Question Three:
What makes us radically
different? Are our internal hopes and needs fundamentally the same?
Female 1: Right, last one.
Female 2: What makes us radically
different? Are our internal hopes and needs fundamentally the same?
Female 1: That’s my question.
Female 3: This is a good one to
end up with given the conversation. The order worked out well.
Female 1: Do you want to give
us a bit of context?
Female 2: I was prompted by
what you’d put in your tweet and blog post.
How you wanted to meet people who were radically different from
you. I just wondered, kind of how we
defined meaning actually. How do we
define radically different? Are we on a
kind of looking at outside things, of jobs, ethnicity, background, and age. My
point is, on the inside are we not quite similar in some ways? Basic needs and
hopes. So how do we define radically different?
Female 1: Part of the idea came
out of - I had a chat with an old friend
from back home who on the outside we look really similar - similar backgrounds,
and we value, I thought, similar things. Well, I said one little thing, “this
government is so hated” because in my oeuvre all I hear is how much we hate
this government. And they were like, “Really? I didn’t know that. I just don’t
think they are being particularly effective.”
It kind of short circuited me because in so many ways we were so similar
and then just our experience with that and how we extrapolate our beliefs into
the world is so different. You can pick
what you want, about where you want to locate differences I think.
Female 3: I think if you take
it down to the most fundamental things we’re not different at all in terms of
what we need: food, shelter, and connection to others. To be a part of society,
whatever your view of society is. Then
the ways that we express that, the ways that we think we should achieve that;
the mechanisms that we think are important to enable that can be quite radically
different. Someone who votes for UKIP as
opposed to someone who votes for the green party still has the same fundamental
needs and wants. They just have radically different ideas about what that looks
like and how they can go about achieving it.
Male 1: Aren’t we ourselves
potentially radically different from ourselves? I don’t mean it in a twatty
way. I know it sounds like a really ridiculous question but if I think back to
me as a 16 year old in Birkenhead and speaking really quickly,
people couldn’t understand me out of Birkenhead Really kind of harsh, Liverpudlian accent, swearing
all the time, didn’t value education, didn’t value society, didn’t value
parents, or anything.
Now
I’m radically different from that. That’s quite interesting in reference to how
we see difference in others, because that difference that we see may have only have appeared yesterday.
Whoever
that person is.
Male 1: That homeless person for
example, we all have homes that would be radically different from us, but that
might have only happened to them two days ago.
We can see those things that appear radically different, but they might
actually be very close. I don’t know. My
other thought about the blog post is that when you call for meeting people
radically different surely there’s a cross section of society who are all
interested in meeting people who are radically different. So you end up missing
out on the people who are radically different because all the people that will
turn up will want to meet radically different people. You know what I mean?
That’s why I wonder if it’s a difficulty…
Female 2: That’s the thing.
What would you ask for?
Male 1: That’s why I think Devoted
and Disgruntled is interesting because the individuals write the invitation. I’ve
been thinking about my projects. It’s
like if you get that person who’s interested in it to write their own
invitation, potentially the idea is that they, if they are true to themselves
will appeal to different people than you were.
If I were you and you wanted this to change I would get one of your
young people that you know to write the invitation so it’s in their voice.
Female 2: So each event has an
invitation from a cohost.
Male 1: Yes, from a cohost maybe,
that’s interesting. Then just because we’re individuals and we’re connecting to
different people, you end up potentially with different people that turn up.
Female 3: Maybe the answer
isn’t different individuals at each session it’s a different cohost so a
different type of person ateach session. The session themselves, if you get a
young person to do it, you have five young people come over. Another time it’s people from a certain
section rather than the individuals all being different.
Male 2: I think there is something
really good in that, because I had that thought recently as well. You have to start with those people who are
similar; start with the young people or start with your older generation. Start with these, then you bring all of them
together to a different thing, but because they’ve come together with the group
that they’ve connected with they’re more inclined to go to the…
Female 1: Phased introduction.
Male 2: Yes phased introduction yes.
Female 3: Well the reason we’re
all here today is because we knew that we’re not really that different and
we’re going to get an interesting conversation. It’s going to be a fairly safe
environment; and it’s going to be great conversation.
Male 2: I was thinking about my dad who is in his 70s
now, who is conservative, probably … I suspect he’ll probably vote UKIP in the
next elections
Female 1: He tells us that we’re guardian reading republicans…
Male 2: Yes. Basically he reads the Daily Mail
etcetera etcetera. And I was imagining replacing any one of us in this random
table with him, how the conversation would go then? It would such a different
conversation, particularly if he was the only person… if
we took one person from this group and put him in he would feel isolated, quite
defenseless and attacked. Especially given a lot of things that we’ve said, he
may not necessarily disagree at core with a lot the things we’re saying about
opportunity and when we were talking about schools and community, and all that
kind of stuff. But maybe the way that we
say it and the ideas that we have and our preparedness to discuss it are
actually quite intimidating.
Female 1: Not everyone necessarily feels intellectually
equipped to have a conversation where it could be about anything.
Male 2: No.
Male 1: Exactly.
Male 2: My dad, he isn’t stupid but
he’s tried to do, he’s a bright man, he’s tried to do an Open University course
but he struggled because of not quite being able to engage with the ideas.
Female 1: First he tried to go
back to university in his 60’s and had to leave because all these bloody young’uns
who were idiots were surpassing him or just getting how it worked better.
Male 1: Yes.
Female 2: Oh, yes.
Female 1: And
he felt stupid, I think.
