Adam Curtis's paranoia

Adam Curtis has received fulsome praise from some quarters for his three-part BBC2 series, The Trap. But this viewer is unable to follow suit. Broadly put, The Trap suggests that people in Britain and the US have fallen into a trap, one set partly by circumstances, especially the cold war, and partly by a few institutions, particularly those under the influence of the Rand Corporation. But the key instigators are a number of highly influential academics. Among these are the game theorists John Nash and Thomas Schelling and the economist James Buchanan. Curtis argues that figures like these, along with a host of researchers and teachers, bent on a crusade to quantify everything, have taken the heart out of society and left us fatally weakened and individually isolated. One lone dissenter, the psychologist Ronald Laing, figures prominently in the debate. Like much else in The Trap, this complex thinker is both resurrected and reduced to caricature—in this case, as a brave but hopelessly outnumbered defender of basic human values. All is suggestion. Little is spelled out. This is dense and fast-moving television, verging on the chaotic. The game theorists and Buchanan are two examples which illustrate the failings of Curtis's style of analysis.

In the programme we see clips of James Buchanan maintaining that public figures in government and elsewhere have personal objectives, and do not ceaselessly strive for the public good. In other words, politicians are humans, like everyone else. Buchanan is hardly the first social scientist to suggest that an analysis that takes some account of the motives of politicians is likely to help in understanding their actions. Machiavelli suggested similar ideas centuries ago in the political realm, as did Adam Smith and the classical and neoclassical economic tradition with the concept of "economic man." But Curtis presents these ideas as something new, and adopts an extreme form of what is called reflexivity, the idea that by studying things we affect their behaviour. He argues that Buchanan and his ilk are responsible for the wicked and self-interested actions of politicians and others in public life. Curtis holds that the mere act of suggesting that self-interest plays a role in political life was enough to change politicians from dedicated public servants into control freaks. This goes beyond the bounds of acceptable naivety. It romanticises the past while misrepresenting the ideas it purports to explain.

The Trap argues that there was a time when a more generous spirit prevailed, before the trio of academics, quantifiers and technocrats got control. Trust and compassion are important elements in social life, and they ebb and flow in power over different periods. But it is odd to attribute these changes to the actions of a conspiracy of evil thinkers; academics do not have such power.



Curtis makes much play of game theorists as examples of the architects of the trap. But he misunderstands the concept; game theory does not mean that we should treat life as a competitive game. The heart of game theory is to suggest that in many instances there are strategic interactions between people, and that people, in choosing what to do, try to take account of the likely responses of others. Curtis sees these ideas as encouraging manipulative selfish action (although in fact most of the recent work in game theory has been about co-operation rather than competition). At the international level, he sees these ideas as perpetuating the cold war. Utopia is within our grasp, he suggests, but false prophets have tricked us into accepting a wasteland of alienation. This is plain silly. A better society is within our grasp, but Curtis is turning on just those people who have something to contribute to it. He greatly exaggerates the power of ideas, and at the same time almost wilfully misrepresents them. One way of characterising his basic misunderstanding is the old problem of confusing the message with the messenger.

There are important issues in our society regarding social responsibility, how we relate to each other, income inequality and the nature of the just society. These questions are not raised in our usual television fare. This is precisely why they should be addressed by public service television. Adam Curtis and BBC2 deserve much credit for keeping alive the idea of the ambitious, single-voice television essay. But there is something deeply worrying when the style of debate we are given plays with ideas without understanding them, and exploits our fascination with conspiracies. Difficult ideas take time to understand, and are not helped by fast cutting, the indiscriminate use of grainy documentary footage and suggestive music. Is this the work of a conspiracy, perpetrated by the friends of confusion?