Videos

Transcription of Joss Ackland’s monologue

We have no conception of time. We feel it can be observed with mathematical rhythm by a set pattern. 60 minutes an hour, 24 hours every day, 365 days in a year, and less than a hundred years in a lifetime.

But this is delusion, because life is controlled in gear. Over our first decade of life, we travel in first gear, which enables us to open our eyes and observe what we see.

During our next decade, We realize that the room in which we live has a closed door to the world outside. Many cannot catch sight of anything beyond that door because they have no desire to turn the handle. Others make the effort and there are a few where the door once opened will seek other doors to the world outside.

Teenage years move without speed because we are shedding our skin in search for a lifeline. The speed of the next three decades is controlled by the road we travel.

But for the latter half of our life, our gears run out of control. And we roll a coaster in increasing speed. And weeks seem like hours, and hours become minutes.

Eventually, each generation has fed its offering with knowledge and experience, and the world has therefore made progress and improved. That is what we understand.

A few centuries ago, we were primitive creatures who lived in caves. We had little knowledge, reason or understanding, and were unable to think clearly or mouth words coherently. Today, we When sail the seas fly through the air to other planets, create music, poetry and prose, and observe and communicate with creatures on the other side of the spinning world.

So how is it that we did make progress? How did we develop it?

We are given to understand that the knowledge we've accumulated in our lives will pass from one generation to the next, and so progress is made. But Tudor, Elizabethan, Restoration and Georgian people were all totally different creatures in quite different worlds, and generations lost light of one another, and they still do.

Transcript reproduced from the Museum transcription supplied with the film. Apparent transcription anomalies have been preserved rather than silently rewritten.