Male
1: Yes, I
think so, yes. See, that's, oh, I was thinking that myself, like what if that person
I met in Tottenham that I struck up a conversation with on the street, was
here? They'd never be here because they wouldn't have been on Twitter and they
wouldn't have found out about it, but what if they were, and how different that
would be? Compared to my mother, as well, if I brought her, she sits all day in
front of QVC and just buys stuff. Like, that's pretty much her life. And how I
think this is an interesting question of, as an enlightened group of people, (laughter) which is often the issue, like it
comes back to this kind of idea of imperialism, colonialism, of "the
educated" and "the uneducated," like how do we...
Female
1: Right to
have a voice?
Male
1: ...yes,
right, over how do we battle with that within ourselves as well as those individuals
battle with it as well 'cause, you know, your father having been intelligent,
reads the Daily Mail but for somebody like me, might regard him as being well
an absolute idiot because he believes, when we attach him to the Daily Mail, he
believes in all these things. But how do we manage that? To go well “verybody
should read The Guardian or everybody should read The Daily Mail, or everybody
should read Vice?”
Female
1: And that's the thing, because if you are,
because part of this comes out of a desire to somehow be activist.
Male
2: Yes!
Female
1: And like there's this thing, isn't there,
that if like liberals are the only people that can't militantly fight their own
cause because they have to accept that [laughter] everyone's allowed to believe
what they want.
Male
1: What they want, yes exactly. [laughter]
Exactly.
Female
1: It's like how the fuck do you do that? And...
Male
1: How do you change anything?
Female
1: And on the one hand, like, I don't believe
that everyone should read The Guardian, but I do believe that everyone should
think that you are, like all races are equal. That's not negotiable for me.
Male
1: Yes.
Female
2: I think with The Daily Mail though, there's
something in the age, because the people who all read it tend to be older…
Female
1: It’s the
most widely read newspaper
Female
2: … but my
mother-in-law for example reads The Daily Mail every day and she worked, her
whole career was at the BBC, you know, she is, on paper she's one of these Guardian
reading…
she's not educated, she started as an
actress, she then was at the BBC for a very long time. But she reads The Daily
Mail. It's...
Male
1: Yes. And what is the reality of dealing
with that, difference, with that radical difference? Like, what is genuinely
the reality of that? Like, in terms of let's just imagine this environment.
You've invited people. So what if you have somebody who's homeless coming in
here, what if you have somebody who's racist coming in here, like, that's what
we're asking for when we're saying...
Female
1: Yes. Because that's what I'm asking.
Female
2: Yes.
Male
1: Exactly, exactly. And how do we manage,
how do we manage that, I think. Because I'm really interested in that, I'm
massively interested in radically different groups of people. But to what end?
Am I hoping that if I meet all those radically different people I'm going to
go, "Oh, so hopefully by the end of this you'll realize it's bad to be
racist." I mean, do you know [laughter] what I mean? What are we looking
for?!
Female
1: I don't know if it's that naive, but I think
there's something about, like I, at the moment I feel, I went through this
period where I walked through different areas of London and I came across
different things of graffiti or stickers or things that essentially were about
social division. It was like "Yuppies Out," "Don't feed the
hipsters."
Male
1: Yes.
Female
1: And like it feels like [laughter] the
entire...
Male
1: [laughs] I like that, "don't feed the
hipsters."
Female
1: ...ironically it's right by The Yard Theatre
in Hackney and because it's all [laughs]...
Male
1: Oh that's
hilarious.
Female
1: And like I was, I sort of thought a kind of,
who is benefiting from dividing us, along such arbitrary lines as
"yuppies" and "hipsters?" who to some people, for example
my mother, they are the same thing!
Male
1: Yes, they're
the same thing. Exactly.
Female
1: And kind of like who is responsible for that
division, or creating the narrative of that division, and who benefits from it?
Male
1: Yes.
Female
1: And I think, [rattling of dishes interrupts
the recrding] you're rattling...
Male
3: Sorry.
Female
1: ...in an annoying way. It's alright [laughs].
Female
2: Be helpful quietly. [laughter]
Male
1: You're so demanding. [laughs]
Female
2: And I think that there's something, like, when
I was younger I used to think that there weren't overarching intelligent
forces, like it was just "shit happens," and actually I do think that
there are now, and I don't think there's a meeting everyday where the evil
Oligarchs get together and say, "let's divide the bastards."
Male
1: No.
Female
1: But I think there is a shared agenda of the
folks that have more power than I do, that means that they want me not to gang
up with the crack addicts down the road in Loughborough Junction..
Male
1: Yes.
Female
2: And so actually it was about...
Male
2: Well, what a group of people that would
be, by the way. [laughs]
Female
2: I know, right? [laughs] So yes, so I think it
was about trying to just do a little tiny thing that made people go, "Oh,
we're not so different."
Male
1: Yes. And that's the thing, that is, that
was the key for me when I was reading is just like, it's just a conversation,
and that's the beginning I think of everything. If you can get a group of
people sitting in a room just having a conversation, even if they disagree,
then that's the beginning of any sort of progression, or change.
Female
1: Mm, and just commit to disagree...
Male
1: Exactly, commit to that, exactly.
Female
1: ...for the duration of the meal.
Female
3: I think in terms of this, though, having a
group of people who are going to be quite similar, or feel that they're going
to have things in common to talk about, is quite key. Because if you feel that
you're here, and I refer to your father, you're basically being put in the position
of being that voice, you're having to advocate, you're having to argue
"your standpoint" by yourself, it's very isolating. And people, some
people aren't going to have the intellect to do that. But more to the point,
don't want to, some people could and don't want to. Who wants to have a rant?
