How to make the world work | Simon Anholt | TEDxHamburg
-
Not Synced(Applause)
-
Not SyncedGive me 30 seconds,
-
Not SyncedAnd I can give you a list of
30 terrifying challenges -
Not Syncedfacing humanity and the planet
at this point in history. -
Not SyncedAnd we wouldn't sleep tonight.
-
Not SyncedThere are so many of them,
and they seem to be so frightening -
Not SyncedIt's not really surprising
-
Not Syncedthat many of us are feeling
a little bit disheartened, -
Not Syncedand a little bit anxious at the moment.
-
Not SyncedBut the way I see it -
-
Not SyncedThere are really only two things
-
Not Syncedstopping the world working at the moment
-
Not SyncedThe first one is the fact that
the countries don't collaborate enough. -
Not SyncedWe know the solutions
to most of those challenges. -
Not SyncedBut we don't implement them
because we don't work together. -
Not SyncedAnd the second thing
that stopping the world working properly -
Not Syncedis the fact that every single
one of those challenges -
Not Syncedhas been caused by the behaviour
of human beings. -
Not SyncedAnd if we can change that
we can change everything. -
Not SyncedNow those sound like
big tasks and they are. -
Not SyncedBut I'm optimistic.
-
Not SyncedFor the last 10 years, I've been working
on projects and plans and policies. -
Not Syncedto try and attack those two barriers
to making the world work better. -
Not SyncedSome of them I tried to encourage
countries to implement. -
Not SyncedBut the coolest ones, I keep
and I try to do them myself. -
Not SyncedSo I'd like to tell you about two of those
in the few minutes that I've got today. -
Not SyncedThe first one is more of an update.
-
Not SyncedIt's a project called The Good Country Index,
which I launched back in 2014. -
Not SyncedI haven't spoken about it for a while,
but it's been through 4 different editions. -
Not SyncedAnd I thought it would be good
to give an update. -
Not SyncedSo The Good Country Index is an attempt
to measure what every country on earth -
Not Syncedgives to the rest of the world
-
Not Syncedoutside of its own borders,
-
Not Synceda kind of balance sheet
for the world if you like. -
Not SyncedA lot of people, when I
originally launched it said -
Not Syncednot another country index, surely
there are enough of those around already. -
Not SyncedBut the interesting thing is that
almost all of the others look inwards. -
Not SyncedThey treat countries as if they were little islands
-
Not Syncedinhabiting their own private oceans.
-
Not SyncedBut surely that doesn't really make sense.
-
Not SyncedBecause everything everybody does
has an impact on all of us, always. -
Not SyncedIf one country pollutes the air or water,
that's our air and our water. -
Not SyncedIf they go to war,
drags other countries in -
Not Syncedand the refugees pour out.
-
Not SyncedThere is really nothing
you can do any more -
Not Syncedthat only impacts the domestic population.
-
Not SyncedSo what The Good Country Index
attempts to do -
Not Syncedis to make a start towards
helping people to understand -
Not Syncedthat this is an interconnected system,
-
Not Syncedby measuring what each country
contributes to the rest of the world. -
Not SyncedNow, it's not my opinion which countries
rank higher and which ones rank lower. -
Not SyncedIt's formed from a set of 35
large databases, -
Not Syncedwhich mostly come from the UN system.
-
Not SyncedAnd what they do is they simply measure
the positive and negative effects -
Not Syncedthat the countries have.
-
Not SyncedIt's always been a tiny bit controversial.
-
Not SyncedBut that's kind of good,
-
Not Syncedbecause it helps to start
a new kind of argument. -
Not SyncedIn fact, it works really well.
-
Not SyncedWithin hours of me releasing the first
edition of The Good Country Index -
Not SyncedI started receiving thousands of
beautiful hate mails from trolls -
Not Syncedall over the world, demanding to know
why the country they hate ranks so high. -
Not Syncedand the country they love ranks so low,
and how I cooked up the entire thing -
Not Syncedjust to produce that specific result
and annoy them personally. -
Not SyncedAnd we have conversations about
these things and we argue about it, -
Not Syncedand at the end I'd always say
the same thing, "Look, it's working." -
Not SyncedI don't know if I am right.
I don't know if you are right. -
Not SyncedBut in the end, we are
discussing the right thing. -
Not SyncedWe are talking about
not how well is your country, -
Not Syncedbut how much is your country doing.
-
Not SyncedAnd that's what it was supposed to achieve.
