Documentary Description
Individual freedom is the dream of our age. It’s what our leaders
promise to give us, it defines how we think of ourselves and,
repeatedly, we have gone to war to impose freedom around the world. But
if you step back and look at what freedom actually means for us today,
it’s a strange and limited kind of freedom.
Politicians promised to liberate us from the old
dead hand of bureaucracy, but they have created an evermore controlling
system of social management, driven by targets and numbers. Governments
committed to freedom of choice have presided over a rise in inequality
and a dramatic collapse in social mobility. And abroad, in Iraq and
Afghanistan, the attempt to enforce freedom has led to bloody mayhem
and the rise of an authoritarian anti-democratic Islamism. This, in
turn, has helped inspire terrorist attacks in Britain. In response, the
Government has dismantled long-standing laws designed to protect our
freedom.
The Trap is a series of three films by Bafta-winning
producer Adam Curtis that explains the origins of our contemporary,
narrow idea of freedom. It shows how a simplistic model of human beings
as self-seeking, almost robotic, creatures led to today’s idea of
freedom. This model was derived from ideas and techniques developed by
nuclear strategists during the Cold War to control the behavior of the
Soviet enemy.
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