Transcripts: Sunday Lunch Project 18/05/14 Question 2

How can we engage young people to make good choices when contemporary culture promote celebrity and warped sense and beauty? 

Speaker 1: In terms of what we were just talking about, you learned to ask that question.

Speaker 2: Yeah.

Speaker 1: And not be scared of yeah, difference.

Speaker 3: And not to be told “Don’t do drugs” but actually to see why not to do drugs.

Speaker 4: You really are a very good cook, Rebecca.

Speaker 1: Thank you. My dad’s family are all chefs and my parents are quite, on the scale of things, they’re old, like in their 40’s when I was born. And my mum used to do this thing where she’d say, “Come on, let me teach you to cook because we’re going to die and you need to fend for yourself.”

Speaker 2: It’s like a lioness teaching her cub.

Speaker 1: Yeah.

Speaker 4: Yeah, I was going to ask you that that isn’t something that is genetically passed on.

Speaker 1: Yeah,I remember it quite vividly, very, very clear.

Speaker 2: Yeah. And you know, they’re still going strong.

Speaker 1: Oh, yeah, touch wood.

Speaker 2: Yeah, my head my head my head.

Speaker 1: Yeah. They’re still going strong. But actually, yeah, I’ve become a bit of an obsessive cook, so…

Speaker 5: Cheers!

Speaker 6: How many of these have you done now then?

Speaker 1: This is the second one.

Speaker 6: Oh, wow, really?

Speaker 1: Yeah. The next one is in Leeds because it’s going to start going on tour.

Speaker 6: Oh, exciting! How are you going to do that?

Speaker 1: Well, I’m working with arts organizations and public access organizations and if they’ve got a kitchen and a table—

Speaker 6: That’s what you’re going to need.

Speaker 1: That’ll do. And although the next one is really…because there’s an Aga which apparently is temperamental. I’ve never cooked on an Aga. And I have no, idea what I’m going to cook, but we shall see. They were like “We’ve got a tea urn” and I’m like, “That’s wonderful. But what… A Pot noodle? What can I cook with a tea urn?” So yeah, it is a challenge. It’s fun. Okay, shall we choose the next question.

Speaker 6: How can we engage young people to make good choices when contemporary culture promote celebrity and warped sense and beauty? So this is my question. Possibly kind of a few questions in one, I guess. But I think there’s something really interesting about…when I was growing up, you wouldn’t really see celebrities everywhere. You’d probably get your Top of the Pops magazine once a week and that was where you would read about New Kids on the Block—

Speaker 1: Smash Hits, yeah.

Speaker 6: Smash Hits, exactly, and what they were up to. And it seems like kind of influenced, I don’t think, particularly for a girl in terms of how you look by a lot of this stuff. And I think there’s so many trends at the moment in terms of these thigh-gap selfies where people are taking pictures of how big the gap is between their thighs. And young girls aren’t eating properly, as they try and emulate that. And I just don’t know, I don’t know what the question really is. It’s kind of like is there any positivity that comes out of that? How can it be used in a better way? How can we teach young people that that’s not necessarily the kind of—

Speaker 4: Where the value lies.

Speaker 6: Exactly. And I think that’s some of the biggest things and I think particularly with the generation coming through now where jobs are scarce and it feels a bit harder, I guess, to have self-worth in other areas. People are doing all sorts of things to stop having to stack shelves at Tescos and calling the X-factor seems to be the way out. And I just think it’s such a different thing to when I was young and growing up. It’s something that we probably need to be much more aware of and mindful of and we’re kind of thinking about young people and the stuff they’re going through. So it’s not much of a question, I guess, but it’s a topic.

Speaker 1: It kind of is, though, isn’t it? Because how can it be because—

Speaker 2: Can we turn back?

Speaker 1: Yeah. I mean, that input, it’s so massive, just the millions of images that you see every day.

Speaker 6: We have access to it.

Speaker 1: Yeah.