-
Not SyncedSo by pushing the direction of
the argument, the conversation, -
Not Syncedtowards a new way of looking at countries,
-
Not Syncedthen I think that
it's pushing the agenda forward -
Not SyncedSo, my colleague Robert Govers and I
-
Not Syncedjust released the latest edition
of The Good Country Index. -
Not SyncedAnd I'll just give you a very quick glimpse
of what's going on there. -
Not SyncedFinland came first.
-
Not SyncedOne of these days, somebody is going to
invent a country ranking -
Not Syncedthat does not have
a nordic country in the top ten. -
Not Synced(Laughter)
-
Not SyncedAn index of modesty perhaps.
-
Not SyncedAnyway well done Finland, seriously!
It's absolutely great. -
Not SyncedAnd another rather interesting thing
happened in this latest edition -
Not Syncedof The Good Country Index,
and that was -
Not Syncedwhat you can see if you go to the
slightly lower in the Index, -
Not Syncedthe USA has various reasons sunk
quite a long way since the last edition, -
Not Syncedand Russia for various reasons has risen.
-
Not SyncedAnd we now have this peculiar situation
where the USA and Russia -
Not Syncedrelative to the size of their economies,
-
Not Syncedare neck and neck,
quite a long way down the Index. -
Not SyncedIt's like two mean kids holding hands
at the edge of the playground -
Not Syncedand refusing to join the others.
-
Not Synced(Laughter) (Cheering) (Applause)
-
Not SyncedBut hey, it's an interesting result,
-
Not Syncedbut in the end, I'm afraid to say that
the world hasn't changed very much -
Not Syncedsince the first one came out in 2014.
-
Not SyncedIt's still America first, Britain first,
Russia first, Germany first. -
Not SyncedAnd in a way I understand that.
I don't have a problem with it. -
Not SyncedI mean after all, if you are elected
to run a country, it's pretty obvious -
Not Syncedyou put that country's interest first.
-
Not SyncedBut what I find rather demoralising
about those kinds of sentiments -
Not Syncedis the implication that
everybody else has to come last. -
Not SyncedAnd this is what I dispute.
-
Not SyncedI think we can all come first.
-
Not SyncedAnd one of the nice things about
the job I have been doing -
Not Syncedfor the last 20 years or so
advising governments around the world -
Not Syncedand trying out real policies
in the real world, -
Not Syncedis that it's perfectly
possible to harmonise -
Not Syncedyour domestic and your
international responsibilities. -
Not SyncedYou can do the right thing
for your own people, -
Not Syncedand you can do the right thing
for humanity at the same time -
Not Syncedwithout sacrificing yourself.
-
Not SyncedAnd the funny thing is,
it makes better policies. -
Not SyncedThis is something that most
governments have simply never tried. -
Not SyncedSo on to the second thing
that's stopping the world working -
Not Syncedthe slightly more complicated issue
of the behaviour of us humans. -
Not SyncedWell, to get started on this.
-
Not SyncedI thought it would be interesting to try
to find out how many people in the world -
Not Syncedalready agree with
some of these basic principles, -
Not Syncedthe ones outlined behind
The Good Country Index. -
Not SyncedSo Robert and I did some research
-
Not Syncedand we discovered that no less than
10% of the world's population -
Not Syncedappears to fully share
the principles of The Good Country, -
Not Syncedthe idea that countries should collaborate
and cooperate a great deal more, -
Not Syncedand compete a tiny bit less.
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Not SyncedThis is great news. 10 percent,
that's 760 million people. -
Not SyncedIf that were a nation, that would be
the third largest nation on the planet -
Not Syncedafter China and India.
-
Not SyncedAnd I have to admit when
those numbers came out, -
Not SyncedI got very excited.
-
Not SyncedBut then on mature reflection,
I realised that actually -
Not Syncedthe counterpart of that is that
90% of the people in the world -
Not Synceddon't agree with that proposition.
-
Not SyncedAnd I think if one was going to
take this challenge seriously, -
Not Syncedone has to focus on the 90%.
-
Not SyncedIt's not enough just to sell messages
to the people who already agree with you, -
Not Syncedand try to make them make tiny tweaks
in their behaviour because -
Not Syncedfrankly, it's too late for that.
-
Not SyncedWe are in too much of a hurry.
-
Not SyncedWe need big change,
we need it very soon. -
Not SyncedIn fact, we need it right now.
-
Not SyncedSo how can we deeply educate
the majority of the world's population -
Not Syncedto behave in a way which is more
friendly to the world that we live in -
Not Syncedand more friendly to each other?
