Wisdom in fragments

Poverty is like treading in a pool of quicksand- if you're standing on the outside looking in, it's easy for you to pontificate about what the person in the quicksand should do, how they should behave, what risks they should be able to take- but anyone who's been in the proverbial quicksand knows that the biggest risk is that they make one move in the wrong direction, and submerge deeper.

Scottish Writer, Broadcaster & Anti-Poverty Activist & Poet

The main issue around homelessness is simple- there aren't enough homes for people. That's the fundamental, systemic fact, that a lot of well-meaning acts of charity don't address; and that includes homelessness charities.

Scottish Writer, Broadcaster & Anti-Poverty Activist & Poet

Todays' politicians can't lead public opinion, because they're frightened of it – and we're so consumed by constitutional crises, that there's just no real chance that politicians can give these issues sufficient thought.

Scottish Writer, Broadcaster & Anti-Poverty Activist & Poet

Our public services are emotionally illiterate.

Scottish Writer, Broadcaster & Anti-Poverty Activist & Poet

There is a popular belief that poverty is characterised by social factors – low wages, addiction, and violence. These things all exist, but what really characterises the experience of poverty is emotional stress.

Scottish Writer, Broadcaster & Anti-Poverty Activist & Poet

Our boredom threshold has declined to the point where we're unable to stand idle in an elevator for ten seconds without pulling out our phones. There's also an epidemic of social avoidance, particularly among younger people, as the skills required for face-to-face interaction are more demanding.

Psychologist & Author specializing in behavioral psychology and irrational decision-making

Information overload means we are so bombarded with information that we can't make sense of it and so we become tribal, emotional and irrational, surviving using heuristics rather than facts. You can see this reflected in how our politics is changing – it's becoming more tribal, emotional and polarized.

The concentration of power in technology corporations is a moral and political problem that we simply don't have a precedent for. More people use Facebook than speak English for example, so the implications of Facebook, as just one platform, are at the scale of language itself.

Our apps and platforms are addictive by design. We know this both because the tech titans behind them have admitted it publicly, and because the dominant apps and social media platforms use the same suite of techniques that are well-proven to ensnare us.

Psychologist & Author specializing in behavioral psychology and irrational decision-making

Our informational environment has flipped from scarcity to abundance in a similar way that our food environment has. The heuristics we had living on the plains of Africa in an environment of food scarcity served us well there. But in the environment of Netflix, Ben & Jerrys Ice Cream and La-Z-Boy recliners, these same heuristics give us less than ideal outcomes.

Digital technologies are now an unavoidable part of the infrastructure of life and society, and we have the capacity to design them in ways that promote, understand and respect people's goals and values in ways we simply couldn't in the pre-digital era. With many of these technologies, though, our deeper human goals get treated as secondary, or are ignored altogether, in favour of lower 'engagement' goals such as views or clicks.

A practitioner is the person who goes out and breaks the limits of the mind, the soul, the body. A practitioner listens, and understands that the voices who say things cannot be done are theorists.

Ultramarathon Runner, Navy SEAL, & Motivational Speaker

You must call yourself out for who you're not, and that's where you start to grow. That's where you can really fix the problems in your life when you recognise that.

Ultramarathon Runner, Navy SEAL, & Motivational Speaker

I need failure like I need air. Unless people understand what failure is, they can't grow. I find growth in suffering, in pain and in failure.

Ultramarathon Runner, Navy SEAL, & Motivational Speaker

You have to be your own hero; that doesn't mean sticking your head up your own ass- but being accountable for who you are as a person and finding strength from within.

Ultramarathon Runner, Navy SEAL, & Motivational Speaker

To overcome extreme obstacles, to do the impossible, you have to create another human being inside yourself. I had to create an image of how I wanted to look, how I wanted to act, how I wanted to believe, how hard I wanted to push. I trained that image in my mind, and then I had to become an artist to create it.

Ultramarathon Runner, Navy SEAL, & Motivational Speaker