"The Century of the Self" explains why Freud's family is responsible for the damnable state of the world today. In 1927/8 advertising in America started changing, from giving people information about products they needed to creating "wants". This was the basis of the hypercapitalism that has emerged to consume our planet.
The most disturbing aspect of watching 'Hypernormalisation', is the comments below. People shouting that "If this were true, 'they' would never have allowed us to see it." A whole world of people who can no longer believe anything they see or hear (unless it reinforces their pre-existing mindset 100%.) I'm middle-aged now and the most shocking change I've witnessed, is people declaring that they no longer believe in 'Science'. Not in certain theories, or certain results, but the entire body of knowledge acquired via the scientific-method, actually a rejection of the scientific-method itself. Two plus Two being Equal to Four, is going to be up for debate.
The rejection of science by increasingly more people is a result of science being used improperly by those with power to enrich and empower themselves further.
Because 'mainstream science' has been usurped by the motivation of governmental funding.. And because REAL science reveals things we find very uncomfortable.. spaceandmotion
Good. I love Adam Curtis but I find Russell Brand is an insufferable prat. Curtis might be doing well in making his ideas accessible to the masses through Brand, but Brand himself represents the most dead-head appreciation of politics and sociology. Brand's "pearls of wisdom" wash over people like tepid water: toothless, directionless and fundamentally annoying.
To the editor of this interview, THANK YOU: adding subtitles is very fortunate for both listeners and readers whatever their command of English, but editing Russell Brand out as much as it was possible is such a bless! Thanks again!
RB is becoming quite annoying last few years. No longer about genuine curiosity, exploring, seeking knowledge but instead garnering as many views as possible to make as much money as possible and that done with editing that is totally unnatural, cutting to different views constantly, which stimulates brain in certain ways to make it engaged in viewing, but is not at all in any real way what reality is like. When was the last time, when not looking at a screen, you saw someone "cut jump" again and again and again? At all? Even once? That is what I mean by the unnatural contouring of brain wave patterns from screen interaction, first, but more so, it is done deliberately by RB as a means of garnering more "Spectacle" that "Engages" the audience (hooks/tricks the mind) for more views. Unfortunate really. That he has made that become is driving force. Of course others do it too, not just him, but it is really noticeable and very blatant in its design, the intent behind it, over last few years I've noticed. I cannot really listen to him anymore, cannot get through one of his videos due to this.
you've done a great job of editing this down. Hypernormalisation (the original) is soooo long but sooo interesting. BUT its soooo difficult to get anyone to look at it because its 3 hours long. This is very palatable with some more modern nuances. Good work Carlos
It's good to hear Curtis give some of the explanation behind his thinking in Hypernormalization uninterrupted like this. I always thoroughly enjoy his documentaries but sometimes I'll get distracted by the power of what he's doing on screen and lose the thread a bit.
In regard to risk, its rise in use can be traced back to the growth and focus on modern portfolio theory, and it was working very well, as seen by the bubble economies and the market being flooded with cheap debt. The reality is that if you want to change or break free from the system, is you are going to have to find a model that works better than MPT.
Remember Jeremy Corbyn? He suggested very minor 'change' and was demonised and even more-so, ridiculed. Even the so-called left-wing media (especially the Guardian), happily laughed him out of the room. Remember the years of 'Labour's antisemitism problem.'? Now quickly, list all the actual examples of antisemitism, that fed this 'scandal'. I've even searched for hours online and couldn't find them.
The media just have to say something and the masses will believe it without fact checking. The tories know this, look at how they make blatant lies in parliament "we're cutting taxes" they say, while raising them, because they know the electorate are too stupid to realise and will believe what is said over what is done. It's amazing how many people (nearly all from the 'older' generations) who really believe that the Tories are doing the best for the country and any hardships are the fault of: Brexit (if remainer), Covid, the left, America, Russia, social media, political correctness - delete as appropriate. They will even condone a Prime Minister breaking the law as something trivial! They will dismiss failures as something any country has and swallow the rhetoric of Murdoch and the Mail in the somehow Labour are evil and would make things worse. Meanwhile, the Tories are getting more blatant in their corruption and breaking not only their own rules, but their own ministerial codes! Without intending to be divisive, it is a bit generational, as most voters are from the boomer generation. It most likely will only change when the disgruntled millennials outnumber them as they are in no way 'comfortable' and have suffered a lot under the tories, are well aware it's a tory issue as they generally better informed. Obviously, this is a huge generalisation of all age groups as there are Tory-voting millennials and anti-Tory boomers, but in general this is how the ages have split so if there were any change, it will be from the younger generations and only when their are more of them. Tories will be here for a long time. Once they get in power, they are like a weed and are almost impossible to get rid of.
This example and many others make it odd that Curtis claims the left also has no alternative vision. They do, it's just being fought tooth and nail at every level.
@@b.6.7.f.h. No, not really. If the left had a vision, it would be successful, even though it would be fought tooth and nail. Of course, only if that vision was actually desirable. But they have neither - neither a strong vision, nor one which is desirable to a lot of people. That's why they keep losing to people like Trump who *nobody* would have elected thirty years ago.
It's the only thing I can appreciate Brand for. Remember when he told everyone to not vote in that election and then quickly changed his mind in the 11th hour? Complete dead-headed twat.
I used to be in the Greens and had come to some of these conclusions myself. This is far more detailed and considered, and filled in a lot of the gaps.