Speaker 5: But it’s an interesting statement. There’s really just sometimes things seem inevitable. It’s inevitable that eventually everything will be marketised, it’s inevitable that eventually all photographs will be porn. But I don’t think it is that way. You know what I mean? And sometimes it can feel like its an unstoppable tide but it’s not because even a year ago, people didn’t know about, you know, Everyday Sexism wasn’t a thing and people follow on twitter. Then No More Page Three was Clare Short and a couple of angry people and now it’s a much more main stream thing.

Speaker 4: It’s a cultural shift, isn’t it?

Speaker 5: And I think probably—oh Rebecca, you’ll know that Briony Kimmings show, Credible, Likeable, Superstar Role Model. I think it’s a brilliant project that kind of—do you know about that? So that directly addresses, I guess, the issue. So Briony is this performance artist and Briony and her niece Taylor, who’s nine. Briony went to her niece Taylor and said, “I want you to create a role model that you will look up to,” because Taylor was just confused because she’s nine, she’s watching pop stars and the level of sexuality was just really bewildering when you’re nine because you don’t understand why the girls that you are watching on the telly kind of take their clothes off and twerking and stuff—

Speaker 1: While men in suits stand and watch them.

Speaker 5: Yeah. And Blurred Lines is a perfect example of that, which was a mainstream thing that nine year olds would sing. And Taylor was finding it bewildering. So Briony said to Taylor, “Right. We’re going to make a woman who is a role model for you.” And they invented a character called Catherine Bennett and Catherine is a paleontologist pop star who liked pizza and bicycles and wears big glasses and has curly hair. So there’s two shows, one of which is the show about the project, which is called Credible, Likeable, Superstar, Role Model and thats about the project and it’s about Briony’s investigation of culture and that sexualisation and commercialization of everything, the pornification of everything, I guess, and then the other is the Catherine Bennett show where Briony performs as Catherine Bennett and tours schools and theatres, and now stadiums and is on the Top of the Pops. Well, not Top of the Pops because that doesn’t exist anymore. But she’d been on Going Live or whatever the equivalent is now…

Speaker 2: You’re a man of your generation.

Speaker 5: [Inaudible][06:52]

Speaker 2: Yeah, she got into interviewed by Ed the Duck, in the Broom cupboard! Yeah, I know exactly what you’re talking about, yeah.

Speaker 5: Wherever you go, if you’re a pop star now, she’s done. But I think that it feels like that was a really positive, genuine, someone saying ‘Let’s do something about this’ and Catherine Bennett is now a kind of a genuine star in her own right to that generation. Now what’s interesting, I think, Briony’s very aware that she’s fighting celebrity by creating a celebrity and it’s a weird kind of ironic feedback loop that you create after that. But I think what’s exciting is it is saying this is not inevitable. It isn’t tied to this. You can stop or at least stand up against.

Speaker 1: And I mean actually, because all of those come from the commodfication of those people and it’s mostly women, but it is men as well. And as consumers, I guess we do have the power if enough of us say no, to stop that being how things are marketed, just like they don’t market vacuum cleaners now to men saying your wife will be so pleased with you if you take this home because all women are like ‘fuck off!’.

And so yeah, I think there is such potential to make it better, but I think for me, one of the key issues is that…I mean, we’re all based in or within shooting distance of London. We’re all of similar age. I think we probably all exist in certain social-political boundaries, right? And I can look at, for example, I look at my sisters who are really clever, bright people in their own fields, who don’t live in London, who aren’t academic, who aren’t artistic, who aren’t necessarily particularly culturally engaged beyond on what’s on ITV on a Saturday night, and this isn’t in their cultural dialogue. So they’re not equipped to tell their kids that.

Speaker 6: And I think this is the problem, that no one going to get rid of the, well, apart from the commissioners, no one’s going to get rid of the X-factor because even if that happens, they’ll come up with the next thing again where it’s, you know, celebrities naked jumping from planes or whatever they come up with next.

