It curious and not a little baffling why Adam Curtis felt the need to distort Isaiah Berlin's idea of Negative Liberty since the central thrust of the documentary could have stood without this distortion. In "Two Concepts of Liberty," Berlin defines and highlights the pros and cons of each without exalting or preferring one over the other. He only warns that both can be misused in the name of, or in an ostensible quest for, liberty for all. I urge viewers to read the essay for themselves.
Really disappointed that Curtis seeemed to gloss over and distort the meaning of negative and positive liberty. I used to learn things from his documentaries, now they just seem to be political rants (and I can see the socialist direction he's going in)
Not to dispute the points made, but what's not considered are the differences between the different dynamics of these revolutions. The positive liberty of the French and Russian revolutions are in response to overthrowing their respective domestic royal leaderships. The 20th century revolutions were predominantly with the colonies wanting to be free from their foreign rule. But the negative liberty that Berlin expressed was to be applied domestically to maintain the status quo of power.
That's also rubbish Ghandi won! Some revoultions are velvet, revoultions can succeed- Berlin again is wrong.
And it's a total fantasy to say that power should be limited, power is there- it exists, Berlin is a dreamer only answer is leagal oversight over those in power.
In my own (fairly pessimistic) worldview, this endless cycle of freedom, tyranny, and revolution is a fundamental part of human nature. This is why regular elections/changes of government are so important; they provide an outlet for revolutionary pressures that might otherwise build up into a catastrophic explosion. Better "a little revolution every thirty years," in Jefferson's words, than a Khmer Rouge-esque shitfest every three hundred.
This is through and through a late-Victorian worldview best phrased by Freud- the "build-up of pressures, and the inevitability of their mechanical release".
but what ends up in Jefferson's words is not revolution, that's discontent- rebellion, bargaining.
Big "R" revolution is still yet to come in my mind, inspite of the shitfests that pretended to be revolutions proper.
National Socialism or a Modern Nationalism with an understanding and an aversion to fratricide (e.g. WWI, WWII), colonialism etc. Are modern answers - racial issues need to be solved first of course! Each people should stay in thier own part of the World, immigration should be limited.
Where the fuck are any comments about the mode of production or economy in general? Many mentions of 'communism' but absolutely nothing on Marxism. If it's been such a force why not talk about it?! This is such wishy washy liberal bollocks. At the most it's lefty, hardly very radical.
It's naive to believe that the current rulers and shakers of the world are in any way idealists. I think that Eustace Mullins and Noam Chomsky got it right when they said that the leaders--in the USA, for example--are behaving like mafioso. That is, they are megalomaniacs and mercenary thugs with no greater purpose than to fill their own coffers at the expense of the masses. "Idealistic" rhetoric is then merely a smoke screen.
@daizee 106, the answer is farming , farm your own food, seeds r free !!! that's about as independant as you can get on this earth. if you don't want 2 get your hands dirty with dirt and sweat a little then , you choose 2 b dependent , dependent means getting a dic* up your ass. feel free 2 choose, i choose farming. if you think because u work in an office you r not dependant, think again. who's your farmer? u don't know huh, u get a di%* up ur ass.if u don't farm ,u expect someone 2 do it 4 u?
@outlawmlo7 Excuse me sir, but you are sadly mistaken. My main farmer is my Dad. I do not work in an office any more. I get my hands dirty regularly. So get the dick out of your ass and realize I was joking and you do not get the joke
You clearly don't have a clue what you're talking about. You haven't read berlin. You've taken a single quote from the internet, and hopelessly mis-read it. I suspect the same is true of the maker of this idiotic television program.
...continued from (i)... "positive self-mastery a la Rousseau, Hegel, Marx: e.g. "you don't know what you really want. Real liberty is behaving in accordance with the forces of history, or reason, or the proleteriat, not your petty desiers" etc.
(ii) Note Berlin says, "pluralism entails a MEASURE of negative liberty". A measure of negative liberty is necessary for any kind of civilised life. Pluralism also entails a measure of PL, and a measure of social justice, and of equality.
