Earlier quoted context omitted.
Adam Curtis’ “All Watched over by Machines of Loving Grace” theorized that that emerging chaotic state mixed with our recent technological emergence has lead us to believe we can “contain the chaos” of this highly sophisticated system. He quite amazingly illustrates over 3 hours that we falsely believe that earth is an unchanging systematic snow globe rather than a chaotic system. And the more we try to control it, t…
Maybe I am misinterpreting the tone, but this is an incongruous belief. Nothing about a chaotic system precludes a *trend* in that system. I think it is quite objectively clear that while extremely chaotic, the trend of recent human impact on the earth is an equally extreme destruction of natural habitats.
A lot of the series is about the belief that we could, with technologies predictive powers & neoliberal market ethos... And how it doesn't pan out. We have "New Economies" greatly bloom in the world. And about how instead we got the 1997 Asian financial crisis. We thought we were taming market complexity (via in part neoliberalism weirdly) but turns out not so much. We have the rise of cybernetic thinking & Limits of Growth (& it's limitations in assuming we cannot change human behavior).
"Sure everything is trending towards shit, but we're humans, we can definitely go create some genius machine that will fix this, right"
Curtis rarely comes out and makes broad conclusions, but the watcher is definitely left with impression of absurd hubris & folly & chaos-triumphant, in AWOBMOLG and in much else of Curtis's excellent excellent catalog of contemporary history documentaries.