“Can't Get You Out of My Head”, Adam Curtis (iPlayer)

[eighthobstruction]

....kernelbogey....Ref carl sagan - i dived into the internet and found some quotes....remembering him to be a prince of the memorable line. If I'd have had time I'd have researched a couple of Richard P. Feynman quotes too. Mass communicators.

In all these individuals Curtis talks about, are EMOTIONS....and emotions are quite difficult things to talk about (like other peoples dreams and such, they are quite boring to listen about)....but fear, and joy....empathy, terror are quite easy in general to understand. I don't know if disappointment is an emotion, i suppose it is. In the crowd
scenes in Curtis I cannot help but see myself as one individual in each and every crowd : oppressed or activated or manipulated. I imagine the homelives they must tolerating, the hard boring work, the petty malevalence of petty officials - lack of good food. If I had got off the wrong bus at the karma depot, things could have been bad for me....but this isn't a memoir....I have never really been a follower, I have always disliked authority, in employment I have been a maverick and difficult to manage....I have got through life on charm, humour and bullshit. My dyslexia has made it difficult to do the things I would have wanted. I do not have a mainstream view. Creative is where i fit. I seem to have innately 'felt' the Curtis type knowledge without ever knowing it- always warey, always broadminded, always thinking life was a joke, not to be taken too seriously....my view of others; the exploited, the neutral, the family folk, the exploiters (in brief).....and yes I have been involved in community action and single issue politics, on committees, Non Violent Political action, Squatting/Occupations....cocking a snook, ridiculing the over stuffed. Never rank and file, usually up at the front, but not stupid enough or committed enough to get caught and arrested. I rarely 'buy' into things (except internet clickbait offers for warm socks).

But I would say that the most influencial thing on me is Cognitive Dissonance....lots of it, lots of it continually....it has held me back....saved me....mixed me up....made me kind. That is the reason I love this Adam Curtis SOUP....

[kernelbogey]

Eighth - thanks so much..... So much there for me to think about (and I shall) and maybe watch again one of the Curtis films. One thought that you lead me to is that my 'search for Curtis's meaning' is a misstep, that a more purely emotional focus may help me: perhaps I was dismissing that as 'glittering surface, absolutely fascinating' rather than the substance.

More anon....

[eighthobstruction]

....thanks for making me pull my own view together kb....helpful....I am glad that you too are searching....Paperless unable to write ideas down while walking the dog etc, it is nice to pull something together when I get home ....in my normal unauthorative manner........working it all out is important to me, but not obsessive....

[johncorrigan]

....thanks for making me pull my own view together kb....helpful....I am glad that you too are searching....Paperless unable to write ideas down while walking the dog etc, it is nice to pull something together when I get home ....in my normal unauthorative manner........working it all out is important to me, but not obsessive....

Thank you both very much, and great to read the Sagan quotes again. I'm two-thirds through the series and go through periods of hopelessness, and others where I feel determined to act locally to help make difference. I hope you don't think I'm being glib here, as it is not my intention, but this piece by Kurt Vonnegut has been very helpful keeping my spirits up.

Easy Life
I work at home, and if I wanted to, I could have a computer beside my bed, and I’d never have to leave it. But I use a typewriter, and afterwards I mark up the pages with a pencil. Then I call up this woman called Carol out in Woodstock and say,’Are you still doing typing?’ Sure she is, and her husband is trying to track bluebirds out there and not having much luck, and so we chitchat back and forth, and I say, ‘OK. I’ll send you the pages.’ Then I go down the steps and my wife calls. ‘Where are you going?’ ‘Well,’ I say, ’I’m going to buy an envelope.’ And she says, ‘You’re not a poor man. Why don’t you buy a thousand envelopes? They’ll deliver them and you can put them in the closet.’ And I say, ‘Hush!’
So I get to this news-stand across the street where they sell magazines and lottery tickets and stationery. I have to get in line because there are people buying candy and all that sort of thing. The woman behind the counter has a jewel between her eyes, and when it’s my turn , I ask her if there have been any big winners lately. I get my envelope and seal it up and go to the postal convenience centre down the block at the corner of Forty-seventh Street and Second Avenue, where I’m secretly in love with the woman behind the counter. I keep absolutely poker-faced: I’ve never let her know how I feel about her. One time I had my pocket picked in there and I got to meet a cop and tell him about it. Anyway, I address the envelope to Carol in Woodstock. I stamp the envelope and mail it in the mailbox in front of the post office, and I go home.
And I’ve had a hell of a good time. I tell you, we are here on Earth to fart around, and don’t let anybody tell you any different.
Kurt Vonnegut

[eighthobstruction]

....I once sent a letter to Kurt Vonnegut. I'd just been to Usa (which I hitch hiked across over 3months)[1981]....i sent a short letter reviewing what i thought of Americans, fairly rude ending with some Vonnegut type gutteral sounds. Sent via publisher - no reply.