Speaker 5: That’s genius pitch. Celebrity Naked Air Jump, you know, 7 PM after they jump.

Speaker 6: The example which is given, I was just thinking of her best example, you know, as you were speaking, Miley Cyrus. You know, even today, there are young children who are being shown Hannah Montana and they think that she’s the most wonderful thing and stuff that she says, stuff that her father says is stuff that young children are growing up with and thinking that is the way to approach life. And then you see her today and she is literally rebelling against her own, against the persona she’s built for herself. Like this is something I just hate and I want to break out of it and you just wonder how confusing is that?

Speaker 1: But it’s because at that age she was commodified as this uber vanilla, wholesome American girl. Her dad’s Billy Ray Cyrus, she’s never been the all American kid.

Speaker 2: But is it because she was actually something you could never be. As an ordinary person, you could never be like that perfect and also as an ordinary person, you could never be what Miley Cyrus is today.

Speaker 4: That’s true. She’s gone from one extreme to the other. She was playing a role. It wasn’t like it was her name. Hannah Montana was Disney who then she got the job and she did it. It was a job. See it as a job not the whole person.

Speaker 1: It’s like getting pissed off at Jennifer Aniston for not being a ditz, right?

Speaker 4: Yeah, exactly. But it’s like that thing of individuality, it’s just hyper now, it’s just really harmful. Everything’s about how many likes you had, how many followers have you got. So whatever, even if you say “I want to be a female scientist,” you think brilliant, but probably then your next thing as a young person is to be the most famous female scientist. And that’s where I get my value. Not from the skill involved and not from being part of the team or being part of society—

Speaker 1: Because that’s the problem, isn’t it? It’s nothing to do with skill or quality or excellence …

Speaker 4: But then that skill is going on the competitive side. Do you need to be excellent or do you need to see a need and say I could be useful in that and actually you don’t need your name on it. You just need to know you’re actually…on your deathbed, you think yeah, I’ve actually done something positive.

Speaker 5: I think that’s the problem. I think we’ve created this culture where unless your name is out there and that people like you on Facebook, unless you’ve got 17,000 followers, you’re not worth anything. It’s that worth.

Speaker 2: I don’t know how I came across this, but for some reason I wound up watching a high school graduation speech by a guy named David McCullough Jr. who was just at some school, some random school at some random town—

Speaker 5: Is this on YouTube?

Speaker 2: It was on YouTube, yes. Have you seen this?

Speaker 5: No. When you can just watch YouTube for hours on end—

Speaker 2: Yes. I don’t know how—

Speaker 5: You end up watching a fair amount. Going “How did I get here?”

Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah. So I don’t know how it happened, but I was watching an 18-minute high school graduation speech and the next one I watched was J.K. Rowling—

Speaker 5: Of course at Harvard?

Speaker 2: At Harvard. That’s the one that led me to it. Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 5: Steve Jobs was next.

Speaker 2: Okay. So David McCullough Jr., whose dad, I think, David McCullough Sr.—I don’t know if they are really, but I think they probably are. David McCullough Sr. is this fabulous biographer who did this biography on Harry Truman and he did a huge biography on the Brooklyn Bridge. Biography of the Brooklyn Bridge! It was comfortably a thousand pages long and I bought it for my mother going like, “You have a crack at that one here.” His son, I think, is a teacher but his speech was called You Are Not Amazing and You Are Not Special. That’s what it was called. You Are Not Special. And he said you are one of the graduating class today of 65 very talented people. If you were the valedictorian, if you were the one person who came out top on this, let me just say that there are 37,000 high schools in the United States and today they’re all graduating, so you’re one of 37,000 valedictorians this year and there was a valedictorian last year and the year before, the year before, and the year before that, and that you have been told that you have grown up in a culture where—his relationship to it, he said it’s because we, as parents, were told to tell you that you’re amazing, you’re special, you’re wonderful. Look at the way you crapped on that, you know, like from potty training upwards you’re so special. So I don’t know. It was a fascinating thing to watch.

