From 600+ conversations with the world’s leading thinkers.
Film is a reflection of society, both present and past.
We estimate with the World Bank that US$20-40 billion each year is lost in developing countries through corruption. If you add to that $5 billion each year in stolen assets, it clearly shows that corruption is a serious obstacle to the achievement of the millennium development goals.
We are no longer sovereign-islands protected by fortified walls and arbitrary map-lines- we are an interconnected global family who depend on each other in incredibly profound ways.
When we crafted that phrase, it was because we saw a similarity with physical fitness. If you work out today, you don't return home and declare, 'Great, I'm finished, I never have to exercise again.' Those with the strongest social bonds diligently nurture them throughout their lives.
The Convention on the Rights of the Child is not just a document - it's a promise we made to every child on this planet that they matter, that their voices count.
On the whole, science is seen as one of the most trusted professions- and we need to retain that trust. It is essential that the public knows how deeply science and technology affect their lives.
Every reason why we fight reveals a cost that our society ignored. The grisly, terrible costs of fighting are often 'nil' where, for example in the case of a dictator, the leadership is not held to account.
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.
I'm particularly interested in the human propensity to copy behaviours that lack any kind of knowable causal structure. This is how we learn arbitrary conventions—and I think it originates in a distinctively human way of building group identities. I describe ritual actions as causally opaque. We engage in this kind of behaviour even more enthusiastically when we're anxious about being excluded or left out.
Morality represents the way we would like the world to work, and economics represents how it actually does work.
Even if we end up with better regulations, we'll still have 300 million guns washing around the US, and that's going to be a huge problem for decades, because guns last a long time.
Unlike the divisive silos we've constructed, where one generation accuses the other — the older labeling the younger as lazy and the younger dismissing the older as out-of-touch or rigid. This dynamic needs transformation. Moving forward, it's imperative that both boomers and zoomers work in tandem.