-
Not SyncedBecause by the way, when I was speaking
of trolls, of course it reminded me -
Not Syncedof this strange idea that emerged recently
and I don't know where it came from -
Not Syncedthat the people who
care more about local things -
Not Syncedand people like me who
care more about global things -
Not Syncedshould be enemies.
-
Not SyncedWho thought of this idea?
-
Not SyncedI think this is the most dangerous idea
in the world at the moment, -
Not Syncedand I think we should all look out for it
and challenge it whenever we hear it. -
Not SyncedThe people who care more
about local things -
Not Syncedand the people who care more
about global things shouldn't be enemies. -
Not SyncedThey should be working together.
-
Not SyncedWe should be glad that each other exists.
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Not SyncedThere isn't time for this kind of
childish tribalism. -
Not SyncedWe need to get on and fix things.
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Not SyncedWhile anyway as I was saying
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Not Syncedthe 90% need to be fundamentally
educated in a different way. -
Not SyncedAnd I started looking at some
of the websites of the NGOs, -
Not Syncedand the campaigning
organisations and the charities, -
Not Syncedand I began to notice there was
a common theme emerging. -
Not SyncedThere was a sentence, which in
one form or another -
Not Syncedkept on cropping up.
-
Not SyncedAnd the sentence was something like this,
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Not Synced"And we should leave the world
in a better state for our children." -
Not SyncedAnd I've tried to read this sentence
about 93 times in different places. -
Not SyncedI began thinking to myself,
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Not Synced"you know that's pretty arrogant really."
-
Not SyncedThe idea you can take something huge
-
Not Syncedlike climate change, huge systemic problem
or conflict or migration -
Not Syncedthat's taken billions of people
centuries to perpetrate, -
Not Syncedand you are gonna fix it
before you check out? -
Not Synced(Laughter)
-
Not SyncedIt's this kind of arrogance and impatience
that causes more problems than it solves. -
Not SyncedIf we only have the nerve,
if we only have the courage -
Not Syncedto give it one generation,
-
Not Syncedwe can fix everything and
we can fix it for good. -
Not SyncedBecause every single day that passes
humanity has an opportunity to start again. -
Not SyncedBecause every single day that passes
new children are born, -
Not Syncedand they can learn in new ways.
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Not SyncedSo there is a solution to every
single challenge facing humanity. -
Not SyncedIt's called education.
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Not SyncedBut we need to do it in a new way
and a different way -
Not Syncedand a much more ambitious way
than we've done it before. -
Not SyncedImagine if you wield a test tube rack
-
Not Syncedof the sort that you probably had
when you studied science at school. -
Not SyncedAnd in this test tube rack made of wood
there are 7, 8, 10 I don't know -
Not Syncedlittle glass test tubes, and each one
contains a different coloured liquid. -
Not SyncedAnd each one of those liquids
is a vaccine, an educational vaccine -
Not Syncedagainst the behaviours that cause
climate change, conflicts, -
Not Syncedhuman right abuses, terrorism, migration
pandemic and all the rest of it. -
Not SyncedAnd if we administer these educational
vaccines to all of our children, -
Not Syncedin the next generation, they will be
incapable of continuing the behaviours -
Not Syncedthat we have indulged in for so long.
-
Not SyncedIf we teach our children
cultural anthropology at the age of 6, -
Not Syncedit's a wonderful subject for 6 year olds.
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Not SyncedThey grow up taking a scientific pride
in understanding cultural differences. -
Not SyncedThey are immunised
against the kind of ignorance -
Not Syncedthat leads to prejudice and intolerance.
-
Not SyncedI know that one works, because
I experimented on my own children -
Not Syncedand it works a charm.
-
Not Synced(Laughter)
-
Not SyncedIf we want to lessen
the speed of climate change, -
Not Syncedwe need to teach our children
oceanography and meteorology, -
Not Syncedand then maybe one day
they will switch off the damn light -
Not Syncedwhen they leave the bedroom.
-
Not Synced(Laugher)
-
Not SyncedWe need to teach our children hygiene
so that there is less disease. -
Not SyncedWe need to teach them to meditate
so there is less mental illness, -
Not Syncedand they learn to have more empathy
and more understanding and more kindness -
Not Syncedtowards everybody else.
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Not SyncedThere are so many subjects.
-
Not SyncedI can't decide which ones they should be.
