Adam Curtis' new documentary aired recently on BBC2; it was fantastic, as expected, he has a stunning track record, his previous films have been some of the best programmes ever broadcast. It's called The Trap: What Happened to our Dream of Freedom, you can find it through bittorrent, or on google video. In his previous videos he has looked at issues like politics of fear, systems of control, the concept of self and the history of ideas among other things. He follows a similar line of thought for the new film, exploring at the idea of freedom and liberty.

In The Trap he looks into ideas of social control, such as game theory, and how they have been applied by elites over the past thirty years or so; examining their practical implementation and subsequent economic and sociological effects. Game theory is a mathmatical model of decision making that was first applied on the political stage during the cold war to try and balance the superpowers to create an environment of safety in the west through rationality and fear; it is based on the idea that humans are ultimately self seeking individuals, out purely for their own good. He claims that this mistaken assumption has led to practical applications of the theory having dire consequences, citing examples from the 80s through to the present day.

He also explores the idea that there are two different types of freedom, as pioneered by Isaiah Berlin, these are defined through concepts of positive and negative liberty. The gist of it is that negative liberty is the freedom to be able to do what you want, to not be coerced against your will; whilst positive freedom allows the individual to "fulfill their potential". For example, positive freedom is often demonstrated through revolutions, like the Russian revolution, in which an individual or a group overthrows the establishment to make a new Utopian society through implementing a new social ideal; throughout history this process has often ended in disaster, primarily due to the corruption of the leaders once they get into power. Negative liberty is what we exercise today in the west, a concept of liberty that grew out of the "clash of ideals" during the cold war. Curtis looks into these two types of freedom and explains how he sees them implemented over the past few decades. Fantastic stuff.