Male
1: That's a really interesting thing you
invite the group that are similar, so you invite all the crack heads one day,
and then you invite all the other people, and you invite the hipsters one day,
and you invite this…And then eventually you say, "Let's all get in a
room." [laughs]
Female
2: And listen, look it, then look at the
differences within that group of similar people.
Male
1: Yes.
Male
2: One of the things I'm, no no after you.
Female
2: I was just going to say, this is going to
sound a little bit silly, but if you look at "Come Dine With Me," and
obviously they don't do it for the noble purpose that you're doing it for.
Female
1: Oh my god that’s it! This is lefty Come Dine
With Me. [laughter]
Female
2: They do it for good TV, but they clearly
deliberately recruit people who are not going to agree with each other, who
come from different backgrounds, because they want good TV. They don't want any
kind of meaning out of it, but they do manage to get a kind of different, I
mean I haven't watched it for a while, but, 'cause it's started to become a
caricature of itself, but yes, I wonder how they go about that process.
Male
1: Yes, that's fascinating.
Female
1: You can have difference without...
Female
2: Sorry to reduce your [laughter]...
Female
1: No no that's fine. Fuck.
Male
2: No that's hilarious, 'cause that didn't
even enter my head, but it's true.
Female
3: If you offered people the chance to be on TV
you might get...
Male
1: [laughs] A more diverse...
Female
1: If that was in my gift…
Male
2: We can film it. I have a camera. It's
actually quite difficult to get people to agree, if they don't want to agree
necessarily. In my day job I work in a trade union, we're in the middle of a
big negotiation at the moment and so you've got the employees on the one side
and the employers on the other side. You get them into a room and a lot of
things they have in common, and they start and they talk and they think,
"Oh yeah yeah yeah," but every time you see them sort of edging
towards agreement, suddenly a vested interest comes in and people really like
go back to their core position and then disagree and then turn it into a fight,
and then people walk out of the room, and all that kind of stuff. It's so difficult
to get people to agree even on things that you think people would agree on. They
always find, or something in the experience of my negotiation exercise at the
moment, you can agree 95 percent of it and you find this one little, one
percent that you disagree on and that stops the whole process.
Female
1: But that's an adversarial view of how to
bring two parties together. Like this kind of thing, because also one of the
conversations we had this morning was you're like "I'm not comfortable
with recording," I'm outing you now," [he laughs] "I'm not
comfortable with you recording it because what if I want to say that Hitler was
a great guy," [laughter] what if...
Male
2: [laughing] Yeah his portrait’s on the wall
right now…
Female
1: And, you know, I know that isn't your belief,
but what you're saying is "what if I want to be provocative, or what if I
want to say something I'm not really sure that, what if I want to play with
ideas" and that can be dangerous. And...
Male
2: It's because I don't feel safe, or
wouldn't have felt safe.
Male
1: Yes. Yes, absolutely.
Female
1: Yes. Right. So, 'cause that's the thing
because in a social situation, like for example I've been thrown out of parties
with kids I grew up with for telling people they were ignorant racists; it's
really rare and it's really frowned upon to disagree. Like you go to a dinner
party like this and you go, oh yeah what, yeah, and you find the common ground.
So I'm kind of interested in that mechanism. Like, if we're all trying to find
the common ground, what, and but if it's something, you know, how does that
affect how you then go out into the world? Or alternatively, if you're there
going, "Oh now I need to say this," and it's the thing that you can't
find the common ground about, and you have to...
Male
1: Yes. And it's often, and it is often the
thing that's, I find anyway personally, it's the thing that stops me going to
the thing thinking that, "Oh fuck, there's gonna be all these people here,
they're all from a different class, they all earn a different amount of money,
I'm gonna have to pretend I get what they're talking about?" And I find
that that idea of finding the common ground is what's going to keep me away from
something, because I have...
Female
2: The pressure to do it.
Male
1: ...a fear
of not being able to find it, of going, Oh, oh you know, I'd have the same fear
of going into an inner city school that had, you know, six cases of physical
violence in the last six months or something. I would have that "how do we
begin?" Where do we find that common ground? But that's, but that's where
it becomes really important, where you have to take that step...
Female
1: Where there’s difference, yes.
Male
2: ...yes,
where the difference is.
Female
2: I was at a work course last week, which was
actually about project management but it was about relationships and how
important they are to successful projects and that was all about how
relationships are fundamental to making projects work, and people with
different points-of-view and diverse needs and wants out of a project and being
able to form those relationships and have honest conversations and be able to
establish what peoples' wants and needs are, and somehow then find that common
ground. But it's sort of, one of the things they were saying was if you're sort
of reaching sort of like an impasse where things aren't going forward, people
aren't really disagreeing but maybe they're not fully coming to the table, in
order to get people to open up about what they really want, or what they're worried
about, or what they're concerned about is that you have to make yourself
vulnerable first. That people won't be willing to do that and have that honest
conversation unless you take that step and you make yourself vulnerable, say,
"I'm worried I'm not really handling this well, how can I do this
better?" but I want to make that step to be vulnerable. But anyway that
just sort of made me think of that when you were talking about, then people
trying to find common ground but not. And then not wanting to open themselves
up to what they're actually thinking.
Male
1: And that
makes me think about, we're talking about adults here, and does the education
system teach that one lesson? Like, just to try and connect them all up in one
way of like when you're kids, you're taught to be "the strong one"
and you've got to be the best and all of that business. But if they actually
said, "you know, oh on this exam you're going to collaborate as a group of
three, so the idea is you all help each other pass the exam," which is
what we expect in our workforce, yet we educate for "individuality"
but we don't educate for cooperation. Yet we suddenly end up in a society where
we have to cooperate, but we're not taught how to do it, in a kind of testable,
normal…
Female
1: So there's that sense where you do end up in
like, when you do end up in cooperative or collaborative situations, like, you
still want your boss to know that the good idea was fucking yours.