What an intelligent, articulate and well organised take on modern society, so well balanced in allowing the listener to understand society a little deeper in an accessible way. He's got a great voice too 👍
I adore the unintentional satire in Curtis saying "I think a bit of humility might be good for our society" and then the edit makes it sound like Brand is just being talked over, as if it's a comment being made directly about him lol
Wow I had seen the movie but anted a refresher: thanks so much for doing this editing. I watch a lof of stuff at fast speed but this was nicely condensed and Curtis sure lays it out clearly. Awesome editing!
It's really satisfying to hear Brand keep piping up only to have the editing make it sound like Curtis keeps cutting him off. It's really making me laugh. XD
How on earth can anyone talk for 30 mins with such insight. The amount of information per unit word was immense and he did not repeat himself one. He also rendered Russell Brand silent for 30 mins, lol.
I am a transistorized, transgenderized, transmogrified, trans-human A corporatized, commercialized, industrial strength consumer A goal setting, gym sweating, debt fretting freak A social climbing net worker that's always on heat I got my education majoring in indoctrination Where they taught me to comply, to never question why And so I'm chasing an illusion of success that's a delusion That's sending me insane, exploding my brain And as we teeter on the brink, soon to be extinct I always wear a smile, coz I'm living in denial
As a creator and publisher of alternatives I must recognize again and again, that nearly nobody is interested. People obviously WANT to live in hypernormalization!
You are so right people don’t want to be challenged or open their minds to a bigger picture because like Curtis says its frightening, they might feel out of control, instead put your mind back in the digital echo chamber and buy something comforting off amazon for next day delivery
'It's not a conspiracy' says Curtis. But I find he often goes too far in the other direction. Things just happen. People just suddenly start behaving differently. No attempt to analyze how these came to be. That there are forces with an active interest in depoliticizing the general public (and are in a position to pursue such aims) seems never to cross his mind. And the part about the financial sector always seeking stability -- give me a break! As if wealthy players in that sector haven't made a killing on instability while others paid a price.
Finally, yes! In the sense that marxists use this term, Curtis is a textbook Idealist - i.e. he thinks that ideas shape the material world, rather than the other way around. It shows in the part about hippies and individualism. He thinks that humanity shifting to a new set of ideas (why? how?) created a changed in the productive forces of society, who chose to accommodate this new philosophy by giving people new stuff. Totally backwards
yeah, I'm a fan of Curtis overall but this really does bleed through. I'd also argue his analysis of OWS is pretty ahistorical. i mean, it's not as if they gathered in a park for a bit and then said "all right, that's it, let's wrap it up." there was a period of police brutality in the middle there, kind of a lot, that he just skips over. if your left-wing perspective on OWS sounds so similar to the contemporary Daily Show reaction, you may want to re-evaluate.
He never mentions the Likud terror attacks in the 50’s during HN either. He dances around the premise that Arabs didn’t invent suicide bombings and it was a war tactic pushed onto Shia and Sunni imams out of nowhere by Gaddafi and Assad….when there’s plenty of history on Likud/Mossad civilian bombings to create the tensions and pretense that the Arab world isn’t safe for Jews anymore in the 50’s bc they’re building this shiny new city on a hill
after 5 minutes of listening to this, it drove me mad that mr currtis would just keep talking over the other guy, never stopping. then i read the description. seeing that this is an edit and who "the other guy" was, aversion turned into gratefulness... :P
Wages didn't just stagnate out of nowhere. It isn't the fault of business that caused this. Whether Curtis is referring to the CEOs who refuse to include workers to share in the profits the workers are solely responsible for creating, then refer to those CEOs by their titles. Stop referencing some obscure, faceless entity as the cause. If he was referring to the business itself as failing then how does he explain the 70% increase in productivity in this country since 1979. Remember all those things we read about data mining, what the goal was of Cambridge Analytica? They slowly and subtlety nudge our opinions in the direction big tech wants to direct us in or who ever is paying them to direct us. And this Curtis chat is a shining example of that. Some truths sometimes a lot of truth then using terms or using the narrative mentioned above. You almost don't notice he is trying to lead us into blurring our vision as to who is really at fault for this take down of the country. We know there are names and faces to blame for major contribution to the collapse and they can't go back into hiding.
My theory is that each country, tends to get the government they have either overtly or instinctively wanted. What awful things happen after that is why people rebel against it.
"to exclude ... Russell Brand" - YT autoplayed this and after 25m I finished dinner and read the blurb, "Russell Brand" ... RUSSELL BRAND!!!. I was baffled, I can't imagine listening to RB for more than 5s. What is going on? Excluded for clarity. Well done.🤣🤣🤣
08:03 dear Adam Curtis, “individualism comes basically out of the hippy movement” ?? I am confused. You gave us the brilliant “Century of the Self” whichI still use as an analytical tool every day. In that line of thinking, wasn’t the hippie movement just the next generation of “manufactured consent” ?
That whole portion of the video was totally wrong in my opinion. He said that individualism created consumer capitalism, because it gave producers something to market towards; this is exactly backwards. Capitalists produce whatever crap they can think of, and then people are faced with a superabundance of goods, and start using their personal selection of goods to express their individualism. Production is key.
@@TrichordoKostas I have to disagree. I don't think the market just produces goods without first pinpointing the consumer's identity and advertising to them specifically. That's how people in a capitalist economy "express" their individualism by choosing specific brands. I think marketing is the key here when talking about utilizing individualist politic in capitalism.
