13 ms·

Adam Curtis on the dangers of self-expression (2017)

218 points by greenie_beans 2y ago

navaed01 2y ago
I highly recommend Adam Curtis’s documentaries for anyone who has not watched.
- kemitchell 2y ago
  I recommend only with three serious reservations: Viewers should be well aware of the Kuleshov effect. Viewers should understand that Curtis is highly selective in what he takes and puts together. Viewers should carefully consider any decision to watch while under the influence of substances that tend to make you suggestible or impressed. The amount of archival footage Curtis riffles through for his pieces is an impressive part of the story of his storytelling. It should also be its own implicit warning. The runtime of the footage he watched and did not include dwarfs the runtime of any single piece of his you might see. To be well read on any particular event, much less time period, that he jaunts through would take a stack of books and a lot of serious attention.
myrloc 2y ago
Great read. Thanks for sharing. I am not familiar with Adam Curtis' work but will be looking for more!
- 000ooo000 2y ago
  His 4-part Century of the Self series is on Youtube, IIRC. Interesting watch. Hypernormalisation didn't grab me as much.
  - aporetics 2y ago
    I think “Can’t Get You Out Of My Head” may be of more interest, topically, to hacker news readers, because it converges on the use of computing as a means of controlling social unrest.
    - switch007 2y ago
      Can watch it here https://thoughtmaybe.com/cant-get-you-out-of-my-head/ https://thoughtmaybe.com/cant-get-you-out-of-my-head/
  - mhh__ 2y ago
    Hypernormalisation is kind of a miss. It might be true, but it doesn't work because Curtis himself is hypernormalising — he isn't a journalist, he tells stories and emotions rather than a left-brained truth.
- optimalsolver 2y ago
  As noted below, Century Of The Self would probably be the best starting point: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DnPmg0R1M04 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DnPmg0R1M04
- krmboya 2y ago
  Got started with the series "All watched over my machines of loving grace". I think more engineers and technologists who build systems that affects people's lives at a large scale need to watch those.
  - tsunamifury 2y ago
    If there wa required viewing for entering big tech. This would be it.
- mhh__ 2y ago
  I'd go as far as saying that he's the only genuinely serious person in his domain (on TV at least) at this point . Others have recommended "the century of self" for example which is great but I highly recommend his earlier stuff like "Pandora's box" and "The Mayfair set"
  - untwerp 2y ago
    +1 for Pandora's Box. The conclusion sums it up nicely https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-FDrA7yUdFc&t=2466s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-FDrA7yUdFc&t=2466s
- itsoktocry 2y ago
  >I am not familiar with Adam Curtis' work but will be looking for more! You're in for a treat, then. He has hours of wonderful documentaries. https://watchdocumentaries.com/tag/adam-curtis/ https://watchdocumentaries.com/tag/adam-curtis/
brakmic 2y ago
Adam Curtis Documentaries on YT: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m25q3it0rDs&list=PLtsknc8NVnKMWXbxbm5STDuaBoxrYEtjk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m25q3it0rDs&list=PLtsknc8NVn...
Animats 2y ago
Huh. "Computers can see us as large groups, but they’re glum and only aggregate us to sell us stuff. In reality, the computers give great insight into the power of common identity between groups. No one’s using that." That's from 2017. Unfortunately, that's no longer the case. From ISIL to Q-Anon to MAGA to LGBTxx, finding dispersed but like-minded people and using them to build a political movement is now common. Worse, automated blithering with LLMs works all too well. "The history of modern self-expression dates from the hippies." It goes back further than that. Find a copy of "Swing Kids". The "music is the weapon" concept of the 1960s and 1970s was mainstream for a while. Back when being in a band was a big deal. Before Live Nation got to decide who performs where. Now music is just a business. Even rap. We have a huge problem trying to get society to go in useful directions. People have forgotten how to make democracies work. So we get autocrats.
- surfingdino 2y ago
  It goes even further back to the days of late 19th/early 20th century and artistic communes. The first time someone monetised it on a large scale was Bernays who repackaged Freud's psychoanalysis and sold it to US government and companies. His "torches of freedom" campaign tapped into the women's right movement and desire for self-expression. The tobacco industry was very pleased with the outcomes, because until then women did not smoke cigarettes. Bernays also wrote "Engineering Consent" and "Propaganda", which he renamed as Public Relations after WWII. Curtis has an interesting documentary on the subject.
  - badpun 2y ago
    Exactly. In the US culture specifically, in the XX century before the hippies, there were limited pockets of "self-expression" (discarding previous culture, really) as depicted by Henry Miller, and later the whole Beat Generation. Only after that, this tendency picked up enough steam so that the masses picked it up, in the form the Hippies movement.
- chefandy 2y ago
  That wasn't true in 2017, either. Though the author makes some interesting points, he conflates catalysts, causes, and cultural movements and just calls it all self-expression, and casually makes some rather eyebrow-raising assertions in the process. This reads more like an idea he was trying to hash it for himself rather than a well-considered piece.
SomeoneFromCA 2y ago
Now I got to read all the books, referenced in the article. Will start with Patti Smith. HORSES! HORSES!
keiferski 2y ago
