1 00:00:01,000 --> 00:00:04,074 Subtitles downloaded from Podnapisi.NET 2 00:00:13,618 --> 00:00:16,722 The ultimate political goal at the heart of our age, 3 00:00:16,722 --> 00:00:19,125 is the idea of individual freedom. 4 00:00:19,125 --> 00:00:24,600 I believe that freedom is the future of all humanity. 5 00:00:24,600 --> 00:00:28,038 In Britain, our government has set out to create a revolution 6 00:00:28,038 --> 00:00:32,345 that will free individuals from the control of old elites and bureaucracies. 7 00:00:32,678 --> 00:00:36,884 A new world, where we are free to choose our lives, 8 00:00:36,884 --> 00:00:39,555 not be trapped by class or income 9 00:00:39,588 --> 00:00:41,925 into a pre-destined role. 10 00:00:41,991 --> 00:00:46,665 To liberate Britain from all the old class divisions, 11 00:00:46,665 --> 00:00:49,503 old structures, old prejudices. 12 00:00:49,503 --> 00:00:51,706 To liberate the individual. 13 00:00:54,510 --> 00:00:57,381 And abroad, in Iraq and Afghanistan, 14 00:00:57,381 --> 00:00:59,250 Britain and America have set out 15 00:00:59,283 --> 00:01:01,987 to liberate individuals from tyranny. 16 00:01:01,987 --> 00:01:03,957 For those leading it, 17 00:01:03,957 --> 00:01:07,596 it is just a first step in a global revolution for democracy. 18 00:01:08,864 --> 00:01:12,269 But if one steps back and looks at what has resulted, 19 00:01:12,269 --> 00:01:15,173 it is a very strange kind of freedom. 20 00:01:15,673 --> 00:01:19,045 The attempt to liberate people from the dead hand of bureaucracy 21 00:01:19,045 --> 00:01:23,519 has led to the rise of a new, and increasingly controlling, system of management, 22 00:01:23,519 --> 00:01:26,556 driven by targets and numbers. 23 00:01:26,556 --> 00:01:31,163 While governments, committed to creating freedom of choice in all areas, 24 00:01:31,163 --> 00:01:37,705 have actually presided over a rise of inequalities and a dramatic collapse in social mobility. 25 00:01:37,739 --> 00:01:43,747 The consequence has been a return of the power of class and privilege. 26 00:01:44,916 --> 00:01:47,553 And abroad, the attempt to create democracy 27 00:01:47,553 --> 00:01:49,756 has led not just to bloody mayhem, 28 00:01:49,756 --> 00:01:53,595 but to a rejection of the american-led campaign to bring freedom. 29 00:01:53,595 --> 00:01:56,532 "GO HOME YANKEE, GO HOME YANKEE" 30 00:01:56,532 --> 00:02:00,472 "WE'RE HERE FOR YOUR FUCKING FREEDOM, SO BACK UP RIGHT NOW" 31 00:02:00,505 --> 00:02:05,679 And it has summoned up an anti-democratic, authoritarian islamism. 32 00:02:06,213 --> 00:02:10,786 This in turn, has helped inspire terrorist attacks in Britain itself. 33 00:02:10,786 --> 00:02:14,325 In response, the government has dismantled long-standing laws 34 00:02:14,325 --> 00:02:17,229 designed to protect our freedom. 35 00:02:17,229 --> 00:02:19,765 This is a series of films 36 00:02:19,765 --> 00:02:23,571 about how this strange, paradoxical world came to be created. 37 00:02:24,072 --> 00:02:27,744 This episode tells the story of how, in the 1990s, 38 00:02:27,744 --> 00:02:31,048 politicians from both the right and the left, 39 00:02:31,082 --> 00:02:33,352 tried to extend an idea of freedom, 40 00:02:33,352 --> 00:02:38,359 modeled on the freedom of the market to all other areas of society. 41 00:02:38,425 --> 00:02:42,064 This was something that previously no-one, 42 00:02:42,064 --> 00:02:44,535 not even the high-priest of capitalism, Adam Smith, 43 00:02:44,568 --> 00:02:47,171 had thought possible or appropriate. 44 00:02:47,205 --> 00:02:49,875 But now, it was seen as inevitable, 45 00:02:49,875 --> 00:02:52,446 because underlying it was a scientific model of ourselves, 46 00:02:52,446 --> 00:02:56,218 as simplified robots. 47 00:02:56,251 --> 00:02:58,288 Rational, calculating beings, 48 00:02:58,288 --> 00:03:03,963 whose behavior and even feelings, could be analysed and managed by numbers. 49 00:03:04,163 --> 00:03:09,003 But what resulted, was the very opposite of freedom. 50 00:03:09,037 --> 00:03:11,373 The numbers took on a power of their own, 51 00:03:11,373 --> 00:03:14,711 which began to create new forms of control, 52 00:03:14,711 --> 00:03:19,986 greater inequalities, and a return of a rigid class structure, 53 00:03:20,019 --> 00:03:23,290 based on the power of money. 54 00:03:34,940 --> 00:03:38,980 Second part: - The Lonely Robot - 55 00:03:38,980 --> 00:03:41,717 In 1991, the new leader of the Conservative Party, John Major, 56 00:03:41,750 --> 00:03:44,887 was searching for what his advisors called "the vision thing". 57 00:03:44,887 --> 00:03:48,493 A policy that would define his time in office. 58 00:03:48,493 --> 00:03:52,699 "Can we turn left into Atlantic Road in a moment please?" 59 00:03:52,699 --> 00:03:55,903 "I think I'd like to go down there and have a look." 60 00:03:55,903 --> 00:03:58,574 "Is it still there?" 61 00:04:00,410 --> 00:04:03,649 "It is, it is..." 62 00:04:03,649 --> 00:04:07,286 "It's still there. It's still there..." 63 00:04:08,756 --> 00:04:12,395 The pattern was set, and the world divided. 64 00:04:12,395 --> 00:04:15,532 Not into male and female, oh no no no... 65 00:04:15,565 --> 00:04:20,172 That's just mere superficial division, of minor importance. 66 00:04:20,205 --> 00:04:25,780 No, gentleman... There is another division... Another dichotomy... 67 00:04:25,813 --> 00:04:30,721 More basic, more profound... At that fateful moment, the world was divided 68 00:04:30,721 --> 00:04:34,159 into winners and losers. 69 00:04:34,159 --> 00:04:37,363 Top men, and underdogs. 70 00:04:37,497 --> 00:04:42,604 In a word, the one up, and the one down. 71 00:04:43,605 --> 00:04:50,048 And in July, John Major announced that he was going to make Britain a fairer and more equal society. 72 00:04:50,048 --> 00:04:53,052 And he was going to start with the public services. 73 00:04:53,052 --> 00:04:56,491 The arrogant bureaucrats who had ruled Britain for so long, 74 00:04:56,491 --> 00:04:59,395 were now going to be made to serve the public. 75 00:04:59,428 --> 00:05:01,898 There would be no "them and us" andy longer. 76 00:05:01,898 --> 00:05:05,938 "Nothing less than a revolution in the way in which public services are delivered. 77 00:05:05,938 --> 00:05:10,344 It will be the most comprehensive quality initiative ever launched. 78 00:05:11,178 --> 00:05:14,784 New and tougher standards of services will be set. 79 00:05:14,784 --> 00:05:16,687 The wide range of mechanisms 80 00:05:16,687 --> 00:05:19,991 to ensure that they are met to the citizens satisfaction. 81 00:05:19,991 --> 00:05:21,761 - "WAIT THERE!" 82 00:05:21,794 --> 00:05:25,633 Behind John Major's vision was a radical new political theory, 83 00:05:25,633 --> 00:05:29,171 which had been borne out of the strategic thinking of the Cold War. 84 00:05:29,171 --> 00:05:31,074 As last week's programme showed, 85 00:05:31,074 --> 00:05:33,644 it argued that the idea of public duty, 86 00:05:33,677 --> 00:05:36,581 which had underpinned British public life for generations, 87 00:05:36,581 --> 00:05:38,551 was an illusion. 88 00:05:38,551 --> 00:05:43,191 In reality, public servants were motivated only by self interest. 89 00:05:43,191 --> 00:05:47,531 When they talked proudly of serving the public good, it was hypocrisy. 90 00:05:47,564 --> 00:05:51,303 What they were actually doing was scheming to build up their empires. 91 00:05:51,303 --> 00:05:54,707 John Major was setting out to create an alternative system, 92 00:05:54,707 --> 00:05:59,047 that tried to mimic the self-interested drive of the free market. 93 00:05:59,047 --> 00:06:04,722 This would harness the true individualism of public servants in a productive way. 94 00:06:05,323 --> 00:06:08,561 The management consultants who designed the systems, 95 00:06:08,561 --> 00:06:11,833 explained that this was liberation. 96 00:06:11,833 --> 00:06:14,469 Once public servants were set performance targets, 97 00:06:14,469 --> 00:06:17,240 they could achieve them in any way they wanted. 98 00:06:17,240 --> 00:06:20,110 The old bureaucratic rules could be thrown away, 99 00:06:20,110 --> 00:06:24,350 and they would become heroic entrepreneurs. 100 00:06:24,784 --> 00:06:29,491 "Dispel for good our notions of bureaucratic inefficiency and complacency. 101 00:06:29,491 --> 00:06:32,929 These people have visions, they set goals, 102 00:06:32,929 --> 00:06:36,301 they constantly seek customer feedback, they beat budgets 103 00:06:36,301 --> 00:06:38,437 and pursue innovations with zeal." 104 00:06:38,470 --> 00:06:40,173 "Right..." 105 00:06:40,173 --> 00:06:43,945 The bureaucracy-bashing revolution is underway. 106 00:06:43,945 --> 00:06:51,723 It's no longer management by the book. And in fact, the book has been rewritten, and in some cases literally thrown out. 107 00:06:51,756 --> 00:06:56,296 "And anybody that deals with the public, you can never win. 108 00:06:56,296 --> 00:07:01,604 You can never win when you deal with the public. Never." 109 00:07:04,475 --> 00:07:09,248 But this radical new theory had an inexorable logic at its heart. 110 00:07:09,282 --> 00:07:13,354 It wasn't just going to attack the old bureaucratic institutions, 111 00:07:13,354 --> 00:07:15,591 it was going to go much further. 112 00:07:15,591 --> 00:07:19,296 It would undermine the very ideals of democratic politics, 113 00:07:19,329 --> 00:07:22,935 and the politicians belief that they could change the world. 114 00:07:23,635 --> 00:07:26,941 The man who did most to drive through this logic, 115 00:07:26,941 --> 00:07:29,945 was one of the most influential economists in the world: 116 00:07:29,945 --> 00:07:32,048 James Buchanan. 117 00:07:32,048 --> 00:07:37,990 His ideas had fundamentally shaped the conservative revolution in both Britain and America. 118 00:07:38,757 --> 00:07:43,998 He argued that politicians, just like the civil servants, were hypocrites. 