From 600+ conversations with the world’s leading thinkers.
The essence of public health as a field of action is that it tries to stop problems from happening where possible, and prepares societies for problems that are unavoidable. That's why it requires us to understand the entire population.
In humanity's relentless drive for convenience and economic growth we have developed a dangerous level of dependency on networked systems in a very short space of time: in less than two decades, huge parts of the so-called 'critical national infrastructure' in most countries have come under the control of ever more complex computer systems.
Our mate choices are the ultimate form of consumer choice. I can pretty much fit most of our purposeful behaviours under the umbrella of consumption.
Your only duty is to take the rope and try to make a better one. Your only duty is to make the best rope you can for your children, for the next generation.
My greatest fear is that we have learnt nothing. Individually, we have learnt that the longer your population lives healthy, the better off your economy will be.
World leaders have promised everything to everyone. But they are failing. The UN's Sustainable Development Goals are supposed to be delivered by 2030. The goals literally promise everything, like eradicating poverty, hunger and disease; stopping war and climate change, ending corruption, fixing education along with countless other promises. This year, the world is at halftime for its promises, but nowhere near halfway.
Being able to trust is actually what makes us human. It's a very innate thing. And often, distrust and mistrust are learned behaviours that start to set in around the age of four.
If you have a bottle of water in your house, it belongs to you. Nobody can touch it without your permission, nobody can get into your house without your permission. This doesn't apply to the internet world. Facebook can access your room and your house without your consent. They can tear down your house, they can delete and block your digital life.
Globally, we have neglected this topic [agriculture] for decades. We have, worldwide, over a billion undernourished people. Food prices have risen over the past few years, with our own research showing these should accelerate up from 2010. The world's demographics are also alarming: The world's population has quadrupled in the twentieth century, doubling between 1960 and 2007. For the first time in history, we have seen the global urban population exceed the rural one, and, over the past forty years, agricultural-land has increased by only 10%. Two words, food security, are central to our model.
Time wealth is all about having the freedom to decide how you spend your time, who you spend it with, where you spend it, and what you trade it for. It boils down to one simple truth: recognizing time as your most precious asset—the only thing you can never get back.
Connection is not a nice to have. When we lose the right kinds of connections with others, we start to feel we don't exist. Buried underneath the complexity and the contempt, there's something wrong with how we're connecting as a society that's fuelling the anger we see.
When it comes to guns, the trend of covering of mass-shootings leads the public to think the big problem is mass shootings. However, the big problems are suicides, domestic violence, known people, and gangs shooting at each other.