fascinating insights into our world

Thought Economics is a book full of interviews with interesting people, often experts in their fields of expertise and with different areas of knowledge put together in this collection. The range of topics is vast and there are golden nuggets of information on every page. Vikas has put these interviews in a blog but has collected much wisdom and distilled some of this into this book.
- IDENTITY AND WHO WE ARE: The first section of the book looks at how we from our identities and who we are. We are all related and life came from one single life form over 3 billion years ago. We share 99% of our DNA with chimpanzees and 90% with a domestic cat, as well as a large amount with a banana, (and 70% with a sponge that doesn’t even have neurons) but animal that feel and see have a consciousness as well as us. We share our hormones, genetic make-up and the environment that we live in, but as well as that it seems to be the stories we tell ourselves within the story’s society tells also impact along with the culture we live in form who we are.
- It's interesting to wonder if we are social beings that are thoughtful or if we just stare out the window watching the clouds or we stare out the window and think of life and who we are. Perhaps the best way of looking at it is that we're on this planet for a brief short moment, full of light, colour and wonder and we should try and appreciate and make the most of it because eventually we all die, and all things will pass.
- CULTURE AND ART: The second part of the book is about culture and art, and how through poetry, novels, stories, pictures, film and art, we can make sense of our world and our place in it. Pictures and visual visions that we have through the stories can shape ourselves, and the world that we live in through the culture of our times.
- There's a lovely story by Maya Angelo, who was a black young girl, and who read a line by William Shakespeare, ‘when in disgrace with fortune and men’s eyes, I all alone bemoan my outcast state’ which connected with her. She had no idea that Shakespeare was some white bloke who lived 400 years ago and his lines were so relevant that she thought he must be a black lady or person as he understood her human condition so well, and this is what poetry and stories can give us.
- Although most of us will live just a few decades, there is also the fact that much of us is 4.4 billion years old, with elements that make up all living things and forged from stars, stories and art help us in the journey through live and to not feel alone, Music is ingrained in us all, wherever we go, we could often be challenging football songs or singing music and it can be something simple as a chant or Beethoven Mozart Concerto, helps us to make sense of our lives and the world we live in.
- Art has gone from chalk markings in caves to the stained glass windows that told people stories, full of colour and wonder what they were sitting in church as most people couldn’t read, to the modern wonders of the cinema where a beam of light seems to shine as if onto a cathedral window, full of moving images that deep down, dwell and merge into our unconscious state and help us fill our brains to understand life and all the trials come with it.
- As our cultures and societies change, we often seek more kudos from our peers than from our elders, which not only helps us to understand ourselves and allows us to tell stories and to make sense of the world, but also it allows us to change culture in a similar way.
- People often are surrounded by history and ancient buildings, and yet have a collective amnesia of their past. We are nothing more than our hormones and emotions and the cell signalling transactions in our brain, but through these things by allowing ourselves to be open to art, whether it be poetry or written word or photograph. We can change history through a photograph, one may have stopped the Vietnam war and that's what art can do to change our culture for a better place.
- For much of our past and our lifespans that in the past were only a third in length to what they are today, and we had to live through wars, famine, plagues and for most of what, we were just trying to live, find food and shelter and pass on our genes were what mattered most. Now, we live longer, our food is plentiful, the only thing we really need to worry about is breathing in the air that we live in, that we can then now have the far greater and enriched life by the world through art and culture
- Art allows us to shape ourselves as we wander through this world on our own and allows us to connect with others and to help us with the journey that we undertake that we move through life.
- LEADERSHIP: The book then looked for leadership, and one of the interesting points is how many leaders seem to focus on division and stoking fear, chaos when we really need is to be able to connect and bring together people and share a vision for them to follow, put in the work to do it and make sure that vision is clear so that all those around them understand what is expected and what we want to achieve to make the world a better place.
- It's interesting to know that many people in the Navy or in Armed Forces will often feel more anxious about failure than they are about loss of life and this is how we define success, which nowadays seems to be power, wealth and fame. However, in the past, this wasn't always the case and other times, it might have just been people who wrote poetry. It's worth thinking that perhaps we should change what we define as success because having a few people who become wealthy powerful and famous leaves many of the rest of us well behind.
- ENTREPRENEURS: The next part of the book looks at entrepreneurs and that if we are going to come up with ideas, we need to be thinking about the ones that haven't been thought of yet, so it's worth keeping a notebook with you and asking people looking at situations where any need is required. However, entrepreneurs need to be thinking about not how to create wealth, but also are they doing something for the good of society and having that as a goal is really important step in creation a brilliant decision for someone to achieve. As someone once said, if you've never made a mistake, and you've never failed anything, you've never done anything and one of the most important things about entrepreneurs is learning from your failures and excepting that they're going to happen.
- DISCRIMINATON: The next section looks at discrimination and how people have used this usually through the security of trying to spread some form of religion and using class and colour as a form in which to show discrimination against others. This is something that happily has changed for the better but continues to be something we should strive to continue to improve and to stop discriminating and to see people as equal, although different due to culture and ideas that they have.
