If there is one thing that Sean and I have learned from starting CVLT Nation, it’s that we have become a part of a supportive, compassionate global community of people, both in those who are covered on or contribute to the webzine, and those who read the webzine. We have met so many amazing people through CVLT Nation, and at the foundation of what we do, and what a lot of the musicians and artists do, is give to each other in the form of information, music and art. It creates a society that crosses the globe, and exists in the dark corners of other, larger societies. What unites us is the message that the world we live in is run by people who pretend to care for us, but behind closed doors, they work to destroy us and our connections to one another. Our compassion for one another and our creativity is a threat to their profits, and we vocalize our knowledge of their selfishness through our art and music.
One documentarian who tirelessly works to expose the mechanics of the global power structure is Adam Curtis, creator of The Power of Nightmares, The Trap and The Century of the Self series. His latest documentary series is called All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace, and addresses our global love affair with computer technology and how we have become beholden to and bound by their influence in our lives. On a micro level, sites like CVLT Nation bring together like-minded people and foster the kind of community I described above. On a macro level, Curtis argues that computer technology has created a false sense of security in global systems, like the financial system. In the first episode of the series, “Love and Power,” Curtis shows that computers facilitate an anti-community spirit, even when they were envisioned as a way to allow people to self-organize via vehicles like the Internet. Instead, via the New Economy, they are used to create “failsafe,” high-speed trading systems like the ones that run the US and European economies, systems that package and repackage loans at a rapid rate, and that inevitably led to property bubbles that exploded our economies into nothing. He ties in Randian theory, arguing that Objectivism pervades both Silicon Valley and Wall Street. As such, they are not held responsible for the consequence of their actions when entire swathes of the population lose everything due to their faulty speculation and immoral trading.
In “Love and Power,” Curtis ties together seemingly disparate ideas into one cunning web that we are all stuck in right now, immobile as we are wrapped in the spider’s silk, waiting to have our guts sucked out for his dinner. He brings in Silicon Valley, the Chinese economy, Bill Clinton, Alan Greenspan, Ayn Rand and a whole other bunch of amazing ideas – and out of all these people and things he creates a sharp, innovative argument against modern economics, and explains why, on a global level, we are in the shit. Check out Part I of his series, “Love and Power,” below…and remind yourself why you listen to angry, revolutionary music:
Watch the rest of this mind blowing documentary after the jump!
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