No it doesn't: you need to improve your reading skills. PL means having role in who governs. NL means society letting you get on with your own thing in private. The two are different, although related, concepts. (i) In your quote Berlin says "positive self-mastery" - which is not PL, so much as a specific interpretation of PL a la Rousseau. Berlin argues that this rhetoric is usually a way for an elite to mask its re-writing of the individual's desires.
Berlin writes over and over that a society has to hold different values in tension. He argues that negative liberty is an essential value, which has to be traded off against (rather than re-construed as) other essential values, like equality and rationality. His argument against the monists is that they re-construe one value (negative liberty) in terms of another value (rationality or social justice). This program's presentation of berlin couldn't be more false. It's illiterate
Berlin was a pluralist which means that he recognised many objective values which are incommensurate and have to be traded off against each other. One of these values, for him, was positive liberty; another one was negative liberty. His argument, in two concepts, was that positive liberty is taken to be the only form of liberty by monists who reject negative-liberty. This idiotic program presents him Berlin a monist who only accepts negative liberty.
"Vomative" isn't a verb. A t.v. show can't be retarded. And a program can't be "illiterate". Your inferior American education is showing. And to teamcrumb, you just listed them yourself, idiot. Also, making lists is the first step in understanding something - Biology etc.
I'm english and was educated in england. A television program can be illiterate, as this program clearly demonstrates. Is that all, or have you got any more irrelevant and idiotic points to make?
Malcolm Muggeridge's pseudo-upper-class accent is truly vomative, considering that he was grammer-school boy and son of a Labour councillor from Croydon.
This program is illiterate. Berlin never advocated negative liberty over other values. He merely wished us to distinguish it as a separate value. He defied the conflation of liberty and rationality. He rejected the subsumption of liberty - the modern ideal of liberty as liberty of the individual to make mistakes - under the ancient - platonic - concept of right-action. Of course Berlin was a LIBERAL. He was not a "cold war intellectual", but an "intellectual", unlike maker of this program
I would say that even this "negative freedom" was never really pursued in any meaningful sense, because we allowed power-lusting dictators to control society through CORPORATE-BANKING fascism.
I was bold in the pursuit of knowledge, never fearing to follow truth and reason to whatever results they led, and bearding every authority which stood in their way.
Every generation has to have a revolution; we must put to face the new world order and diminish they hold on humanity ability to think for themselves... We must use logic that is what the divine force in the universe gave to us to have to so we wouldn't need to deal with this power trip of infadels... Democracy is nothing more than mob rule where fifty one perscent of the people can take away the rights of the other forty nine...
Just felt obliged to comment here: Saw this clip, and liked it enough that I headed out to Amazon and ordered The Trap as well as The Power of Nightmares.
Thank you for bringing Adam Curtis' work to my attention.
don't get me wrong I am not saying a Violent revolution PEACE forget borders banks monetary systems in general are not as effective as barter trade interest on anything is not natural and asks for trouble it is warned against in more then one religion People lived thousands of years w/o interest simply barter/trade and used natural resources to build, Look into perma-culture and even the Zeitgheist idea these seem to be the only viable answer to co-existing with mother earth
@billyysands He also said: "What a man! I have lost my heart!... Fascism has rendered a service to the entire world... If I were Italian, I am sure I would have been with you entirely from the beginning of your victorious struggle against the bestial appetites and passion of Leninism." Anyway, what about direct democracy, workers' councils, participatory democracy, workers' control, workers' self management etc?
The United States of America if not a democracy it is a republic if you don't know learn the difference.
deadreck024 4 months ago
It curious and not a little baffling why Adam Curtis felt the need to distort Isaiah Berlin's idea of Negative Liberty since the central thrust of the documentary could have stood without this distortion. In "Two Concepts of Liberty," Berlin defines and highlights the pros and cons of each without exalting or preferring one over the other. He only warns that both can be misused in the name of, or in an ostensible quest for, liberty for all. I urge viewers to read the essay for themselves.