[johncorrigan]

....I once sent a letter to Kurt Vonnegut. I'd just been to Usa (which I hitch hiked across over 3months)[1981]....i sent a short letter reviewing what i thought of Americans, fairly rude ending with some Vonnegut type gutteral sounds. Sent via publisher - no reply.

Wonder if we saw each other, eighth...I was also hitching across the States in '81.

[Serial_Apologist]

....I once sent a letter to Kurt Vonnegut. I'd just been to Usa (which I hitch hiked across over 3months)[1981]....i sent a short letter reviewing what i thought of Americans, fairly rude ending with some Vonnegut type gutteral sounds. Sent via publisher - no reply.

The emotions are the least interesting aspect of human behaviour to latch onto, either in seeking causes or solutions, because they are so easily stirred up by false stimuli, largely a matter of mistaking of the menu for the meal, metaphorically-speaking: the map for the journey. Curtis references Walter Benjamin at one point somewhere in his pantheon, and he could do us a service by way of a John Berger approach to sorting the wheat from the chaff - Benjamin having been a big influence on Berger. How to recognise the false in the mediation is the question, the solution which provides a better starting point to getting anywhere. There really is a continuity running through all stages in human social (read political) history, albeit expressed in myriad various ways, and that is class, which has defined how the wealth created by production, on which satisfying all else depends, can be channelled away from meeting basic needs and into the hands of those whose riches privilege their monopoly, including over how the knowledge necessary for preventing war, starvation, inequality and environmental destruction can be shared and acted on inclusively. And by inclusively I mean the huge wealth of alternative wisdom that is made to go to waste in a world in which the premium is always on competitive survival.

Unfortunately, if the interview with Curtis in the link below is to be taken at face value, it would appear that I have been led up the proverbial by Curtis's inclusiveness of the main players in the game that has been on the go for most of our lifetimes, shaping world events, and that he is pretty cynical about our naivety, which he evidently must put down to inborn character traits, whose existence I find questionable. If I were as basically pessimistic as he seems to be, rather than inflicting my de-motivating views on the world I would just shut myself away and keep my ideas to myself.

http://www.wired.co.uk/article/adam-curtis-bbc-cant-get-you-out-of-my-head?utm_source=pocket-newtab-global-en-GB

On the other hand, there is plenty in the series to draw from which to formulate an alternative viewpoint, if one sidesteps the false deductions and misinterpreted connections...

[kernelbogey]

....I once sent a letter to Kurt Vonnegut. I'd just been to Usa (which I hitch hiked across over 3months)[1981]....i sent a short letter reviewing what i thought of Americans, fairly rude ending with some Vonnegut type gutteral sounds. Sent via publisher - no reply.

So it goes....

[kernelbogey]

Thank you both very much, and great to read the Sagan quotes again. I'm two-thirds through the series and go through periods of hopelessness, and others where I feel determined to act locally to help make difference. I hope you don't think I'm being glib here, as it is not my intention, but this piece by Kurt Vonnegut has been very helpful keeping my spirits up.

Easy Life....

John, thank you: I'm enjoying the thread.

Your delicious Vonnegut quote reminds me of David Foster Wallace's piece This is Water (aka Kenyon College Commencement Speech) - well worth reading (here).

[Mandryka]

What do you think of Adam Curtis?

I've only recently discovered two of his series, HyperNormalisation and Can't Get You Out of My Head -- both on the BBC iPlayer. I'm completely overwhelmed by them, I doubt that what he says about the world today and how we got there is the whole truth, nothing ever is, but I bet it's got a good deal of truth in it.

Anyway, I'm so excited -- I think that's the word -- by what I've seen that I thought I'd start a thread to see if anyone else has an opinion.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/p04b183c/hypernormalisation

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/p093wpgw/cant-get-you-out-of-my-head-series-1-1-part-one-bloodshed-on-wolf-mountain

[eighthobstruction]

...there is alkready a thread ref this http://www.for3.org/forums/showthrea...rtis-(iPlayer)

[Serial_Apologist]

Maybe the two threads could be merged, or is this too late now?

[Nick Armstrong]

Maybe the two threads could be merged, or is this too late now?

Leave it with me

[Nick Armstrong]

I'm completely overwhelmed by them, I doubt that what he says about the world today and how we got there is the whole truth, nothing ever is, but I bet it's got a good deal of truth in it.

Currently making my way through Can’t Get You Out Of My Head and finding it stimulating, even exhilarating

[Serial_Apologist]

A much better, more sympathetic interview with Curtis than the one I criticised somewhere else on the forum the other day, is to be found below. He elaborates on the suggestion at the end of the documentary that Covid may have done something to prize open a way forward for alt-left politics - one which actually undermines his own take on identity politics at its start and points back to the primacy of class.

http://time.com/5941744/adam-curtis-cant-get-you-out-of-my-head/?utm_source=pocket-newtab-global-en-GB