@@c7261 good point, I don't disagree. From a materialist perspective, your view is far more nuanced than the crude way I put my comment. When I said production comes first, I mean the economic activity spawns the culture based around consumption to prove ones individualism. I would still say that marketing to specific identities and creating the consumerist mindset is production creating an ideology, but I put it in a way that made it seem like I was referring only to physical factory production, what I was trying to get at was what you describe, where the overarching social ideology is created by capitalism and capitalists as a natural knock on effect of their production, in this case marketing
Adam is a great entertainer - he is like a DJ, but with pictures & ideas - what fun! As for his ideas, there's a bitter irony in that Adam's not offering an alternative either! He's right about the left - Labour is just Tory-Lite these days, but he's right about nobody being in charge anymore. All the actors - finance, investors, politicians and so on are in locked into a giant and unchanging stale-mate. We, the votors, simply sit back, watch and whinge and moan and comment (endlessly) and ultimately do nothing. A sort of massive world-wide stuckism! And nothing will change until there's a boot-up-the-arse big enough to jolt us out of our collective inertia & indecision. That boot is likely to be climate chaos. We shall see. BTW thank-you for editing out most of RB, even if it makes AC sound as if he's on Columbian marching powder... ;-)
Interesting. I think the update big finance got after that documentary is that they learnt to profit from instability as well, which is much more lucrative when you can predict (or even better provoke) it. After Trump/Brexit look at Covid, Ukraine war, rapid interest rates surge, latest Israelian war..
It's surreal to me that while making the point about how our reactions to atrocious behaviour are so banal, you then describe how society has become more administrative and how it's an outcropping of our politics but never realise that the increased administration is a function of the melding of corporation/"finance" and state; the textbook definition of Fascism. The 1990's was the last decade of anything like "democracy", if there ever was such a thing. It's all around you. No one can say or do anything without getting at least tacit assent from their paymasters without toeing some sort of ideological loyalty. It's just that simple: oligarchs and career politicians seizing every means of production and expression to back the populace into an ideological corner where corporate state truth is orthodox and all else is heresy. There's an organisation that's been at this since before we were born yet, much like the financial bubble of 2008, people have forgotten that the danger is still imminent because they've been fed a healthy dose of the propaganda and distraction that hypernormalisation relies on.
I wonder if change only requires violent cycles because that's the only thing on our menu. Didn't the great spiritual teachings of southern India emerge due to 1000 years of peace? I have only heard this in passing and have to wondering how such a society managed to be free from war and if peaceful growth based existence is a possibility.
I sort of agree about the lack of overarching ideas in movements like Occupy but ultimately it was the government, media and established power that stepped in to crush these movements once it became clear they were perhaps a threat. Protests like BLM and XR were very successful in raising issues last year so the Tory government has virtually banned protest under the threat of ten years imprisonment, if you're 'noisy' or cause 'inconvenience'. That gives huge scope for police to shut down virtually anything.
Those movements were never actually a threat though, because they leaned too hard into this individualistic, horizontalist mode of organizing. We've all become allergic to surrendering ourselves to something larger. This is often spoken about by Curtis and many others.
Thank you. Just FYI that AC Doc channel listed in your video description has been booted by UA-cam. Claims of copyright infringement. It's too bad, I was formerly subscribed to it!
Finally I came to know that everything I ever loved is actually part of the very chain I'm trying to get free from. Btw, I'm refering to the original documentary, not this commentary.
Good. Russell has nothing meaningful to add to the conversation. The man told people not to vote and then changed his mind when it was too late for many people to go to the polls. He may as well work for the Tories.
The basic problem has been that leaders should not borrow money from the banks to finance gov't. They should tax the banks to finance gov't. Its not complicated, or as Curtis might ironically say.... its not rocket science.
But then gov spending would be limited by the profits of banks, and we can’t have gov spending limited now can we. Jokes aside, if gov just taxes banks for revenue, banks simply raise prices and it boils down to yet another tax on the working class who now can’t get cheap loans. All the elites involved just protect themselves with complex financial structures anyway. One of the core problems with central planning is the law of unintended consequences. The economy is an ecosystem, you can’t just tax an industry and expect nothing to counter your move. This is why gov likes to tax inelastic goods - because alcoholics will use their rent money for more booze. On elastic goods, the demand dries up rendering the tax useless. Gov is parasitic against productive people, and there is no way around that basic reality. There is nothing it can do that isn’t some form of theft from the working class.
Would it be possible to get the slides you used to make this? I want to read along at my own pace and make notes. There is so much information to digest. As another commenter says- Curtis is a machine lol
Pause the slides at regular intervals and screencapture them. In macOs Command+Shift+4 to screencap, several apps in Windows, and finally in Android and iPhones is possible too.
Individualism wasn't just about people doing their own thing and every man for himself. There's a bit of strawman argument there that the people that favor individual autonomy don't believe in things that involve a collective community making a group decision. That isn't true. They just want the right to opt out of a group that doesn't agree with them and opt into a group that does. It's about decentralizing power because too much was given to a centralized government that didn't have any skin in the game and those governments attempt to build a one-size-fits-all, but end up making nobody happy. That very same political class weren't part of the community that's affected by their policy ideas, either and they didn't represent want most people actually wanted.