119 00:07:43,998 --> 00:07:48,972 The idea they promoted - that they were serving the public - was a fiction. 120 00:07:48,972 --> 00:07:53,478 In reality, they too followed their self-interest. 121 00:07:55,247 --> 00:08:00,021 The illusion would be that politicians are out there, 122 00:08:00,021 --> 00:08:03,994 really seeking to do good for us. 123 00:08:03,994 --> 00:08:08,934 Not for themselves, but doing good for us. 124 00:08:08,934 --> 00:08:13,407 A kind of an optimistic illusion, that he is doing good for the public 125 00:08:13,407 --> 00:08:15,677 - Whereas you believe..? 126 00:08:15,710 --> 00:08:20,817 - believe that, for the most part, he's after his own interest. 127 00:08:20,817 --> 00:08:22,687 I mean, that's where we model his behaviours. 128 00:08:22,687 --> 00:08:25,324 - What about idealism? 129 00:08:25,357 --> 00:08:29,296 Well, I don't know what you mean, you'd have to tell me more about what you mean by that word. 130 00:08:29,296 --> 00:08:37,509 - The idea that you're in politics for a greater public good than something you gain for yourself. 131 00:08:37,509 --> 00:08:42,549 Well I don't think that meaningful. I don't know how to put any handles on that. 132 00:08:42,582 --> 00:08:44,952 ""...your Labour candidate speaking to you.. 133 00:08:44,952 --> 00:08:46,789 "I ask you to support the Labour Party on March the twenty...." 134 00:08:46,789 --> 00:08:51,662 What Buchanan argued, was that all politicians followed their self-interest, 135 00:08:51,662 --> 00:08:58,605 because the idea that they could interpret and express the general will of the people, was logically impossible. 136 00:08:58,605 --> 00:09:01,509 Behind this view, lay not just right-wing ideology, 137 00:09:01,509 --> 00:09:04,680 but a scientific theory called Game Theory. 138 00:09:04,680 --> 00:09:06,583 As last week's programme showed, 139 00:09:06,616 --> 00:09:11,123 game theory had been used in the 1950s by nuclear strategists, 140 00:09:11,123 --> 00:09:15,196 but the idea had then been developed by the mathematical genius John Nash, 141 00:09:15,196 --> 00:09:18,801 as a way of looking at all social interaction. 142 00:09:18,801 --> 00:09:21,839 Individuals lived their lives as a game, 143 00:09:21,839 --> 00:09:24,676 in which they pursued only their own self-interest, 144 00:09:24,676 --> 00:09:27,413 constantly adjusting to each other's strategies. 145 00:09:27,814 --> 00:09:30,685 If this were true, the economist argued, 146 00:09:30,685 --> 00:09:36,659 then the very idea of collective peoples will, was mathematically impossible. 147 00:09:36,659 --> 00:09:40,632 You simply cannot add up the millions of competing individual desires 148 00:09:40,665 --> 00:09:43,837 into one coherent goal. 149 00:09:43,871 --> 00:09:47,142 They called it "The Impossibility Theorem". 150 00:09:47,142 --> 00:09:53,050 And the only system they said that could respond to what people really wanted in such an atomised world, 151 00:09:53,050 --> 00:09:57,524 was the free market, not politics. 152 00:09:57,557 --> 00:10:00,461 In this game theory view of the world, 153 00:10:00,461 --> 00:10:04,032 everyone is out for their own personal advantage, and then if you take that as given, 154 00:10:04,032 --> 00:10:09,274 then all those individuals want to maximise their pleasure, in this very simplified scheme, 155 00:10:09,274 --> 00:10:12,511 and that's what the Impossibility Theorem says, 156 00:10:12,511 --> 00:10:15,515 it says they actually do that in the market, 157 00:10:15,515 --> 00:10:19,988 but they don't do that in political situations, like voting situations. 158 00:10:19,988 --> 00:10:22,058 - It's a very narrow view of politics... 159 00:10:22,058 --> 00:10:26,398 Very narrow view of politics, but of course it has to be, because it's a narrow view of the human being. 160 00:10:26,398 --> 00:10:33,875 But what it does, is it reduces what it means to be a human being to a few relatively mechanical principles. 161 00:10:33,875 --> 00:10:37,080 That individuals are little information processors, 162 00:10:37,080 --> 00:10:40,318 the market is the best information processor, 163 00:10:40,318 --> 00:10:45,392 and voting, or democracy is a weak information processor. 164 00:10:45,392 --> 00:10:46,493 - Inefficient. 165 00:10:46,493 --> 00:10:47,729 - Inefficient, yes. 166 00:10:47,996 --> 00:10:52,236 By the early 90s, this argument had come to dominate not just economics, 167 00:10:52,236 --> 00:10:56,241 but the thinking of those who ran the markets. 168 00:10:56,241 --> 00:11:01,549 In 1992 Walter Riston, the head of CityCorp, the largest bank in the world, 169 00:11:01,582 --> 00:11:05,120 wrote a best-seller called "The Twilight of Sovereignty" 170 00:11:05,120 --> 00:11:09,760 in it, he predicted the coming triumph of a new market democracy, 171 00:11:09,760 --> 00:11:15,736 where the market would take over responsibility for running much of society from the politicians. 172 00:11:15,736 --> 00:11:19,942 "Markets", he said, "are the only true voting machines. 173 00:11:19,942 --> 00:11:23,947 If they are left untouched by politicians and regulation, 174 00:11:23,947 --> 00:11:29,589 they will truly come to act out the peoples will for the first time in modern history". 175 00:11:29,589 --> 00:11:35,063 And the bankers are about to find a way of making this happen. 176 00:11:35,397 --> 00:11:40,338 Ohio wants change. America wants change. 177 00:11:40,338 --> 00:11:45,478 And Ohio cast 144 votes for the next president. 178 00:11:45,478 --> 00:11:49,216 In 1992, Bill Clinton was running for president. 179 00:11:49,216 --> 00:11:53,022 Under George Bush senior, America had slid into depression, 180 00:11:53,022 --> 00:11:59,031 and Clinton promised that he would use the political power of the presidency to rescue the nation. 181 00:11:59,198 --> 00:12:02,903 "It's time to change America. 182 00:12:02,903 --> 00:12:11,048 George Bush, if you won't use your power to help America, step aside, I will. 183 00:12:12,617 --> 00:12:17,358 There is no "them", there is only "us"." 184 00:12:17,358 --> 00:12:22,264 Clinton promised to use the power of the state to reform America's healthcare, 185 00:12:22,298 --> 00:12:25,469 extend welfare, and invest in jobs. 186 00:12:25,502 --> 00:12:30,309 And above all, reduce the inequalities that had risen up under president Reagan. 187 00:12:30,376 --> 00:12:34,515 And at the end of 1992 he was triumphantly elected. 188 00:12:36,485 --> 00:12:40,023 But in January, a few days before his inauguration, 189 00:12:40,023 --> 00:12:44,163 two leading members of the financial world, came to see Clinton in Washington. 190 00:12:44,163 --> 00:12:47,901 One was Alan Greenspan, the head of the Federal Reserve. 191 00:12:47,901 --> 00:12:53,710 The other was Clinton's new economic advisor, Robert Rubin, the head of Goldmann-Sachs. 192 00:12:53,710 --> 00:12:56,647 What they told the president was dramatic. 193 00:12:56,647 --> 00:12:59,851 His political plans were impossible. 194 00:12:59,851 --> 00:13:03,257 He was inheriting a huge government deficit, 195 00:13:03,257 --> 00:13:06,694 and if he borrowed any more money to pay for his promises, 196 00:13:06,694 --> 00:13:11,234 interest rates would rise, people would stop borrowing and spending, 197 00:13:11,234 --> 00:13:14,373 and there would be an economic disaster. 198 00:13:17,076 --> 00:13:22,384 The single most critical meeting with president Clinton, with respect to the economic strategy of the Clinton administration, 199 00:13:22,384 --> 00:13:27,992 was in early January during the transition, about two weeks before the inauguration. 200 00:13:27,992 --> 00:13:32,833 And it was that meeting - what we were saying to the president was that we needed a dramatic change in policy, 201 00:13:32,833 --> 00:13:38,474 and it has to be accomplished as much as possible by cutting spending, even though that is very difficult politically. 202 00:13:38,474 --> 00:13:43,915 - It was a dramatic message though for a democratic president, wasn't it? 203 00:13:44,082 --> 00:13:49,890 I think any president would have found it a dramatic message, whether Democrat or Republican, 204 00:13:49,890 --> 00:13:53,762 to have to start his administration by both reducing programmes, 205 00:13:53,762 --> 00:13:59,337 and cutting spending, and that's very difficult for any politician. 206 00:13:59,337 --> 00:14:02,175 But what both Rubin and Greenspan told Clinton, 207 00:14:02,175 --> 00:14:06,180 was that there was an alternative way to build a better society. 208 00:14:06,180 --> 00:14:09,085 He should let the market do it. 209 00:14:09,085 --> 00:14:13,324 Instead of seeing the markets as a dangerous force, that politics had to control, 210 00:14:13,324 --> 00:14:17,898 he should give away power, and let them flourish unrestricted 211 00:14:17,898 --> 00:14:21,836 The markets, they said were now so intertwined with people's lives, 212 00:14:21,869 --> 00:14:25,008 that they could respond democratically to people's needs, 213 00:14:25,008 --> 00:14:27,011 in all aspects of their lives, 214 00:14:27,011 --> 00:14:29,981 in a way that politics couldn't. 215 00:14:29,981 --> 00:14:32,885 Alan Greenspan communicated a very clear message to Bill Clinton: 216 00:14:32,919 --> 00:14:37,825 that the economy, and people's appetites as expressed in the economy 217 00:14:37,825 --> 00:14:42,232 - their buying - their ability to buy - what they buy - what they prefer - 218 00:14:42,232 --> 00:14:48,708 is a better gauge of public sentiment than any other. 219 00:14:48,708 --> 00:14:53,915 The economy, to that extent, is superior to democracy. 220 00:14:53,915 --> 00:14:56,820 In a democracy, it's less tidy. 221 00:14:56,820 --> 00:15:01,193 People can express their preferences only indirectly, through their representatives 222 00:15:01,193 --> 00:15:04,831 and their representatives have to express the preferences of a lot of people, 223 00:15:04,831 --> 00:15:08,737 and, sometimes want to express their own preferences rather than their constituents. 