Briefing No. 23

WHAT WE'RE READING

On the Greenwood Place bedside table

Professor David Deutsch’s “Beginning of Infinity” is an energising and surprising book. Extraordinarily wide-ranging, it is the mental equivalent of the mind-opening travel and conversation that is so challenging right now.   

Most scientists would tell you that human beings are pretty insignificant - a speck of dust on a small planet. David Deutsch says that is wrong. He says that people matter because they incubate knowledge - a force of almost unlimited power in the universe.

THE TRUST BAROMETER

The Edelman Trust Barometer is an online survey carried out annually across 28 markets and with 34,000 respondents in total. The results of Edelman’s 2021 survey reveal an epidemic of misinformation and widespread mistrust of societal institutions and leaders around the world.

BIODIVERSITY AND ECONOMICS

Professor Sir Partha Dasgupta, of the University of Cambridge, says prosperity has come at a "devastating" cost to the natural world. Today, human beings, together with the livestock we rear for food, constitute 96% of the mass of all mammals on the planet. The remaining 4% is everything else – from elephants to badgers, from moose to monkeys.

Dasgupta’s landmark review calls for transformational change in our economic approach to nature. He constructs a grammar for understanding our engagements with Nature – what we take from it, how we transform what we take from it and return to it – and what we can do to change direction.

THE WATER PLANET

“Every living thing, eagles, roses, whales, butterflies, trees, fishes, corn, turtles, amoebas and even man himself, all are organised water. And there is only one source of life sustaining water, the sea.” Jacques Cousteau

HOW TO BE ALONE

A lyric poem that seems designed for these disquieting times - when the human question is not what you do, nor even who you are, but simply how you go about being.

PODCAST FOR A LONG WALK

We just discovered the TED Interviews - a short series of hour-long conversations with extraordinary thinkers. We love Chris Anderson’s conversations with Islamic scholar Dalia Mogahed, and Daniel Kahneman, widely regarded as the world’s most influential living psychologist.

REFLECTIONS ON LEADERSHIP

We are impressed daily by the tenacity and commitment of leaders across our community of grantee partners. Despite a constantly shifting environment, our partners have continued to serve and in many cases have had more impact than ever before. For wisdom and practical ideas we have been digging into “15 Commitments of Conscious Leadership” - recommended by community member Eva Yazhari.

AND FINALLY…

We’re eagerly awaiting our pre-ordered copies of Bill Gates’s “How to avoid a climate disaster” and Mark Carney’s “Values”.

While we wait for them to arrive, we’ve put together a list of all the books we’ve recommended in the 23 issues of the Greenwood Place Briefing.

Our back issue recommendations make an increasingly tall pile and all are worth revisiting. You can easily browse those you missed over the years here.

UPCOMING EVENTS

Thank you to all those who joined us over the past few weeks for conversations with Sir Ronald Cohen and with Emily Bolton.

At our next community roundtable conversation we will discuss Igniting the Power of Collective Action with Kennedy Odede of SHOFCO and development economist Courtenay Cabot Venton. Do let us know if you’d like to join us.

The Skoll World Forum is on April 13-15, 2021. Join for virtual plenaries, sessions, activities, and more. The Virtual Forum is free and open to all. Registration begins in February here.