I follow the contemporary art world pretty closely, and a feeling I often get is that it's merely a giant collection of individuals expressing themselves in a way that fits into the market system of galleries, museums, auctions, etc. There are of course artists focused on political causes, but for the most part it is entirely devoid of any centralized ethos or ideal. While this situation is freeing for the individual artist, I can't help but look at previous eras – say, the Italian Renaissance, or the high point of Ottoman miniature painting [1] – and admire the lack of complete self-expression. Instead, you had a much narrower focus of acceptable work and topics, with the result that artists were all engaged with basically the same art forms and the same topics, across the entirety of the artistic community. For example, both da Vinci and Raphael were painting Madonnas [2], whereas today you'd certainly never have two world-famous painters in direct competition working on the same type of painting – because their value is determined by their individuality and self-expression, not their expertise/skill. This is a widespread post-modern culture thing and not limited to art, of course, and probably won't go away for a long, long time, or at least until you get a massive society-wide idea like Christianity to take root again. 1. The book "My Name is Red" by Orhan Pamuk is all about this. Great book. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/My_Name_Is_Red https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/My_Name_Is_Red 2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Madonna_(art) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Madonna_(art)
- JohnFen 2y ago
  Art is creativity expressed under a constraint. That constraint can be the medium, the style, or even something as arbitrary as writing a novel without using the letter 'e'. I've noticed that most of the truly great works of art (in my opinion) have been works produced under unusually restrictive constraints.
- squigz 2y ago
  > you had a much narrower focus of acceptable work and topics, with the result that artists were all engaged with basically the same art forms and the same topics, across the entirety of the artistic community. For example, both da Vinci and Raphael were painting Madonnas Mightn't this have to do with the fact that most paintings back then were commissioned by rich clients, who were probably competing with each other in some way? "Aha, my painting of Madonna is better than yours!" sort of thing (I know nothing about art history, so I'd be happy to learn why this is silly :P)
nycnutterjob 2y ago
[dead]
bjornsing 2y ago
Curtis expresses disdain for our generation’s reluctance to form groups and struggle for power. But I’m more inclined to think this is a good thing. Power struggle between groups is a zero sum game, while individual freedom is not. It’s true that individual freedom also leads to power structures, and that those can be oppressive to certain groups. But I think that problem is better addressed with individual and universal human rights.
- trinsic2 2y ago
  Yeah, I see some good points in what you just said. I see certain ideologies like patriotism, seem to isolate us into camps, and then people that desire power through these ideals, use those constructs to control populations in each of the countries of the world.
- 65 2y ago
  When everyone is individualized and alienated from each other, you wind up with a deep emptiness in a population looking for community and organization to fill the void. This is exactly the methodology Stalin and Hitler took to get people on board with totalitarianism. People are fundamentally social animals who need community and social structures, and making everyone into an individual creates instability and allows for sociopaths to rise to power to fill those gaps. I suggest reading the book The Origins of Totalitarianism by Hannah Arendt.
  - suroot 2y ago
    [flagged]
- badpun 2y ago
  Power struggle is always there, the question is only if your group pushes back. If it largely doesn't for a couple decades, you eventually get results like young families cannot afford a basic place to live in 2024 in some of the wealthiest societies in the history of the planet.
SebFender 2y ago
Great read - and exactly my thoughts when I started seeing my kids and all their friends get a bunch of tattoos... Around the pool they all now look the same. Oversimplified, but that made me laugh.
katmai 2y ago
are you mental cuz? imagine trying to get everyone connected to the oxygen supply cuz the air is running low, and a bunch of idiots running around knocking into everyone else, start raving about the "dangers of self expression" and miniature painting. i mean, yes.
Karellen 2y ago
> There is another definition of freedom which simply says, “In whose service is perfect freedom.” By giving yourself up to the Lord, you free yourself of the narrow cage of your own desires and your own selfishness. ...and that's where they lost me.
- greenie_beans 2y ago
  i don't think he's evangelizing, that's more meant to be an example.
  - tsunamifury 2y ago
    And even if it’s not it would be like saying all of Lord of the Rings is garbage because I found out Tolkien was a catholic.
- munchler 2y ago
  [flagged]
- justanotherjoe 2y ago
  Yeah, that is literally doublethink passage. I get the appeal though. Real freedom is hard cause you can make mistakes. There is no guarantee of anything. Being dictated feels safe cause you never have to make your own choices. That's the appeal of things like fascism and why it's really filled with weak men, despite posturing strength. Weak men beg for their freedom to be taken away.
- e4325f 2y ago
  It doesn't have to be "the Lord". Replace that with running for example and it reflects a quote from the greatest marathon runner of all time Eliud Kipchoge - "Only the disciplined ones in life are free. If you are undisciplined, you are a slave to your moods and your passions."
- e4325f 2y ago
  It doesn't have to be "the Lord", that's just an example, albeit a poor one. Replace that with running and it reflects a quote from the greatest marathon runner of all time Eliud Kipchoge - "Only the disciplined ones in life are free. If you are undisciplined, you are a slave to your moods and your passions."
trinsic2 2y ago