224 00:15:08,770 --> 00:15:14,980 So, in that way of viewing the world, an economy is preferable to a democracy. 225 00:15:15,013 --> 00:15:18,451 Faced with the banker's arguments, Clinton agreed. 226 00:15:18,451 --> 00:15:21,990 And on taking office, began to cut back on his reforms. 227 00:15:22,357 --> 00:15:24,560 During his first term, 228 00:15:24,560 --> 00:15:29,133 he dismantled much of the welfare structure that had been put in place in the 1930s. 229 00:15:29,133 --> 00:15:31,837 He abandoned all his healthcare reforms, 230 00:15:31,837 --> 00:15:34,307 and cut government regulation of business. 231 00:15:34,340 --> 00:15:37,411 It was what the markets wanted. 232 00:15:37,411 --> 00:15:41,717 As Greenspan had promised, the economy began to boom. 233 00:15:41,717 --> 00:15:48,360 And in 1996, Clinton made a speech that announced the end of the vision of liberal politics 234 00:15:48,360 --> 00:15:53,000 that one could use the power of big government to change the world. 235 00:15:54,536 --> 00:15:58,575 "We know big government does not have all the answers." 236 00:15:58,575 --> 00:16:04,550 "And we have worked to give the American people a smaller, less bureaucratic government in Washington." 237 00:16:04,550 --> 00:16:09,457 "And we have to give the American people one that lives within its means." 238 00:16:09,457 --> 00:16:13,263 "The era of big government is over." 239 00:16:13,263 --> 00:16:16,434 It was the triumph of market democracy: 240 00:16:16,434 --> 00:16:19,272 a belief that anyone who gave the public what they wanted 241 00:16:19,272 --> 00:16:22,276 was democratic, and thus good. 242 00:16:22,276 --> 00:16:24,913 As opposed to the old political elites, 243 00:16:24,913 --> 00:16:27,850 who believed that they knew what was best for "us" 244 00:16:27,883 --> 00:16:31,856 and imposed their idea of what society should be. 245 00:16:31,889 --> 00:16:35,061 In the process, business-men became transformed: 246 00:16:35,061 --> 00:16:37,097 They might be greedy and selfish, 247 00:16:37,131 --> 00:16:40,769 but they were also engineers of a new kind of freedom. 248 00:16:40,769 --> 00:16:44,108 By responding to the needs and desires of individuals, 249 00:16:44,108 --> 00:16:50,449 they were interpreting the will of the people, in a way that politicians couldn't. 250 00:16:51,651 --> 00:16:55,758 If markets are in fact democracy, if markets are a means of consent, 251 00:16:55,758 --> 00:16:58,194 a medium of consent, you know, 252 00:16:58,194 --> 00:17:03,235 which all of these people believe that they are, there's a very very commonplace view in the United States these days, 253 00:17:03,235 --> 00:17:05,671 in fact this is a consensus view 254 00:17:05,705 --> 00:17:08,509 it's hard to find someone at the upper reaches of broadcasting, 255 00:17:08,542 --> 00:17:11,914 journalism, business, whatever, who doesn't think this. 256 00:17:11,947 --> 00:17:15,118 If markets, in fact, are a medium of consent, 257 00:17:15,118 --> 00:17:18,624 then you've got all sorts of funny things come out - then CEOs 258 00:17:18,624 --> 00:17:21,394 are the people whom the market have chosen above all others 259 00:17:21,461 --> 00:17:25,967 are in fact "men of the people". They're not some kind of bloodthirsty robber-baron, 260 00:17:25,967 --> 00:17:29,138 like Americans thought they were in the 1930s. 261 00:17:29,138 --> 00:17:32,377 When they speak to us, they say "you speak, we listen", 262 00:17:32,377 --> 00:17:35,214 or, Fox News - what is it - "we report, you decide", 263 00:17:35,214 --> 00:17:37,217 you know, or any of these slogans. 264 00:17:37,217 --> 00:17:40,188 The promoters of this idea of market democracy 265 00:17:40,188 --> 00:17:43,827 portrayed it as a glorious return to a golden age. 266 00:17:43,827 --> 00:17:46,330 A time in the 18th or 19th centuries 267 00:17:46,363 --> 00:17:51,337 when laissez-faire capitalism, not politics, had ordered society. 268 00:17:51,337 --> 00:17:52,973 But this was a myth. 269 00:17:53,006 --> 00:17:55,443 The political philosophers of that time 270 00:17:55,476 --> 00:17:59,181 had made a distinction between the self-interest of the marketplace, 271 00:17:59,181 --> 00:18:04,656 and other areas of social and political life, that involved what Adam Smith called: 272 00:18:04,690 --> 00:18:06,793 "moral sentiments". 273 00:18:06,793 --> 00:18:10,231 These were sympathy and understanding for others, 274 00:18:10,231 --> 00:18:13,903 which were just as important in the ordering of society. 275 00:18:13,936 --> 00:18:17,441 What was happening at the end of the 20th century 276 00:18:17,441 --> 00:18:20,479 was something that had never been tried before. 277 00:18:20,479 --> 00:18:22,515 The idea of democracy 278 00:18:22,515 --> 00:18:27,689 was being taken over by a simplified economic model of human beings. 279 00:18:27,689 --> 00:18:31,795 And in the process, freedom was redefined to mean nothing more 280 00:18:31,795 --> 00:18:36,035 than the ability of individuals to get whatever they wanted. 281 00:18:37,103 --> 00:18:40,842 If you go back to the 18th and 19th centuries, 282 00:18:40,842 --> 00:18:44,179 most political philosophers and most economists 283 00:18:44,179 --> 00:18:48,119 understood that there was a certain social contract. 284 00:18:48,119 --> 00:18:53,826 People were bound together, not as individuals expressing themselves only through the marketplace, 285 00:18:53,826 --> 00:18:55,863 but as citizens. 286 00:18:55,863 --> 00:18:58,300 We had obligations to one another. 287 00:18:58,300 --> 00:19:02,973 We were not simply self-interested individuals purchasing things for ourselves, 288 00:19:02,973 --> 00:19:05,945 but we were a community. 289 00:19:05,945 --> 00:19:13,088 Our very identities, our moral values, came from our relationships in these communities. 290 00:19:13,121 --> 00:19:16,826 The view that the market was preferable to politics, 291 00:19:16,826 --> 00:19:19,898 as a means of giving people exactly what they wanted 292 00:19:19,898 --> 00:19:24,471 that notion - that notion - is a rather new idea. 293 00:19:24,504 --> 00:19:28,978 Behind these new ideas about how society should be managed, 294 00:19:28,978 --> 00:19:33,351 was a model of the individual as a rational calculating machine, 295 00:19:33,351 --> 00:19:37,422 whose self-interested behaviour could be analysed by numbers. 296 00:19:37,422 --> 00:19:40,160 This simplified version of us 297 00:19:40,160 --> 00:19:43,698 had been created back in the Cold War by Game Theorists. 298 00:19:43,732 --> 00:19:46,250 They had made an assumption that we were like that, 299 00:19:46,250 --> 00:19:49,741 simply in order to make their equations and their models work. 300 00:19:50,875 --> 00:19:57,585 But what was now rising up was a powerful scientific proof that this was not just an assumption. 301 00:19:57,618 --> 00:20:01,624 It really did describe the very roots of our nature 302 00:20:01,657 --> 00:20:08,634 that everything human beings did and felt, had been programmed into us by our genes. 303 00:20:08,634 --> 00:20:14,510 And all our actions were the result of rational calculations by that genetic programme: 304 00:20:14,543 --> 00:20:20,251 that we really were computing machines guided by numbers. 305 00:20:26,393 --> 00:20:30,366 The roots of this idea go back to the 1970s, 306 00:20:30,366 --> 00:20:33,136 when geneticists who were studying the behaviour of animals, 307 00:20:33,136 --> 00:20:35,540 made a conceptual shift. 308 00:20:35,540 --> 00:20:40,747 They started to look at the animals behaviour from what was called the gene's point of view. 309 00:20:40,747 --> 00:20:42,950 They realised that from this perspective, 310 00:20:42,950 --> 00:20:50,327 the animals were simply machines that were being used by the genes, to survive and replicate themselves. 311 00:20:51,096 --> 00:20:57,504 In effect, we can picture the body of the chicken as being a machine, a device, 312 00:20:57,504 --> 00:21:02,579 constructed by the gene, to ensure the production of more genes. 313 00:21:02,579 --> 00:21:06,150 Now, this may seem a perverse way of looking at things... 314 00:21:06,150 --> 00:21:08,720 You may think of reproduction 315 00:21:08,720 --> 00:21:12,926 as your method of producing children like yourself. 316 00:21:12,926 --> 00:21:16,398 And I'm asking you to look at it in a very different light. 317 00:21:16,398 --> 00:21:22,908 The human body is simply the genes device for producing more genes like itself. 318 00:21:22,908 --> 00:21:27,348 Behind this new way of seeing animals was, yet again, game theory. 319 00:21:27,381 --> 00:21:29,784 Game theory had inspired the geneticists 320 00:21:29,818 --> 00:21:31,786 because it gave a powerful framework 321 00:21:31,820 --> 00:21:35,893 for understanding how the genes dictated behaviour. 322 00:21:35,893 --> 00:21:40,166 Game theorists looked at society as a system of self-interested individuals, 323 00:21:40,166 --> 00:21:44,005 competing and strategising against one another. 324 00:21:44,005 --> 00:21:48,912 And the geneticists applied exactly the same model to genes. 325 00:21:48,945 --> 00:21:53,018 They developed complicated equations to show how all animal behaviour, 326 00:21:53,018 --> 00:21:55,221 from violence to altruism, 327 00:21:55,221 --> 00:22:00,728 were actually rational strategies played by the genes in a game of survival. 328 00:22:00,728 --> 00:22:05,302 The geneticists asserted that the same must be true for human beings. 329 00:22:05,302 --> 00:22:07,939 And one scientist did an extraordinary experiment 330 00:22:07,939 --> 00:22:11,344 to see whether our genes did control our behaviour 331 00:22:11,344 --> 00:22:14,415 in the same rational, mathematical, way. 332 00:22:22,160 --> 00:22:25,698 It took place deep within the Amazon rain forest. 