Speaker 5: I think the French—I remember reading an article and it was a French mum, an English mum, and the French mum was saying, “We do not say well done, you’re special, congratulations, you’re the best or you’ll be the next something, you’re going to be a superstar, because it’s not helpful for anyone, be you a parent, a child, or whatever. Yeah, we need to get away from that, like, standing on people’s heads to feel value.

Speaker 2: This is a cultural thing, like my mum went to see—I went to see Testament of Mary on Friday. Fiona Shaw acting as the mother of Jesus, telling the story of how the crucifixion sounded, when it was your son being crucified, right?

Speaker 5: Well, he was quite special. I mean that was probably okay!

Speaker 2: But what was interesting about it was that she was saying rather like…I mean, it was sort of like that moment in Monty Python: “He’s not the Messiah, he’s a very naughty boy!”. “He’s my son”. And so it was by Colm Toibin. It’s based on this very short book. Her point was he’s just my son and there is…an organization was created and been created around him and he’s been forced up as this sacrificial lamb in order for whatever. There was a whole political thing.

But the point of it was—and Fiona Shaw is Irish, from Cork and my mother is Irish and went to see it with some Irish friends of ours and I came out, I called my mother, who’d been to see it the night before, and she said that at the end there as a conversation, there was a Q&A with the director. By the way, the director was her former, like Fiona Shaw and the director—you know Deborah Warner? Yeah, they used to go out and now she directs her? Can you imagine that? Stand over there. Fuck off! Ex-girlfriend over here. Standoff. That’s amazing!

Speaker 6: Fiona Shaw? Isn’t this the person who was in Harry Potter?

Speaker 1: Yeah. She plays Dudley’s mum.

Speaker 2: Oh, yeah. So anyway, there was a Q&A afterwards and they were talking about—“I played it,” she said. My mother sort of reported this was that she said, you know, it’s a very Irish thing to say you’re nothing, young one. And that’s a very—I would have heard that a lot now, you’r nothing but [Inaudible][16:32] and don’t you forget it. It’s a very helpful way of keeping you grounded and don’t forget where you came from, boy, and these kinds of things. It certainly makes it sound very harsh.

Speaker 4: They have a saying in Liverpool like that

Speaker 2: Yeah! And so this Jewish woman, this old Jewish lady was sitting beside my mother and they began to have a conversation about it. My mother was talking about this is a very Irish thing—her mother would have been like this and Fiona Shaw’s mother would have been like this, and the Jewish lady said, ‘This isn’t how we are at all. In our house, my son can do no wrong.” And that was the cultural, like that’s a cultural difference, like the manner in which we teach our children.

Speaker 6: Will it be the same with their daughters or will it be just the son?

Speaker 2: I don’t know. But is it just that there has been…because America has done enough?

Speaker 5: Well even if your parents say it, because I’m in London. I’ve just got to say I definitely have a little Scouse person on my shoulder going “Don’t get to big for your boots” and you say anything that’s about you and you then self-deprecate and be like ‘oh it was nothing’. Because otherwise the little Scouser will be like “who do you think you are, living in London? Knowing all this?” And you go back to Liverpool, it’s a similar thing. Oh, you’re back home. Who do you think you are? But I think it’s a helpful thing but it can be…it’s a balance, isn’t it? But it is that thing now, even if your family or your culture said it, the fact that the rest of the world that we perceive says who you- if you wanted that, how many people have you got, like what makes you unique rather than…yeah. How do you fit into this cog?

Speaker 1: Do you think it’s because we’re kind of the, well, we’ve had a really, really long period of kind of post-Thatcherite, post-Regan politics where  working people, people who like made things and dug things out of the earth and made their living in ways that are totally commendable and you probably, a hundred years ago, you could be quite proud of making a decent honest wage and being a decent honest person, has been belittled and denigrated and squashed and replaced with robots, to the point where endeavor, and graft, mean nothing. Like I mean, now even if you’re brilliant at something, you don’t say, “Oh god, it took me six years to get that right.” You go, oh yeah it came

Speaker 4: Naturally?

