From 600+ conversations with the world’s leading thinkers.
I assumed this was just a fact of life in the UK, but because I saw the warmth of some people's welcome in the business community in particular, I overlooked it…
If you have a doctor who is very ready to find people as having heart disease, and thus overdiagnoses and overtreats them – that's a mistake, risks safety and wastes resources. Similarly, if you have a doctor down the hall who underdiagnoses, that endangers lives.
Fear has had a huge impact on human societies throughout history, and as science and archaeology are increasingly suggesting through prehistory, too. But my main interest is in how fear has been used as an instrument of power, wielded by rulers to consolidate their authority, and to manage their populations.
Innovation is not about products or scientific laboratories- it is also about governance, education and everything we do as people. It is not about scientists alone innovating.
We have to constantly evolve how we make an impact, and make sure that we're doing what the communities we work in want us to support rather than enforcing some kind of model. Our work has to be led by the leaders of communities telling us what will work.
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.
However brave you are, you can't protect yourself against a huge pile of metal coming from the sky to kill you and everything you love.
According to Global Witness, 4 environmental activists are killed somewhere in the world each week, predominantly in Latin America but also in Africa and Asia. These are individuals doing everything from defending water, land and forests to the rights of indigenous communities.
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.
The neo-liberal capitalist mindset has been a huge contributor to loneliness. Since the 1980s, a new form of economics came to the fore which enshrined the pursuit of self-interest over the pursuit of collective good. That generated the mindset we see today- me first, dog-eat-dog, greed is good.
Winning is good, losing is bad! If you're winning, you can give back — to your family, institutions of your choice, and your local communities. If you're losing, your pockets are empty.
Young people see philanthropy and change completely differently – they don't support charities in the same way as I do, but they campaign and that's perhaps more valuable. The money is less important now, and the drive is the focus, the talking, the doing.