Male
2: Yes!
[laughs] Exactly! It was still me, that was, yes.
Female
1: "What I did was I said to the
team," like, ha! [laughs]
Male
1: Yes,
exactly! And I wonder if that vulnerability question, 'cause I think that's
really powerful, I think that's like really powerful thing that vulnerability,
if that was taught at nine, ten, 11, and repeated year after year after year,
if we'd come out to working together and actually projects would be so much
smoother, society might be smoother, I don't know. [laughs]
Female
3: Well, cutting into what you say there, see,
again I can only go by what I see with my children, but my daughter who's nine,
they do work in groups, and she was saying about how her group at first they
all didn't get on, and they saw themselves as "the group that didn't get
on," and that's what they called themselves, 'cause they're all very
different. And it was joking, it was a joke, but they have to work, they're
working together on a project, and they have to come up with, they have to
devise a product that will help old people. And that's their project, and they're
working together as a team. And at first they had these differences and now
they're working through it. And she does, they do a lot of stuff where they're
working in groups and they all sit, and they're all in tables, and they all
have to work together. And so I think to contradict what you're saying about, I
think at primary school level they do do that.
Male
1: Yes.
Female
3: But I know what you're saying is it when we
actually do exams, 'cause we get to secondary school it's so different.
Female
1: But once you get to senior school it's so
different.
Male
1: So
different.
Female
3: And I think that's the interesting difference
in education because I think a lot of those things we're saying, are there in
primary school, but then for the education that is seen as "counting"
it's not there.
Male
1: And that's
because the National Curriculum is freer at primary level, as like it's very
difficult for teachers to find any sort of freedom in secondary level.
Female
1: Yes. And also kind of to teach at primary,
'cause all of my family are primary school teachers? Yes. And all the ones that
are teachers, the, to teach at primary school level you kind of have to be
really interested in teaching primary school children.
Male
1: Yes.
Female
1: Whereas to teach at secondary school level
you have to be interested in your subject.
Male
1: Yes,
exactly, that's true.
Female
1: So the whole function and how, and what that
does, and the role that plays...
Male
1: One of
them's about Child Development and one of them's about The Subject.
Female
1: The information.
Female
3: Yes, and information and achievement, and
knowledge, knowing that.
Male
1: Yes.
Female
1: Yes, and no one ever teaches kind of like I
don't remember ever being taught that it's okay to be wrong.
Male
1: No, exactly.
Female
1: And like I was thinking about...
Male
1: Which connects to that vulnerability.
Female
1: Yes, yes.
Male
1: Yes.
Female
1: Yes, because actually, like it's in people
being wrong where all the exciting shit happens. [laughter]
Male
1: Yes.
Female
2: Yes. There's no shame in that.
Female
3: Yes.
Male
1: I had
this, a friend of mine wrote a blog post for the organization that I work with,
which is called Celebrating Failure, because he went to see this project and it
was this young kid, 16, presenting this project, and all the people just,
'cause it wasn't very good obviously, just walked away kind of ashamed, heads
down, didn't talk to him, and how do we navigate that? When we fail, how do we
navigate the fact of being able to deal with failure, and go, "It's okay
that you’re wrong, mate, you look like an absolute dick but, you know, it's
alright because next week you might look great," 'cause that takes a lot
of bravery within ourselves...
Female
2: And at least you did something, or gave something
a shot, put yourself out there, yes.
Female
3: Yes, exactly, there isn't that sort of value
of "look, you did something, you did something. It might not have worked
out, but you put yourself out there and you did something."
Female
1: And also it's, that's how you learn, and
actually it goes, who was it, I'm gonna name a scientist that's gonna be wrong
now, but it was like the dude Pasteur, the dude left his conical flasks with broth
out and they went moldy and discovered sterilization. Like...
Male
2: Yes.
Female
3: There's quite a few things like that.
Female
1: Yes. Like he came back on Monday morning, was
like, "Oh fuck I'm such a failure, I didn't even wash my flasks." And
what that gave was the, like one of the greatest medical discoveries ever.
Male
1: Yes.
Female
1: So the
idea that failure and getting stuff wrong is "wrong," or "is not
valuable," is just insane.
Male
1: Yes, I
agree.
Female
3: But it's also how you learn to be what type
of person that you want to be, you do something that you feel has gone wrong,
and you think, "I don't want to be that type of person."
Female
1: Yes.
Male
2: Hm.
Female
3: "I want to be this type of person."
And you learn something. But I think that is one of the things that's missing
in at least secondary education, is the sense of pride and, you know, that I
have to be right, that you have to be right, and that there's kudos in being right
and shame if you're wrong.
Male
2: Yes. I'm
very conscious of being wrong in whatever the situation is, whether it's a social
situation, but even this I’m conscious of saying the wrong thing or (gasp)
"oh my god I can't," and then at work I'm conscious of saying the
wrong thing. So I'm sometimes quiet myself, sensor myself, so that I don't say
the things that I really mean and then I always regret it afterwards and, sorry
that was all I had to say.
Female
1: I'm trying to be much more shouty crackers,
like now I'm trying to be true to myself even if it's wrong. And it's, and how
people respond to that is quite interesting actually.
Female
3: When you say "even if it's wrong,"
you mean even if it's like socially wrong, or wrong for yourself, you mean...?
