Here is a fascinating BBC documentary about the use of Freud and psychoanalysis, especially by government, during the 20th Century. It's about four hours long, but it's well worth watching. Set aside an hour a night for a few days.
3 comments:
MrSparkle
said...
Grim have you seen any of his other films? They are highly enjoyable despite the fact he likes a neat narrative far too much.
Couple of note are, 'The Power of Nightmares' comparing the development of the Neoconservative movement in the US inspired by Leo Strauss, and the radical Islamist movement in Egypt inspired by Sayyid Qutb. It's interesting how both groups shared a similar idea, that society was being damaged by self-interested value-free & aimless hedonism. Evidently the Qutb response was to try and incite a revolution against foreign backed dictators. One of the film's other claims is that the Neocons sought to exaggerate an enemy (firstly by seriously overestimating the Soviet threat).
Bitter Lake is another one, about how operations in Afghan went sour and how the West has inadvertently supported Wahhabism through petrodollars, the title originating from a 1945 meeting of FDR and King Abdulaziz of Saudi Arabia on a ship in the Great Bitter Lake on the Suez Canal...
I haven't, no. He's surely right at least about Saudi Arabia's support of Wahhabism -- in theory the Kingdom has laws against backing militant groups, but in practice there's a large flow of money to Kuwait, which has effectively no controls and will send it on wherever you want.
It's hard for me to get worked up about Leo Strauss, though. He had an interesting idea, and it's even one that is probably applicable in a number of cases -- but it's easy to overdo it. Philosophers sometimes have trouble saying what they mean even when they aren't trying to hide it under a layer of protective irony. :)
Politicians and planners came to believe Freud’s underlying premise that deep within all human beings were dangerous and irrational desires. They were convinced that it was the unleashing of these instincts that had led to the barbarism of Nazi Germany, and in response to this, they set out to find ways to control the masses so as to manage the ‘hidden enemy’ within the human mind.
Heh. Original Sin is the beginning of all that 'dangerous/irrational' stuff, and "managing the masses" ain't gonna cure that.
3 comments:
Grim have you seen any of his other films? They are highly enjoyable despite the fact he likes a neat narrative far too much.
Couple of note are, 'The Power of Nightmares' comparing the development of the Neoconservative movement in the US inspired by Leo Strauss, and the radical Islamist movement in Egypt inspired by Sayyid Qutb. It's interesting how both groups shared a similar idea, that society was being damaged by self-interested value-free & aimless hedonism. Evidently the Qutb response was to try and incite a revolution against foreign backed dictators. One of the film's other claims is that the Neocons sought to exaggerate an enemy (firstly by seriously overestimating the Soviet threat).
Bitter Lake is another one, about how operations in Afghan went sour and how the West has inadvertently supported Wahhabism through petrodollars, the title originating from a 1945 meeting of FDR and King Abdulaziz of Saudi Arabia on a ship in the Great Bitter Lake on the Suez Canal...
I haven't, no. He's surely right at least about Saudi Arabia's support of Wahhabism -- in theory the Kingdom has laws against backing militant groups, but in practice there's a large flow of money to Kuwait, which has effectively no controls and will send it on wherever you want.
It's hard for me to get worked up about Leo Strauss, though. He had an interesting idea, and it's even one that is probably applicable in a number of cases -- but it's easy to overdo it. Philosophers sometimes have trouble saying what they mean even when they aren't trying to hide it under a layer of protective irony. :)
Politicians and planners came to believe Freud’s underlying premise that deep within all human beings were dangerous and irrational desires. They were convinced that it was the unleashing of these instincts that had led to the barbarism of Nazi Germany, and in response to this, they set out to find ways to control the masses so as to manage the ‘hidden enemy’ within the human mind.
Heh. Original Sin is the beginning of all that 'dangerous/irrational' stuff, and "managing the masses" ain't gonna cure that.
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