Speaker 2: The thing that crystallizes this, this image, this whole notion for me are the two minute sections on X-factor, whichever one it is, where there was that girl. And this is the first time I’ve ever watched one. I’ve been overseas a lot. This is the first—which one is the one with Abby Alton—

Speaker 4: [Inaudible][19:17]

Speaker 2: So she was a- made me in a kind of whatever.

Speaker 4: But he loved it!

Speaker 2: Right, absolutely! [Inaudible][19:23] but everytime she was on, she would say, “I can’t believe it. I can’t go back to my…” and the notion was—she was on the…

Speaker 4: Staking shelves

Speaker 2: Stacking shelves… She worked behind, she worked on the counter, and the notion that she would have to go back to that was so repellant to the…”Oh, we musn’t get her back to there”. The notion that she was going to get plucked from that rather than earn her wage, get a flat, get a nicer flat, sort yourself out, like that’s completely unacceptable and what we need to do is rescue her from this dowdy existence by plucking her up and turning her into a coke head in three years.

Speaker 4: That Cinderella thing. That’s what’s very, very dangerous. It’s interesting, how do you stand up against it? Part of it probably is that, you know, I mean, I do think there’s a level to it where celebrity doesn’t reward excellence because you can’t be on there and learn excellence.  Long-lived celebrities are excellent and there are some well known people, like, you don’t become a famous Novellist without being a good novelist or a famous theatre director. There is a reward for exellence. There’s a responsibility from those people to talk about how hard it was.

Speaker 3: They’re not the celebrities that are posting pictures of themselves on Facebook, if that’s the case.

Speaker 4: No.

Speaker 3: [Inaudible][20:45]

Speaker 5: More are younger and younger, so they haven’t had it.

Speaker 3: Like poor Miley Cyrus being asked “What does world peace look like?” But people that are that young don’t know world peace looks like. No. The poor girls, you know the teens, don’t be asking them those questions, just because you’re at the top of Google doesn’t mean you know how to fix world peace.

Speaker 1: But that’s what’s really interesting because actually, like Elizabeth I, at 19, was one of the great statespeople. So it isn’t the youth isn’t capable. It’s that we’re not educating it.

Speaker 5: She was born and trained in that, lived with lots of people around her. I think that the young celebrities might be picked at 13 or 14, but it’s still very—

Speaker 6: But they do get a lot of exposure and frankly public office is something that comes with responsibility. Sorry to quote Spiderman, but with great power does comes great responsibility. And at that position, it isn’t good enough to say, you know, “I don’t know” because you are a role model. It is a responsibility you have taken on and it becomes something that you need to do in order to stay where you are or you can gracefully step off and say this is a responsibility that I cannot take on. But if you are a role model for a certain section of society, there is a certain way you have to live, period.

Speaker 4: And I quite admire it when every now and then a politician says, you know what, this is too hard. I need some time to think about it. I mean, I actually think it’s courageous—

Obama has tried, I mean, for all his failings and he has done quite well, is he’s consistently made speeches like look, this is really complicated. Like his first big race speech was brilliant because he said, “Right, look everybody, this isn’t a kind of polarized…” it’s not. It’s a big wiggly, wobbly mess—

Speaker 5: And this is the kind of people you would be asking about this stuff or whatever and all of this stuff, you’d come back and say, “Look, this is not a big issue for the whole of America, so I’m not even going to tell you the answer because you need to know that we should be focused on this paparazzi thing.” And he was really good and I do think a lot of it and I always think this thing about people, is about its creeping up to that selfie and aren’t we lovely and let’s nod to everything, even when we’re secretly talking here, don’t agree with that. There isn’t a culture where it’s encouraged to challenge each other or critiquing each other and be critical friends and say actually Miley, maybe think about the thing before you do it. How many people has she got around her—