I could be reacting from my bias towards individuals, self expression with this response. I'm not seeing this is a problem of individual self expression. At least in the way it's described in this article, which I understand is to be, we're all over the place expressing ourselves in different ways and we can't come together on singular, or central topics. I see trends, in art, specifically movies where the writers are definitely clued-in on the troubles of the time. I think the actual problem is politics itself, which is kind of an artificial construct that puts people together for causes that are not their own, or even not directly supporting the common causes. Because political movements end up getting co-opted by people that have vested interests in profiting off of, and controlling society for some specific benefit that does represent the will of the people. I see local Grass-roots movements that are not politically motivated by some particular political party to be more representative of the truth and moving toward actual resolution for societies problems. Maybe I'm talking about the same thing I just don't like the idea of politics itself, at least in the perspective of a party based system. A great example of this is EFF podcast: Open Source Beats Authoritarianism [0] [0]: https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2024/02/podcast-episode-open-source-beats-authoritarianism https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2024/02/podcast-episode-open-s...
jgalt212 2y ago
a wise man once said, art without aesthetic appeal is just commentary.
backtoyoujim 2y ago
"Capitalism is about self-expression" is a garbage statement that made me wish I hadn't read that far into the article.
hi-v-rocknroll 2y ago
Hyperindividualism lends itself to the footguns of narcissism, entitlement, and drama while diminishing empathy, solidarity, and community.
jongjong 2y ago
Our system is characterized by increasingly divergent experiences due to fundamental problems in its design. Self-expression is how we can fix that. Unfortunately many parts of the system are working to suppress self-expression and hence prevent the fix. Self-expression is only dangerous for the individual who possesses it. For society, it is always a positive. Contrarians are the heroes of free society, this is true regardless of how vile their views are. They are essential for maintaining the right level of chaos to have a free, functioning society. Extreme contrarians define the boundary for freedom within which everyone else can roam without fear. Contrarians are a minority by definition so they are not a threat to a functioning society. Self-expression and individualism are critical because it's the best mechanism that humans have to prevent their political systems from declining into totalitarianism and poverty. Without self-expression, we get total compliance, an entire society fully compliant to all the whims of the elite; if the elites are good, then lucky for you, until the next regime change. If the elites are bad, then you're in for a miserable time. Not to mention that the people who seek power and who are willing to take irrational risks to attain it aren't usually the friendliest bunch on average. With self-expression and individualism, society can protect itself against idol worship. The intentions of the elite doesn't matter as much because they can be easily replaced. Without self-expression, society will fall into one delusion after another... By the time it wakes up from its current delusion, it will be too late, the backlash will be so sudden and massive that it will guarantee that it will fall victim to yet another delusion in the opposite extreme.
zoogeny 2y ago
I want to disagree with him and I want to agree with him in almost equal measure, I think that is ambivalence. My cynicism says that people like him, people who create psychologically dense pieces for the BBC, are actually on the side of conformity. I've felt since I was young that we are being sold our revolutions. They've firmly commoditized the opposition. I'm tired of the politicization of everything. Even in this piece, there is an implicit call to political action underneath his attempted reframing of individualism. He wants us to see the power in being a member of a group. It is some kind of call to group-think, to pretend you are an individual and yet still act within a political body seeking power. The real question I have is much deeper. Sapolsky has been on the podcast circuit pushing his new book that insists we have no free will whatsoever. Žižek claims that we are locked inside our ideologies. But I keep going back to ancient Greek philosophical ideas that entreat me to "know thyself". I heard on a podcast recently that Sartre's lament that "hell is other people" is best interpreted as the observation that our instinct to mimic others invades our own freedom. When our peer group expresses strong virtues we are pressured to conform by threat of ostracization. This leads to anxiety as our own sense of virtue may be misaligned according to the group. Yet I have a growing belief that finding my own virtue, something that completely originates within myself independent of external influence, is the real key. And Curtis here is suggesting that technology can be used to that purpose, to unite like-minded individuals based on their genuine virtues. I suppose it is the power-seeking aspect of this piece that sits poorly with me. That I would (or should) seek other like-minded people for the purpose of exerting some political influence. It seems to me that just identifying and remaining true to virtues that I feel originate within myself is hard enough. To also consider the political consequences of grouping up with others and combining our resources to affect societal change is more than I want. It reminds me of the conversation Jesus is said to have had with Pontius Pilate. He asks Jesus if he is trying to raise an army to overthrow the Roman order and Jesus responds that the Kingdom he is interested isn't of this Earth. There is something to that religious language which I think we've forgotten.
- perfmode 2y ago
  i wholeheartedly resonate with that quest for inner origination. thanks for sharing
- 2y ago
austin-cheney 2y ago
You are never more free than your availability to offend other people. Everything else is anti-stoic posturing to retain tangible and social stature.
- throwaway924385 2y ago
  I can’t imagine a more tedious definition of freedom