333 00:22:26,165 --> 00:22:30,972 The Yanamamo people were famous for being one of the most violent societies on earth. 334 00:22:31,306 --> 00:22:36,780 An anthropologist studying them, decided to see whether behind the chaos of the fighting, 335 00:22:36,780 --> 00:22:41,621 there was a hidden genetic pattern, guiding it in a mathematical way. 336 00:22:41,621 --> 00:22:44,391 He was called Napoleon Chagnon, 337 00:22:44,391 --> 00:22:49,899 and his first step was to try and find out the names of everyone, and who was related to whom. 338 00:22:49,933 --> 00:22:51,869 I assumed at the outset 339 00:22:51,869 --> 00:22:56,943 that the natives would be excited and eager and thrilled and flattered 340 00:22:56,976 --> 00:23:02,651 that I was interested in their culture and their society and their families and genealogies. 341 00:23:02,651 --> 00:23:07,157 And so, I would innocently ask what the name of so-and-so was, 342 00:23:07,157 --> 00:23:11,297 and they would give me a name, and I would write it down. 343 00:23:15,036 --> 00:23:18,340 And it turned out that they tricked me, 344 00:23:18,340 --> 00:23:23,848 that all of the names of the people in the village I was living in, were not only incorrect, 345 00:23:23,848 --> 00:23:27,920 but they were derogatory, vulgar, false 346 00:23:27,953 --> 00:23:32,260 not all of them were vulgar and derogatory, but a lot of them were. 347 00:23:32,260 --> 00:23:33,829 - Like what? 348 00:23:33,829 --> 00:23:41,073 Like "fart-breath", "hairy-c***", "long dong", things of that sort. 349 00:23:41,106 --> 00:23:46,213 "Hairy pussy" - there's the name of the wife of the head man. 350 00:23:46,213 --> 00:23:52,756 But Chagnon persisted. He spent months checking and cross-checking names and relationships. 351 00:23:52,756 --> 00:23:55,794 He also gave out western goods, 352 00:23:55,794 --> 00:23:58,898 above all the prized machete, in return for information, 353 00:23:58,898 --> 00:24:01,302 Hasta que llegó el momento en que, a su parecer, 354 00:24:01,302 --> 00:24:06,476 until he built up what he believed 355 00:24:06,043 --> 00:24:09,329 which he then stored on a computer at his university. 356 00:24:09,981 --> 00:24:12,585 Chagnon then returned with a film crew, 357 00:24:12,585 --> 00:24:16,324 and recorded in great detail, a fight in the village. 358 00:24:16,324 --> 00:24:18,559 "Bring your camera over here" 359 00:24:20,964 --> 00:24:23,634 - 'The Ax Fight', 1975 - 360 00:24:28,074 --> 00:24:35,151 Chagnon returned to America, and went through the film frame by frame identifying all the participants. 361 00:24:35,151 --> 00:24:37,988 On the surface there seemed no meaning to the fight, 362 00:24:38,021 --> 00:24:42,995 often individuals who appeared closely related, attacked each other. 363 00:24:42,995 --> 00:24:46,100 But when Chagnon fed their details into the computer, 364 00:24:46,100 --> 00:24:50,439 and cross-checked them with his database, another reality emerged. 365 00:24:50,439 --> 00:24:53,944 Because of the Yanomamis complex history of intermarriage, 366 00:24:53,944 --> 00:24:58,451 individuals were related to each other in the most surprising ways. 367 00:24:58,451 --> 00:25:03,291 What the computer showed was that individuals who took risks for each other in the fight 368 00:25:03,291 --> 00:25:06,328 were always more closely genetically related 369 00:25:06,328 --> 00:25:09,467 than those they attacked. 370 00:25:10,468 --> 00:25:13,673 There was a hidden pattern in the film 371 00:25:13,673 --> 00:25:20,048 and it was the computer that proved and demonstrated that the pattern was there, 372 00:25:20,081 --> 00:25:26,090 because you can't possibly remember everybody's genealogical relatedness to everybody else in the village. 373 00:25:26,123 --> 00:25:30,063 So underneath all of this chaos and confusion what meets the eye, 374 00:25:30,063 --> 00:25:34,603 there were people who shared genes with each other 375 00:25:34,603 --> 00:25:39,843 and chose sides to defend on the basis of their relatedness to each other... 376 00:25:39,843 --> 00:25:44,216 Yeah, there is kind of a hidden mathematical dimension there to the whole thing 377 00:25:44,250 --> 00:25:47,521 that you have to really dig for to discover. 378 00:25:48,523 --> 00:25:51,827 Chagnon's experiment caused a sensation within the human sciences. 379 00:25:51,827 --> 00:25:54,732 Because it seemed to offer precise mathematical proof 380 00:25:54,732 --> 00:25:59,438 that genes played a powerful role in guiding human behaviour. 381 00:25:59,438 --> 00:26:05,246 It became one of the fundamental pieces of evidence underpinning a new powerful model of human beings. 382 00:26:05,246 --> 00:26:08,385 They were machines, whose actions and feelings 383 00:26:08,418 --> 00:26:10,588 were driven by coded instructions, 384 00:26:10,621 --> 00:26:13,759 implanted deep inside them millions of years ago, 385 00:26:13,759 --> 00:26:16,329 of which they were unaware. 386 00:26:16,329 --> 00:26:21,336 It was an image that began to permeate deep into our culture. 387 00:26:21,336 --> 00:26:24,575 The image of the organism, including ourselves, 388 00:26:24,575 --> 00:26:27,845 as a machine for passing on genes, 389 00:26:27,845 --> 00:26:31,016 to shift the focus away from the idea of the organism 390 00:26:31,016 --> 00:26:36,458 as being the agent in life, to the immortal replicator. 391 00:26:36,458 --> 00:26:39,329 Our DNA is a coded description 392 00:26:39,329 --> 00:26:42,466 of the worlds in which our ancestors survived. 393 00:26:42,466 --> 00:26:47,708 DNA it's the computer recipe for life itself. 394 00:26:47,708 --> 00:26:53,315 Unravelling like a reel of magnetic tape on some giant computer. 395 00:26:54,618 --> 00:26:59,491 Back in the dark and frightening days of the Cold War, mathematicians 396 00:26:59,491 --> 00:27:03,497 had developed a simplified, machine-like model of human beings, 397 00:27:03,497 --> 00:27:07,803 whose behaviours could be analysed and predicted by numbers. 398 00:27:07,803 --> 00:27:13,911 They had done this to try to understand and control the terrifying uncertainties of that time. 399 00:27:15,280 --> 00:27:18,752 Now in the 1990s, the Cold War was over, 400 00:27:18,752 --> 00:27:21,857 and its giant defenses lay empty. 401 00:27:21,890 --> 00:27:25,595 But that simplified model had risen up and triumphed 402 00:27:25,595 --> 00:27:30,468 as an explanation of what we truly are as human beings on every level. 403 00:27:30,468 --> 00:27:35,276 Politically, economically, and now, biologically. 404 00:27:35,276 --> 00:27:41,217 We no longer see this theory as having historical inspiration in the Cold War, 405 00:27:41,217 --> 00:27:48,161 instead what we see is a quasi-natural-social-science theory of everything. 406 00:27:48,161 --> 00:27:51,933 It applies to something as small as a gene, 407 00:27:51,933 --> 00:27:55,571 or something as medium-sized as a human being, 408 00:27:55,571 --> 00:27:58,743 or something as large as a nation-state. 409 00:28:00,846 --> 00:28:04,384 The human being sort of dissolves in this social theory, 410 00:28:04,384 --> 00:28:07,255 that it isn't about necessarily, human beings anymore. 411 00:28:07,255 --> 00:28:14,232 It's about these little entities that are constantly questing to reproduce themselves, 412 00:28:14,232 --> 00:28:18,270 and also to find their maximum advantage. 413 00:28:18,437 --> 00:28:21,776 And with the rise of this machine model of human beings, 414 00:28:21,776 --> 00:28:26,116 a new idea about how to change society began to emerge. 415 00:28:26,116 --> 00:28:28,319 Not through politics any longer, 416 00:28:28,319 --> 00:28:32,692 but by adjusting how well the individual machines function. 417 00:28:32,759 --> 00:28:35,395 The technicians of this new idea 418 00:28:35,395 --> 00:28:38,233 would be the psychiatrists and the drug companies, 419 00:28:38,233 --> 00:28:42,539 who would free people from the terrible anxieties inside themselves. 420 00:28:42,539 --> 00:28:46,945 But what it would lead to would be a new form of order and control, 421 00:28:46,945 --> 00:28:49,682 not defined by the old political elites, 422 00:28:49,682 --> 00:28:53,288 but by the objective power of numbers. 423 00:28:53,288 --> 00:28:56,559 "I just found myself constantly worrying... 424 00:28:56,559 --> 00:28:58,562 I couldn't.. I just couldn't stop." 425 00:28:58,595 --> 00:29:02,468 "My hands were shaking, and I was sure that people were looking at me 426 00:29:02,468 --> 00:29:04,404 and watching my hands." 427 00:29:04,437 --> 00:29:07,175 These college students didn't know it then, 428 00:29:07,175 --> 00:29:11,314 but they were each experiencing the symptoms of an anxiety disorder. 429 00:29:11,314 --> 00:29:16,521 Panic disorder, generalised anxiety disorder, obsessive compulsive disorder, 430 00:29:16,521 --> 00:29:19,125 social phobia, and post-traumatic stress disorder. 431 00:29:19,125 --> 00:29:21,929 This year 23 million Americans will suffer 432 00:29:21,929 --> 00:29:24,165 from one of these anxiety disorders, 433 00:29:24,165 --> 00:29:26,435 they're the most common mental illness in the country, 434 00:29:26,468 --> 00:29:29,373 and they can attack anyone at any time. 435 00:29:29,373 --> 00:29:32,578 In the early nineties, an epidemic of mental disorder 436 00:29:32,578 --> 00:29:34,948 was sweeping America and Britain. 437 00:29:34,948 --> 00:29:36,917 As last week's programme showed, 438 00:29:36,951 --> 00:29:41,224 it had been uncovered by a new system for identifying disorders. 439 00:29:41,224 --> 00:29:44,094 Psychiatry had been attacked for relying on the personal 440 00:29:44,094 --> 00:29:46,965 and fallible judgement of psychiatrists. 