Speaker 2: Like Sinead O’Connor did make genuine effort to whether or not she should publish it on the internet or not, I don’t know. But I think that was a genuine effort to engage her and talk about responsibility and savageness comes back and-

Speaker 4: Yeah and if she would’ve had, but it’s that in general, when you’re with your friends, which is sometimes you want to say “Stop with the selfies. Love I’m bored with pictures of your cat. So you love it but do we really need to see it?” The reason and it’s not welcomed or encouraged by us as a society and as individuals. I mean we should, you know…

Speaker 3: To regulate it.

Speaker 4: To regulate it. We don’t regulate each other and we need to.

Speaker 1: So what would that look like?

Speaker 4: Well, wouldn’t it just be like a little, “You talked a lot about yourself there mate, now let’s…” Or you know.

Speaker 2: Just going to quiet down in the next section.

Speaker 4: That thing if you’d like if you love and you respect each other, I think you can say, like, you know, why are you wearing that bikini in December, you know? Surely he’ll like you for your personality…You know, that thing that we could, like parents and siblings do.

Speaker 1: Because cultural values are set by…like my values are set by the collective values of pretty much everyone around me plus my own desire to crusade, you know?

Speaker 4: We’ve all had times where we wanted to say to someone, you know, oh come on, I know you can do better than that or I did you think about that, but we don’t.

Speaker 5: So that’s really interesting because that is a thing that you could teach, isn’t it? I mean, we work in a theatre, I mean in theatre world, there is a very clear, like, this is kind of safe circle, within this space we can say anything to each other.

Speaker 1: And you have to tell people if—

Speaker 5: And we have to do that. If there’s something that can be taught in school, it is about critical thinking and setting up the space that says look, I can critique your work or your behavior. It doesn’t mean I’m critiquing you.

Speaker 4: And we’re doing it. We can all be better.

Speaker 5: And I think the Arts world is quite good at that because it’s inherent, but it didn’t happen in the finance world, for example. It didn’t go. But “look steady on old chap.”

Speaker 1: But you know what? I sort of think about this. I think there’s a lot of narrative about it being about self-aggrandizement and arrogance and not giving someone critical feedback. And actually, I have this sneaking suspicion that the root cause of it is because everyone feels so shit about themselves. Because we’ve got much smaller nuclear families, because we don’t have the large social support system than there were kind of 50 years ago, like there isn’t anything reflecting back at you, telling you what your value is. So—

Speaker 2: Except this broad narrative that gets fed to our media.

Speaker 1: Exactly. The media. So if you look like that, then you have value. So all of that, “Hey, look at my selfie…”

Speaker 4: And I think that’s like when you see it, you know, a guy in a little tiny but very large sports car, I’m thinking, “Oh, bless him. He’s highly insecure.” Someone needs to give him a hug, but other people go “Ohh Amazing!”. I used to always think greed was the thing that caused all the problems in the world, but now I just think it’s insecurity. Ralph Feinnes was talking about Coriolanus and he said he did it because his main motivation was for us to look at Coriolanus’ mum and the relationship he has with his mum and how we need to change those types of relationships, otherwise you end up having a dictator as a son. So okay then. But it was a good critique saying, you know, this guy wasn’t born the devil. How did he end up in this place? Let’s figure it out.

Speaker 1: I’m going to stop there because I let that go on a little bit too long. Now it’s not your fault at all.

Speaker 2: Wrapped it up with Coriolanus.

                   

Recordings: Sunday Lunch Project 18/05/14 Question 2

Question 2

How can we engage young people to make good choices when contemporary culture promotes celebrity and a warped sense of beauty?

The recording lasts about 27 minutes. There's a bit of chit chat at the beginning before we get into the nitty gritty of the question.

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Transcripts: Sunday Lunch Project 16/03/14 Question 3

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!