From 600+ conversations with the world’s leading thinkers.
Each person is trapped in their own world and assume that the rest of humanity sees the world the same way that they do. That assumption is incorrect. You see the world differently to me, and that's true for every situation in which we find ourselves.
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.
The most common misunderstanding is that the Arctic is just a frozen wilderness with a lot of ice and glaciers and a few polar bears roaming. On the contrary the Arctic is a very diverse part of our planet with multiple resources and economic opportunities, the home for over four million people of different nationalities and diverse ethnic origin.
We're discussing the challenging feat for our species of being both self-advocating and relationship-oriented, particularly in stressful circumstances. When stressed, we all tend to lean towards self-preservation, which may be perceived as a threat by others.
It's not just the internet which is contributing to these changes, its mobile and digital technology generally, it makes everyone a journalist. This is why the internet has blown apart the notion of journalism, because it gets rid of the gatekeepers.
The systems we now use exist at a scale that's actually hard to comprehend as human beings. On Facebook, you are one of several billion people and at that scale, it's easy to become a number, or simply a wallet. At that scale, it's very hard to make any meaningful change as an individual.
The most important thing to realise is this; we control the market, the market does not control us.
Our world needs a more reflective way of communicating, something which the media are not promoting. We need an antidote to the current shooting-from-the-hip, and outrage sparking emotive content that is causing mutual incomprehension, it's a tragedy.
We don't change the world through opinions, we change it with examples. So I've been putting myself out there, reaching out and connecting.
Alibaba convinced me that it's possible to do good for society, and to do good in business. Traditionally, people thought of social impact as a nice to have, something on the side as part of your 'CSR.' Increasingly, there is a belief that it should be core to a business.
You can go and build a schoolhouse in any village or community, but it will do nothing without impassioned and brilliant teachers. In many ways, the teacher is more important than the building because a good teacher can teach anywhere.
Inequality is strong because wealth goes to wealth. The economic and political organisations of the world are such that the negotiation power of the poor is minimal if not zero. There are no trade-unions, no capacity to negotiate… even in the US, Europe and elsewhere… the level of concentration of wealth is bigger than ever.