“Documentaries shouldn’t just reflect the world: they should try and explain why reality is like it is”…
— Adam Curtis
“One of the main functions of politicians — and journalists — is to simplify the world for us”…
— Adam Curtis
“Throughout the western world, new systems have risen up whose job is to constantly record and monitor the present — and then compare that to the recorded past. The aim is to discover patterns, coincidences and correlations and, from that, find ways of stopping change. Keeping things the same”…
— Adam Curtis
At the beginning of UK Documentary Filmmaker Adam Curtis’ 2016 film — HyperNormalisation [1] — the first words spoken are:
We live in strange times…
It’s a movie highlighting how a whole generation has retreated from an active engagement with power and any desire to change the world.
It’s a film about helplessness and detachment.
HyperNormalisation [1] is a yearning for simplicity, certainty and knowing — a fake simple world — in a world of complexity and uncertainty — a complex real world.
It highlights how we are no longer equipped as a Society to lean into all the volatility, uncertainty, complexity [2] and ambiguity that reality presents.
It’s a distorted interpretation of the World where risks are perceived as asymmetric [3].
An environment where risk needs to be eliminated, mitigated, and controlled in our desire for control and knowing [4].
HyperNormalisation [1] was a term coined by a writer in the Soviet Union in the 1980s to describe the prevailing state of reality when it was collapsing.
At the time, there were no protests, however:
“Everyone knew that everything was not right
they knew that the leaders were not in control
everyone knew the leaders knew that they were not in control and everything was corrupt and fake
but nobody did anything about it, it was “normal”
you knew it was a bit odd, unreal & fake, but because there was no other picture of the world and you were in this system, you accepted it as normal and went along with it[5]…
In this film, Adam Curtis is not suggesting that Western Nations are necessarily the same as the Soviet Union, but he is suggesting that our Society does know that things are a bit odd, unreal & sometimes fake, and those leaders in charge know that we know they are not in control, sometimes allowing a level of corruption, and yet nobody does anything about it because there is no other picture of the world and because when you are within this system, you simply go along with it.
It is the impotence and passivity in accepting this as normal.
It raises a core question — whether from progressive or conservative politics — around whether people really want change.
It feels like rhetoric, whether it is the Occupy Wall Street [6] movement or the Arab Spring [7].
We have confused the process with content.
A world without an alternative vision that reflects the complexity of reality.
It’s a world dominated by managerialism [8], a conservatism of both the left and the right ( keeping things the way they are ), bureaucracy and containerised individualism where the social media algorithms sort us into collective digital marketing personas for people like us [9].
The aim is to keep the world stable, monitor the world, and manage risk.
Modern managerial capital [10], such as finance, seeks to avoid instability — there is always the right thing to be.
A fear of change.
A Society that must, at all costs, avoid risk.
Look what happens when you try to change things?
You can never tell the consequences.
The reality is that our Modern Day Society emerged through change — change can be positive — providing exciting new opportunities and pathways.
A time to re-imagine.
Where risk lives in the dynamics of opportunity.
Another example of this phenomenon has been the action by Central Banks since the Global Financial Crisis in 2008.
We live in an economy where the price of credit (i.e. the price of risk/uncertainty) is manipulated by Central Banks, where price discovery has been eliminated, where we no longer have recessions, where fiscal deficits no longer matter, and where zombie companies and zombie markets [11] prevail.
A Society where lower & lower interest rates and corporate tax rates, more & more debt, Quantitative Easing and higher & higher Financial Asset prices drive the economy, providing an illusion of short-term prosperity. and wealth creation.
A shift from economic cycles to perpetual asset price increases as outlined in our earlier article — Tomorrow's Economy [10].
However, the folly of this narrative in a complex world was exposed by Covid and the Global Pandemic.
A virus where we attempted to synthesise the complexity through existing analogies such as the flu, car crashes and cardiac arrests.
A virus that reintroduced the uncertainty & complexity of reality [12] and exposed the fragility of the economy and financial system we have created.