Female
1: Well, even if it's socially wrong, or even if
it's ultimately the wrong answer to a problem, because I have to look at, I
have to be allowed to look at it properly to find out it's the wrong answer.
Female
3: Yes, absolutely.
Female
1: Yes. Like, I have to be able to argue that we
should absolutely eat blamange for breakfast every day, before I realize that
that means I have a massive sugar crash at 10:30 and I'm useless for the rest
of the, you know, whatever, you know?
Male
1: It's like
experimentation, isn't it?
Female
1: And it's interesting because in all of the
things that we value that could, educationally like Science and Mathematics,
Engineering, it's experimentation that leads to knowledge.
Male
1: Yes.
Female
1: Even like Philosophy, you know?
Male
2: Yes,
that's exactly true.
Female
1: It is experimentation that leads to
knowledge. So I don't understand why we're not...
Male
1: But the
interesting thing, the underlying principle of Science is uncertainty, of
going, of not, but that's not what's taught at TUSC...
Female
1: You're taught the shit you have to learn.
Male
1: ...you're
taught the shit that you know, and the definites of it, it's, like the...
Female
2: And wrong or right answer.
Male
1: ...exactly,
the philosophical elements of science of essentially we're dealing with
uncertainty because scientists saying "this is probable," but it's
never saying "we know."
Female
1: They don't know.
Male
1: Exactly.
It, like that's the fundamental of...
Female
2: And that's the thing, the universe changes.
Male
1: But what we're taught is like,
"science is definite, you can rely on science," it's like that's not
the principles that they...
Female
2: It's logic, it's rational.
Male
1: Exactly,
[laughs] it's not the principles that they went into it with.
Female
1: I got thrown out of math class once for
arguing the philosophical value of root 2. 'Cause root 2 is an irrational, the
square root of 2 is an irrational number, which means it's non-terminating, non-repeating?
Male
1: Yes.
Female
1: I was like, "Okay fine but like [sighs],
I want to build the hypotenuse, I want to build a wall that's just the
hypotenuse and I live in the future and it's possible to build it to infinite
accuracy." "Where do we put the fucking stone?" [laughter] And,
yes no they didn't want to have that conversation. [laughs]
Male
1: No.
Male
1: It's an
interesting one, though, isn't it, if we end up with spaces with more radically
different people there might not be very productive in the direct result of
that meeting, but it might, it might be the thing that's productive five years
later.
Female
1: Mm, yes.
Female
3: Yes.
Male
1: And that's
the difficulty with, I think, with all these things. The measures are applied
so soon after the experience. When I think about experiences I've had five
years ago, like "Ahh yeah, that argument with that person," I've
really learned something from that now, you know.
Female
1: Yes.
Female
3: "Oh now I get it!"
Female
1: "Shit!"
Male
1: Oh now I
get it, yes, I was wrong, oh what an idiot, or "Yes I was right,"
whatever, but the measures that we live in now are like, well, it's all driven
when you think about it, is from the fact that things change nearly every four
years, because we've different government. So how can you do anything
consistent and measure anything consistently? If you look at Gove’s changes,
and then his second changes, and now his kind of 2.5 changes, there's no time
to measure out any of those results [laughs] whether they've been better or
worse?! And I wonder if that's what we're trying to do, we're trying to make
information too tangible too quickly.
Female
2: Yes, we measure, everything has to be
quantifiable.
Male
1: Yes.
Female
2: And actually the only things that are
quantifiable are the things that are entirely useless. [laughter]
Male
1: Yes, yes.
Female
2: I think there's something in what you're
saying about "learning from something that you did like five years
ago." 'Cause I kind of feel like I'm at a stage where I'm bringing lots of
different stages of my life kind of together, and I think it's, you know, not
looking, not measuring in like five years of where I've gone, but it's, as a
constant changing moving entity that you're learning from things, the lessons
that you learn from things you couldn't have had the lesson 20 years ago.
[laughs] And then suddenly it sort of applies. Yes.
Female
1: But you can have the, yes, I think you can
have the lesson 20 years ago, and you don't understand it.
Female
2: No you don't.
Female
1: Like it's, yes, like there's so many things
now like "Oh I, yes, you were all the, oh fucking mother, you were right,
dammit," and I've just spent 20 years titting around. [laughter]
Female
3: Exactly, exactly, and if you were to measure
something within, you would completely miss all that.
Male
1: Yes,
exactly.
Female
3: Like it takes a really long time [laughs]
sometimes to learn things, or to change it for the context to be right again in
that you make the connection and go, "Oh yeah."
Male
1: The, yes, you've hit on something for me,
actually, just time in general, actually, that's what I think is part of so
many of these things, of meaning, of education, is "it's time." It's
because we're trying to fit so much in to such a short amount of time, and our
lives are so full of new information, new information, new information, that it
doesn't leave any time to make any meaning out of it. 'Cause you never really
have a chance to kind of process it, or click with it.
Female
1: Like the old ways things used to work, like,
in the 1600's say, 'cause that's such a model of social values, but like, you
know, you were a kid and you were an apprentice to something that could make
you a living, and you, well unless you're a girl but let's presume it's, aside
from feminism, but like you know you kind of went with someone who could teach
you shit and you did your best at that, and you tried to become the best you
could and over a lifetime you got better and better and better and better and
better at it just because that was all you, that was all that was available to
you in a way, you weren't expected to be a philosopher and a mathematician, and
I think you're expected to make these stools perfectly, for example, like do
you think there's something in not allowing people to become expert enough, like
expecting everyone to be...
Female
2: Yes.
