From 600+ conversations with the world’s leading thinkers.
We have a very parasitic ideology; it operates like a virus. To stop a virus, you have to understand how it attaches to cells... you have to create an immune response via a vaccine... or by having the disease and fighting it.
While some criticize them as being overly individualistic, I believe there's a subtle yet undeniable transition from the 'me' mindset to a collective 'we' approach. The profound 'co' concept I foresee is what I term 'co-destiny,' rooted in socially energized capital.
Women account for a mere 0.5% of recorded history.
The printing press helped democratise Europe by providing space for discussion and agreement among politically engaged citizens, often before the state had fully democratised.
HIV/AIDS is the greatest pandemic in human history. It is chronic pandemic, in the sense that its rise and fall is measured in decades. The known part of this pandemic is now three decades old, and it has several decades still to run.
You know what else is immoral? 700 million people who have no electricity. We need to have actual conversations about how to solve problems – and hold the uneasy tension of who pays for it, and how.
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.
We have the unusual paradox of being both highly individualistic, yet in essence social. We exist in what I describe as a collective survival exercise.
Even if there's no profound cultural difference between brown, black and white Britons… they speak the same language, eat the same food, abstain from going to the same churches… identity culture assigns significance to their bodily differences, and so race exists.
The complexity of the topic combined with significant political and social blindness towards it, has led to disability becoming one of the most significant un-addressed issues of modern time.
About 80 billion of the dead ones died of infection over humanity's lifetime, and the average lifespan of those people was 30. Think of all the self-actualization, the dreams, the aspiration, the success, fulfillment, the family, the grandchildren—all those things that you never ever saw.
I want to take African rhythm and put it into classical music, European jazz, and symphonies. I want people to come together from all over the place, through music. That's my legacy.