From 600+ conversations with the world’s leading thinkers.
There is a strong possibility that the relationship between humans and their environment would be so fundamentally changed that hundreds of millions of people, perhaps billions, would have to move. History tells us that this carries serious risks of severe and extended conflict.
Too often when we find someone disagreeing with us, our question is about why. Why do you believe this ridiculous thing? What tends to work better is a how question… This kind of approach helps to view the real complexity of a situation and reveals gaps in knowledge.
I remember taking my daughter to a speech I gave when she was just 5 years old, I wanted her to see mummy on stage as a way of showing her that she could be whatever she wanted to be.
Distrust in government is very dangerous – what follows is the ability for authoritarian and totalitarian forms of government to take control, and that doesn't do anybody, any good.
Once the cancer of authoritarianism gets into the veins and organs of society, it's not easy to get-out – they have this very specific way of paralysing political mechanisms and dismantling the fundamental human logic.
The real strength of our culture lies in what happens once our basic needs are met. As social capital develops, humans become increasingly able to perform feats way beyond the biological and cognitive limitations of the individual.
My Mom never recovered psychologically from being in the concentration camp; so, my aunt and uncle inherited me. They received this 'animal' with no social upbringing and turned me into a human being.
It's taken for me to get into my 30s to realise I am more than the media told me I was- I have more to say, so do my friends. We are intelligent, we are strong, we are multi-faceted, we are vulgar and we are funny.
Initially, I harboured a somewhat naive belief that the system's failings were largely due to a scarcity of people willing to do the right thing. Working for international organisations, I was caught up in the belief that we could fix broken systems simply by introducing the right resources, processes, and intentions. However, I've come to realize that good intentions alone are insufficient.
Those who know the locations of the remaining graves remain silent, not wanting to tarnish the 'heroic' image of their generals. This silence and glorification prevent crucial information about mass graves from emerging, demonstrating the profound and tragic impact of this hero worship.
We are in the epoch of simultaneity; we are in the epoch of juxtaposition, the epoch of the near and the far, of the side-by-side, of the dispersed.
Just think about what happens when the next billion people come online, and the next two billion after that. It's a remarkable thing to consider.