Female
1: Because on the one hand I feel like everyone
should have basic, you know, Maths, Philosophy, Art, English, blah blah blah,
but there's also something in like, I feel like we don't value Intense Skill,
and I think that kind of gives you meaning, and it gives you social value and
it gives you a purpose, in a way, because your perpetually pursuing the
betterment of yourself, you’re in a race with yourself.
Male
1: Yes, this
is an interesting thing because that, like, just that period of time you've got
those specific craftspeople but that's also the birth of the renaissance, where
those people are doing Maths, Philosophy, Science, dah dah, but they're also
really expertise in one specific area. And it seems like it's about the
relationship between "being an expert, in your specific field," and
how that applies...
Female
1: In being a polymath
Male
2: ... to the
broader, to the broader society, to the broader areas of idea, really.
Female
1: Yes, yes so you get people like Caravaggio
painting these beautiful paintings with massive like religious and political
philosophical messages or whatever in them.
Male
2: Yes.
Female
1: Or, you
know, people carving their tables with their political agenda.
Male
2: Yes,
exactly, so that there's this, there's a conversation always between all the
things. They won't, even though you were a specific expert in something, it was
always in relation to a conversation to everything else that was happening.
Whereas the economic value of what we do now is "become an expert in something,
so that you can earn money," and that also means that you can ignore everything
else." And I think that's the difference.
Female
1: Hm, and it means you can ignore "being
the best at that thing," because "best" and "most
profitable" are different.
Male
2: Yes, yes.
It's not "finding the end of the thing itself."
Female
3: Coming back to your first question in
meaning, something that I've been thinking recently is finding, is where I'm
getting my meaning, is in the process of doing something, not the results.
Male
1 : Yes.
Female
3: You know, and I'm writing plays, I've had a
few short plays, it takes, you know, a long time to get plays where I really
love but and it's about enjoying the process of writing every day, and
achieving it, for myself, not saying, "Oh I'm only going to enjoy it when
that play's on at The Royal Court," or wherever 'cause, you know, that
won't, but it's about the process, not the results.
Male
1: It's about
the thing being an end in itself.
Female
2: Exactly.
Female
1: Mm.
Male
1: It's about going and writing it.
Female
3: It's about doing that for the sake of doing
it rather than what you're going to achieve, and enjoying the process of doing
that.
Female
1: Yes.
Male
1: That is difficult, though, in a world that
says, "You're only valuable if you own this amount of money."
Female
1: And if it's all about product and endgame,
yes.
Male
2: Or if it's
recognized, exactly. If you get, if you get 50,000 followers on Twitter that's
more valuable than the person who gets five, you know? [laughs]
Female
2: Well that, I think that can also link back to
the expertise thing and a lack of value around people who have genuine
expertise, if you look at the way that people are selected to talk on, you
know, panel shows about current affairs, it's that we don't select experience,
we select someone like Russell Brand who's gonna talk about something, and we
would rather hear what he says about the topic than someone who actually
genuinely knows it and can give real insight, because, of what they're saying,
yes.
Male
1: But you know what I'm hopeful of...?
Female
1: That's because those people are experts in
"being on panel shows."
Female
3: …In being a personality.
Male
2: Yes.
Male
2: And it's paying, so...
Male
1: And you know what I think the, I would be
hopeful of is that Russell Brand would be really open to that criticism and
then he'd partner up with an expert and then both of them would go somewhere
and they'd have a really interesting dialogue between themselves and then the
people? Because he's in a position where he could give power to those genuine
experts...
Female
2: Yes, that's true.
Male
2: ...which could be quite an interesting
collaboration of going "Right, Russell, you've had your big blur around
all these ideas, here's somebody who's going to help you put some of those in
practice, and also tell you where you're wrong and being a bit of an
idiot." And that would [laughs] be an interesting thing to go and...
Female
1: But, 'cause at least like Russell Brand bless
him, like at least he's existing in a world where it's okay to know about this
stuff.
Male
1: Yes, exactly.
Female
1: And be Russell Brand.
Male
2: Yes, exactly. That's what I found
fascinating, and I had to write a piece about it and I was just like, it's a
more interesting use of celebrity, that was my conclusion, that if you're going
to have celebrity as a concept, that's a far more interesting use of it,
getting people debating whether voting is worth it or not, you know? Because
everybody came out with an opinion about that, on that [laughs], everybody came
out with an opinion, and they're talking about it, in pubs, on the street, and
in university lecture halls, and in community. You know? It's like it was a
public debate and a private debate, families were talking about it at home.
Female
1: Whereas actually we've known that only 23
percent of people vote for what? How many sets of general elections there are?
Male
1: [laughs]
Exactly, exactly.
Female
3: For me though it's about that, it's coming
back to this thing of time and not valuing time.
Male
1: Yes.
Female
3: And not valuing how long it takes to mature,
and tying [laughs] all these ideas together, the fact that, you know, when
you're younger or whatever, you will make mistakes, you will, it's okay to, you
might believe things that you then change your mind on later, you might change
your politics, you might change your ethos, that things can constantly shift
and change and that expertise actually takes a really long time, and coming
back to your guy again, you know, who wrote the blog for, these things take a
lot of time, and it's not something that today's society really likes.
Male
1: Right.
Female
1: See, 'cause this is really interesting,
'cause one of the things that's stressing me out at the moment is I absolutely
agree with you, it takes a, what is it 10,000 hours to be an expert or
whatever?
Female
1: Yes, at least.
