The next big thing?

My comment in response to an article by Jane Caro in New Matilda

I think I see the point that Jane is making but I look at it slightly differently. I don't agree "the next big thing" is "out there, dogging us like a ghost". To me, that powerful metaphor implies that the big thing exists independently of human though and action, almost as if it’s waiting to ambush and/or transform us.

Just because Michael Apted didn't pick up on aspects of social reality in 1963 doesn't mean that those realities weren't foreseen and worked for by others at that time and before it.

For example, wasn't Virginnia Woolf one of those who foresaw and agitated for what Michael Apted couldn't quite see when she gave her talks that became A Room Of One's Own? That which Michael Apted couldn't see didn't sneak up on everyone. It was formed by conscious and deliberate social action that could only be driven by one force: women.

What's the next big thing? It's what we make it. By "we" I mean people who organise to act for social change (which I want to be progressive but others want to be otherwise ... let's not forget George W Bush).

And what might that mean? Dunno, but the playwright Arthur Miller helpfully suggested the direction in which we need to move when he wrote: “And yet one cannot stand forever on the shore; at some point, filled with indecision, scepticism, reservation and doubt, you either jump in or concede that life is forever elsewhere”.

Whatever is coming will come because we produce the conditions out of which it emerges.