I love the way Curtis constantly 'interrupts' Brand and carries on relentlessly like an intellectual threshing machine. Completely out of control, but in a good way. :)
It's a pity that the population of the West are so impressed with novelty. It is their defining characteristic. The largest casualty of this obsession... is tradition. Tradition is viewed as stodgy and staid, the antithesis of shiny, sparkly newness. Whereas all other cultures consider 'tradition' as a hard fought battle, won to stabilise their society. In the West it is considered a tool of oppression. Without tradition, a population is led into the frivolity of decadence. A meaningless society devoid of any innate significance. To a point where nothing makes sense anymore, seems rational or trustworthy. Humans need meaning, they need a sense of continuation with the past. Anxiety and distrust are a constant... in a society where boundaries are in constant flux. Since the US won WWII, western society generally and America specifically, has felt no slow down in its unprecedented growth. No nation state has had all of its society's 'resource needs' within its own borders before. It cemented the US as invincible... an untouchable power base. From which to influence the entire world. With so much abundance, its society has become deeply decadent. Decadence coupled with a lust for novelty... destroys hard fought for roles, attitudes and beliefs. The amount of change in the West 'since the end of WWII', is almost too vast for cultural critics to form theories on. If this constant change were directional... it might be considered valuable, in and of itself. But the West is driven by Neoliberal Capitalism. To become successfully entrepreneurial is to become a king. It's driven by individual greed, not for the overall betterment of the population, or society as a whole. Society is dragged along behind the wealthy entrepreneurial classes whims. Neoliberal Capitalism leads nowhere. Just a circular continuation of an endless reimagining of consumer products to sell. The West is defined by a fundamental absence of progress for those that live there. Only the pretence of progress... a never-ending supply of new versions of old stuff for individuals to buy. Western Capitalist society cannot improve humanities existence on this planet. For humanity... it is a dead end. The people of the West feel the existential void of its society. Without tradition, without a sense of nationhood or 'the spiritual'. The basic elements, that bind society's together. Which the West has burned in its quest for extreme novelty. The dream of becoming entrepreneurial and climbing the giant Western pyramid sales scheme, is not a human value worth investing your life in. Or for investing the future of humanity on. The West is a dystopian idealists dream. Where the only people awake are the poor.
I’ve just discovered this. This resonates with me deeply. Can anyone suggest further reading/media that expands upon these ideas?
All Adam Curtis videos “I can’t get you out of my head” snd others
@@weegledorfer Yes. A great one to start with is "The Century of the Self".
"The Century of the Self" explains why Freud's family is responsible for the damnable state of the world today. In 1927/8 advertising in America started changing, from giving people information about products they needed to creating "wants". This was the basis of the hypercapitalism that has emerged to consume our planet.
Edward Bernays, Freud's nephew, abetted by Freud's widow, goes down in history as the " father of spin".
All Watched Over By Machines of Loving Grace, Roadside Picnic, Stalker, It Felt Like a kiss.
Thank you so much for editing out Russell Brand.
@Joris Luyendijk ha,ha,ha - my thoughts exactly - although to be fair Brand is growing up a bit now that he's reached middle age !
Based
@@revol148if he’s anything but a Marxist then he’s still a child
What a FOOL!
'Enlightened' gprifter conman fascist enabler.
Agreed. To be honest, I don't know if I would have been able to listen to his maniacal side ranting.
This is great. We don't have to listen to Russell Brand gibbering and wasting our time. Thank you so much, whoever put this together.
extremely efficient editing. thank you for bringing me more of what i already like
tongue-in-cheek right?
🧐...😆
You mean gagging Russell ya...
@@colinmagnier1232 appreciate that, i needed to hear this, and am old, brand is an irritant, so this edit is very helpful.
The most disturbing aspect of watching 'Hypernormalisation', is the comments below. People shouting that "If this were true, 'they' would never have allowed us to see it." A whole world of people who can no longer believe anything they see or hear (unless it reinforces their pre-existing mindset 100%.) I'm middle-aged now and the most shocking change I've witnessed, is people declaring that they no longer believe in 'Science'. Not in certain theories, or certain results, but the entire body of knowledge acquired via the scientific-method, actually a rejection of the scientific-method itself. Two plus Two being Equal to Four, is going to be up for debate.
The rejection of science by increasingly more people is a result of science being used improperly by those with power to enrich and empower themselves further.
@@skypickle29 Could not agree more, it’s now much more politicised!
Post-modernist deconstruction of ideas,
Sky Pickle is right however.
Yuri Bezmanov was right
Because 'mainstream science' has been usurped by the motivation of governmental funding.. And because REAL science reveals things we find very uncomfortable.. spaceandmotion
I love how fierce adam curtis sounds in this cut. Its like hes lecturing brand at gunpoint.
the interview questions are cut out.
@@TheMrBobD thats my point
Lol, funny image in mind
Good. I love Adam Curtis but I find Russell Brand is an insufferable prat. Curtis might be doing well in making his ideas accessible to the masses through Brand, but Brand himself represents the most dead-head appreciation of politics and sociology. Brand's "pearls of wisdom" wash over people like tepid water: toothless, directionless and fundamentally annoying.
And increasingly believing in his own bullshit. The man’s a good parrot of other ideas that’s about it
To the editor of this interview, THANK YOU: adding subtitles is very fortunate for both listeners and readers whatever their command of English, but editing Russell Brand out as much as it was possible is such a bless! Thanks again!
