Is Adam Curtis a Conservative?

 

Who cares?... This is kind of a follow-up to my previous article, see: https://hpanwo-voice.blogspot.com/2021/08/cant-get-you-out-of-my-head-part-6_13.html. In a video by Zero Books, Douglas Lain reviews the new documentary by Adam Curtis, Can't Get You Out of my Head. He refers to a talk by Curtis where he laments the loss of communal values and social libertarianism. He described himself as "neoconservative" and even apolitical. Curtis posits numerous critiques of society in a very negative sense. However, according to Lain, the Left needs this wakeup call because they are too naively optimistic. He praises Curtis' technical style, as do I. However, he sees Curtis as an idealist whereas he sees himself as a realist who regards the world in material terms. He adapts David Graeber's maxim into a Marxist equivalent in which our world is purely the product of our industrial system. He also cites one of his house's own titles, Democracy Under Siege by Frank Furedi... shameless plug... who makes a similar point to Curtis about how the battlefield of class struggle is not the economy, but the human mind (George Orwell also understood this profoundly). Lain however stands beside classical Marxism and differs from both Furedi and Curtis. Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=76StMC0l7kU. I didn't notice this at first, but I have come to realize that Curtis feels some sympathy for the subjects of his films who come to the conclusion that a life without some teleological drive is a life not worth living. In our society even the question of a transcendental meaning or mission to one's existence is considered quaint and childish. Somebody at my hospital once challenged me on my ideas about the other porters by saying: "Those men, they literally just couldn't give a fuck." I replied: "About what?" He responded: "Everything!... Anything! They just couldn't give a fuck." This man regarded my ideas as foolish and doomed to failure. Yet the people Curtis refers to, Sayyid Qutb, Leo Strauss, Tupac Shakur and many others, believed that humanity could not function without some higher objective of principle to their own existence and the universe at large. They all came from different countries with different backgrounds living in different times in history, but their philosophies all converged on the same spot. Were they right? Yes. This does not justify the sometimes manipulative, deceitful and violent way they chose to solve that problem, but at least they identified the problem.
See here for more background: https://hpanwo-voice.blogspot.com/2016/10/hypernormalisation.html.
And: http://hpanwo-hpwa.blogspot.com.