441 00:29:46,998 --> 00:29:52,173 But instead, a new objective method based on checklists had been invented. 442 00:29:52,173 --> 00:29:55,577 These listed only the objective symptoms, 443 00:29:55,577 --> 00:30:00,618 and deliberately did not enquire into why and individual felt an anxiety. 444 00:30:00,618 --> 00:30:03,221 In the late 80s, nationwide surveys had revealed 445 00:30:03,221 --> 00:30:05,391 an incredible picture: 446 00:30:05,391 --> 00:30:09,530 more than 50% of Americans suffered from mental disorders. 447 00:30:09,564 --> 00:30:14,237 - How are you feeling? - I don't know, I'm just sad... 448 00:30:14,905 --> 00:30:17,943 But at the very same, the drug companies 449 00:30:17,943 --> 00:30:22,750 had announced that they had created a new type of drug, called an SSRI, 450 00:30:22,750 --> 00:30:29,159 which they claimed, targeted the circuits inside the brain that were causing these malfunctions. 451 00:30:29,159 --> 00:30:33,164 The SSRIs were marketed under names like "Prozac". 452 00:30:33,164 --> 00:30:39,674 What they did was alter the amounts of serotonin that flowed across the circuit connections within the brain, 453 00:30:39,674 --> 00:30:42,745 and they readjusted the chemicals to normal levels. 454 00:30:42,779 --> 00:30:47,719 And all of a sudden, here comes somebody that says "OK, now try these on, try this Prozac on", 455 00:30:47,719 --> 00:30:50,389 and I tried it on, and for the first time in my life 456 00:30:50,423 --> 00:30:53,962 I went - woah - is this the way reality really is? 457 00:30:53,962 --> 00:30:57,199 This pill could solve all of your problems. 458 00:30:57,199 --> 00:31:00,838 It's called Prozac, and it may mean the end of depression as we know it. 459 00:31:00,871 --> 00:31:03,542 - I've been taking Prozac for two years. 460 00:31:03,542 --> 00:31:06,079 - And what difference has that made? - Brilliant. 461 00:31:06,112 --> 00:31:08,549 - Oh, she's smiling! Eyes lighting up! 462 00:31:08,549 --> 00:31:10,018 - And I feel as if I'm back to normal. 463 00:31:10,018 --> 00:31:11,086 - You feel normal? - Yeah. 464 00:31:11,086 --> 00:31:14,023 - You feel a better person? - Yeah. 465 00:31:14,056 --> 00:31:19,465 Through treatment, I learned to function with my disorder, and now life is so much more enjoyable. 466 00:31:19,465 --> 00:31:23,136 life is so much better now that I've gotten treatment, 467 00:31:23,136 --> 00:31:28,111 and I feel like I've got my OCD under control, and it feels really great. 468 00:31:28,111 --> 00:31:30,447 A better life is waiting. 469 00:31:30,481 --> 00:31:32,449 What now began to happen, 470 00:31:32,483 --> 00:31:36,789 was that millions of people who had been diagnosed by the checklist as disordered, 471 00:31:36,789 --> 00:31:39,393 went to psychiatrists to be medicated. 472 00:31:39,393 --> 00:31:43,799 The result was liberation from anxiety on a wide scale. 473 00:31:44,167 --> 00:31:47,405 But in the process, the checklist became a powerful, 474 00:31:47,405 --> 00:31:50,142 and seemingly objective guide for people, 475 00:31:50,142 --> 00:31:54,348 as to what should be their normal feelings, and what was abnormal. 476 00:31:54,348 --> 00:31:56,985 And a number of leading psychiatrists began to argue 477 00:31:56,985 --> 00:32:00,891 that what they were actually doing was creating a static society, 478 00:32:00,891 --> 00:32:03,928 in which human beings were adjusted by the medication, 479 00:32:03,928 --> 00:32:09,804 so that they fitted to an agreed normal type, defined by the checklist. 480 00:32:09,804 --> 00:32:13,976 - People come to me all the time asking me to medicate them. 481 00:32:13,976 --> 00:32:17,748 The implication behind that was that human beings, 482 00:32:17,781 --> 00:32:19,717 like all other animals, 483 00:32:19,717 --> 00:32:23,557 have a particular ideal model. 484 00:32:23,557 --> 00:32:26,928 It had a machine-like quality to it. 485 00:32:26,928 --> 00:32:31,734 We know what the model should be, and they ask the medications 486 00:32:31,734 --> 00:32:39,680 they ask of me, to give them medications that would push them back to this particular model they have... 487 00:32:39,713 --> 00:32:45,588 An unrealistic model, but a very static model, of man as machine. 488 00:32:45,621 --> 00:32:49,127 - Has it worked? You look very dubious my friend! 489 00:32:49,127 --> 00:32:53,299 - Apparently it has. I can't help being suspicious of it. 490 00:32:53,299 --> 00:32:55,769 - I don't think she's the woman I married. 491 00:32:55,769 --> 00:32:57,706 - Why? - I think she's changed. 492 00:32:57,706 --> 00:33:04,616 - In what way? -I don't know. I don't know, but there's something there that is different. 493 00:33:04,616 --> 00:33:08,053 - OK, she's not the woman you married... Is she a better woman? 494 00:33:08,087 --> 00:33:10,624 -No. She's different. 495 00:33:10,624 --> 00:33:17,801 They imagined that they might live in a world where there would never be a worry, not even a grief, 496 00:33:17,801 --> 00:33:29,117 where never did a conflict, concern, debate, worry over alternatives, 497 00:33:29,117 --> 00:33:35,359 make possible the kinds of progress that we've seen in the past. 498 00:33:35,359 --> 00:33:39,232 But then, the man who had created the checklists 499 00:33:39,232 --> 00:33:42,403 admitted that it might actually be leading millions of people 500 00:33:42,403 --> 00:33:45,875 to believe that they were disordered when they were not. 501 00:33:45,875 --> 00:33:49,112 The checklist added up only observable symptoms. 502 00:33:49,112 --> 00:33:52,918 They deliberately excluded any understanding of a patients life. 503 00:33:52,918 --> 00:33:57,258 Because of this, he said, it confused genuine psychological disorder 504 00:33:57,258 --> 00:34:01,231 with normal human feelings of sadness and anxiety, 505 00:34:01,231 --> 00:34:04,501 and that this was happening on a wide scale. 506 00:34:04,668 --> 00:34:08,541 All this was being said by one of America's most powerful psychiatrists, 507 00:34:08,541 --> 00:34:11,245 Dr. Robert Spitzer. 508 00:34:11,245 --> 00:34:15,150 What happened is that we made estimates 509 00:34:15,150 --> 00:34:19,389 of prevalence of mental disorders totally descriptively, 510 00:34:19,389 --> 00:34:23,161 without considering that many of these conditions 511 00:34:23,195 --> 00:34:25,565 might be normal reactions 512 00:34:25,598 --> 00:34:27,701 which are not really disorders. 513 00:34:27,701 --> 00:34:29,537 That's the problem. 514 00:34:29,537 --> 00:34:34,278 Because we were not looking at the context within which those conditions developed. 515 00:34:34,278 --> 00:34:39,451 - You have effectively medicalised much of ordinary human sadness, 516 00:34:39,485 --> 00:34:43,157 fear, ordinary experiences, you've medicalised them. 517 00:34:43,157 --> 00:34:46,295 - I think we have, to some extent. 518 00:34:46,328 --> 00:34:51,101 How serious a problem it is, is not known. 519 00:34:51,101 --> 00:34:55,474 I don't know if it's twenty percent, thirty percent, I don't know. 520 00:34:55,474 --> 00:35:00,548 But that's a considerable amount if it is twenty or thirty percent. 521 00:35:01,450 --> 00:35:05,556 What was happening was that large parts of normal human experience 522 00:35:05,556 --> 00:35:08,827 grief, disappointment, loneliness, 523 00:35:08,860 --> 00:35:13,033 were all being reclassified as medical disorders. 524 00:35:13,033 --> 00:35:17,173 In the process, a new system of management was emerging. 525 00:35:17,173 --> 00:35:20,844 The drugs took away those complex and difficult feelings, 526 00:35:20,844 --> 00:35:23,415 and made the individuals happier. 527 00:35:23,415 --> 00:35:26,286 But they also made them simpler beings, 528 00:35:26,286 --> 00:35:29,190 more easy to predict and manage. 529 00:35:29,223 --> 00:35:34,998 And closer to the machine-like creatures at the heart of the economic models. 530 00:35:35,032 --> 00:35:38,803 By using checklists of symptoms about emotions, 531 00:35:38,803 --> 00:35:45,446 you have gone out and confused normal human responses to life, 532 00:35:45,446 --> 00:35:48,818 with mental disorder, and therefore created an illusion 533 00:35:48,818 --> 00:35:51,389 of a vast epidemic. 534 00:35:51,389 --> 00:35:54,192 A medicalised illusion. 535 00:35:54,192 --> 00:35:57,698 And, obviously a situation where you medicalise, a situation where your focus, 536 00:35:57,698 --> 00:36:04,006 will not be on social change, it will be on controlling individuals to fit in properly. 537 00:36:04,039 --> 00:36:07,478 That's the subtle and overall danger here. 538 00:36:07,478 --> 00:36:11,350 That it could serve our social economic systems needs 539 00:36:11,350 --> 00:36:16,825 in a way in which we become more efficient, but less human. 540 00:36:17,359 --> 00:36:19,796 What the psychiatrists had discovered, 541 00:36:19,796 --> 00:36:22,599 was that an objective system based on numbers 542 00:36:22,599 --> 00:36:24,736 had led them into a trap. 543 00:36:24,769 --> 00:36:27,441 The numbers had imposed their own narrow logic 544 00:36:27,441 --> 00:36:31,045 on how we thought and felt about ourselves. 545 00:36:32,014 --> 00:36:37,354 And the politicians were about to find that their attempts to manage society by using numbers 546 00:36:37,354 --> 00:36:40,525 would also have the strangest consequences. 547 00:36:40,525 --> 00:36:43,630 Far from helping them achieve their progressive vision, 548 00:36:43,630 --> 00:36:46,568 they would actually make society more rigid, 549 00:36:46,568 --> 00:36:49,205 and even harder to change. 550 00:36:49,805 --> 00:36:53,044 In 1997, New Labour was elected. 