218 points by greenie_beans 2y ago

navaed01 2y ago

I highly recommend Adam Curtis’s documentaries for anyone who has not watched.

kemitchell 2y ago
I recommend only with three serious reservations: Viewers should be well aware of the Kuleshov effect. Viewers should understand that Curtis is highly selective in what he takes and puts together. Viewers should carefully consider any decision to watch while under the influence of substances that tend to make you suggestible or impressed. The amount of archival footage Curtis riffles through for his pieces is an impressive part of the story of his storytelling. It should also be its own implicit warning. The runtime of the footage he watched and did not include dwarfs the runtime of any single piece of his you might see. To be well read on any particular event, much less time period, that he jaunts through would take a stack of books and a lot of serious attention.

myrloc 2y ago

Great read. Thanks for sharing. I am not familiar with Adam Curtis' work but will be looking for more!

000ooo000 2y ago
His 4-part Century of the Self series is on Youtube, IIRC. Interesting watch. Hypernormalisation didn't grab me as much.
- aporetics 2y ago
  I think “Can’t Get You Out Of My Head” may be of more interest, topically, to hacker news readers, because it converges on the use of computing as a means of controlling social unrest.
  - switch007 2y ago
    Can watch it here https://thoughtmaybe.com/cant-get-you-out-of-my-head/ https://thoughtmaybe.com/cant-get-you-out-of-my-head/
- mhh__ 2y ago
  Hypernormalisation is kind of a miss. It might be true, but it doesn't work because Curtis himself is hypernormalising — he isn't a journalist, he tells stories and emotions rather than a left-brained truth.
optimalsolver 2y ago
As noted below, Century Of The Self would probably be the best starting point: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DnPmg0R1M04 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DnPmg0R1M04
krmboya 2y ago
Got started with the series "All watched over my machines of loving grace". I think more engineers and technologists who build systems that affects people's lives at a large scale need to watch those.
- tsunamifury 2y ago
  If there wa required viewing for entering big tech. This would be it.
mhh__ 2y ago
I'd go as far as saying that he's the only genuinely serious person in his domain (on TV at least) at this point . Others have recommended "the century of self" for example which is great but I highly recommend his earlier stuff like "Pandora's box" and "The Mayfair set"
- untwerp 2y ago
  +1 for Pandora's Box. The conclusion sums it up nicely https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-FDrA7yUdFc&t=2466s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-FDrA7yUdFc&t=2466s
itsoktocry 2y ago
>I am not familiar with Adam Curtis' work but will be looking for more! You're in for a treat, then. He has hours of wonderful documentaries. https://watchdocumentaries.com/tag/adam-curtis/ https://watchdocumentaries.com/tag/adam-curtis/

