The idea that we are like billiard balls bumping into each other without any common interest has created violent chaos
Madeleine Bunting, The Guardian, 12 March 2007
What will define the 21st century? When the question was put to a wide range of thinkers by Prospect magazine, the answers read like the horsemen of the apocalypse – disease, disaster, mayhem. Not cheerful bedtime reading then. The comments of philosopher, Jonathan Rée seemed to sum it all up: at the beginning of the 20th century, “the main emotion behind most people’s politics was hope: hope for science, for free trade, for social democracy, for national efficiency, for world government”. That sentiment has now been replaced, he argued, by indignation. “People are more interested in bearing witness to their personal moral righteousness” than in engaging in open-minded debate.
Optimism and a belief in progress are now the implausible preserve of Labour party apparatchiks who are regarded as at best deluded, at worst as cynically trying to preserve their own legitimacy. The rest of us have little faith in the capacity of human beings for self-sacrifice or cooperation to avert climate change or any of the other predicted catastrophes that fill the media.
Gloomy thoughts for a Monday morning. Last night the BBC television series The Trap: What Happened to Our Dream of Freedom began, claiming to explain how we have managed to land ourselves in this miasma of misery. Its director, Adam Curtis, has built a reputation on tracing how ideas shape political and social trends. This series, though his most dense, could be his most important yet. Ultimately, its message is optimistic – better understanding of the trap we’re in will help us find a way out.