It has highlighted the record global debt, the wealth & income inequality, and the casualisation of the workforce, including the Gig Economy.
It exposed the fragility [13] of business models & business practices optimised for financial efficiency, automation, financial engineering, stock buybacks and a just-in-time supply chain rather than one of adaptability and resilience.
..and yet the response so far to the Pandemic has been more of the same...
More Central Bank liquidity, more debt monetisation, more asset purchases, more government intervention in the eternal hope of eliminating uncertainty and controlling the economy like a machine from the Industrial Age…
A combination of existing Industrial Age ideologies, including Neoclassical Economics, Neoliberalism, Modern Monetary Theory, Taylorism, Fordism and Friedmanism…
Despite this, the more we attempt to suppress reality and avoid risk, the more that risk will reappear with a vengeance.
A Minsky Moment
The Risk Paradox [14]
It’s akin to a perpetual game of whack-a-mole that adds more & more complexity and distortions to our Economy and Society resulting in further erosion of Trust and the Social Contract.
An economy where Central Banks and Governments ultimately determine the winners & losers in Society — akin to Central Planning from a mid-20th Century Soviet Politburo.
There must be a better way?
A society where we embrace the uncertainty and complexity of reality.
Where collaboration, innovation and entrepreneurship sit at its centre.
Where a heterodoxy – a diversity of perspectives – is embraced rather than a prevailing orthodoxy.
Where risk is recognised and appropriately priced rather than avoided.
Where unleashing human potential and sharing knowledge to solve customer and community problems was at its core.
Where new skills in sensemaking [15][16] & reflexivity are integrated with existing skills in abstraction, codification & term logic. The integration of Discovery — a World as Sensed — with — Creation — a World of Action.
Where Phronesis — Practical Wisdom — Vernunft — is more critical than Verstand.
A World where the uncertainty and emergent qualities of reality are viewed as opportunities to re-imagine.
[1] — HyperNormalisation — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HyperNormalisation
[2] — The Complexity Void — https://medium.com/@rlschutte/unbundling-complexity-503c77f0b261
[3] — Against the Gods — https://medium.com/@rlschutte/against-the-gods-958f510c082e
[4] — Humility is truth and the sea of ignorance… — https://medium.com/@rlschutte/humility-is-truth-and-the-sea-of-ignorance-c289112cbd57
[5] — Adam Curtis — Do We Really Want Change? — https://open.spotify.com/episode/61b5AjudR047aPqcWwrrWb
[6] — Occupy Wall Street — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Occupy_Wall_Street
[7] — Arab Spring — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arab_Spring
[8] — Re-Imagining Organisations for the 21st Century… — https://medium.com/@rlschutte/re-imagining-organisations-for-the-21st-century-94d32e4e7e91
[9] — The Mesh… — https://medium.com/@rlschutte/the-mesh-5db1311fd139
[10] — Tomorrow’s Economy… — https://medium.com/@rlschutte/tomorrows-economy-941889e4de64
[11] — El-Erian Says Fed Buying Stocks Will Lead to ‘Zombie’ Market — https://www.bloomberg.com/news/videos/2020-04-23/el-erian-says-fed-buying-stocks-will-lead-to-zombie-market-video
[12] — The Reality Gap… — https://medium.com/@rlschutte/the-reality-gap-74da0e5e869a — and — The Complexity Void… — https://medium.com/@rlschutte/unbundling-complexity-503c77f0b261
[13] — A shift to liquid brains… — https://medium.com/@rlschutte/a-shift-to-liquid-brains-fba931fa8c1b
[14] — If you don’t become the ocean you’ll be seasick every day… — https://medium.com/@rlschutte/if-you-dont-become-the-ocean-you-ll-be-seasick-every-day-25034bfa44ac
[15] — Sensemaking, the core skill for the 21st Century… — https://medium.com/@rlschutte/sensemaking-the-core-skill-for-the-21st-century-ebc8c679cfe8
[16] — Collective Sensemaking… — Collective-sensemaking-90826d1cb007