RB is becoming quite annoying last few years. No longer about genuine curiosity, exploring, seeking knowledge but instead garnering as many views as possible to make as much money as possible and that done with editing that is totally unnatural, cutting to different views constantly, which stimulates brain in certain ways to make it engaged in viewing, but is not at all in any real way what reality is like. When was the last time, when not looking at a screen, you saw someone "cut jump" again and again and again? At all? Even once? That is what I mean by the unnatural contouring of brain wave patterns from screen interaction, first, but more so, it is done deliberately by RB as a means of garnering more "Spectacle" that "Engages" the audience (hooks/tricks the mind) for more views. Unfortunate really. That he has made that become is driving force. Of course others do it too, not just him, but it is really noticeable and very blatant in its design, the intent behind it, over last few years I've noticed. I cannot really listen to him anymore, cannot get through one of his videos due to this.
You've added so much by virtue of what you've taken away.
Great editing, thankyou.
you've done a great job of editing this down. Hypernormalisation (the original) is soooo long but sooo interesting. BUT its soooo difficult to get anyone to look at it because its 3 hours long. This is very palatable with some more modern nuances. Good work Carlos
Thank you so much for editing out Russel Brand's interruptions.
It's good to hear Curtis give some of the explanation behind his thinking in Hypernormalization uninterrupted like this. I always thoroughly enjoy his documentaries but sometimes I'll get distracted by the power of what he's doing on screen and lose the thread a bit.
I fell you 100% , maybe it’s because I’m dyslexic af but I have to have a little break at times to process some of the info he’s dropping 😂
Very efficient editing. Listening to this felt like reading.
GODDAMN!!! Listening to Curtis' take on modern culture is so consistently mind blowing!
Thank you for excellent editing and reassembling this chat
In regard to risk, its rise in use can be traced back to the growth and focus on modern portfolio theory, and it was working very well, as seen by the bubble economies and the market being flooded with cheap debt.
The reality is that if you want to change or break free from the system, is you are going to have to find a model that works better than MPT.
Remember Jeremy Corbyn? He suggested very minor 'change' and was demonised and even more-so, ridiculed. Even the so-called left-wing media (especially the Guardian), happily laughed him out of the room. Remember the years of 'Labour's antisemitism problem.'? Now quickly, list all the actual examples of antisemitism, that fed this 'scandal'. I've even searched for hours online and couldn't find them.
The media just have to say something and the masses will believe it without fact checking. The tories know this, look at how they make blatant lies in parliament "we're cutting taxes" they say, while raising them, because they know the electorate are too stupid to realise and will believe what is said over what is done. It's amazing how many people (nearly all from the 'older' generations) who really believe that the Tories are doing the best for the country and any hardships are the fault of: Brexit (if remainer), Covid, the left, America, Russia, social media, political correctness - delete as appropriate. They will even condone a Prime Minister breaking the law as something trivial! They will dismiss failures as something any country has and swallow the rhetoric of Murdoch and the Mail in the somehow Labour are evil and would make things worse. Meanwhile, the Tories are getting more blatant in their corruption and breaking not only their own rules, but their own ministerial codes!
Without intending to be divisive, it is a bit generational, as most voters are from the boomer generation. It most likely will only change when the disgruntled millennials outnumber them as they are in no way 'comfortable' and have suffered a lot under the tories, are well aware it's a tory issue as they generally better informed. Obviously, this is a huge generalisation of all age groups as there are Tory-voting millennials and anti-Tory boomers, but in general this is how the ages have split so if there were any change, it will be from the younger generations and only when their are more of them. Tories will be here for a long time. Once they get in power, they are like a weed and are almost impossible to get rid of.
Anything that suits 'the agenda' will be allowed or tolerated. Anything that does NOT suit the agenda will NOT be tolerated.. How difficult is it?
He bit the hand that fed him and had to be put down.
This example and many others make it odd that Curtis claims the left also has no alternative vision. They do, it's just being fought tooth and nail at every level.
@@b.6.7.f.h. No, not really. If the left had a vision, it would be successful, even though it would be fought tooth and nail. Of course, only if that vision was actually desirable. But they have neither - neither a strong vision, nor one which is desirable to a lot of people. That's why they keep losing to people like Trump who *nobody* would have elected thirty years ago.
thanks for taking the time to edit this :D
Thank you for your editing, this is perfect and much needed
Nice. And appreciation to Russell for bringing Curtis to his show.
It's the only thing I can appreciate Brand for. Remember when he told everyone to not vote in that election and then quickly changed his mind in the 11th hour? Complete dead-headed twat.
Two conspiracy theorists feeding off each other.
I used to be in the Greens and had come to some of these conclusions myself. This is far more detailed and considered, and filled in a lot of the gaps.
I love listening to Curtis talk, but the best part of this exchange is the fact that Brand is edited out.
Modern society
Does not know where it is
Does not know why it's here
Does not know how it got here.
one of my favourite Aleister Crowley (of all people) quotes is: "We have no reliance on Virgin or Pigeon, the method is science, the aim is religion"
It opens you eyes to reality we live in and the apathy of the elites who virtue signal for fear of real change
What an intelligent, articulate and well organised take on modern society, so well balanced in allowing the listener to understand society a little deeper in an accessible way. He's got a great voice too 👍
I adore the unintentional satire in Curtis saying "I think a bit of humility might be good for our society" and then the edit makes it sound like Brand is just being talked over, as if it's a comment being made directly about him lol
Wow I had seen the movie but anted a refresher: thanks so much for doing this editing. I watch a lof of stuff at fast speed but this was nicely condensed and Curtis sure lays it out clearly. Awesome editing!
Thanks for the upload, this is actually my favorite interview of Russell Brand.
"Hey, what ya say we both be independent together, huh?"
Herme, Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer - 1964
Excellent Adam Curtis!
