BEGIN:VCALENDAR
VERSION:2.0
X-WR-CALNAME:www.indybay.org
PRODID:-//indybay/ical// v1.0//EN
BEGIN:VEVENT
UID:Indybay-18634741
SEQUENCE:18697267
CREATED:20100108T222900Z
DESCRIPTION:The evening begins with an optional social hour and potluck refreshments at 
 6:30 pm,\nfollowed by the film at 7:30 pm, followed by a discussion at the 
 end of the film.\n\nTHE TRAP\nEpisode Two:  The Lonely Robot\nby Adam 
 Curtis\n\nThis second episode develops the theme that drugs such as Prozac 
 were being used to normalize behavior and make humans more predictable, 
 like machines.  People with standard mood fluctuations diagnosed themselves 
 as abnormal.  They then presented themselves at psychiatrist’s offices, 
 fulfilled the diagnostic criteria without offering personal histories, and 
 were medicated.  The alleged result was that vast numbers of Western people 
 have had their behavior and mentation modified by SSRI drugs without any 
 strict medical necessity.\n\nAdam Curtis shows Richard Dawkins propounding 
 his ultra-strict “selfish gene” with archive clips emphasizing how the 
 severely reductionist ideas of programmed behavior have been absorbed by 
 mainstream culture.  This brought Curtis back to the economic models of 
 Hayek and the game theories of the Cold War.  He explains how, with the 
 robotic description of humankind apparently validated by geneticists, the 
 game theory systems gained even more hold over society’s 
 engineers.\n\nThis episode describes how the Clinton administration gave in 
 to market theorists in the U.S. and how New Labour in the U.K. decided to 
 measure everything it could, the better to improve it.  In industry and 
 public services, this way of thinking led to a plethora of targets, quotas, 
 and plans.  It was meant to set workers free to achieve these targets in 
 any way they chose.  What these game-theory schemes did not predict was 
 that the players, faced with impossible demands, would cheat.\n\nThen 
 Curtis describes how the theory of the free market was applied to 
 education.  With league tables of school performance published, the richest 
 parents moved to new homes to get their children into better schools.  This 
 caused house prices in the appropriate catchment areas to rise dramatically 
 — thus excluding poorer parents who were left with the worst-performing 
 schools.  This is just one aspect of a more rigidly stratified society, 
 which Curtis identifies in the way in which the incomes of the poorest 
 (working class) Americans have actually fallen in real terms since the 
 1970s, while the incomes of the average (middle class) have increased 
 slightly and those of the highest earners (upper class) have quadrupled.  
 Similarly, babies in poorer areas in the U.K. are twice as likely to die in 
 their first year as children from prosperous areas.\n\nCurtis concludes 
 that the game theory/free market model is now undergoing interrogation by 
 economists who suspect a more irrational model of behavior is appropriate 
 and useful.  In fact, in formal experiments the only people who behaved 
 exactly according to the mathematical models created by game theory are 
 economists themselves or psychopaths.\n\nWheelchair accessible around the 
 corner at  411  28th  Street\n\n$5 donations are accepted\n 
 https://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2010/01/08/18634741.php
SUMMARY:The Trap: Episode Two
LOCATION:Humanist Hall\n390  27th  Street\nmidtown Oakland, between Telegraph and 
 Broadway\nhttp://www.HumanistHall.org 
URL:https://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2010/01/08/18634741.php
DTSTART:20100121T033000Z
DTEND:20100121T053000Z
END:VEVENT
END:VCALENDAR