From 600+ conversations with the world’s leading thinkers.
Public health goes everywhere. Winslow defined it as 'the science and art of preventing disease, prolonging life, and promoting health through the organised efforts of society'. I think that's a good start, but we have to see the culture and ecosystem of public health in the context of the community. Not only is happiness important to public health, but so is GDP and the environment. It's an immensely broad subject.
History is full of changes that were only made because of direct action. In the US context, you need look no further than the civil rights movement. Racial segregation would not have been dismantled the way that it was, to the extent that it was without the work of grass roots movements who were prepared to take risks and break the law.
GDP only catches a slice of the value that we value. It captures what goes on in the market, the financial value of goods and services sold in an economy over a year. We need to get away from the narrow, monetary, measure of GDP which asserts that economic value is the only thing we care about.
I often envision the modern world as a battleground, with a continuous tug-of-war between the forces of salvation and our own potentially destructive instincts. AI emerges as a beacon of hope with a promise to significantly elevate the quality of life, especially for those in the lower echelons of society.
At the end of the day, the platforms will complain, but they exist to serve society—society doesn't exist to serve them.
The average person works more than five days a week… they're burned out by the weekend, they end up drinking too much alcohol, too much caffeine, they don't look after themselves, they're reacting to how they feel instead of preparing for the tasks ahead.
Mahatma Gandhi once said, 'first they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win…' the good news is that society is reaching a critical mass of influence meaning that today, people cannot ignore us, and cannot laugh at us, they have to fight- and if Gandhi was right, we are near the breakthrough towards winning.
There is no healthy society without a healthy internet.
The last quarter century of globalisation has utterly transformed how our markets and nations do business. With that in mind, we have to appreciate that our economies not only provide profound benefits and wealth-creation opportunities, but also hold very real (and untended) existential threats to the livelihoods of billions of citizens.
The less we engage with those who think differently, the more we demonise them. That demonisation can become dehumanising, reinforcing the idea that we have nothing in common. Worse still, when someone dares to engage across ideological lines, they risk being branded a traitor by their own group.
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.
Glastonbury means different things to different people, but for me, there's something really life affirming about bringing people together who can live peacefully, without conflict, for 5 days in the middle of the countryside with pretty basic facilities, leaving feeling like they can change the world.