Over the last several weeks, I watched the documentary of the above name (aka ‘The Trap’) by Adam Curtis on Channel 4, also available on Google Video and YouTube here, here and here. I was interested partly because of the subject matter, and partly because I wrote an essay on exactly this subject for my second year philosophy module on Hegel’s Philosophy of Right. Apart from the fact that the programme was shot like a propaganda film and clearly designed to brainwash you into thinking that the world was being taken over by a bunch of right-wing technocrats (OK, so maybe it is, but just give us the evidence and let us decide for ourselves, why don’t you? — or perhaps because we are no longer free, we are also incapable of rational thought…?) and the obvious political subtext (Tony Blair and Gordon Brown are not to be trusted — ditto the above), it was actually very interesting.

The premise of the programme is that Western democracy has adopted an idea of freedom based upon a particular mathematical abstraction of human behaviour, namely the idea of the individual as a rational, self-seeking agent that wishes to maximise its own personal gain and choice, and wishes to escape from all forms of imposition and authority. This model is derived from the world of game theory and, whilst it may seem like a suitably pessimistic view of human nature to some, completely ignores the emotional, compassionate and altruistic side of human experience. The filmmaker’s contention was that the ideas of game theory had been taken up during the Cold War, first of all as a means of predicting and controlling enemy behaviour, and later as an influential force in psychiatric and political circles as a way of controlling and managing people’s mental health (in the form of self-diagnosis checklists), the economy (self-regulation of markets and the imposition of performance targets throughout both public and private sectors) and ultimately the individual, who begins to define his or herself in this very narrow and restrictive way. This has lead to the very tightly managed and shallow form of ‘freedom’ that we now enjoy, as well as to the imposition (by force if necessary) of this conception of freedom upon other countries in the form of the Western ideal of democratic self-determination. The irony is that such a narrow, selfishly defined vision of freedom is ultimately doomed to turn into its opposite, becoming yet another form of oppression and restriction upon the individual, whose self-expression and identity is crippled by the resulting controls that are placed upon him or her in an effort to guarantee the very freedoms that it sets out to create. Now if that isn’t a living, breathing example of a Hegelian dialectic, then I don’t know what is!

The idea of freedom to which the programme was referring is Isiah Berlin’s concept of ‘negative liberty’, first described in his famous ‘Two Concepts of Liberty’ lecture. Although this was only mentioned in the last of the three programmes, this conception stands opposed to what Berlin termed ‘positive liberty’, which is the freedom to achieve certain things through, for example, the power of the state, as opposed to freedom from unnecessary restrictions that ultimately aims to allow everybody to do (as far as humanly possible) whatever they desire. The idea of positive liberty to which Berlin so vehemently objected on the basis of the worst excesses of, for example, Soviet Russia and the terrible consequences of the French revolutionary terror under Robespierre, was exactly the idea of freedom promoted by the oft misunderstood continental philosopher, G.W.F. Hegel. Hegel’s thought — and I think it is a good one — was that freedom, properly conceived, is not just freedom from all forms of restriction, but that freedom can itself be expressed through public institutions, such as those of the state, provided that the individual can identify with the aims and structures of such institutions; i.e. that we are ‘at home’ with them as an extension and expression of our collective humanity and will. It is only when we become alienated and distant from these collective expressions of freedom that we experience them as oppressive forces that are outside our control, or when they begin to lose touch with the common good, as so easily happens in periods of radical or rapid political change.

Although the programme did not go into the philosophical issues underpinnig this alternative idea of freedom (other than casually endorsing them at the very end), I find this line of thought to be quite compelling. I definitely agree that freedom entails more than just being allowed to do whatever it is that we want — that is the freedom of the adolescent who seeks to escape the dominating influence of its parents, and is necessarily reactionary and self-indulgent. However, it is less easy to identify the form that positive freedom might take, especially in these days of increasingly large political communities and globalisation. I am, however, entirely convinced that governments should avoid giving up — and if at all possible, attempt to claw back — some of the power that they have handed over the multinational corporations, perhaps the most distant and ultimately controlling influences on the face of the planet. It is an absolutely fallacious argument that such corporations represent the true expression of freedom in that we are all ‘free’ to buy the products that they produce or otherwise. Until these companies adopt an internal structure and social responsibility towards the rest of humanity that reflects and expresses our collective will and positive freedom, then they should in my opinion be treated as sociopathic — as well as potentially psychopathic — psuedo-beings that are not worthy of the slightest respect or consideration.

Similarly, all attempts to export or impose this limited and distinctly Western idea of ‘freedom’ should be looked upon with a healthy degree of scepticism as increasingly they do not lead to freedom but its opposite, condemning ever increasing numbers to slavish self-interest and shared dependence on the institutions of money, trade and catastrophic mistreatment of our global environmental (not to mention fellow human beings) that is nothing short of shameful. Whilst I do not believe that money and commerce institutions are inherently wicked, I do believe that, if left unchecked, they become the source of much human suffering and degradation, and so need to be brought into the service of the collective interests of mankind, rather than being left to shape and dictate the socio-political structure of our world unchecked.

Underlying all of this is the concept that we can become slaves to self-serving ideologies and ideas just as much when we pursue the apparently honourable goal of ‘freedom’ as when we enter into or are forced under authoritarian control. Only by constantly realigning and reinventing the institutions that most clearly express and embody our freedoms can we truly realise the goal of becoming ‘at home’ in our world. A state that promotes the independence of the individual above all else can become just as oppressive and restrictive as one that imposes duties and responsibilities upon all of its citizens. It is only by embracing this apparent contradiction and seeking to transcend it by rediscovering and expressing our collective identity as a community and as a society that we can escape the constant transformation and distortion of ‘freedom’ into its opposite — a transformation that continues in so many places around the world where the freedoms of the few have ensured the servitude of the many. Ultimately, it is our system and our ideas that are the source of this painful contradiction, and it is these that must be changed if we are ever to achieve the ideal of peace and prosperity for the majority of the world’s citizens, rather than the comfort and the avoidance of responsibility that are currently the province of the privileged few.