HyperNormalisation

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https://youtu.be/fh2cDKyFdyU

Has anyone seen this documentary from a couple years ago?

I've been reading bits and pieces of papers, blogs and such related to the topic of hyperreality and this seems like a reasonable depiction of some of the involved ideas as I understand them.

Have you read anything on the topic? On other topics that tie in?

Yes!
Adam Curtis is a fantastic storyteller, make sure to also watch his earlier documentary series, namely "all watched over by machines of loving grace", "the power of nightmares" and "pandora's box".

the films however all leave me confused. Not that I don't understand the content, but rather: facing the complexity of it all, I can't make sense of the world anymore.... My confusion led to a lot of reading, and while I still can't make sense, I can by now understand the historic contingency that led to where the world is now.
I also understood that this desire for things to make sense is more or less a human thing ... there's no reason that requires things to make sense. it may as well just be all confusing and chaotic. which is fine, I guess. the idea that it ever was different is an illusion based on too little reading.

Had to go watch them all...

The Power of Nightmares
Part 1 : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dTg4qnyUGxg
Part 2 : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7QTaJ_ZVn-4
Part 3 : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WD1BRE-DBsA

Pandora's Box
Part 1 : https://youtu.be/4oOPgUZkwM4
Part 2 : I can't find it because of copyright take-downs.
Part 3 : https://youtu.be/cNvgEQ0RHsdoes
Part 4 : https://youtu.be/hrxcsDyyGdo
Part 5 : https://youtu.be/UidPGHvBc4Y
Part 6 : https://youtu.be/cJtSdFBBxWA

Seems more than anything to describe a history in which people rush forward to instrumentalize technologies and ideas we either aren't ready for or don't care to account for the complexities of, much of it seemingly driven by the populations themselves through rallying around selected leaders with the stars in their eyes. I wonder how much of it is just us outpacing and beguiling ourselves.

The Century of Self
https://youtu.be/eJ3RzGoQC4s
Found this one too. Seems about right, at least given my feelings towards the behavioral and psychological sciences. The ways they describe Anna Freud's work with those kids hits a bit close to home. I hadn't quite realized the scope of the impact made by our increasing efforts to harness our emotions for economic purposes at a mass scale.

All Watched Over By Machines of Loving Grace
Part 1 : https://vimeo.com/groups/96331/videos/80799353
Part 2 : https://vimeo.com/groups/96331/videos/80799352
Part 3 : https://vimeo.com/channels/ciri/80799354

Some pretty interesting stuff to integrate. It's in line with the general kind of perspective I have, but lays out the political side more than I had thought about in the past. It would be nice to fill in some more detail about inter-generational effects and the changing conditions over time in the educational system and of childhood in general. I can't imagine how that wouldn't be critical to the evolution of all these cultural forms. It's gotten at a bit in The Century of Self with regards to family life and cases of schizophrenia but there has to be more that can be said about what's going on at the community level.

I got really into Adam Curtis after seeing "Century of the Self". It addressed my curiousity about how the human potential movement got co-opted by the advertising industry so perfectly that I sought out all his other documentaries on Youtube. (You still have a few to go: check out "The Trap".) They make me feel like I understand the connections between things better, but they also leave me feeling hopeless about anything ever changing.

Sorry I haven't responded. I watched The Trap and then went off to read some accumulated stuff I haven't gotten around to yet to try to contribute something myself, but I don't have much other than weird and scattered thoughts. Anything I think to say about it all seems reductive. I can only try to put this together in some kind of model, however abstract and parametric that may be, but that seems to be the heart of what causes the new problems.

This is one of the things I had read a while ago which ties in a bit: https://aeon.co/essays/how-economists-r ... strologers