This week David talks to the celebrated film-maker Adam Curtis about his new series Can't Get You Out of My Head, which tells the history of the rise and fall of individualism. Why do so many people feel so powerless in the age of the empowered individual? How has digital technology turbo-charged our feelings of alienation? And what has all this got to do with behavioural psychology? Plus much more: Nixon, China, Dominic Cummings, complex systems, Max Weber and conspiracy theories. https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episodes/p093wp6h/cant-get-you-out-of-my-head
Talking Points:
In his newest series, Adam identifies the 1970s as the wellspring of a global system that feels irrational and beyond political control.
In an age of mass democracy, where individualism reigns, states become extremely difficult to govern.
On the surface, behaviouralism seemed like a challenge to the notion of the rational, self-interested individual.
The Internet, as it is currently constructed, is like a modern ghost story. It’s always looking at patterns in the past.
Fake stability has led to a kind of blindness: think about the collapse of the Soviet Union, or the financial crisis, or Trump.
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