551 00:36:53,044 --> 00:36:58,318 What it promised was a society free of the arrogance and prejudices of the old elites, 552 00:36:58,318 --> 00:37:02,290 who had dominated Britain's class system for so long. 553 00:37:05,294 --> 00:37:08,967 It is us, the new radicals, 554 00:37:08,967 --> 00:37:11,036 a Labour party modernised, 555 00:37:11,070 --> 00:37:15,342 that must undertake this historic mission: 556 00:37:15,342 --> 00:37:20,383 To liberate Britain from all the old class divisions, 557 00:37:20,383 --> 00:37:25,790 old structures, old prejudices, old ways of working and of doing things 558 00:37:25,790 --> 00:37:28,861 that will not do in this world of change. 559 00:37:29,296 --> 00:37:34,703 Throughout their campaign, New Labour had modeled themselves on the Clinton Democrats. 560 00:37:34,703 --> 00:37:38,276 And now in power, they did exactly what Clinton had done. 561 00:37:38,276 --> 00:37:41,980 They gave power away to the banks and the markets. 562 00:37:41,980 --> 00:37:43,917 Gordon Brown's first announcement 563 00:37:43,917 --> 00:37:48,557 was to abandon politicians final lever of control over the economy. 564 00:37:48,557 --> 00:37:52,829 The new Chancellor, Gordon Brown, announces a revolution in economic policy. 565 00:37:52,829 --> 00:37:58,604 From now on, the Chancellor will hand control of interest rates to an independent Bank of England. 566 00:37:58,604 --> 00:38:00,740 And in the management of society, 567 00:38:00,774 --> 00:38:05,314 New Labour turned to the mathematical systems that John Major had brought it, 568 00:38:05,314 --> 00:38:08,352 but on a scale never seen before. 569 00:38:08,352 --> 00:38:10,956 They believed that people actually behaved 570 00:38:10,956 --> 00:38:15,696 in the way described by the simplified economic model. 571 00:38:15,696 --> 00:38:20,769 Performance targets and incentives would be set for everything and everyone. 572 00:38:20,769 --> 00:38:25,276 Even cabinet ministers would have to fulfill their performance targets, 573 00:38:25,276 --> 00:38:27,679 or be punished. 574 00:38:27,679 --> 00:38:29,882 Three hundred or so performance targets, 575 00:38:29,882 --> 00:38:32,886 over 150 efficiency targets, 576 00:38:32,886 --> 00:38:38,562 each public service agreement will have a named minister who is responsible for delivering and achieving those targets. 577 00:38:38,562 --> 00:38:40,665 They may not have to resign, 578 00:38:40,665 --> 00:38:44,738 but they will have to explain why they haven't been able to meet their targets. 579 00:38:44,738 --> 00:38:47,008 If a department fails to meet those targets, 580 00:38:47,008 --> 00:38:51,748 then it's only right and proper that government will look seriously at their ability to deliver. 581 00:38:51,748 --> 00:38:56,488 The Treasury, under Gordon Brown, created a vast mathematical system. 582 00:38:56,488 --> 00:38:58,991 They invented ways of giving numerical values 583 00:38:58,991 --> 00:39:02,696 to thing that, previously, no-one thought could be measured. 584 00:39:02,696 --> 00:39:07,937 Hunger in sub-saharan Africa was to be reduced to below 48%, 585 00:39:07,937 --> 00:39:11,709 while world conflict was to be reduced by 6%. 586 00:39:11,709 --> 00:39:14,012 And all the towns and villages in Britain 587 00:39:14,046 --> 00:39:18,318 were to be measured, for a Community Vibrancy Index. 588 00:39:18,318 --> 00:39:21,023 And even the quality of life in the countryside 589 00:39:21,023 --> 00:39:23,760 was broken down into a series of indices, 590 00:39:23,760 --> 00:39:26,464 one of which measured how much bird-song there should be. 591 00:39:26,464 --> 00:39:30,135 - We want a barometer of the indicators of the quality of life, 592 00:39:30,170 --> 00:39:32,038 and they're not simply the economic ones... 593 00:39:32,038 --> 00:39:36,011 half of the skylarks have gone since 1970. 594 00:39:36,011 --> 00:39:41,452 Now if you want to measure the quality of the life, one of the things is that dawn chorus. 595 00:39:41,619 --> 00:39:46,893 It's about indices that affect everybody, in a quality of life barometer. 596 00:39:46,927 --> 00:39:49,931 The original idea behind the mathematical system 597 00:39:49,931 --> 00:39:54,270 was that it would liberate public servants from old forms of bureaucratic control. 598 00:39:54,304 --> 00:39:58,877 Once they were given the targets, they were free to achieve them any way they wanted. 599 00:39:58,877 --> 00:40:01,814 But almost immediately, New Labour began to discover 600 00:40:01,814 --> 00:40:06,287 that people were more complex and more devious than the simple model allowed. 601 00:40:06,321 --> 00:40:11,462 Public servants began to find the most ingenious ways of hitting their targets. 602 00:40:11,496 --> 00:40:14,600 It's that the pressure to meet these targets 603 00:40:14,633 --> 00:40:22,244 is causing some NHS managers to "game" the system. 604 00:40:22,310 --> 00:40:25,883 Hospital managers proved to be particularly devious. 605 00:40:25,916 --> 00:40:28,787 When they were set targets to cut waiting lists, 606 00:40:28,787 --> 00:40:31,992 they ordered consultants to do the easiest operations first, 607 00:40:31,992 --> 00:40:34,529 like bunions and vasectomies. 608 00:40:34,562 --> 00:40:38,667 Complicated ones like cancers were no longer prioritised. 609 00:40:38,667 --> 00:40:42,540 And they found other clever ways of getting people off the list. 610 00:40:42,540 --> 00:40:45,678 What happened at this hospital is truly shocking. 611 00:40:45,678 --> 00:40:48,081 Administrators wrote to patients 612 00:40:48,081 --> 00:40:50,451 asking them when they would be on holiday. 613 00:40:50,485 --> 00:40:54,323 They then used that information to set the timing of the operation, 614 00:40:54,323 --> 00:40:57,228 knowing that the patients would be away. 615 00:40:57,228 --> 00:41:00,199 As a result, the patients did not get their operations, 616 00:41:00,199 --> 00:41:03,871 but the hospital managed to cut its waiting lists. 617 00:41:03,871 --> 00:41:07,676 And when the managers were set a target to reduce waiting times in casualty, 618 00:41:07,676 --> 00:41:10,346 they came up with more, clever strategies. 619 00:41:10,546 --> 00:41:13,551 A new job was invented, called the "hello nurse", 620 00:41:13,551 --> 00:41:16,922 who did nothing to treat the patient, but simply greeting them 621 00:41:16,922 --> 00:41:20,394 meant they had been seen, and were off the list. 622 00:41:20,394 --> 00:41:22,564 When the government then tried to set a target 623 00:41:22,564 --> 00:41:25,268 to reduce the number of patients waiting on trolleys, 624 00:41:25,301 --> 00:41:30,408 the managers took the wheels off the trolleys, and reclassified them as beds. 625 00:41:30,408 --> 00:41:33,246 And they redefined the corridors as wards. 626 00:41:33,246 --> 00:41:36,551 And yet again, the patients were off the list. 627 00:41:36,584 --> 00:41:40,222 The police were also under pressure to meet their targets. 628 00:41:40,222 --> 00:41:43,728 One of the main ones was to reduce the rate of recorded crime. 629 00:41:43,728 --> 00:41:47,132 Again, inventive strategies were found. 630 00:41:47,333 --> 00:41:52,107 Lothian police announced the most successful crime figures in over 25 years. 631 00:41:52,107 --> 00:41:56,279 But it was later found that they had reclassified hundreds of crimes, 632 00:41:56,312 --> 00:41:59,550 including assaults, robbery, and fire-raising 633 00:41:59,550 --> 00:42:02,421 as simply "suspicious occurrences", 634 00:42:02,421 --> 00:42:04,791 which wouldn't be included in the figures. 635 00:42:04,791 --> 00:42:06,928 We are passionate about meeting these targets 636 00:42:06,928 --> 00:42:07,930 ...Fiddling... 637 00:42:07,930 --> 00:42:08,864 ...By the management... 638 00:42:08,864 --> 00:42:09,932 ...Altered their records... 639 00:42:09,932 --> 00:42:11,935 ...But that's a bit odd... I mean you're the consultant... 640 00:42:11,935 --> 00:42:15,473 ...And started to amend some of the answers that some of the youngsters had given... 641 00:42:15,674 --> 00:42:17,310 ...Trolley waits - none... 642 00:42:17,310 --> 00:42:17,877 ...Targets... 643 00:42:17,877 --> 00:42:18,945 ...Three levels of targets... 644 00:42:18,945 --> 00:42:19,813 ...Clear targets... 645 00:42:19,947 --> 00:42:21,516 Targets... Those targets... 646 00:42:21,516 --> 00:42:23,318 And focus on those targets... 647 00:42:23,318 --> 00:42:25,387 Why they're targets... Targets... 648 00:42:25,788 --> 00:42:28,191 The government tried to dismiss these reports 649 00:42:28,191 --> 00:42:30,261 as just a few bad examples. 650 00:42:30,261 --> 00:42:35,168 But report after report came out which revealed that this inventive gaming of the system 651 00:42:35,168 --> 00:42:38,406 was now endemic throughout the public services 652 00:42:38,406 --> 00:42:41,077 What was supposed to be a rational system, 653 00:42:41,077 --> 00:42:43,280 was instead creating a strange world, 654 00:42:43,280 --> 00:42:46,986 in which no-one knew whether to believe the numbers or not. 655 00:42:46,986 --> 00:42:52,293 The government's response was to introduce even more mathematical levels of management. 656 00:42:52,293 --> 00:42:56,532 Complex systems of auditing were created to monitor workers, 657 00:42:56,532 --> 00:43:01,006 and make sure they fulfilled the targets in the correct way. 658 00:43:01,006 --> 00:43:03,476 What had begun has a system of liberation 659 00:43:03,476 --> 00:43:06,847 was turning into a powerful system of control. 660 00:43:09,283 --> 00:43:13,556 If I don't hit those targets, then I don't get a pay increase. It's as simple as that. 661 00:43:13,590 --> 00:43:14,425 - They withhold your increment? 662 00:43:14,425 --> 00:43:15,426 - They withhold my increment. 663 00:43:15,426 --> 00:43:17,896 - Not meeting the targets is really not an option. 664 00:43:17,896 --> 00:43:21,935 - It's such an important target, that I get to keep my job this month, 665 00:43:21,935 --> 00:43:23,571 because there's no red on the screen. 666 00:43:23,571 --> 00:43:27,076 - If they don't reach the targets they're axed, and if they speak out against them, they're axed, 667 00:43:27,076 --> 00:43:28,612 here you have a catch-22 situation. 