Brilliant editing
It's really satisfying to hear Brand keep piping up only to have the editing make it sound like Curtis keeps cutting him off. It's really making me laugh. XD
Thank you for posting this. I’m glad I ran across it.
The best kind of Russel Brand content, where they cut Russel Brand out.
👍🏽
Deserves more likes 👌
The Waste Makers by Vance Packard - he wrote about consumerism, marketing and the creation of the individual in the 1950s
How on earth can anyone talk for 30 mins with such insight. The amount of information per unit word was immense and he did not repeat himself one. He also rendered Russell Brand silent for 30 mins, lol.
Its edited.
But also, hes like a professor. Hes been working on this lecture for decades now.
Its very well reasoned.
@Zimba Zumba it was edited sunshine - how could you not have noticed that !
Still relevant... Don't stop watching or commenting and sharing. Keep the conversation alive and pursuant...
This needed to be done. Thank you.
I am a transistorized, transgenderized, transmogrified, trans-human
A corporatized, commercialized, industrial strength consumer
A goal setting, gym sweating, debt fretting freak
A social climbing net worker that's always on heat
I got my education majoring in indoctrination
Where they taught me to comply, to never question why
And so I'm chasing an illusion of success that's a delusion
That's sending me insane, exploding my brain
And as we teeter on the brink, soon to be extinct
I always wear a smile, coz I'm living in denial
Most enjoyable I've heard
Fantastic thank you editing this for clarity.
Please God allow this man to live to 120yearsold🙏🙏💎🎁
As a creator and publisher of alternatives I must recognize again and again, that nearly nobody is interested. People obviously WANT to live in hypernormalization!
You are so right people don’t want to be challenged or open their minds to a bigger picture because like Curtis says its frightening, they might feel out of control, instead put your mind back in the digital echo chamber and buy something comforting off amazon for next day delivery
Thank for the edit! :)
The gift of silence (from Russell Brand!). you're doing god's work!
Russel brand interviews without Russell brand are honestly the only way I can listen to them lol
'It's not a conspiracy' says Curtis. But I find he often goes too far in the other direction. Things just happen. People just suddenly start behaving differently. No attempt to analyze how these came to be. That there are forces with an active interest in depoliticizing the general public (and are in a position to pursue such aims) seems never to cross his mind.
And the part about the financial sector always seeking stability -- give me a break! As if wealthy players in that sector haven't made a killing on instability while others paid a price.
Conspiracy & Class Power - Michael Parenti (1993) Great talk, maybe you like it
@@alexsch9956 I have heard it before, and, yes, it is absolutely on topic to what I was talking about. Thanks for bringing it up. 👍
Finally, yes! In the sense that marxists use this term, Curtis is a textbook Idealist - i.e. he thinks that ideas shape the material world, rather than the other way around. It shows in the part about hippies and individualism. He thinks that humanity shifting to a new set of ideas (why? how?) created a changed in the productive forces of society, who chose to accommodate this new philosophy by giving people new stuff.
Totally backwards
yeah, I'm a fan of Curtis overall but this really does bleed through. I'd also argue his analysis of OWS is pretty ahistorical. i mean, it's not as if they gathered in a park for a bit and then said "all right, that's it, let's wrap it up." there was a period of police brutality in the middle there, kind of a lot, that he just skips over. if your left-wing perspective on OWS sounds so similar to the contemporary Daily Show reaction, you may want to re-evaluate.
He never mentions the Likud terror attacks in the 50’s during HN either. He dances around the premise that Arabs didn’t invent suicide bombings and it was a war tactic pushed onto Shia and Sunni imams out of nowhere by Gaddafi and Assad….when there’s plenty of history on Likud/Mossad civilian bombings to create the tensions and pretense that the Arab world isn’t safe for Jews anymore in the 50’s bc they’re building this shiny new city on a hill
Ha ha ... Adam Curtis on hypenormalisation with you tube ads running in the background mix. Excellent.
Adam is one of the few guys who can see the past present and future in one glance. Love.
BTW I think he says Debord - [****] at 21:04.
after 5 minutes of listening to this, it drove me mad that mr currtis would just keep talking over the other guy, never stopping. then i read the description. seeing that this is an edit and who "the other guy" was, aversion turned into gratefulness... :P
Wages didn't just stagnate out of nowhere. It isn't the fault of business that caused this. Whether Curtis is referring to the CEOs who refuse to include workers to share in the profits the workers are solely responsible for creating, then refer to those CEOs by their titles. Stop referencing some obscure, faceless entity as the cause. If he was referring to the business itself as failing then how does he explain the 70% increase in productivity in this country since 1979. Remember all those things we read about data mining, what the goal was of Cambridge Analytica? They slowly and subtlety nudge our opinions in the direction big tech wants to direct us in or who ever is paying them to direct us. And this Curtis chat is a shining example of that. Some truths sometimes a lot of truth then using terms or using the narrative mentioned above. You almost don't notice he is trying to lead us into blurring our vision as to who is really at fault for this take down of the country. We know there are names and faces to blame for major contribution to the collapse and they can't go back into hiding.
I wish I could upvote this comment many more times.
A fair few large nose gentlemen are sure to be involved
Thanks so much for this!!!!
Thanx for posting this is so crazy
My theory is that each country, tends to get the government they have either overtly or instinctively wanted. What awful things happen after that is why people rebel against it.