Tankotoka 7 months ago
This has been flagged as spam show
fascinating my friend. why I like youtube.
melTorino 8 months ago
What does the word 'rhetoric' mean? Go to 1:15 !
ernestlmt 10 months ago
YOU PEOPLE ARE FUCKIN STUPID.. HUMANS NEED A TYRANT LORDING OVER THEM, NOT 'FREEDOM'
I CANT WAIT FOR 'THE NEW WORLD ORDER'.. IT WILL MAKE COMMUNISM LOOK SOFT, AND YOU WILL DESERVE IT YOU PATHETIC, PARASITIC SHEEP-PEOPLE.
AbattoirDream 11 months ago
@AbattoirDream why are you so angry at everyone?
YouDonteverhavetodie 10 months ago
@AbattoirDream are you a somehow separate entity to the rest of 'us' then?
savethecolumbians 9 months ago
Really disappointed that Curtis seeemed to gloss over and distort the meaning of negative and positive liberty. I used to learn things from his documentaries, now they just seem to be political rants (and I can see the socialist direction he's going in)
disamjisa 11 months ago
"There is no way of overthrowing modern society except by violence." Hasn't Sartre read Tolstoy, Gandhi and MLK?
753hill 1 year ago
Not to dispute the points made, but what's not considered are the differences between the different dynamics of these revolutions. The positive liberty of the French and Russian revolutions are in response to overthrowing their respective domestic royal leaderships. The 20th century revolutions were predominantly with the colonies wanting to be free from their foreign rule. But the negative liberty that Berlin expressed was to be applied domestically to maintain the status quo of power.
radicalsquare 1 year ago
That's also rubbish Ghandi won! Some revoultions are velvet, revoultions can succeed- Berlin again is wrong.
And it's a total fantasy to say that power should be limited, power is there- it exists, Berlin is a dreamer only answer is leagal oversight over those in power.
099749 1 year ago
i almost envy the simple life of pre French revolution king at the to you at the bottom society at lest it was simple
255ad 1 year ago
In my own (fairly pessimistic) worldview, this endless cycle of freedom, tyranny, and revolution is a fundamental part of human nature. This is why regular elections/changes of government are so important; they provide an outlet for revolutionary pressures that might otherwise build up into a catastrophic explosion. Better "a little revolution every thirty years," in Jefferson's words, than a Khmer Rouge-esque shitfest every three hundred.
SAGEBOT500 1 year ago 3
Comment removed
KeegannT 1 year ago
This is through and through a late-Victorian worldview best phrased by Freud- the "build-up of pressures, and the inevitability of their mechanical release".
but what ends up in Jefferson's words is not revolution, that's discontent- rebellion, bargaining.
Big "R" revolution is still yet to come in my mind, inspite of the shitfests that pretended to be revolutions proper.
mikezephyr 1 year ago
everyone needs to see this, this is soooooooooooooo good
sgtmcwallace 1 year ago
National Socialism or a Modern Nationalism with an understanding and an aversion to fratricide (e.g. WWI, WWII), colonialism etc. Are modern answers - racial issues need to be solved first of course! Each people should stay in thier own part of the World, immigration should be limited.
andy7666 1 year ago
Where the fuck are any comments about the mode of production or economy in general? Many mentions of 'communism' but absolutely nothing on Marxism. If it's been such a force why not talk about it?! This is such wishy washy liberal bollocks. At the most it's lefty, hardly very radical.
ButherLi55ett 1 year ago
It's naive to believe that the current rulers and shakers of the world are in any way idealists. I think that Eustace Mullins and Noam Chomsky got it right when they said that the leaders--in the USA, for example--are behaving like mafioso. That is, they are megalomaniacs and mercenary thugs with no greater purpose than to fill their own coffers at the expense of the masses. "Idealistic" rhetoric is then merely a smoke screen.
salahudeenabduladl 2 years ago
Wouldnt it be great if all the intellectuals,bankers and politicians and godsquadders would just leave us the fuck alone.
What would be even better if we stopped following them.