brakmic 2y ago

Adam Curtis Documentaries on YT: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m25q3it0rDs&list=PLtsknc8NVnKMWXbxbm5STDuaBoxrYEtjk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m25q3it0rDs&list=PLtsknc8NVn...

Animats 2y ago

Huh. "Computers can see us as large groups, but they’re glum and only aggregate us to sell us stuff. In reality, the computers give great insight into the power of common identity between groups. No one’s using that." That's from 2017. Unfortunately, that's no longer the case. From ISIL to Q-Anon to MAGA to LGBTxx, finding dispersed but like-minded people and using them to build a political movement is now common. Worse, automated blithering with LLMs works all too well. "The history of modern self-expression dates from the hippies." It goes back further than that. Find a copy of "Swing Kids". The "music is the weapon" concept of the 1960s and 1970s was mainstream for a while. Back when being in a band was a big deal. Before Live Nation got to decide who performs where. Now music is just a business. Even rap. We have a huge problem trying to get society to go in useful directions. People have forgotten how to make democracies work. So we get autocrats.

surfingdino 2y ago
It goes even further back to the days of late 19th/early 20th century and artistic communes. The first time someone monetised it on a large scale was Bernays who repackaged Freud's psychoanalysis and sold it to US government and companies. His "torches of freedom" campaign tapped into the women's right movement and desire for self-expression. The tobacco industry was very pleased with the outcomes, because until then women did not smoke cigarettes. Bernays also wrote "Engineering Consent" and "Propaganda", which he renamed as Public Relations after WWII. Curtis has an interesting documentary on the subject.
- badpun 2y ago
  Exactly. In the US culture specifically, in the XX century before the hippies, there were limited pockets of "self-expression" (discarding previous culture, really) as depicted by Henry Miller, and later the whole Beat Generation. Only after that, this tendency picked up enough steam so that the masses picked it up, in the form the Hippies movement.
chefandy 2y ago
That wasn't true in 2017, either. Though the author makes some interesting points, he conflates catalysts, causes, and cultural movements and just calls it all self-expression, and casually makes some rather eyebrow-raising assertions in the process. This reads more like an idea he was trying to hash it for himself rather than a well-considered piece.

SomeoneFromCA 2y ago

Now I got to read all the books, referenced in the article. Will start with Patti Smith. HORSES! HORSES!

keiferski 2y ago

I follow the contemporary art world pretty closely, and a feeling I often get is that it's merely a giant collection of individuals expressing themselves in a way that fits into the market system of galleries, museums, auctions, etc. There are of course artists focused on political causes, but for the most part it is entirely devoid of any centralized ethos or ideal. While this situation is freeing for the individual artist, I can't help but look at previous eras – say, the Italian Renaissance, or the high point of Ottoman miniature painting [1] – and admire the lack of complete self-expression. Instead, you had a much narrower focus of acceptable work and topics, with the result that artists were all engaged with basically the same art forms and the same topics, across the entirety of the artistic community. For example, both da Vinci and Raphael were painting Madonnas [2], whereas today you'd certainly never have two world-famous painters in direct competition working on the same type of painting – because their value is determined by their individuality and self-expression, not their expertise/skill. This is a widespread post-modern culture thing and not limited to art, of course, and probably won't go away for a long, long time, or at least until you get a massive society-wide idea like Christianity to take root again. 1. The book "My Name is Red" by Orhan Pamuk is all about this. Great book. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/My_Name_Is_Red https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/My_Name_Is_Red 2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Madonna_(art) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Madonna_(art)