"to exclude ... Russell Brand" - YT autoplayed this and after 25m I finished dinner and read the blurb, "Russell Brand" ... RUSSELL BRAND!!!. I was baffled, I can't imagine listening to RB for more than 5s. What is going on? Excluded for clarity. Well done.🤣🤣🤣
Interesting, thanks for the cherrypick!
but they are in charge. but the “they” are not our politians, but the Davos crowd
08:03 dear Adam Curtis, “individualism comes basically out of the hippy movement” ?? I am confused. You gave us the brilliant “Century of the Self” whichI still use as an analytical tool every day. In that line of thinking, wasn’t the hippie movement just the next generation of “manufactured consent” ?
When it morphed into the Counter-Culture movement, it then opened itself up to manufactured consent.
That whole portion of the video was totally wrong in my opinion. He said that individualism created consumer capitalism, because it gave producers something to market towards; this is exactly backwards. Capitalists produce whatever crap they can think of, and then people are faced with a superabundance of goods, and start using their personal selection of goods to express their individualism. Production is key.
@@TrichordoKostas I have to disagree. I don't think the market just produces goods without first pinpointing the consumer's identity and advertising to them specifically. That's how people in a capitalist economy "express" their individualism by choosing specific brands. I think marketing is the key here when talking about utilizing individualist politic in capitalism.
@@c7261 good point, I don't disagree. From a materialist perspective, your view is far more nuanced than the crude way I put my comment. When I said production comes first, I mean the economic activity spawns the culture based around consumption to prove ones individualism. I would still say that marketing to specific identities and creating the consumerist mindset is production creating an ideology, but I put it in a way that made it seem like I was referring only to physical factory production, what I was trying to get at was what you describe, where the overarching social ideology is created by capitalism and capitalists as a natural knock on effect of their production, in this case marketing
And everything stayed the same... and that changed everything.
Adam is a great entertainer - he is like a DJ, but with pictures & ideas - what fun! As for his ideas, there's a bitter irony in that Adam's not offering an alternative either! He's right about the left - Labour is just Tory-Lite these days, but he's right about nobody being in charge anymore. All the actors - finance, investors, politicians and so on are in locked into a giant and unchanging stale-mate. We, the votors, simply sit back, watch and whinge and moan and comment (endlessly) and ultimately do nothing. A sort of massive world-wide stuckism!
And nothing will change until there's a boot-up-the-arse big enough to jolt us out of our collective inertia & indecision. That boot is likely to be climate chaos. We shall see.
BTW thank-you for editing out most of RB, even if it makes AC sound as if he's on Columbian marching powder... ;-)
Thanks for doing this
Interesting. I think the update big finance got after that documentary is that they learnt to profit from instability as well, which is much more lucrative when you can predict (or even better provoke) it. After Trump/Brexit look at Covid, Ukraine war, rapid interest rates surge, latest Israelian war..
"Listen. Don't let anyone tell you what to do. You are all individuals."
"Yes, we are all individuals!" ("I'm not!")
(Monty Python) .😮😮
It's surreal to me that while making the point about how our reactions to atrocious behaviour are so banal, you then describe how society has become more administrative and how it's an outcropping of our politics but never realise that the increased administration is a function of the melding of corporation/"finance" and state; the textbook definition of Fascism.
The 1990's was the last decade of anything like "democracy", if there ever was such a thing.
It's all around you. No one can say or do anything without getting at least tacit assent from their paymasters without toeing some sort of ideological loyalty. It's just that simple: oligarchs and career politicians seizing every means of production and expression to back the populace into an ideological corner where corporate state truth is orthodox and all else is heresy.
There's an organisation that's been at this since before we were born yet, much like the financial bubble of 2008, people have forgotten that the danger is still imminent because they've been fed a healthy dose of the propaganda and distraction that hypernormalisation relies on.
I wonder if change only requires violent cycles because that's the only thing on our menu. Didn't the great spiritual teachings of southern India emerge due to 1000 years of peace? I have only heard this in passing and have to wondering how such a society managed to be free from war and if peaceful growth based existence is a possibility.
I sort of agree about the lack of overarching ideas in movements like Occupy but ultimately it was the government, media and established power that stepped in to crush these movements once it became clear they were perhaps a threat. Protests like BLM and XR were very successful in raising issues last year so the Tory government has virtually banned protest under the threat of ten years imprisonment, if you're 'noisy' or cause 'inconvenience'. That gives huge scope for police to shut down virtually anything.
@yumpladukfoo Billionaires essentially own politicians and the gov't so it's like saying the same thing
BLM sure was successful, for the rich, white leftists and the black faces they put out front.
Didn't do a damn thing for common blacks.
oh dear
Those movements were never actually a threat though, because they leaned too hard into this individualistic, horizontalist mode of organizing. We've all become allergic to surrendering ourselves to something larger. This is often spoken about by Curtis and many others.
The world needs less Russell Brand, thank you for this!
Use constant power for the audio pops please
This in my opinion explains what a political platform of The Uni/Party would sound like.
This was described in unbearable lightness of being
Thank you. Just FYI that AC Doc channel listed in your video description has been booted by UA-cam. Claims of copyright infringement. It's too bad, I was formerly subscribed to it!
I think it's more like stagnation than stability...
Imagine if this wasn't edited and he was just that good at interupting Brand
Finally I came to know that everything I ever loved is actually part of the very chain I'm trying to get free from. Btw, I'm refering to the original documentary, not this commentary.
Brilliant
I found a bunch of his videos on Odysee, looks like they have scrubbed most of his work here. I can’t image why haha
HyperNormalisation. The world in 2021.
