From 600+ conversations with the world’s leading thinkers.
I went from having no parents, to having 65! For kids, it was fantastic, there were lots of activities, a very strong community, and everyone cared for each other.
Children are the future of humanity. If we cannot protect our children, if we cannot ensure their rights, their education, their protection from exploitation, then we are failing humanity itself.
As children we experience a domestication process where rather than having our authenticity unlocked for us, instead we have put upon us layers and layers of rules about how we ought to behave and how we ought not to behave.
In a democracy, an informed citizenry can act as a driving force for more robust and effective foreign policies and strategies related to national security, thereby fostering peace and encouraging prosperity. However, the lack of such comprehensive education has been a stumbling block.
There's a vested interest – if the ideas you're teaching and have worked on are completely abandoned in favour of something else, then your legacy goes to zero. I think that's a big force.
If an average developing nation had the UK's primary and secondary education level, it would be approximately 40% wealthier. It's indisputable that education makes individuals highly productive, making countries richer in the long run.
The only way I can get truly invested in something is by doing it and understanding the full-stack of why and how it works, rather than playing a role in it- it's why I was so bad at working for other people… I learn through immersion.
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.
People who learn fast and who have some level of 'natural' talent may go home from practice early because they don't have to work as hard as others to get to their target level of achievement, but when you study super-achievers, you find that instead of going home early, they work late, and really pull-away from the crowd.
80% of ten-year-olds in these countries struggle with basic comprehension, even though they can technically read individual words. This lack of understanding severely hinders their future productivity.
If you're simply trained in accounting or marketing, you'll never have what I call a kind of epiphany. A fantastic business stumbles onto something psychological which just gives it a fantastic edge.
I have shown that anything is possible. I always tell people not to limit themselves. Find out what you are good at or interested in and work hard to be successful in that. Have fun when you are doing it and life is better.