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I've been thinking a lot about the world recently
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and how it's changed over the last 20, 30, 40 years.
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Twenty or 30 years ago,
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if a chicken caught a cold and sneezed and died
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in a remote village in east Asia,
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it would have been a tragedy for the chicken
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and its closest relatives,
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but I don't think there was much possibility
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of us fearing a global pandemic
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and the deaths of millions.
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Twenty or 30 years ago, if a bank in North America
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lent too much money to some people
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who couldn't afford to pay it back
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and the bank went bust,
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that was bad for the lender
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and bad for the borrower,
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but we didn't imagine it would bring
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the global economic system to its knees
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for nearly a decade.
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This is globalization.
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This is the miracle that has enabled us
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to transship our bodies and our minds
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and our words and our pictures and our ideas
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and our teaching and our learning around the planet
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ever faster and ever cheaper.
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It's brought a lot of bad stuff,
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like the stuff that I just described,
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but it's also brought a lot of good stuff.
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A lot of us are not aware
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of the extraordinary successes of
the Millennium Development Goals,
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several of which have achieved their targets
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long before the due date.
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That proves that this species of humanity
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is capable of achieving extraordinary progress
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if it really acts together and it really tries hard.
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But if I had to put it in a nutshell these days,
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I sort of feel that globalization
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has taken us by surprise,
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and we've been slow to respond to it.
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If you look at the downside of globalization,
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it really does seem to be sometimes overwhelming.
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All of the grand challenges that we face today,
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like climate change and human rights
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and demographics and terrorism and pandemics
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and narco-trafficking and human slavery
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and species loss, I could go on,
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we're not making an awful lot of progress
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against an awful lot of those challenges.
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So in a nutshell, that's the challenge
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that we all face today
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at this interesting point in history.
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That's clearly what we've got to do next.
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We've somehow got to get our act together
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and we've got to figure out how to globalize
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the solutions better
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so that we don't simply become a species
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which is a victim of the globalization of problems.
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Why are we so slow at achieving these advances?
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What's the reason for it?
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Well, there are of course a number of reasons,
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but perhaps the primary reason
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is because we're still organized as a species
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in the same way that we were organized
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two or three hundred years ago.
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There's one superpower left on the planet
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and that is the seven billion people,
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the seven billion of us who cause all these problems,
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the same seven billion, by the way,
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who will resolve them all.
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But how are those seven billion organized?
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They're still organized in 200 or so nation-states,
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and the nations have governments
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that make rules
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and cause us to behave in certain ways.
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And that's a pretty efficient system,
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but the problem is that the
way that those laws are made
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and the way those governments think
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is absolutely wrong for the
solution of global problems,
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because it all looks inwards.
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The politicians that we elect
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and the politicians we don't elect, on the whole,
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have minds that microscope.
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They don't have minds that telescope.
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They look in. They pretend, they behave,
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as if they believed that every country was an island
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that existed quite happily, independently
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of all the others
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on its own little planet
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in its own little solar system.
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This is the problem:
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countries competing against each other,
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countries fighting against each other.
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This week, as any week you care to look at,
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you'll find people actually trying to kill
each other from country to country,
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but even when that's not going on,
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there's competition between countries,
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each one trying to shaft the next.
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This is clearly not a good arrangement.
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We clearly need to change it.
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We clearly need to find ways
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of encouraging countries to start working together
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a little bit better.
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And why won't they do that?
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Why is it our leaders still persist in looking inwards?
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Well, the first and most obvious reason
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is because that's what we ask them to do.
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That's what we tell them to do.
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When we elect governments
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or when we tolerate unelected governments,
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we're effectively telling them that what we want
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is for them to deliver us in our country
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a certain number of things.
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We want them to deliver prosperity,
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growth, competitiveness, transparency, justice,
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and all of those things.
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So unless we start asking our governments
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to think outside a little bit,
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to consider the global problems that will finish us all
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if we don't start considering them,
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then we can hardly blame them
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if what they carry on doing is looking inwards,
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if they still have minds that microscope
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rather than minds that telescope.