Adam Curtis gets 'it'...
Technocratic dictatorship
Man, Adam just won’t let Russell get a word in edge wise 😅
Good. Russell has nothing meaningful to add to the conversation. The man told people not to vote and then changed his mind when it was too late for many people to go to the polls. He may as well work for the Tories.
Russel is a pseudo intellectual
Me gusta la versión del mundo de Adam curtis, pero sigo pensando que es lo mismo de los mismo
Why is the Video unlisted now?
God damit Shane.
The Dawgz are startin to roll tide
The basic problem has been that leaders should not borrow money from the banks to finance gov't. They should tax the banks to finance gov't. Its not complicated, or as Curtis might ironically say.... its not rocket science.
But then gov spending would be limited by the profits of banks, and we can’t have gov spending limited now can we.
Jokes aside, if gov just taxes banks for revenue, banks simply raise prices and it boils down to yet another tax on the working class who now can’t get cheap loans.
All the elites involved just protect themselves with complex financial structures anyway.
One of the core problems with central planning is the law of unintended consequences. The economy is an ecosystem, you can’t just tax an industry and expect nothing to counter your move. This is why gov likes to tax inelastic goods - because alcoholics will use their rent money for more booze. On elastic goods, the demand dries up rendering the tax useless.
Gov is parasitic against productive people, and there is no way around that basic reality. There is nothing it can do that isn’t some form of theft from the working class.
You should put the date of the interview in the description box
Hyper normalisation explains exactly the last 12 years of Tory rule . And the depressing thought of a labour government in the future
there was more to this interview why it is just cut off at the end like that ???
I think some sort of superhuman or group of superhumans would be required to sort through this mess
You should allow for a bit more pause in your cuts, this is a bit intense. Doesnt leave much room for thought.
Good call back then, editing out Russell. He's a complete joke now, a very bad dangerous and destructive joke.
We don't accept it. Not all of us.
i appreciate trying to help through the edit, but the result just sounds too strange.
Would it be possible to get the slides you used to make this? I want to read along at my own pace and make notes. There is so much information to digest. As another commenter says- Curtis is a machine lol
You can always click on the settings icon and select a slower speed for the video.
Pause the slides at regular intervals and screencapture them. In macOs Command+Shift+4 to screencap, several apps in Windows, and finally in Android and iPhones is possible too.
Individualism wasn't just about people doing their own thing and every man for himself. There's a bit of strawman argument there that the people that favor individual autonomy don't believe in things that involve a collective community making a group decision. That isn't true. They just want the right to opt out of a group that doesn't agree with them and opt into a group that does.
It's about decentralizing power because too much was given to a centralized government that didn't have any skin in the game and those governments attempt to build a one-size-fits-all, but end up making nobody happy. That very same political class weren't part of the community that's affected by their policy ideas, either and they didn't represent want most people actually wanted.
I love the way Curtis constantly 'interrupts' Brand and carries on relentlessly like an intellectual threshing machine. Completely out of control, but in a good way. :)
Yeah it's almost like it's edited, like someone went crazy with a tape splicing machine, isn't it?
Leftist view: socialist policies must be based on the economic rights of the individual.
Why speed it up?
So much happens when the cat's away.
Who is the person in the background of this interview that is so irritating with his little sounds of agreeing and interrupting?
It's a pity that the population of the West are so impressed with novelty.
It is their defining characteristic.
The largest casualty of this obsession... is tradition.
Tradition is viewed as stodgy and staid, the antithesis of shiny, sparkly newness.
Whereas all other cultures consider 'tradition' as a hard fought battle,
won to stabilise their society. In the West it is considered a tool of oppression.
Without tradition, a population is led into the frivolity of decadence.
A meaningless society devoid of any innate significance.
To a point where nothing makes sense anymore, seems rational or trustworthy.
Humans need meaning, they need a sense of continuation with the past.
Anxiety and distrust are a constant... in a society where boundaries are in constant flux.
Since the US won WWII, western society generally and America specifically,
has felt no slow down in its unprecedented growth.
No nation state has had all of its society's 'resource needs' within its own borders before.
It cemented the US as invincible... an untouchable power base.
From which to influence the entire world.
With so much abundance, its society has become deeply decadent.
Decadence coupled with a lust for novelty... destroys hard fought for roles, attitudes and beliefs.
The amount of change in the West 'since the end of WWII',
is almost too vast for cultural critics to form theories on.
If this constant change were directional... it might be considered valuable, in and of itself.
But the West is driven by Neoliberal Capitalism.
To become successfully entrepreneurial is to become a king.
It's driven by individual greed, not for the overall betterment of the population,
or society as a whole. Society is dragged along behind the wealthy entrepreneurial classes whims.
Neoliberal Capitalism leads nowhere.
Just a circular continuation of an endless reimagining of consumer products to sell.
The West is defined by a fundamental absence of progress for those that live there.
Only the pretence of progress... a never-ending supply of new versions of old stuff for individuals to buy.
Western Capitalist society cannot improve humanities existence on this planet.
For humanity... it is a dead end.
The people of the West feel the existential void of its society.
Without tradition, without a sense of nationhood or 'the spiritual'.
The basic elements, that bind society's together. Which the West has burned in its quest for extreme novelty.
The dream of becoming entrepreneurial and climbing the giant Western pyramid sales scheme,
is not a human value worth investing your life in. Or for investing the future of humanity on.
The West is a dystopian idealists dream. Where the only people awake are the poor.