The quest!

The Trap, What Happened to Our Dream of Freedom (BBC, 2007)
#1. Fck you buddy
#2. The lonely robot
#3. We will force you to be free
Like an ant perched upon a dry leaf being led by the whirling currents of water on rainy day and trying to make sense of the twirling world around it, I fall in the same predicament. More and more I discover that the world is neither flat nor round and solutions of the world are neither black nor white!
An intriguing documentary by BBC on profound theories that makes us wonder whether mankind is doomed for annihilation. It paints a very pessimistic view of the world around us. It is narrated from the UK perspective. The world leaders advocate freedom and the breaking of barriers of class and inequality in society after the end of WW2. The ill-effects of uncontrolled capitalism was seen with the aftermath of the 1930s Great Depression - WW2. This mantra was chanted all over breaking down caste system and age old social system of the East. However, we have only created the biggest inequity and classes amongst us. The divide between the haves and have nots stays apparent. The 1% of the world population own 99% of the world wealth.
It now appears that the Western concept of freedom is not universally accepted by all. They use the word of freedom to trap us into an empty world.

Frederick Von Hayak a thinker of the 40s theorize that the use of politics to plan society is far more dangerous than any part of capitalism. On the other end too, the Soviet model type of control had led to tyranny and its demise. He suggested that citizens control free market. Man is always greedy, his conduct, social interaction and behaviour is all based on self interest. Steady state will finally be reached. Altruism doesn't come in the equation.

John Nash

Another bleak opinion on mankind comes from John Nash, (of Beautiful Mind), the paranoid schizophrenic who suggested that everybody is suspicious and distrustful of each other. We strategize our every move by watching each others' movement and actions. How one responds to a scenario is called 'Game Theory' - how one would think in game of poker. The player would make a move based on how he thinks how the other would think. Nash even came up with a mathematical equation, which earned him a Nobel Prize, in the height of nuclear stand-off to predict what Russian would do and how they would respond when both sides put their fingers on the launch button. Equilibrium is reached when everyone is selfish. When the individual cooperates, the result is unpredictable and dangerous.
Prisoner's Dilemma: Like the blackmailer with a prized diamond who is asking for a ransom would find it more worthwhile to be dishonest, thinking that the other would cheat. By being dishonest, the crook tend to gain possibly have in possession both the diamond and money versus losing all by being truthful. This same scenario was applied to the Western and Eastern blocks. Equilibrium is achieved not by disarmament but rather to arm to the brim! Coming from a person who had to combat paranoid schizophrenia whilst proposing this theory, one wonders how much credence should be given to it!
JD Laing, a Scottish psychiatrist, while treating schizophrenics, proposed that family is a pressure cooker that propagates the dominance of one family member over the other. Love is conditional and makes one conform to mould to the direction of the family and indirectly ensures uniformity in society. Nobody seemingly seem to care for you actually do. They are just trying to control you, just like the people of power in society. This argument brought in counter culture in society. There is no such thing as 'public interest' but rather 'self interest' and everybody started building a distrust to people in authority.

J D Laing

JD Laing, in spite of being a psychiatrist, advocated that psychiatry was not exact science. To confirm his theory, he sent 8 normal and sane people to different mental hospitals in US with only one similar symptom - hearing a thud sound. They were otherwise told to behave normally. All of them were institutionalized; 7 for schizophrenia and 1 for manic-depressive psychosis. It rocked the medical world.
Different labels were now given to different behaviours - personality disorders, OCD, etcetera. After a big fiasco in the American psychiatric fraternity, it hit another wall again when psychiatrist in US claimed success in picking out malingers alleged sent by Laing's group. The only trouble was Laing did not send in 'patients' this time!
A check-lists was created to allay psychiatry biasses It became so simple that everybody became diagnosing themselves of diseases. Society then decided how one should act in society, hence putting a lid on individual expression and freedom.
In UK, the rocky 80s called for drastic measures. To stimulate the economy, productivity in the public sector was increased as people were rewarded with incentives. Civil servants were no longer working for the betterment of society or altruism, but rather for personal interest as Nash predicted in the 50s.
In the early 90s, public service was liberated in line with the free market. The old bureaucratic tradition was challenged. John Buchanan suggests that public servant working for the public is an illusion. Everybody work on own self interest.
The market forces and economy is a better gauge of people's need than politics. Market should be liberated.
So politicians left the economist and free market to have a free rein in spreading the country's economy to its people - market democracy and giving freedom to people.
This failed as human's greed led to crooked accountants and auditors cooked up figures to give a false sense a bull run. Liberal economy only make the lower strata of society poorer and the super rich filthy rich.
Numbers and statistics dictated productivity of civil servants were also shrewdly maneuvered to paint a pretty picture of their performances, which was far from the truth.
Geneticists of the 70s offered another way of looking at life. They suggested that genes use our body as a vessel to control the evolution of species.
New modality to control this machine to conform to society by introducing 'mental illness' and auditing to push man in conformity. SSRI were introduced to make life more predictable.

Sir Isaiah Berlin

Inequility led to politicians who failed people. They gave it to market which also failed. Market is no more an efficient system. Behavioral economics believe that only two type of people behave rationally, the economists and psychopaths.
1956 is seen by social scientists as a turning point in the history of mankind. The Hungarian uprising saw the Soviets severely squashing their subjects with brutal force. The world was surprised that a system which arose as means to liberate common people from the tyranny of tyrants have turn into violence themselves to maintain the status quo.
In Oxford, Sir Isaiah Berlin, a thinker, toyed the idea of two types of liberty - positive and negative liberties. Positive liberty arose after a group of suppressed individuals start a revolution to free themselves from oppression (e.g. French Revolution). People will be free but the general public will not know how to handle the freedom. Only the leader would have an idea of how utopia should be. In order to the tie the line for the non conformers to follow, the leaders would resort to violence and freedom would fail.
Negative liberty allows people to do whether they feel with the people themselves have low ambitions. Everyone is more interested in self indulgence. The law is needed to ensure that each person's freedom does notdisturb the other. This type is also not healthy as people can be coerced with disastrous outcomes.
The 70s also saw a group of revolutionists influenced by Jean-Paul Sartre who believed that a violent approach was needed to liberate the working class from the clutches of the bourgeois. The middle class seem to be a hurdle for free liberation of the public, prompting criminals like Pol Pot to brutalize the middle class to avert opposition to his rule.
The Americans in the height of the Cold War, tried to back dictators to ensure their influence and promote their kind of liberty. Economics was more on their agenda as they also supported the enemy of the state when situation warranted. The neo-conservatives too went to great lengths to hoodwink the world to justify wars to exert what they believed to be freedom to the world. The Western kind of  liberal democracy triumphed when the Soviet Union collapsed. The end seem to justify their agenda.
The world seem to be toddling along wanting a progressively free society. At it stands now, since by nature, Man are greedy, selfish and self centred. The model of society based on free market over the last few decades seem to be the choice of society structure. Again, the rich 1% hold the remaining 99% by their jugular and trap them into a materialistic world where money is King.