668 00:43:28,612 --> 00:43:32,985 - If you get zero star rated, you are being watched like a hawk. 669 00:43:34,119 --> 00:43:35,822 - I think you should go. 670 00:43:36,823 --> 00:43:40,695 But the numbers were also having a strange and perverse effect 671 00:43:40,695 --> 00:43:44,234 on New Labour's vision of a freer and more open Britain. 672 00:43:44,835 --> 00:43:49,075 They were in fact creating a more rigid and stratified society. 673 00:43:49,675 --> 00:43:54,148 At the heart of this was education, and the league tables for schools. 674 00:43:54,148 --> 00:43:58,121 The tables showed parents which were the best performing schools, 675 00:43:58,121 --> 00:44:00,524 and which were the worst ones. 676 00:44:00,691 --> 00:44:07,501 The government said that this would incentivise the less successful ones to compete, and improve their services, 677 00:44:07,534 --> 00:44:11,240 and standards would then rise across the country. 678 00:44:11,240 --> 00:44:14,377 In fact, the very opposite happened. 679 00:44:14,377 --> 00:44:17,982 Rich parents moved into the areas with the best schools, 680 00:44:18,016 --> 00:44:22,422 which then caused house prices to spiral, keeping the poor out. 681 00:44:22,422 --> 00:44:25,193 And nearly all schools taught pupils 682 00:44:25,193 --> 00:44:29,600 only those narrow facts they would need to answer in exams, 683 00:44:29,600 --> 00:44:33,238 and so would help the schools rise up the league tables. 684 00:44:33,238 --> 00:44:36,276 What was lost was the wider education 685 00:44:36,309 --> 00:44:40,481 that would help the poorer children rise up in society. 686 00:44:47,158 --> 00:44:51,030 In 2006, a series of reports made it clear 687 00:44:51,030 --> 00:44:54,501 that there was a definite link between the government's policies in education, 688 00:44:54,501 --> 00:44:58,174 and the rise of social segregation based on wealth. 689 00:44:58,174 --> 00:45:00,911 This has contributed to a much wider problem. 690 00:45:00,911 --> 00:45:04,983 Social mobility in Britain has now ground to a halt. 691 00:45:05,918 --> 00:45:10,291 The stark fact is that the children of rich families in Britain today 692 00:45:10,291 --> 00:45:15,232 are much more likely to live and die rich, than in the recent past. 693 00:45:15,232 --> 00:45:20,272 While children in poor families are more likely to live and die poor. 694 00:45:20,272 --> 00:45:23,210 The country has become more rigid and stratified 695 00:45:23,210 --> 00:45:27,082 than at any time since the second world war. 696 00:45:29,319 --> 00:45:32,623 New Labour had adopted the market model of freedom, 697 00:45:32,623 --> 00:45:35,560 believing that there would be a trade-off. 698 00:45:35,560 --> 00:45:40,935 They gave up their old political role of intervening in the market to reduce inequality 699 00:45:40,935 --> 00:45:46,309 but what was supposed to follow was a new openness and fluidity in society. 700 00:45:46,309 --> 00:45:50,148 In fact, they now have the worst of both worlds. 701 00:45:50,148 --> 00:45:56,691 Society has become more rigid, while the inequalities have become more extreme. 702 00:45:57,492 --> 00:45:59,195 Under New Labour, 703 00:45:59,195 --> 00:46:03,134 the country is even more unequal than it was under Mrs Thatcher. 704 00:46:03,134 --> 00:46:06,372 With an ever-increasing share of the wealth 705 00:46:06,372 --> 00:46:10,077 going to a tiny 1% at the top of society. 706 00:46:10,077 --> 00:46:15,618 And the inequalities not only affect how you live, but also when you will die 707 00:46:15,618 --> 00:46:22,228 Across the country, differences in life expectancy have increased since 1997. 708 00:46:22,228 --> 00:46:27,869 And inequalities in child mortality by class have also increased. 709 00:46:27,869 --> 00:46:30,105 A baby born in Hackney 710 00:46:30,105 --> 00:46:32,776 is now twice as likely to die in its first year 711 00:46:32,776 --> 00:46:35,314 as a baby born in Bexley. 712 00:46:35,314 --> 00:46:39,753 Beneath the meritocratic surface, social class divisions in Britain 713 00:46:39,753 --> 00:46:42,957 are hardening and deepening. 714 00:46:49,400 --> 00:46:52,805 And in America, throughout the 1990s, 715 00:46:52,805 --> 00:46:57,345 the economic model of democracy was leading not just to the rise of inequality, 716 00:46:57,345 --> 00:47:02,485 but to financial and political corruption on a huge scale. 717 00:47:02,519 --> 00:47:06,057 America had experienced a spectacular market boom. 718 00:47:06,091 --> 00:47:10,630 But those running the market had realised that the numbers were not telling the truth, 719 00:47:10,630 --> 00:47:14,770 because the giant accounting firms had become corrupted. 720 00:47:14,770 --> 00:47:18,776 There was a new element of FUD, the very foundation of the market, 721 00:47:18,776 --> 00:47:26,587 the numbers that represented the sanctity of the market, the reliability of the market, 722 00:47:26,620 --> 00:47:30,259 were becoming unreliable because the accountants 723 00:47:30,259 --> 00:47:34,599 had violated the trust the government had placed in them. 724 00:47:34,599 --> 00:47:38,837 I knew that the great accounting firms of America 725 00:47:38,837 --> 00:47:43,077 had engaged in practices that were very very questionable. 726 00:47:43,110 --> 00:47:47,850 And very often fraudulent - we were seeing more and more and more of these cases. 727 00:47:47,850 --> 00:47:49,686 - How widespread did it become? 728 00:47:49,686 --> 00:47:51,589 - Extremely widespread. 729 00:47:52,290 --> 00:47:55,095 Those who ran many of America's corporations 730 00:47:55,095 --> 00:47:58,099 were faking profits on an enormous scale. 731 00:47:58,099 --> 00:48:02,105 They did this because it would then increase their personal bonuses. 732 00:48:02,105 --> 00:48:07,212 "Come on", they would say, "isn't there another way of looking at those numbers?", 733 00:48:07,212 --> 00:48:10,216 "Can we compromise?" 734 00:48:10,216 --> 00:48:15,624 "Can we spread, for example, this misrepresentation over a number of years?" 735 00:48:15,624 --> 00:48:19,296 In all of these cases the effect is one of corruption. 736 00:48:20,832 --> 00:48:23,469 We were trusted. We had a rational system, 737 00:48:23,469 --> 00:48:26,706 based on numbers that could not be disputed. 738 00:48:26,706 --> 00:48:30,779 We ended up now with a fictitious, irrational system. 739 00:48:30,779 --> 00:48:33,884 The officials, whose job was to regulate the market, 740 00:48:33,884 --> 00:48:37,622 tried to persuade politicians in Congress to act and expose this. 741 00:48:37,622 --> 00:48:40,125 But they were blocked at every turn. 742 00:48:40,125 --> 00:48:42,162 They found that all the key politicians 743 00:48:42,162 --> 00:48:45,266 were being given millions of dollars in campaign contributions 744 00:48:45,266 --> 00:48:48,872 by both the corporations and the accounting firms. 745 00:48:48,938 --> 00:48:51,842 I mean massive amounts of money 746 00:48:51,842 --> 00:48:54,447 were spent in lobbying committees of Congress. 747 00:48:54,447 --> 00:48:59,554 I knew they were motivated by concern for business interests. 748 00:48:59,554 --> 00:49:02,091 - You mean they'd been bribed? 749 00:49:02,091 --> 00:49:03,526 - No. 750 00:49:03,526 --> 00:49:08,267 I wouldn't use that word. That's your word. 751 00:49:08,267 --> 00:49:09,801 - What word would you use? 752 00:49:09,801 --> 00:49:11,871 "Seduced." 753 00:49:12,572 --> 00:49:15,210 Despite the growing evidence of corruption, 754 00:49:15,210 --> 00:49:19,348 the Clinton administration portrayed the boom as something revolutionary. 755 00:49:19,348 --> 00:49:22,020 It was a genuine democracy of the marketplace, 756 00:49:22,020 --> 00:49:26,125 in which everyone, at all levels of society was benefitting. 757 00:49:26,125 --> 00:49:28,729 But this was completely untrue. 758 00:49:28,729 --> 00:49:32,034 If one compares the incomes of Americans in real terms, 759 00:49:32,034 --> 00:49:35,973 between the end of the 1970s and the end of the 1990s, 760 00:49:35,973 --> 00:49:40,913 those at the bottom of society saw their income actually fall. 761 00:49:40,913 --> 00:49:44,051 Those in the middle saw a slight increase, 762 00:49:44,051 --> 00:49:49,326 while those at the top increased by an extraordinary amount. 763 00:49:49,826 --> 00:49:52,997 If you take income after taxes, 764 00:49:52,997 --> 00:49:56,803 you find that the average household cash income 765 00:49:56,803 --> 00:50:01,409 in the bottom fifth of Americans 766 00:50:01,409 --> 00:50:04,080 went from $9300 a year to $8700. 767 00:50:04,080 --> 00:50:08,319 You find that the average household cash income in the middle fifth - the median - 768 00:50:08,319 --> 00:50:14,962 went from about $31,800 to $33,200. 769 00:50:14,962 --> 00:50:19,035 You take the top one percent in the same time period, 770 00:50:19,035 --> 00:50:24,843 you go from $256,000 a year to $644,000 a year. 771 00:50:24,843 --> 00:50:29,650 That's to me is the simplest set of numbers I can use to sum it all up. 772 00:50:29,650 --> 00:50:35,759 I have many variations, but those just eat right out of the box at you. 773 00:50:35,759 --> 00:50:38,696 It's just incredible how you can have something like that. 774 00:50:38,696 --> 00:50:41,934 Underlying the political experiments of the 1990s 775 00:50:41,934 --> 00:50:44,938 had been a simplified idea of human beings, 776 00:50:44,938 --> 00:50:47,942 that at heart they were just self-seeking individuals, 777 00:50:47,942 --> 00:50:52,382 whose needs could be best met through the marketplace, not politics. 778 00:50:52,382 --> 00:50:56,422 If left unregulated, the markets would benefit everyone. 779 00:50:56,422 --> 00:50:59,426 In the face of this simple, irresistible argument, 780 00:50:59,426 --> 00:51:02,296 politicians had given away much of their power. 