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That's the first reason why
things tend not to change.
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The second reason is that these governments,
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just like all the rest of us,
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are cultural psychopaths.
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I don't mean to be rude,
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but you know what a psychopath is.
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A psychopath is a person who,
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unfortunately for him or her,
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lacks the ability to really empathize
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with other human beings.
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When they look around,
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they don't see other human beings
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with deep, rich, three-dimensional personal lives
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and aims and ambitions.
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What they see is cardboard cutouts,
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and it's very sad and it's very lonely,
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and it's very rare, fortunately.
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But actually, aren't most of us
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not really so very good at empathy?
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Oh sure, we're very good at empathy
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when it's a question of dealing with people
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who kind of look like us
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and kind of walk and talk and eat and pray
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and wear like us,
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but when it comes to people who don't do that,
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who don't quite dress like us
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and don't quite pray like us
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and don't quite talk like us,
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do we not also have a tendency to see them
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ever so slightly as cardboard cutouts too?
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And this is a question we need to ask ourselves.
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I think constantly we have to monitor it.
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Are we and our politicians to a degree
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cultural psychopaths?
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The third reason is hardly worth mentioning,
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because it's so silly,
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but there's a belief amongst governments
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that the domestic agenda
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and the international agenda
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are incompatible and always will be.
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This is just nonsense.
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In my day job, I'm a policy advisor.
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I've spent the last 15 years or so
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advising governments around the world,
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and in all that time I have never once seen
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a single domestic policy issue
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that could not be more imaginatively,
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effectively, and rapidly resolved
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than by treating it as an international problem,
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looking at the international context,
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comparing what others have done,
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bringing in others, working externally
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instead of working internally.
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And so you may say, well, given all of that,
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why then doesn't it work?
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Why can we not make our politicians change?
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Why can't we demand them?
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Well I, like a lot of us, spend
a lot of time complaining
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about how hard it is to make people change,
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and I don't think we should fuss about it.
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I think we should just accept
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that we are an inherently conservative species.
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We don't like to change.
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It exists for very sensible evolutionary reasons.
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We probably wouldn't still be here today
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if we weren't so resistant to change.
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It's very simple: many thousands of years ago,
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we discovered that if we carried on
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doing the same things, we wouldn't die,
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because the things that we'd done before
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by definition didn't kill us,
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and therefore as long as we carry on doing them,
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we'll be okay,
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and it's very sensible not to do anything new,
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because it might kill you.
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But of course, there are exceptions to that.
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Otherwise, we'd never get anywhere.
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And one of the exceptions, the interesting exception,
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is when you can show to people
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that there might be some self-interest
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in them making that leap of faith
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and changing a little bit.
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So I've spent a lot of the last 10 or 15 years
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trying to find out what could be that self-interest
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that would encourage not just politicians
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but also businesses and general populations,
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all of us, start to think a little more outwardly,
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to think in a bigger picture,
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not always to look inwards,
sometimes to look outwards.
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And this is where I discovered
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something quite important.
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In 2005, I launched a study
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called the Nations Brands Index.
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What it is, it's a very large scale study that polls
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a very large sample of the world's population,
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a sample that represents about 70 percent
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of the planet's population,
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and I started asking them a series of questions
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about how they perceive other countries.
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And the Nation Brands Index over the years
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has grown to be a very, very large database.
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It's about 200 billion data points
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tracking what ordinary people
think about other countries
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and why.
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Why did I do this? Well, because
the governments that I advise
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are very, very keen on knowing
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how they are regarded.
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They've known, partly because
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I've encouraged them to realize it,
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that countries depend
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enormously on their reputations
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in order to survive and prosper in the world.
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If a country has a great, positive image,
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like Germany has or Sweden or Switzerland,
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everything is easy and everything is cheap.
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You get more tourists. You get more investors.
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You sell your products more expensively.
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If, on the other hand, you have a country
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with a very weak or a very negative image,
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everything is difficult and everything is expensive.