JohnFen 2y ago
Art is creativity expressed under a constraint. That constraint can be the medium, the style, or even something as arbitrary as writing a novel without using the letter 'e'. I've noticed that most of the truly great works of art (in my opinion) have been works produced under unusually restrictive constraints.
squigz 2y ago
> you had a much narrower focus of acceptable work and topics, with the result that artists were all engaged with basically the same art forms and the same topics, across the entirety of the artistic community. For example, both da Vinci and Raphael were painting Madonnas Mightn't this have to do with the fact that most paintings back then were commissioned by rich clients, who were probably competing with each other in some way? "Aha, my painting of Madonna is better than yours!" sort of thing (I know nothing about art history, so I'd be happy to learn why this is silly :P)

nycnutterjob 2y ago

[dead]

bjornsing 2y ago

Curtis expresses disdain for our generation’s reluctance to form groups and struggle for power. But I’m more inclined to think this is a good thing. Power struggle between groups is a zero sum game, while individual freedom is not. It’s true that individual freedom also leads to power structures, and that those can be oppressive to certain groups. But I think that problem is better addressed with individual and universal human rights.

trinsic2 2y ago
Yeah, I see some good points in what you just said. I see certain ideologies like patriotism, seem to isolate us into camps, and then people that desire power through these ideals, use those constructs to control populations in each of the countries of the world.
65 2y ago
When everyone is individualized and alienated from each other, you wind up with a deep emptiness in a population looking for community and organization to fill the void. This is exactly the methodology Stalin and Hitler took to get people on board with totalitarianism. People are fundamentally social animals who need community and social structures, and making everyone into an individual creates instability and allows for sociopaths to rise to power to fill those gaps. I suggest reading the book The Origins of Totalitarianism by Hannah Arendt.
- suroot 2y ago
  [flagged]
badpun 2y ago
Power struggle is always there, the question is only if your group pushes back. If it largely doesn't for a couple decades, you eventually get results like young families cannot afford a basic place to live in 2024 in some of the wealthiest societies in the history of the planet.

SebFender 2y ago

Great read - and exactly my thoughts when I started seeing my kids and all their friends get a bunch of tattoos... Around the pool they all now look the same. Oversimplified, but that made me laugh.

katmai 2y ago

are you mental cuz? imagine trying to get everyone connected to the oxygen supply cuz the air is running low, and a bunch of idiots running around knocking into everyone else, start raving about the "dangers of self expression" and miniature painting. i mean, yes.

Karellen 2y ago

> There is another definition of freedom which simply says, “In whose service is perfect freedom.” By giving yourself up to the Lord, you free yourself of the narrow cage of your own desires and your own selfishness. ...and that's where they lost me.

greenie_beans 2y ago
i don't think he's evangelizing, that's more meant to be an example.
- tsunamifury 2y ago
  And even if it’s not it would be like saying all of Lord of the Rings is garbage because I found out Tolkien was a catholic.
munchler 2y ago
[flagged]
justanotherjoe 2y ago
Yeah, that is literally doublethink passage. I get the appeal though. Real freedom is hard cause you can make mistakes. There is no guarantee of anything. Being dictated feels safe cause you never have to make your own choices. That's the appeal of things like fascism and why it's really filled with weak men, despite posturing strength. Weak men beg for their freedom to be taken away.
e4325f 2y ago
It doesn't have to be "the Lord". Replace that with running for example and it reflects a quote from the greatest marathon runner of all time Eliud Kipchoge - "Only the disciplined ones in life are free. If you are undisciplined, you are a slave to your moods and your passions."
e4325f 2y ago
It doesn't have to be "the Lord", that's just an example, albeit a poor one. Replace that with running and it reflects a quote from the greatest marathon runner of all time Eliud Kipchoge - "Only the disciplined ones in life are free. If you are undisciplined, you are a slave to your moods and your passions."

trinsic2 2y ago

I could be reacting from my bias towards individuals, self expression with this response. I'm not seeing this is a problem of individual self expression. At least in the way it's described in this article, which I understand is to be, we're all over the place expressing ourselves in different ways and we can't come together on singular, or central topics. I see trends, in art, specifically movies where the writers are definitely clued-in on the troubles of the time. I think the actual problem is politics itself, which is kind of an artificial construct that puts people together for causes that are not their own, or even not directly supporting the common causes. Because political movements end up getting co-opted by people that have vested interests in profiting off of, and controlling society for some specific benefit that does represent the will of the people. I see local Grass-roots movements that are not politically motivated by some particular political party to be more representative of the truth and moving toward actual resolution for societies problems. Maybe I'm talking about the same thing I just don't like the idea of politics itself, at least in the perspective of a party based system. A great example of this is EFF podcast: Open Source Beats Authoritarianism [0] [0]: https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2024/02/podcast-episode-open-source-beats-authoritarianism https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2024/02/podcast-episode-open-s...

