From 600+ conversations with the world’s leading thinkers.
What happened was that people saw their place going down while London was booming. It's not countrywide; it's not that everyone in the country is poorer. London's doing fine. So people ask: why are they not doing fine when London's doing fine? They start to blame each other.
If you imagine the archetypal social environment we have, probably until the beginning of the twentieth century, we saw our network, our community, every day. If a relative emigrated, we lost track of them very quickly and the family link disappeared as it was a very 'up front' person to person relationship.
Whether we look at the rioters who converged on the capital, the Gamestop Redditors, Incels or Qanon followers, what they have in common is that they're groups of people who are lonely and craving community. Right wing populists have very effectively spoken to this feeling. Trump and Le Pen talk about the 'forgotten people' they say 'we hear you' – That fundamental need for human connection is missing for significant swathes of our population, and that's dangerous.
We have a very strange relationship with empire, a combination of selective amnesia and nostalgia. The amnesia comes from the fact we mostly identify as the nation that won World War 2 not as the nation which had the greatest empire in human history. That helps us forget that there was at least a century where we were quite massively white supremacist and sometimes genocidal.
People come to Glastonbury and can try out ways of living that can be rolled out across the country. It's a place where people come to be a part of something… something greater than the sum of its parts.
I often tell my students to recognize the implicit messages our clothing conveys about our mood, social status, and more. Soon, our entrance into a room will announce our presence not just visually or audibly, but also electromagnetically. Our interactions with others will encompass sight, sound, and this electromagnetic identity.
For the entrepreneurial spirit to manifest as successful business and social endeavours, we need a nurturing environment and an infrastructure that celebrates the human will to solve problems and progress.
The climate crisis disproportionately affects the poorest countries and communities, small islands, and indigenous peoples—who contribute least to the problem. This crisis also embodies racial injustice, as those most affected are often people of colour. Gender injustice is evident through the distinct social roles and limited opportunities for women, who perform a significant portion of agricultural work, especially in regions like Africa and India, yet face barriers in accessing credit and agricultural training.
We don't change the world through opinions, we change it with examples. So I've been putting myself out there, reaching out and connecting- and you know what, I've had a huge amount of people coming forward telling me their own mental health journey.
The story of modernity is a story of scientific advance – but in reality, with every step forward, we're taking half a step backward in terms of making ourselves more fragile.
You know what else is immoral? 700 million people who have no electricity. We need to have actual conversations about how to solve problems – and hold the uneasy tension of who pays for it, and how.
What we managed to do was to bring these people together. I soon realized that human rights advocates, arms experts, and policy makers, despite their different fields, were all driven by the same curiosity and thirst for more information, each bringing their unique perspective to the table.