781 00:51:02,296 --> 00:51:07,337 But what had actually happened was the return of inequalities and social injustices 782 00:51:07,337 --> 00:51:10,141 not seen for a hundred years. 783 00:51:10,141 --> 00:51:14,414 The very thing politicians were supposed to prevent. 784 00:51:14,414 --> 00:51:17,719 Politicians now found themselves weakened and corrupted. 785 00:51:17,719 --> 00:51:20,622 And without the power to change society. 786 00:51:20,622 --> 00:51:24,528 And millions of individuals were left without representation, 787 00:51:24,562 --> 00:51:27,900 and even less control over their lives. 788 00:51:27,900 --> 00:51:30,170 Here is the ultimate irony. 789 00:51:30,170 --> 00:51:33,141 Because as people began to believe 790 00:51:33,141 --> 00:51:35,478 they are just self seeking acquisitive individuals, 791 00:51:35,478 --> 00:51:40,351 that the democratic systems are fundamentally not nearly as good as the market 792 00:51:40,351 --> 00:51:43,823 for fulfilling whatever it is you want, 793 00:51:43,823 --> 00:51:49,164 people allowed elites to takeover politics. 794 00:51:49,164 --> 00:51:52,335 And politics to be distorted, and corrupted, 795 00:51:52,335 --> 00:51:55,807 so that politics became even less capable 796 00:51:55,807 --> 00:51:58,077 of fulfilling people's needs. 797 00:51:58,077 --> 00:52:03,451 And meanwhile, the market did not give people good jobs, secure jobs, 798 00:52:03,451 --> 00:52:08,024 and so ultimately the individual cannot be fulfilled either through politics 799 00:52:08,024 --> 00:52:11,129 or through the market. 800 00:52:11,429 --> 00:52:15,903 What had given this simplified view of human beings much of its power 801 00:52:15,903 --> 00:52:20,209 had been ideas drawn from both mathematics and biology. 802 00:52:20,209 --> 00:52:22,311 As this programme has shown, 803 00:52:22,311 --> 00:52:26,985 it underpinned a powerful model of ourselves as almost computer-like machines, 804 00:52:26,985 --> 00:52:32,860 whose instincts had largely been encoded within them, millions of years before. 805 00:52:32,860 --> 00:52:37,099 But now, questions were beginning to be asked in the scientific world 806 00:52:37,099 --> 00:52:41,472 about whether this was too simple a view of human beings. 807 00:52:41,472 --> 00:52:47,113 In genetics, the idea that the DNA is the all-controlling set of instructions for life, 808 00:52:47,113 --> 00:52:50,319 has been replaced by a more complex idea. 809 00:52:50,319 --> 00:52:53,156 Scientists have shown that a cell actually chooses 810 00:52:53,156 --> 00:52:56,260 and edits which parts of the DNA to use, 811 00:52:56,260 --> 00:53:00,333 depending on the environmental forces acting on it. 812 00:53:03,471 --> 00:53:05,306 One of the key experiments 813 00:53:05,306 --> 00:53:09,679 that showed that the self-interested actions of genes controlled behavior, 814 00:53:09,679 --> 00:53:11,883 has also been questioned. 815 00:53:11,949 --> 00:53:16,155 Anthropologists looked into the history of the Yanamamo tribes, 816 00:53:16,155 --> 00:53:19,961 and discovered a pattern to their violence, that could be explained 817 00:53:19,961 --> 00:53:23,332 by very different causes than genes. 818 00:53:23,332 --> 00:53:27,005 It only seemed to happen when the Yanamamo came into contact 819 00:53:27,005 --> 00:53:29,942 with Westerners who gave them goods. 820 00:53:29,942 --> 00:53:35,517 The tribes then fought with each other for access to those goods. 821 00:53:37,486 --> 00:53:40,724 What I discovered was that there was pattern, 822 00:53:40,724 --> 00:53:45,097 in which the warfare became more intense, or happened at all, 823 00:53:45,097 --> 00:53:49,203 during times of greater Western penetration into the area. 824 00:53:49,203 --> 00:53:54,110 You're not going to get any help by looking at their reproductive striving. 825 00:53:54,110 --> 00:53:56,347 I think what will explain that for you, 826 00:53:56,347 --> 00:54:01,187 is what is the historical interactions with the powerful outside forces. 827 00:54:01,187 --> 00:54:04,258 That explains when and where they fight. 828 00:54:04,258 --> 00:54:06,428 - And those powerful outside forces are what? 829 00:54:06,428 --> 00:54:09,967 The powerful outside forces are predominantly the Westerners 830 00:54:09,967 --> 00:54:14,340 who come in who were sources of these much desired goods. 831 00:54:14,373 --> 00:54:18,278 Anthropologists have looked again at the film of "The Ax Fight". 832 00:54:18,278 --> 00:54:20,681 They argue that what one actually sees 833 00:54:20,681 --> 00:54:23,151 is a struggle between two factions: 834 00:54:23,151 --> 00:54:28,526 One, a group who have been given machetes by the film maker, Napoleon Chagnon. 835 00:54:28,526 --> 00:54:32,531 The other, a group of visitors to the village, 836 00:54:32,566 --> 00:54:36,671 who are refusing to leave, because they too want access to these precious gifts. 837 00:54:36,671 --> 00:54:39,943 The real cause of the fight, they say, is not the genes, 838 00:54:39,943 --> 00:54:42,313 but a struggle of politics and power, 839 00:54:42,313 --> 00:54:45,283 aggravated by the film maker himself. 840 00:54:45,317 --> 00:54:49,590 But Chagnon completely disagrees, and stands by his experiment. 841 00:54:49,590 --> 00:54:52,961 No, I don't think the ax fight happened because I was there. 842 00:54:52,961 --> 00:54:54,930 - Are you sure? 843 00:54:55,699 --> 00:55:00,239 Well, are you sure your father's your father? 844 00:55:02,107 --> 00:55:05,913 I think it would be a reasonable presumption 845 00:55:05,913 --> 00:55:10,486 that this ax fight would have happened whether or not I was there, 846 00:55:10,486 --> 00:55:14,759 and the very fact that I was there and documented it was not the cause of it. 847 00:55:14,759 --> 00:55:18,331 Ax fights or club fights 848 00:55:18,331 --> 00:55:21,803 happen in many other villages when I'm not there, 849 00:55:21,803 --> 00:55:25,742 and I've documented these as well through informants who describe them. 850 00:55:25,742 --> 00:55:28,612 So I don't think this particular fight 851 00:55:28,612 --> 00:55:35,089 was anything extraordinary and out of the pattern of Yanamomo violence. 852 00:55:35,089 --> 00:55:40,029 - You don't think a film crew in the middle of a fight in a village has an effect? 853 00:55:40,029 --> 00:55:43,200 - No I don't. That's the end of my interview. 854 00:55:44,435 --> 00:55:48,174 And in mathematics, the man who had created the equations 855 00:55:48,174 --> 00:55:52,146 that lay behind the simplified economic model of society 856 00:55:52,146 --> 00:55:57,988 was also expressing doubts about the assumptions on which his work had been based. 857 00:55:57,988 --> 00:56:01,025 He was the mathematician John Nash. 858 00:56:01,025 --> 00:56:04,865 Nash, who has now recovered from paranoid schizophrenia, 859 00:56:04,865 --> 00:56:07,001 and still works at Princeton, 860 00:56:07,001 --> 00:56:12,041 has come to believe that the purely rational, calculating creatures in his model, 861 00:56:12,041 --> 00:56:14,912 what he calls "the human as businessman", 862 00:56:14,912 --> 00:56:19,920 have little connection with the complexity of real human beings. 863 00:56:19,953 --> 00:56:22,991 I have had some trouble myself 864 00:56:22,991 --> 00:56:29,032 on the psychological level, I've been in mental hospitals, and so I have, 865 00:56:29,333 --> 00:56:33,640 I may be developing a pattern of rationally 866 00:56:33,640 --> 00:56:36,377 I've realised that what I had said 867 00:56:36,377 --> 00:56:42,185 at some time may have over emphasised rationality 868 00:56:42,185 --> 00:56:47,560 or some type of thinking, and I don't want to over emphasise 869 00:56:47,560 --> 00:56:51,331 rational thinking on the part of humans. 870 00:56:52,833 --> 00:56:56,138 Human beings are much more complicated, like, 871 00:56:56,138 --> 00:57:01,513 than the human being as a businessman. 872 00:57:02,280 --> 00:57:06,486 Human behavior is not entirely motivated by self interest 873 00:57:06,486 --> 00:57:08,590 of each human. 874 00:57:08,590 --> 00:57:11,627 - But the underlying assumption of Game Theory is that it is? 875 00:57:11,627 --> 00:57:15,132 Game theory works in terms of self interest. 876 00:57:15,132 --> 00:57:20,640 But it was like the viewpoint that some game theory concepts could be unsound 877 00:57:20,640 --> 00:57:24,279 there's over-dependence on rationality. 878 00:57:24,279 --> 00:57:27,283 That is my enlightenment. 879 00:57:27,350 --> 00:57:29,720 And Nash is not alone. 880 00:57:29,720 --> 00:57:34,260 In economics, the whole idea that the free market is an efficient system 881 00:57:34,260 --> 00:57:36,796 is coming under serious attack. 882 00:57:36,796 --> 00:57:40,702 Over the past five years, many of the Nobel prizes for economics 883 00:57:40,702 --> 00:57:46,277 have been awarded for research that shows that markets do not create stability or order. 884 00:57:46,310 --> 00:57:49,348 That what Adam Smith called "The Invisible Hand", 885 00:57:49,348 --> 00:57:52,619 is invisible because it isn't actually there. 886 00:57:52,686 --> 00:57:57,793 And politicians do have a powerful role to play in controlling the markets. 887 00:57:58,428 --> 00:58:02,233 And a new discipline, called Behavioural Economics, 888 00:58:02,233 --> 00:58:07,140 has been studying whether people really do behave as the simplified model says they do. 889 00:58:07,541 --> 00:58:11,179 Their studies show that only two groups in society 890 00:58:11,179 --> 00:58:16,521 actually behave in a rational self interested way in all experimental situations. 891 00:58:16,888 --> 00:58:19,858 One is economists themselves, 892 00:58:19,858 --> 00:58:23,898 the other is psychopaths. 893 00:58:27,836 --> 00:58:34,479 Thanks to: ovisnigra subtitle and english transcript 894 00:58:35,000 --> 00:58:38,101