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it's gotten a lot of buzz lately, including on HN, but if you're interested in going down the gaddafi hole a bit further i'd recommend the recent adam curtis fi

by nyolfen 10y ago

it's gotten a lot of buzz lately, including on HN, but if you're interested in going down the gaddafi hole a bit further i'd recommend the recent adam curtis film, hypernormalisation. his films tend to be a bit like getting lost in a wikipedia hole in their own right, though.

emp_zealoth 10y ago
Seconded Then watch Only The Dead (see the end of a war) by an australian bloke Good luck sleeping afterwards
- mcphilip 10y ago
  No joke, just finished watching HyperNormalisation[1]. The most depressing part to me is that Adam Curtis isn't off on an easily dismissed tangent in this documentary, he's essentially cross cut the last 40 years into a 3 hour cliff notes guide to some of the darker corners of postmodern philosophy. Specifically, Baudrillard. His 2002 essay, The Violence of the Global[2] has some interesting food for thought: >We believe that the ideal purpose of any value is to become universal. But we do not really assess the deadly danger that such a quest presents. Far from being an uplifting move, it is instead a downward trend toward a zero degree in all values. In the Enlightenment, universalization was viewed as unlimited growth and forward progress. Today, by contrast, universalization exists by default and is expressed as a forward escape, which aims to reach the most minimally common value. This is precisely the fate of human rights, democracy, and liberty today. Their expansion is in reality their weakest expression. HyperNormalism is bleak and offers no solutions for course correcting international affairs, and there's the rub: universal solutions may not exist. For me, my mind's left reeling by the complexity of the times, leaving me at a loss for how to integrate information from sources like Baudrillard into my worldview guiding day-to-day behavior. My typical response is a hyperlocal focus on the people around me in meatspace and trying to at least get the basics right like the golden rule. [1]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-fny99f8amM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-fny99f8amM [2]http://www.ctheory.net/articles.aspx?id=385 http://www.ctheory.net/articles.aspx?id=385
Angostura 10y ago
You have to be a little careful though - https://youtu.be/x1bX3F7uTrg https://youtu.be/x1bX3F7uTrg
- omnimus 10y ago
  Adam Curtis does make some generalisations but i am not sure its possible without them. The world is so complex that anyone trying to understand the topic would have to go through same research Curtis had to. Its so hard to make point about global situation in 3 hours. It is a political commentary and sometimes its subjective but i think his work make lot of people think and investigate. That's whole lot better than something that tries to be objective no matter what - that always ends up saying practicaly nothing.

by nyolfen 10y ago

emp_zealoth 10y ago

Seconded Then watch Only The Dead (see the end of a war) by an australian bloke Good luck sleeping afterwards

mcphilip 10y ago
No joke, just finished watching HyperNormalisation[1]. The most depressing part to me is that Adam Curtis isn't off on an easily dismissed tangent in this documentary, he's essentially cross cut the last 40 years into a 3 hour cliff notes guide to some of the darker corners of postmodern philosophy. Specifically, Baudrillard. His 2002 essay, The Violence of the Global[2] has some interesting food for thought: >We believe that the ideal purpose of any value is to become universal. But we do not really assess the deadly danger that such a quest presents. Far from being an uplifting move, it is instead a downward trend toward a zero degree in all values. In the Enlightenment, universalization was viewed as unlimited growth and forward progress. Today, by contrast, universalization exists by default and is expressed as a forward escape, which aims to reach the most minimally common value. This is precisely the fate of human rights, democracy, and liberty today. Their expansion is in reality their weakest expression. HyperNormalism is bleak and offers no solutions for course correcting international affairs, and there's the rub: universal solutions may not exist. For me, my mind's left reeling by the complexity of the times, leaving me at a loss for how to integrate information from sources like Baudrillard into my worldview guiding day-to-day behavior. My typical response is a hyperlocal focus on the people around me in meatspace and trying to at least get the basics right like the golden rule. [1]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-fny99f8amM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-fny99f8amM [2]http://www.ctheory.net/articles.aspx?id=385 http://www.ctheory.net/articles.aspx?id=385

Angostura 10y ago

You have to be a little careful though - https://youtu.be/x1bX3F7uTrg https://youtu.be/x1bX3F7uTrg

omnimus 10y ago
Adam Curtis does make some generalisations but i am not sure its possible without them. The world is so complex that anyone trying to understand the topic would have to go through same research Curtis had to. Its so hard to make point about global situation in 3 hours. It is a political commentary and sometimes its subjective but i think his work make lot of people think and investigate. That's whole lot better than something that tries to be objective no matter what - that always ends up saying practicaly nothing.