Female
1: Yes, and but right, before, like I don’t know
in the '60s, like [male laughs] don't laugh at me, people valued relative ages
in a different way. Now we value like experience in states, in middle, I reckon
we value middle-age and we value statesmanship, like, age age, and we don't
value youth, and then, 'cause I was kind of thinking about like Peter Hall ran
The Arts theatre in the West End at 23, fucking 23. No one would give a
23-year-old that now. You've got to be at least, what, 35?
Male
1: Yes, absolutely.
Female
1: And so all of that kind of youthful arrogance
and optimism, that allows you to go "Fuck it! We don't know if this is
going to work, we're going to try it."
Male
1: Yes.
Female
3: Yes.
Female
2: That we miss out on. And then we also miss
out on the stuff that's kind of post-60, which is like "I’ve been doing
this for 40, 50, 60 years, I know." And we exist in this little period
that's like, that's conservative and ill-informed at the same time.
Male
2: Yes.
Male
2: Well, Iis
it that we’refull of the arrogance, we've got some of the arrogance we use and
some of the wisdom of experience.
Female
1: Well, see you're more optimistic than me,
though.
Female
2: That's a lovely way to put it.
Male
1: Yes, why
thank you. [laughs]
Male
1: It's the over-55's
that are mainly creating self-, are mainly going self-employed and developing
self-employed businesses, they're the biggest growth area are the over-55's.
Female
1: Is that because people keep firing them?
Male
1: Who knows?
Is that because they're firing them? Is it because they're sick and tired of
the workforce and they're going, "I have got experience, I am valuable, I
could start a business." You know? It's an interesting, but that's the
biggest growth area, is there. And I think that's quite an interesting thing,
of like...
Female
1: Mm, because I guess also you've got the
economic stability theoretically at that point, to be able to do it.
Male
1: Yes, to be
able to do that. But I think that thing about time that you were saying is
like...
Female
3: Valuing time?
Male
1: ...I
think, I like looking at things in a big macro kind of way, like "oh time,
the concept, oh," but then also like every day practicalities of it. And
if you think about the world that we live in it's telling us all the time, to
not invest in time, "buy your ready meal," buy that, buy a sandwich
from the shop, get this, get this. It's not inviting you to invest in an idea
of "buy the ingredients, cook that meal, you'll learn..."
Female
3: The process of cooking.
Female
1: Yes. [laughs]
Male
1: and through
the process of cooking you'll learn about yourself, you'll learn about cooking,
you'll learn about how that tastes to somebody, it's so…
Female
2: You’ll be in the moment.
Male
1: ...exactly,
exactly, that thing about being in the moment is so crucial in that because...
Female
1: Like making every day things mediatory.
Male
1: Exactly.
Because you're physically involved, you're viscerally involved because
emotionally you can't help but have a reaction to the fact that you just fucked
up that thing, or you've not put that in on time. And then you've got that
experience of "Oh, I tried something and it worked," but like does
society allow us to invest in that? Because you've got the whole world selling
us something, and you've got the fact that we, to be able to achieve our jobs,
like you have to work double your job unless you're in a very straightforward,
"I go and I click this button, and I go home." Like most of us carry
work around with us in some way, surely.
Female
1: Yes, and also I think but also because of the
climate, even if you're in a button-pressing job, it's the sense of "you
have to be the quickest and the best at pushing the button." [male
laughs]...
Male
1: Yes, yes.
Female
1: Because there's someone else that will take
the button job.
Female
3: And people like Amazon will check the
targets.
Female
1: Yes.
Female
2: Yes, but time isn't valued on a macro level
either, so you don't, you know, if you're talking about government, or…
Female
1: Michael Gove doesn't say “I'm gonna wait”.
Male
2: Exactly.
Female
2: ...that you're talking about four-year
periods and we're not investing in things which might see return for the next
generation, we want returns now, so, you know, whoever built the York
Cathedral, that must've taken generations to build, but they knew it would be a
thing of beauty for future generations.
Female
3: Yes, they weren't doing it for themselves,
'cause they knew we were going to...
Male
1: Yes.
Female
2: And we don't do that anymore, on a macro
level either, so it's not just the individual that's developing things.
Female
3: And there's a selflessness in that, and there
was also a real...
Female
1: We’ve no investment in the really long-term
at all,
Female
3: ...and there also I guess a real sense of
this "doing it for the process," you're doing it to build something
really beautiful, I'm not going to get the return of seeing it, but I know I've
done my job well for a period.
Male
2: And now
I've done my job.
Female
1: Do you think this is also to do with us being
a secular society? Because there's no sense of storing up the treasure in
Heaven?
Male
2: Yes,
Female
1: Because if you buy, like the whole point of
like, I don't know about every religion in detail, but the whole point of a lot
of religions, the majority, is that it's about deferred reward.
Male
1: Yes.
Female
1: So if that's what your society's constructed
on, and that's how you get through the day, this is going to be shit but it's
okay because, then that means that you can spend your entire life chiseling one
pillar of the York Cathedral, and not feel like you've...
Male
1: You've
wasted your [laughs] life.
Female
1: ...that you've been pissing [laughs] away
your life.
Female
2: But on the other hand, most people still do
have children, and surely most people want their children to inherit something,
not physically, but be part of a society that is going to function and be all
right.
Female
3: And value.
Female
2: And we don't seem to harness that, or
Government doesn't harness it, and a society doesn't sort of harness that
desire to pass something of worth onto your children, we want it now.