Yehbytheway 2 years ago 5
The answer is there is no answer
daizee106 2 years ago 14
yes
praisethenameofsatan 2 years ago
@daizee 106, the answer is farming , farm your own food, seeds r free !!! that's about as independant as you can get on this earth. if you don't want 2 get your hands dirty with dirt and sweat a little then , you choose 2 b dependent , dependent means getting a dic* up your ass. feel free 2 choose, i choose farming. if you think because u work in an office you r not dependant, think again. who's your farmer? u don't know huh, u get a di%* up ur ass.if u don't farm ,u expect someone 2 do it 4 u?
outlawmlo7 1 year ago
@outlawmlo7 Excuse me sir, but you are sadly mistaken. My main farmer is my Dad. I do not work in an office any more. I get my hands dirty regularly. So get the dick out of your ass and realize I was joking and you do not get the joke
daizee106 1 year ago
@daizee106 : isn't that a double contradiction?
selvmordspilot 1 year ago
You clearly don't have a clue what you're talking about. You haven't read berlin. You've taken a single quote from the internet, and hopelessly mis-read it. I suspect the same is true of the maker of this idiotic television program.
lottiesocks 2 years ago
surely, positive and negative freedom are kantian concepts. does he belong to the great unread?
phwodehouse 2 years ago
...continued from (i)... "positive self-mastery a la Rousseau, Hegel, Marx: e.g. "you don't know what you really want. Real liberty is behaving in accordance with the forces of history, or reason, or the proleteriat, not your petty desiers" etc.
(ii) Note Berlin says, "pluralism entails a MEASURE of negative liberty". A measure of negative liberty is necessary for any kind of civilised life. Pluralism also entails a measure of PL, and a measure of social justice, and of equality.
lottiesocks 2 years ago
No it doesn't: you need to improve your reading skills. PL means having role in who governs. NL means society letting you get on with your own thing in private. The two are different, although related, concepts. (i) In your quote Berlin says "positive self-mastery" - which is not PL, so much as a specific interpretation of PL a la Rousseau. Berlin argues that this rhetoric is usually a way for an elite to mask its re-writing of the individual's desires.
lottiesocks 2 years ago
Berlin writes over and over that a society has to hold different values in tension. He argues that negative liberty is an essential value, which has to be traded off against (rather than re-construed as) other essential values, like equality and rationality. His argument against the monists is that they re-construe one value (negative liberty) in terms of another value (rationality or social justice). This program's presentation of berlin couldn't be more false. It's illiterate
lottiesocks 2 years ago
Berlin was a pluralist which means that he recognised many objective values which are incommensurate and have to be traded off against each other. One of these values, for him, was positive liberty; another one was negative liberty. His argument, in two concepts, was that positive liberty is taken to be the only form of liberty by monists who reject negative-liberty. This idiotic program presents him Berlin a monist who only accepts negative liberty.
lottiesocks 2 years ago
Main Entry: il·lit·er·ate
Showing or marked by a lack of acquaintance with the fundamentals of a particular field of knowledge.
lottiesocks 2 years ago
"Vomative" isn't a verb. A t.v. show can't be retarded. And a program can't be "illiterate". Your inferior American education is showing. And to teamcrumb, you just listed them yourself, idiot. Also, making lists is the first step in understanding something - Biology etc.
baalisgod666 2 years ago
"My american education?"
I'm english and was educated in england. A television program can be illiterate, as this program clearly demonstrates. Is that all, or have you got any more irrelevant and idiotic points to make?
lottiesocks 2 years ago
You English (with a capital) scum are a race of morons like the americans which you now surround yourself with. Pommie scum.
baalisgod666 2 years ago
Malcolm Muggeridge's pseudo-upper-class accent is truly vomative, considering that he was grammer-school boy and son of a Labour councillor from Croydon.
This tv show is retarded.
