Category: Documentary
In a strange city and jet lagged, you tend to watch whatever is on in the early hours of the day with the hope that it is boring enough to drive you to well-deserved sleep. This was my hope not fulfilled.
The Shock Doctrine is a documentary that claims that the economic and social disasters in the last few decades were caused by policies put in place after some disaster or catastrophe. The documentary is based on the book of the same name. The shock facing the general population, with it's attention diverted, provided an opportunity to introduce extreme measures that would not normally be accepted, sometime under the disguise of helping to improve the situation. This was done on purpose or in latter years, planned as part of the whole scheme. The ultimate goal of the Shock Doctrine was at first, to try out Milton Friedman's free-market economic theory in real life. This led to some successes and some failures. But the value of the doctrine lies in it's ability to introduce or make people accept what they normally would not. In the end, the doctrine is used to ultimately put wealth in the hands of the few.
What is shocking to me was the nature of the doctrine itself. This was not thought up by some politician with some shady deal in mind. This was thought up and identified by people in academia, in universities who were driven by some high-minded academic goal. This doctrine was thought up as a means to an end, a tool to be used. I have never fully understood why people of my parent's generation viewed academics with suspicion. I understood why universities were forcing science undergraduates to take more arts-related courses and vice versa, to create a more rounded person. But putting the historical events in the documentary in context (plus the minor event called the creation of the atomic bomb), the drive to make academic more humans seems logical now.
The documentary is depressing to no end. It just piles on woe upon woe of the helplessness of the general public to their manipulation to agree to something that will ultimately bring them great harm. It sheds a new light on politics and war and the tools and goals of them both. Personally, it finally made me understand what the fuss was about Pinochet in the UK and why Margret Thatcher came back to public life to support him. The documentary pulled me in and although I thought I saw some leaps of faith, generally it was easy to follow and lays out the reasoning logically.
Ultimately, it points out a world that we rarely see or at least a perspective of it. The motivation of people is at the center here. The question of morality is not asked but implied throughout. Why such fervor and focus on an idea (the power of the free market to bring about progress) that it seems if put in another context, would be called zealotry. Basically, if you have never been poor, you never understand how it is to be poor. It is from these people who have never been poor in their adult lives (or purposely do not remember) and never have to make a living in the real world that these theories of economic control and dominance came out from. Their faith is manipulated towards another end, the fulfillment of greed of other.
In the end, the documentary points out that the free market was Milton Friedman's religion and god. He believed in it's holiness and it's ability to heal . He believed that business could do no harm and in itself blameless. His final policy statement on taking advantage of a disaster to impose free market principles on a publicly funded system is telling of his beliefs and convictions.
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