The Great Leap Forwards.

Apparently we British spend 20 hours out of every 24 sitting or lying. Ditto this teenage generation will likely be the most unemployed since the beginning of the industrial revolution. This seems perverse when the retirement age is being pushed back progressively. And at the same time this younger generation is becoming more agitated, not for want of work but in a lack of attention and a certain wildness that suggests a gathering frustration of some inner animus. And and and at this same time the likes of Ken Robinson are railing against the misplaced industrialisation of their education and suggesting an entirely new form of engagement. Is there a nebulous watershed slipping under our feet? One generation wedded to hierarchical ladder climbing successful careers and the next to a flat line of variously interesting scraps. It seems the future may be very different. But what is this engagement Ken talks of? And then along comes Olivia Coleman collecting three BAFTAs. Stay with me. She’s an actress that can’t act with a personality that has no understanding of celebrity. She does her job as easily as breathing and is universally loved for it. In some strange way she makes Tony Robbins look like the dinosaur of the self ages. Where he is a brilliant motivator to achieve oneself, one’s full potential, Olivia has no need of a unique self. She does not act the roles she’s given she inhabits the people she plays. It seems when there is no self to cultivate there is no restriction to inhabiting another one, and another. So might this be the watershed, a move from a self-styled self to a universal one? One in which we are all one. Might the apparent flat lining of this next generation not be the failure my hierarchical mindset suggests but an emergence of a one-self not a oneself? Then again you don’t get three BAFTAs in one night without achieving one’s full potential.