- One of the most insignificant problems about inequality is that for some people, it really benefits them, and they can make a lot of money out of promoting terrible approaches to how we should treat other people. Such things include big business and religions and people trying to spread their word through ignorance, and not accepting that other cultures are different to our own. So many acts of genocide and crimes against humanity have been created or occurred just through no other reason that create an ‘us and them’ discrimination and accepting or trying to create the idea that some people are better than others. Actually, it is variety and differences that enrich our lives, even though many people try to promote these ideas that are really quite hurtful.
- SEXISM AND GENDER: It's a sobering fact that more women have been killed in the last 50 years because of their gender than all the men in all the battles of the 20th century”. This idea that women are a second rate or lesser person than males, is in my opinion wrong, but it is something that is constantly occurring in our world.
- Women's rights and suppression is a human rights issue not some sort of moral issue and should be seen as such because there is so much discrimination. “In the UK, when women tried to speak out about gender inequality we're often told, “you don't know how lucky you are!... However, “every year 54,000 women lose their jobs as a result of paternity discrimination, 85,000 women are raped and 400,000 sexually assaulted.” When women are educated, they will have much better outcomes for their children in regard to how they treat them and the health and support they can give, but in many countries these rights do not occur.
- There are currently 72 countries where same sex relationships are either illegal or results in imprisonment and even the death penalty.
- One of the things about the Internet is it's given rise to so much hate speech and people really try to promote fear, uncertainty, and doubt. (FUD). We hear stories around the fear from refuges and immigration. Stoking fear is powerful, and making people doubt when people aren't telling you the truth, but they're telling you their truth and their facts and their belief and stating them as facts when they're not.
- In many ways, the biggest casualty of all of the lies and perpetuations sent on the Internet, and through social media is TRUTH.
- Another interesting aspect is that we are all descendants from Africans and yet we have managed to make and construct race where some people are deemed more superior to others and my personal opinion this is just quite wrong because in many ways we are all from we are all connected and we are all from the same background if you go back far enough.
- Just because we have evolved from an ape ancestor, from a handle to add to an axe (which took a million years or more) to sending men to walk on the moon, we may have become more intelligent, but we haven't necessarily grown wiser.
- To change and free us from the prison that we've created through the societies and the cultures that have become the norm, we need to be able to see people through the eyes of others to develop understanding and respect for others.
- WAR AND CONFLICT: The next part of the book looks at war, and how war has made many people lose their lives, so that the rich can get richer. When we have inequality and others have large amounts of wealth and reduce people rights, then you are more prone to having warfare occurring both in civil wars, and in war between other countries. It’s interesting to know that after most wars have finished that there is seldom peace that occurs or reconciliation following the war, and this can be due to people who have lost family members who will struggle to forgive and forget what has happened to their own loved ones. Although we can change infrastructure following wars and make new administrations and do rebuilding, one of the things we also need to consider is the narrative that people have told themselves within the narratives of the society and culture that surrounds them, and perhaps one of the only ways we can truly find a way of seeking peace is through the act of forgiveness, which is free, and also will really annoy your enemies because nothing hurts them more than being having the power that they no longer have control over you, because you have considered forgiveness. However, this isn’t always possible.
- The book also asked the question what a refugee is, it is no longer necessarily just somebody fleeing from repression or religion, but it is also people, for example coming from Africa who are just fleeing from a country that is unable to look after them, and if they do not flea, they will certainly die.
- There are 65 million refugees in the world, which is roughly the population of the UK, but nine out of every 10 refugee is actually a refugee in their own country or a neighbouring country, and only one in 10 actually make it to Europe. It is only when they get to Europe that we call this a crisis and until then it's not, which is a bit strange.
- Plato, once said that ‘only the dead know the end of war’, and one of the sad factors of our culture is that we tend to glorify war, and speak of it in noble terms when we need to realise that it is a way for rich people who want some land from somebody else, or seek some injustice or grievance, to send young men who are often innocent of any such cause, to their death, so that the powerful elites gain glory, wealth and their riches can be maintained.
- DEMOCRACY: The book, then looks at democracy and how this has been a bit of an experiment and begins with the Winston Churchill quote about if you want to have an argument about democracy and how bad it is the “have a five-minute conversation with the man on the street”, but then he also said of “democracy is the worst form of government, except for all others.”
- One of the interviewees, Michael Lewis talks about how people in America, no longer see themselves as citizens, but as customers and demanding what the government can do for everyone. Only when we consider the good of everyone rather than just our own selfish needs, we can create a better world, and that's how democracy should be working.
- It's important to know that politics is a complex business and you're never going to please all the people all the time, but we still need to have the idea that the voice of the citizen can help for the benefit of all, not just for themselves to create a strong government. Supporting countries less fortunate than ours can reduce inequality and reduce movements of some refuges.
- Someone once said that referendum are the tools of demagogues and dictators, but it's also interesting to know that when it came to an Brexit, this was mainly a tool used by government not in the interest of people, but as a tool to fight oppositions within their own party, and that was not a good outcome, and many of their lies they told have now come to be shown to be false.
- If one day, it might be that we need a really bad emergency or terrible thing happens for people to wake up and realise that actually having skin in the game is something worthwhile having, but whilst we have so many populist spreading misinformation and sowing fear, uncertainty and doubt, then it is very difficult to people to understand what is truly going on, and the value of having something like true democracy might just be an experiment that is a worthy thing that is worthwhile having.
- Lots more nuggets but the points above are the ones that have stuck me the most whilst reading.

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!