-
Not SyncedWhat I think we need to do is
we need to have a big global discussion -
Not Syncedon the internet
-
Not Syncedwhere everybody puts in their own idea
-
Not Syncedabout what should be
the next set of values -
Not Syncedthat we are going to teach the next
generation of children -
Not Syncedso they can run towards
the global challenges -
Not Syncedinstead of running away
from them as we've done. -
Not SyncedAnd we can do this.
-
Not SyncedNext year, it will be my aim, my ambition
to have one hundred ministers of education -
Not Syncedsigning up to this new global compact
of educational values. -
Not SyncedUNESCO has already signed a letter saying
that they would like to support this -
Not Syncedif we can get it going.
-
Not SyncedAnd if you have any doubts
about whether it's possible -
Not Syncedfor humanity to engage
in such a big common project -
Not Synceddespite all of that cultural differences,
-
Not Syncedwe'll just have a think about
the United National's charter -
Not Syncedor the human rights documentation.
-
Not SyncedHave a read if you
haven't read it for a while. -
Not SyncedThese are the most beautiful documents
ever produced by humanity, -
Not Syncedand they really give you faith,
because they remind you as you read them -
Not Syncedthat we are capable of
behaving like a single species -
Not Syncedinhabiting a single planet.
-
Not SyncedWe can do it if we really want to
and if we do it at scale. -
Not SyncedThe good news is that
it's more about joining up the dots -
Not Syncedthan starting from scratch.
-
Not SyncedBecause there are of course hundreds
and hundreds if not thousands of projects -
Not Syncedaround the world at the moment,
finding and experimenting different ways -
Not Syncedof educating children so they
behave better in the future. -
Not SyncedThe trouble is they are mostly
single topics and in single countries. -
Not SyncedThere's no time for doing it
that slowly now. -
Not SyncedWe need to do it big,
and we need to do it in one go. -
Not SyncedGreta Thunberg, the 16 year old
Swedish climate activist -
Not Syncedis beginning to discover and beginning
to show us how very difficult it is -
Not Syncedto persuade grown-ups
to change their behaviour. -
Not SyncedBut the simple fact to the matter is
-
Not Syncedthat we can see that a lot of children
have got the right attitude, -
Not Syncedbut they don't have the solutions.
-
Not SyncedSome adults have the solutions but they
definitely don't have the right attitude. -
Not SyncedAnd so guess what, it's another
necessity for collaboration, -
Not Syncedthe children and the grown-ups
working together. -
Not SyncedWe all have to think very hard now
about being better human beings. -
Not SyncedAnd that's about being better citizens,
both locally and globally. -
Not SyncedBut it's also perhaps mainly
about being better ancestors. -
Not SyncedIf we can do that,
we can make the world work. -
Not SyncedThank you.
-
Not Synced(Applause) (Cheering)
- Title:
- How to make the world work | Simon Anholt | TEDxHamburg
- Description:
-
For more information on Simon Anholt, please visit our TEDxHamburg website www.tedxhamburg.de Simon Anholt has advised the presidents, prime ministers and governments of 55 countries during the last twenty years, helping them to engage more imaginatively and effectively with the international community, and to ‘make the world work better’.
He also publishes the Good Country Index, a survey that ranks countries on their contribution to humanity and the planet, and in 2016 launched the Global Vote, which enables anybody in the world to vote in the elections of other countries.
Simon’s TED talk launching the Good Country Indexhas received 5.6 million views, and his more recent one launching the Global Vote, over a million.
Professor Anholt is the author of five books about countries, cultures and globalisation. He is the founder and Editor Emeritus of a leading academic journal focused on public diplomacy and perceptions of places, and publishes a major global study measuring the international standing of fifty countries and fifty cities, the Anholt-IPSOS Nation Brands Index and City Brands Index.
Website: www.goodcountry.org This talk was given at a TEDx event using the TED conference format but independently organized by a local community. Learn more at https://www.ted.com/tedx
- Video Language:
- English
- Team:
closed TED
- Project:
- TEDxTalks
- Duration:
- 14:55
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Peter van de Ven edited English subtitles for How to make the world work | Simon Anholt | TEDxHamburg | |
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Peter van de Ven edited English subtitles for How to make the world work | Simon Anholt | TEDxHamburg | |
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Chloe Liu edited English subtitles for How to make the world work | Simon Anholt | TEDxHamburg | |
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Chloe Liu edited English subtitles for How to make the world work | Simon Anholt | TEDxHamburg | |
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Chloe Liu edited English subtitles for How to make the world work | Simon Anholt | TEDxHamburg |