From 600+ conversations with the world’s leading thinkers.
It's tougher being a leader now, in 2022, than it was in 1982 when I joined the Foreign Office. Leaders are examined much more closely, and constantly, now than they were in the past.
We are now 10 years into the mass warping of the human collective psyche because of a lack of checks and balances. To even begin to correct what's already happened means we have to wake up to the challenge of a world which must collectively wake-up from a mass delusion that has warped our trajectory as a civilisation.
Being 'online' does feel sort of 'godlike', it does make you feel that the limitations of material human existence don't apply quite so much. This godlike feeling explains some of the terrible behaviour on anonymous social media. It also gives you this sense that you somehow could become one with the metaverse.
Corruption can be seen as denigration of the basic right of people to dignity. It is also a threat to human security and human rights.
How many years or months do we have to be surprised before we realise it's not a surprise that this is a regular pattern? We will have massive waves of forced displacement.
Film is a reflection of society, both present and past.
My hands have been known mostly for the leather gloves that I've used as an instrument to punish opposing fighters. Outside the ring, though, I want my legacy to be the man with bare hands that offered kindness and hope to those in need.
While people have been worried about AI being embedded in humanoid robots from the science fiction world, our lives have been shaped and influenced by AI which makes tens of billions of decisions each day about what we see, and how we communicate.
Our brains are adept at concealing our motives from ourselves, convincing us that we are not as interested in status as we might actually be. This self-deception, paradoxically, enhances our ability to argue our lack of interest in status, which, in turn, can ironically increase our standing within the social group.
The power of population is so superior to the power in the earth to produce subsistence for man, that premature death must in some shape or other visit the human race.
It's extraordinary to see the gains that have been won in the past half-century. The period from then till now is the blink of an eye in the vast passage of human history and the historic persecution of LGBT+ people.
They help us to understand that there is no 'us' versus 'them', and that 'The Other' is, in fact, my brother, my sister; the other is me.