Female
1: It's because we're all living kind of, like
not literally, like I think most people have "just enough," but like
philosophically and kind of self-realizationally, I don't know what that word
is, but like we, it's just enough, "I get this and I give it to myself in
order to survive," and there is no resource because I work, you know, I
have to leave the house at 6:00 AM to get to my job that's in another city, for
half past eight, or nine, and then I work all day and I skip lunch because I
have to be the best person in my job to hold onto my job, so I skip lunch, and
I work through it, or I eat a sandwich at my desk, and then I get on the train
at half past six, and I come back and I'm home at 8:00 o'clock and I read a
story to my kid, who should have been in bed a half an hour ago, and I put them
in bed. And then I have to do the, I have to answer my e-mails on my
Blackberry, and then God forbid I might have to have sex with my partner, or
like talk to them, and then it's like, and then I have to get back into bed
just to be able to function for the next day. So there isn't any headspace in
that to allow me to think "how else could this be?"
Female
2: Which is I guess why it's important that
leaders have some kind of vision and strength to be thinking those big
questions and tackling it on some level so you people don't have to do it on an
individual level.
Male
1: Exactly
that, they are largely, whoever's in any sort of leadership position is largely
doing exactly the same as the people who aren't, and having to change things...
Female
1: Just scrabbling day-to-day.
Male
2: Yes. I
mean from my experience I manage a team of six people, and I am, my job is to
do exactly that, is to essentially lead them to the overall picture, to understand,
think ahead and I find over the last six months or so I've been doing exactly
what you've been describing in the work context, of just tcht tcht tcht tcht
tcht....
Female
1: So you're
totally reactive.
Male
2: ...and
I've gone totally reactive, I don't step back, I don't think, and as a
consequence over the last six months, I've not actually been doing a very good
job of what I've been paid to do. Not only am I suffering but the team who work
with me, they're not doing their, the overall strategic support of any, so
actually because I'm being overworked and reacting all the time, the overall
process is suffering as well.
Male
1: Yes. And
that, that sort of thing is exactly what spills over into any spare time that
people might have as well because then it becomes really difficult just to,
just to sit there and contemplate think process anything that you've experienced
for the last week.
Female
1: Mm, so...
Male
1: But on the
other hand of that, it does also make me go, "wow, middle-class issues,"
it does make me go like that, all these people who have to fucking work and
scrabble around, ooh isn't that terrible, you've got people who've got no work,
and that's, that's a society that we live in right now. Where I was living in Tottenham, like just huge unemployment but also lots of people
seemingly having a really good time, taking their time walking down the street,
buying the plantain, and the, like completely different cultural response to
time as well. You know...
Female
1: So tell me something then, why isn't there,
like if that’s a middle-class problem, that lack of wherewithall to have a
political voice, or agenda, like why isn't there a massive upsurge in political
dominance or relative political voice from the people that do have the time?
Like if it's just about work, there's...
Male
1: Mm, no
that's true, like if, it's not just about that, that's the thing, though.
Female
1: 'Cause it seems like the system, essentially,
like the capitalist consumerist system, effectively what it does is the people
that have the education and self-, and power, self-belief to have a voice, are
kept so fucking busy that they can't say anything, and then everyone else,
they, is grown in such a way they're not, they don't have the power of a voice.
Male
1: Yes, they
don't feel like they have a voice, yes. Absolutely. [laughs] There you go. Well
we've just identified that issue. And that's a good note to end on, let's all
end on that depressing note. [laughs]
Female
2: I was just
sitting here thinking on how interested I'm going to be to read your blog, and
I don't mean just about today, I mean going forward because you've had one
lunch, how long are you planning to...?
Female
1: I don't , I
have no fucking clue...
Female
2: Yes, I'm
really fascinated, you know? I think you've set yourself a really interesting
project, or, you know...
Female
3: I think it's a great project.
Male
1: Yes.
Female
1: I hope, like I hope I get, I hope there's
like a really wide spectrum, like across a year, it will be great to just get,
I'd love to have someone who comes and fucking disagrees with me.
Male
1: Yes, yes
of course.
Male
2: I can
invite my dad.
Female
2: The problem you're going to have is you have
a power difference in that this is your house.
Female
1: Yes.
Female
3: So if someone comes in and wanted to disagree
with you, they, one they could do it if they're respectful, I mean they'll, yes
they're people that will be able to do it I guess, but there's a lot of people
who wouldn't want to.
Female
1: And there are going to be some that I think
aren't at my house, because I think, I'm going to try and do some outside of
London, so whoever the host is there, I'm not going to be the person with the
power, I'm just going to be the person which brings the pizza, you know.
Female
2: Yes. And it
might come into selecting questions as well, like these have been pretty
top-level broad questions, where if you have some kind of philosophical harmony
with the people around the table, you're going to reach some kind of consensus,
but if there are questions that are more about "the how," "how
do we go about," you know, "how should this happen," or the
detail of it, then you might start to see some...
Female
1: Yes.
"Should we close Britain's borders?" Yes.
Female
3: Yes. Yes,
very specific questions.
Male
1: Yes, but
it could be, even like on a small scale, somebody could turn up going, you
know, "How do I start a shoe shining business," or "how do I
start a dog grooming business?" You know? And that might be quite
interesting to have that sort of level of question, with people and who might
not know anything about dog grooming [laughs] at all, you know? Would that be
an interesting question for your table?
Female
1: 'Cause
that'd be interesting, 'cause you kind of, you kind of learn so much about how
people view the world from their answer, from what they thought about that.
Male
1: Yes,
[laughs] exactly, so they're, "well why would you want to do that?"
might be somebody's reply. [laughs]
Female
1: You've got
to get a dog, you've got to go to the park, with your dog...
Male
1: "And
just start shaping their hair there, in public." [laughs] [non-related
dialogue]
Female
1: It’s four
o’clock. Thank you so much. I was worried we might run out of things to say but
it turns out not!
