You’re more than welcome. The main reason I started this new little site, aside from just keeping the URL alive, was to share all of these marvellous videos that I’ve stumbled across since my teevee conked out. There's a selfish/lazy motive too. It gives me a convenient place to find them all whenever I want to watch one again without having to go rummage around the web attic looking for it.
Of late, I’ve been quite obsessed with the work of Adam Curtis and his various explorations of how different elites have tried to impose their ideologies on the times with predictably tragi-comic consequences (to paraphrase the Observer). There’s another one that I’m going to get to that deals with marketing and public relations through the prism of Freudian psychology that is absolutely bloody brilliant.
Despite the many ways to interpret Stirling's actions and the eventual outcome, I see it through the simple prism of Grant's thesis: that liberal-capitalism has so triumphed over pre-capitalist mores that those who do not play the game by the liberal rules are doomed.
Stirling tried to play British Imperialism in the age of technique & capitalism. The end result is Foreign Control & Influence of British Capital.
This is why George Grant wrote his "Lament." Given the obvious benefits and the easy life that modern capitalism provides (in general) he saw no way to counter it as a weltanschung. So, he lamented and tried to slow-down the pace of change as much as he could. He knew it was losing battle.
He also knew/believed that it would eventually lead us to some form of global crisis. During the 1960's this fear was Nuclear War. Perhaps the real crisis will turn-out to be environmental disaster.
I will watch Episode #2 this morning: I can only imagine how Maggie ecacerbates the problem. Not that much could be done anyway, as Denis Healy's actions from the mid-1970's imply.
Thanks for posting this. I look forward to further installments.
ReplyDeleteYou’re more than welcome. The main reason I started this new little site, aside from just keeping the URL alive, was to share all of these marvellous videos that I’ve stumbled across since my teevee conked out. There's a selfish/lazy motive too. It gives me a convenient place to find them all whenever I want to watch one again without having to go rummage around the web attic looking for it.
ReplyDeleteOf late, I’ve been quite obsessed with the work of Adam Curtis and his various explorations of how different elites have tried to impose their ideologies on the times with predictably tragi-comic consequences (to paraphrase the Observer). There’s another one that I’m going to get to that deals with marketing and public relations through the prism of Freudian psychology that is absolutely bloody brilliant.
Despite the many ways to interpret Stirling's actions and the eventual outcome, I see it through the simple prism of Grant's thesis: that liberal-capitalism has so triumphed over pre-capitalist mores that those who do not play the game by the liberal rules are doomed.
ReplyDeleteStirling tried to play British Imperialism in the age of technique & capitalism. The end result is Foreign Control & Influence of British Capital.
This is why George Grant wrote his "Lament." Given the obvious benefits and the easy life that modern capitalism provides (in general) he saw no way to counter it as a weltanschung. So, he lamented and tried to slow-down the pace of change as much as he could. He knew it was losing battle.
He also knew/believed that it would eventually lead us to some form of global crisis. During the 1960's this fear was Nuclear War. Perhaps the real crisis will turn-out to be environmental disaster.
I will watch Episode #2 this morning: I can only imagine how Maggie ecacerbates the problem. Not that much could be done anyway, as Denis Healy's actions from the mid-1970's imply.