MrNewchange 2 years ago
This program is illiterate. Berlin never advocated negative liberty over other values. He merely wished us to distinguish it as a separate value. He defied the conflation of liberty and rationality. He rejected the subsumption of liberty - the modern ideal of liberty as liberty of the individual to make mistakes - under the ancient - platonic - concept of right-action. Of course Berlin was a LIBERAL. He was not a "cold war intellectual", but an "intellectual", unlike maker of this program
lottiesocks 2 years ago 2
There playing the music from the scene from the movie carrie where she was buried in rubble
Pentazoid111 2 years ago
This has been flagged as spam show
I would say that even this "negative freedom" was never really pursued in any meaningful sense, because we allowed power-lusting dictators to control society through CORPORATE-BANKING fascism.
Berlin's system never restrained THEIR power.
TheLogicJunkie 2 years ago
I was bold in the pursuit of knowledge, never fearing to follow truth and reason to whatever results they led, and bearding every authority which stood in their way.
Thomas Jefferson
fader22 2 years ago
Every generation has to have a revolution; we must put to face the new world order and diminish they hold on humanity ability to think for themselves... We must use logic that is what the divine force in the universe gave to us to have to so we wouldn't need to deal with this power trip of infadels... Democracy is nothing more than mob rule where fifty one perscent of the people can take away the rights of the other forty nine...
fader22 2 years ago
Just felt obliged to comment here: Saw this clip, and liked it enough that I headed out to Amazon and ordered The Trap as well as The Power of Nightmares.
Thank you for bringing Adam Curtis' work to my attention.
DgtlSorcrs 2 years ago
Corruption is what has turned extraordinary possibilities into ordinary for extraordinary people.
WrenElessedil 2 years ago
say what?
teamcrumb 2 years ago
almost 2500 views that would be a pretty decent force to start a revolution with.
neven01 3 years ago
It starts with knowledge and ideas spreading. People need to know there is an alternative to what they have been forced to survive so far.
hollywoodartchick 2 years ago
yeah lets have another bloodbath! pol pot ! pol pot! its a holiday in cambodia o/~
billyysands 2 years ago 4
There have been peaceful Revolutions
however few and far between Freedom is not inherited or born into it is earned.
It is far easier to hold onto while you are free then to try to get it back.
neven01 2 years ago
look there are causes worth killing people over and there are those causes that inherently create blood
nazism and communism were some
facism killed 60 million people
communism twice that number
for what famines in the ukraine?
a gulag in siberia the cultural revolution
setting back china twenty years and kiling another 1 mlion 5 million more with famine?
all communism did was starve and murder than when it established order it produced misery and oppression
billyysands 2 years ago 3
don't get me wrong I am not saying a Violent revolution PEACE forget borders banks monetary systems in general are not as effective as barter trade interest on anything is not natural and asks for trouble it is warned against in more then one religion People lived thousands of years w/o interest simply barter/trade and used natural resources to build, Look into perma-culture and even the Zeitgheist idea these seem to be the only viable answer to co-existing with mother earth
Peacefully.
neven01 2 years ago
It has been said that Democracy is the worst form of government except all those other forms that have been tried from time to time.
- Winston Churchill
billyysands 2 years ago 4
This has been flagged as spam show
@billyysands He also said: "What a man! I have lost my heart!... Fascism has rendered a service to the entire world... If I were Italian, I am sure I would have been with you entirely from the beginning of your victorious struggle against the bestial appetites and passion of Leninism." Anyway, what about direct democracy, workers' councils, participatory democracy, workers' control, workers' self management etc?
ButherLi55ett 1 year ago
Democracy is based upon the conviction that there are extraordinary possibilities in ordinary people.
- Harry Emerson Fosdick
billyysands 2 years ago 12
@billyysands I think that's an exaggeration. Rather that the average person can make fair, informed decisions about society.
Redcarpet01 1 year ago
facts you do not relate to do not need you compiling them into lists.
Communism, totalitarianism, Capitalism all have bloodshed in living memory.
Listing these horrors is not understanding them.
teamcrumb 2 years ago
Maybe yes. Maybe no. Or it's the beginning of understanding them.
drhealthy4u 2 years ago
That is an incredible sound bite/clip of Malcolm Muggeridge
jgrannum 3 years ago
Pol Pot - Supported by USA,UK and Germany
wwwPNACATTACKcom 3 years ago