Adam Curtis is a British journalist and documentary maker who describes himself as fascinated with the relationship between memory, politics and power. His documentaries consist of archive footage of significant events in modern history, often set to a cold, atmospheric soundtrack and his own narration. What he aims to do is formulate new ways of understanding how the modern world has come to its present state – capitalism, warfare, democracy, religion, culture, literature, science.

His 2012 talk (above) is an interesting, lateral take on cultural/societal memory explored through the scientific and journalistic myth of brainwashing – the cold-war idea that human memories can be manipulated (wiped and replaced by new memories) by cults, strange new religions and radical politics.

Brainwashing by journalist Edward Hunter in 1951, was a text born out of the fear that American POWs were being converted to communism by the Chinese through new psychological experiment come to be known as “brainwashing.” It later became evident that the fear and resultant text were both propagandist hoaxes, but not before the C.I.A. and American psychologists subscribed to and tested out the idea themselves (if the Chinese are doing it, we must do it too). What evidence showed was that while memories could be wiped, they could not be replaced with new ones – and later that those cultists who suffered most psychological trauma were those involuntarily de-programmed by psychologists attempting to return them to “reality.”

Curtis believes this concept of brainwashing, despite being largely discounted by the scientific community, still exists in the heart of society and manifests itself in a view of humans as “fundamentally weak” and “psychologically vulnerable” – “a weak and passive view of human beings.”

“What disappeared was the idea of humans as confident individuals who can be inspired by new ideas and new ways of seeing the world.” And this all comes out of this dangerous view of memory, as easily manipulated.