June 20, 2011
The Coping Cop-out of Machines of Loving Grace
Throughout the AWOBMLG trilogy, Adam Curtis effectively shows how certain memes inform economic, social & political change in the world & in the third monkey in the machine <> machine in the monkey episode he addresses the mother of all memes: the selfish gene, as put forward by Hamilton > Price > Dawkins. And in the process Curtis manages to artfully wrangle & weave in disparate & seemingly unrelated topics (like HIV, hippies, PS2, gorillas, London’s homeless, disco-dancing & conflict in the Congo), but doesn’t touch the one topic I would’ve liked to see addressed: interspecies altruism & how to explain it genetically. I’m not talking about the classic examples of reciprocal altruism (ox-pecker<>buffalo or remora<>shark) but for example dolphins saving humans from sharks or why this orangutan seemingly has an interest in reviving this little bird, or why we humans, unlike the honey badger, even give a shit.
At first these final lines of episode 3 were a let-down, a cop-out that left me hanging (for perhaps the same reason that Deron couldn’t get past the premise):
… But Hamilton’s ideas remain powerfully influential in our society. Above all, the idea that human beings are helpless chunks of hardware controlled by software programs written in their genetic code. The question is, have we embraced that idea because it is a comfort in a world where everything we do, either good or bad, seems to have terrible unforeseen consequences? We know that it was our actions that helped cause the horror still unfolding in the Congo. Yet we have not idea what to do about it. So instead we have embraced a fatalistic philosophy of us as helpless computing machines to both excuse and explain our political failure to change the world.
But now, waking up the next morning, I can’t stop thinking about it & I’m wondering if it bothered me because it’s true & I just don’t want to accept it?
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Okay, I’m definitely going to watch all of this now.
Thank you, Derek. Your comments about episode 1–along with those of Deron, Lucy, and Sheila–inspired me to watch, but I got through only 1/2 of the episode before I was interrupted. I will say, I was fascinated, and I look forward to watching the entire series.
I like the way we think here.
I’d think you of all people would dig it, Deron. Even gets into AI & Alan Turing–it would seem he bites off more than he can chew, especially of buzzword topics, but he somehow manages to pull it together and make it seem relevant to the central message–regardless of whether that message is questionable or not.