system of social management, driven by targets and numbers. Governments committed to freedom of choice have presided over a rise in inequality and a dramatic collapse in social mobility. And abroad, in Iraq and Afghanistan, the attempt to enforce freedom has led to bloody mayhem and the rise of an authoritarian anti-democratic Islamism. This, in turn, has helped inspire terrorist attacks in Britain. In response, the Government has dismantled long-standing laws designed to protect our freedom.

The Trap is a series of three films by Bafta-winning producer Adam Curtis that explains the origins of our contemporary, narrow idea of freedom.

It shows how a simplistic model of human beings as self-seeking, almost robotic, creatures led to today’s idea of freedom. This model was derived from ideas and techniques developed by nuclear strategists during the Cold War to control the behaviour of the Soviet enemy.

Mathematicians such as John Nash developed paranoid game theories whose equations required people to be seen as selfish and isolated creatures, constantly monitoring each other suspiciously – always intent on their own advantage.

This model was then developed by genetic biologists, anthropologists, radical psychiatrists and free market economists, and has come to dominate both political thinking since the Seventies and the way people think about themselves as human beings.

However, within this simplistic idea lay the seeds of new forms of control. And what people have forgotten is that there are other ideas of freedom. We are, says Curtis, in a trap of our own making that controls us, deprives us of meaning and causes death and chaos abroad.

taken from: http://www.bbc.co.uk/pressoffice/proginfo/tv/wk11/unplaced.shtml#unplaced_trap

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How and what we eat has radically changed over the past few decades with the all-consuming rise of the supermarket. But what price are we paying for the homogenised, cheap and convenient food that supermarkets specialise in? In a two-part programme, journalist Jane Moore investigates how supermarkets have affected the food on our plates and reveals the tell-tale signs that the food we buy may not have been grown in the way we think.

Using a combination of undercover filming and scientific analysis, Supermarket Secrets investigates whether the food on supermarket shelves is really as good as it looks, whether prices are as good as they seem and what happens behind the scenes in the production of supermarket food.

This year Britain’s shoppers are expected to spend around £70billion on food. 56% of this total expenditure will take place in supermarkets. These films ask how supermarkets manage to push prices down and profits up. Are farmers and growers being pressured to produce food in a manner that leads to it being less nutritious than in the past? And what of the conditions that livestock is reared in today?

The first of the two programme features secret filming which uncovers the horrific conditions inside a chicken broiler house preparing chickens for a company which supplies all the major supermarkets. One study carried out by a professor from Cambridge University revealed that 82% of chickens bought in supermarkets had hockburns – a tell-tale sign of poor animal welfare caused by sitting in litter. Jane Moore shows how to examine chickens for hockburns.

The programme also examines why chickens nowadays have more fat and less protein and why it is vitally important to read the ingredients lists on healthy option meals. Also, top chef Raymond Blanc puts some supermarket ‘ready meals’ to the taste test.

Programme two meets the organic potato farmer who feeds much of his crop to his cows because, he says, the supermarkets deem his produce to be insufficiently cosmetically pleasing. The film also hears from a toxicologist about the levels of pesticide residues in supermarket fresh produce; reveals how dairy cattle are now factory farmed and why packaged fruit and vegetables from your local supermarket may be more expensive that you think – and not as good for you.

taken from: http://www.channel4.com/news/microsites/S/supermarket_secrets/

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