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CREATED:20111031T063100Z
DESCRIPTION:\n\nFilm evenings begin with potluck refreshments and social hour at  6:30 
 pm,\nfollowed by the film at  7:30 pm, followed by a discussion after the 
 film.\n\nAll Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace\nEpisode III\nby Adam 
 Curtis\n\nThis is a series of three documentary films by renown director 
 Adam Curtis about how humans have been colonized by the machines they have 
 built. Adam Curtis will show us that, although we don’t realize it, the 
 way we see everything in the world today is through the eyes of computers. 
 His film series claims that computers have failed to liberate us and 
 instead have distorted and simplified our view of the world around 
 us.\n\nToday we see Episode III: The Monkey in the Machine and the Machine 
 in the Monkey.  In this episode Adam Curtis looks at why we humans find 
 this machine vision so beguiling.  The film argues it is because all 
 political dreams of changing the world for the better seem to have failed 
 – so we have retreated into machine-fantasies that say we have no control 
 over our actions because we are unable to change our world.\n\nAt the heart 
 of this Episode is a famous scientist — William Hamilton.  In 1963 he 
 argued that human behavior is really guided by codes buried deep within us. 
  This Episode begins in the jungles of the Congo and Rwanda in the year 
 2000.  William Hamilton was there to help prove his theory that humans are 
 machines controlled by genes.  But all around him the Congo was being torn 
 apart by “Africa’s First World War.”  This Episode then interweaves 
 the two stories — the strange roots of William Hamilton’s theory, and 
 the history of the West’s tortured relationship with the Congo over the 
 past 100 years.\n\nHamilton’s idea was later popularized by Richard 
 Dawkins as “the selfish gene.”  The theory was that individual human 
 beings are really just machines whose only job is to make sure their codes 
 are passed on for eternity.  Adam Curtis tells us that Hamilton’s idea 
 that humans are computers controlled by their genes had been accepted by 
 the public.  He shows us that this idea that we humans are all “soft 
 machines,” driven by the impulses of our genes, governs much of our 
 politics and personal lives.  But he also asks whether we have accepted 
 this fatalistic philosophy — that humans are helpless computers — so as 
 to explain and excuse the fact that, as in the Congo, we are unable to 
 improve and change our world.  So Adam Curtis’ dark conclusion is that we 
 all willingly adopt Hamilton’s idea that we are genetic machines because 
 it explains why there are so many dreadful things going on in the world 
 that we’re powerless to stop.\n\nWheelchair accessible around the corner 
 at  411  28th  Street\n\n$5 donations are accepted\n\n \n\n \n 
 https://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2011/10/30/18696208.php
SUMMARY:All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace
LOCATION:Humanist Hall\n390  27th  Street\nuptown Oakland, between Telegraph and 
 Broadway\nhttp://www.HumanistHall.org
URL:https://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2011/10/30/18696208.php
DTSTART:20111201T033000Z
DTEND:20111201T053000Z
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