On fading into the distance
Whenever I accept an invitation to be a guest speaker at rotary lunches, CBI dinners or charity functions – a healthy way of making a little extra loot to eke out a meagre pension that I’d recommend to any Rust reader – and I’m ever asked to describe the raison d’être behind this organ and its massive worldwide success I always give two answers.
The first is that, almost as a reaction to the lightning speed at which the 21st Century operates – not least via the social media phenomenon which has caused the Millennial generation to simultaneously develop the attention span of a gnat and totally lose the art of conversation – it grew out of a collective feeling of a group of us [shall I say?] ‘beyond a certain age’ that there might just be a gap in the internet market for a website that enabled those of us who have been around the block a few times to review, reflect and pass comment upon the world and its manifold activities from a unique perspective, viz. that of people who are gradually losing their ability ‘to keep up’ with what’s happening … but don’t actually care.
Then – after a slight theatrical pause – I give my second, alternative, answer (“You know what, I cannot remember …”) which, as I intended, usually prompts an explosion of mirth among my audience if not also a flash of communal self-recognition.
The truth is that the one key factor the Rust – and other giant super-corporations with the ability to dominate the lives of billions of human beings and evade the attempts of mere governments to regulate them such as Google, Facebook, Amazon, eBay and the Mr Whippy ice cream franchise – all have in common is that, after emerging from the proverbial chrysalis with a simple idea or purpose in mind, they have developed an unstoppable momentum that eventually gobbles up everything in its path until they can literally accommodate anything and everything to the point where the original concept becomes irrelevant.
Which, arguably, is a nice place to be if you can get there.
Notwithstanding all of the above, sometimes it does us all good to be reminded of our roots and that is the thought I wished to present today:
You really know you’re a member of the Ruster generation when somebody provides a list of the supposed all-time greatest films, theatre shows, exhibitions, sports stars – indeed anything – in history and, as you go to it in anticipation of joining the gentle wallow in nostalgia (and perhaps a little enlightenment) you realise that you’re ineligible to join in because you were born before ‘history’ began.
See here for a link to an article by John Lynch that features today upon the website of – THE INDEPENDENT