jgalt212 2y ago

a wise man once said, art without aesthetic appeal is just commentary.

backtoyoujim 2y ago

"Capitalism is about self-expression" is a garbage statement that made me wish I hadn't read that far into the article.

hi-v-rocknroll 2y ago

Hyperindividualism lends itself to the footguns of narcissism, entitlement, and drama while diminishing empathy, solidarity, and community.

jongjong 2y ago

Our system is characterized by increasingly divergent experiences due to fundamental problems in its design. Self-expression is how we can fix that. Unfortunately many parts of the system are working to suppress self-expression and hence prevent the fix. Self-expression is only dangerous for the individual who possesses it. For society, it is always a positive. Contrarians are the heroes of free society, this is true regardless of how vile their views are. They are essential for maintaining the right level of chaos to have a free, functioning society. Extreme contrarians define the boundary for freedom within which everyone else can roam without fear. Contrarians are a minority by definition so they are not a threat to a functioning society. Self-expression and individualism are critical because it's the best mechanism that humans have to prevent their political systems from declining into totalitarianism and poverty. Without self-expression, we get total compliance, an entire society fully compliant to all the whims of the elite; if the elites are good, then lucky for you, until the next regime change. If the elites are bad, then you're in for a miserable time. Not to mention that the people who seek power and who are willing to take irrational risks to attain it aren't usually the friendliest bunch on average. With self-expression and individualism, society can protect itself against idol worship. The intentions of the elite doesn't matter as much because they can be easily replaced. Without self-expression, society will fall into one delusion after another... By the time it wakes up from its current delusion, it will be too late, the backlash will be so sudden and massive that it will guarantee that it will fall victim to yet another delusion in the opposite extreme.

zoogeny 2y ago

I want to disagree with him and I want to agree with him in almost equal measure, I think that is ambivalence. My cynicism says that people like him, people who create psychologically dense pieces for the BBC, are actually on the side of conformity. I've felt since I was young that we are being sold our revolutions. They've firmly commoditized the opposition. I'm tired of the politicization of everything. Even in this piece, there is an implicit call to political action underneath his attempted reframing of individualism. He wants us to see the power in being a member of a group. It is some kind of call to group-think, to pretend you are an individual and yet still act within a political body seeking power. The real question I have is much deeper. Sapolsky has been on the podcast circuit pushing his new book that insists we have no free will whatsoever. Žižek claims that we are locked inside our ideologies. But I keep going back to ancient Greek philosophical ideas that entreat me to "know thyself". I heard on a podcast recently that Sartre's lament that "hell is other people" is best interpreted as the observation that our instinct to mimic others invades our own freedom. When our peer group expresses strong virtues we are pressured to conform by threat of ostracization. This leads to anxiety as our own sense of virtue may be misaligned according to the group. Yet I have a growing belief that finding my own virtue, something that completely originates within myself independent of external influence, is the real key. And Curtis here is suggesting that technology can be used to that purpose, to unite like-minded individuals based on their genuine virtues. I suppose it is the power-seeking aspect of this piece that sits poorly with me. That I would (or should) seek other like-minded people for the purpose of exerting some political influence. It seems to me that just identifying and remaining true to virtues that I feel originate within myself is hard enough. To also consider the political consequences of grouping up with others and combining our resources to affect societal change is more than I want. It reminds me of the conversation Jesus is said to have had with Pontius Pilate. He asks Jesus if he is trying to raise an army to overthrow the Roman order and Jesus responds that the Kingdom he is interested isn't of this Earth. There is something to that religious language which I think we've forgotten.

perfmode 2y ago
i wholeheartedly resonate with that quest for inner origination. thanks for sharing
2y ago

austin-cheney 2y ago

You are never more free than your availability to offend other people. Everything else is anti-stoic posturing to retain tangible and social stature.

throwaway924385 2y ago
I can’t imagine a more tedious definition of freedom