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So governments care desperately
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about the image of their country,
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because it makes a direct difference
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to how much money they can make,
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and that's what they've promised their populations
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they're going to deliver.
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So a couple of years ago, I thought I would take
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some time out and speak to that gigantic database
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and ask it
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why do some people prefer one country
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more than another.
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And the answer that the database gave me
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completely staggered me.
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It was 6.8.
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I haven't got time to explain in detail.
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Basically what it told me was
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— (Laughter) (Applause) —
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the kinds of countries we prefer are good countries.
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We don't admire countries
primarily because they're rich,
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because they're powerful,
because they're successful,
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because they're modern, because
they're technologically advanced.
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We primarily admire countries that are good.
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What do we mean by good?
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We mean countries that seem to contribute
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something to the world in which we live,
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countries that actually make the world safer
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or better or richer or fairer.
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Those are the countries we like.
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This is a discovery of significant importance
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— you see where I'm going —
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because it squares the circle.
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I can now say, and often do, to any government,
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in order to do well, you need to do good.
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If you want to sell more products,
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if you want to get more investment,
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if you want to become more competitive,
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then you need to start behaving,
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because that's why people will respect you
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and do business with you,
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and therefore, the more you collaborate,
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the more competitive you become.
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This is quite an important discovery,
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and as soon as I discovered this,
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I felt another index coming on.
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I swear that as I get older, my ideas become simpler
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and more and more childish.
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This one is called the Good Country Index
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— (Applause) —
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and it does exactly what it says on the tin.
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It measures, or at least it tries to measure,
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exactly how much each country on earth contributes
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not to its own population but to the rest of humanity.
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Bizarrely, nobody had ever thought
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of measuring this before.
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So my colleague Dr. Robert Govers and I have spent
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the best part of the last two years,
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with the help of a large number
of very serious and clever people,
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cramming together all the reliable data in the world
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we could find about what countries give
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to the world.
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And you're waiting for me to
tell you which one comes top.
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And I'm going to tell you,
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but first of all I want to tell you
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precisely what I mean
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when I say a good country.
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I do not mean morally good.
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When I say that Country X
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is the goodest country on earth,
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and I mean goodest, I don't mean best.
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Best is something different.
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When you're talking about a good country,
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you can be good, gooder, and goodest.
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It's not the same thing as good, better, and best.
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This is a country which simply gives more
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to humanity than any other country.
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I don't talk about how they behave at home
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because that's measured elsewhere.
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And the winner is
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Ireland.
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(Applause)
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According to the data here,
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no country on earth per head of population,
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per dollar of GDP, contributes more
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to the world that we live in than Ireland.
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What does this mean?
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This means that as we go to sleep at night,
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all of us in the last 15 seconds
before we drift off to sleep,
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our final thought should be,
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Godammit I'm glad that Ireland exists.
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(Laughter)
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And that — (Applause) —
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in the depths of a very severe economic recession.
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I think that there's a really important lesson there,
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that if you can remember
your international obligations
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whilst you are trying to rebuild your own economy,
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that's really something.
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Finland ranks pretty much the same.
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The only reason why it's below Ireland
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is because its lowest score is
lower than Ireland's lowest score.
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Now the other thing you'll
notice about the top 10 there
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is of course they're all, apart from New Zealand,
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Western European nations.
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They're also all rich.
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This depressed me,
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because one of the things that I did not want
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to discover with this index
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is that it's purely the province of rich countries
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to help poor countries.
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This is not what it's all about.
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And indeed, if you look further down the list,
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I don't have the slide here, you will see
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something that made me very happy indeed,
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that Kenya is in the top 30,
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and that demonstrates one
very, very important thing.
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This is not about money.
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This is about attitude.
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This is about culture.
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This is about a government and a people that care
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about the rest of the world
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and have the imagination and the courage
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to think outwards instead of only thinking selfishly.
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I'm going to whip through the other slides
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just so you can see some
of the lower-lying countries.
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There's Germany at 13th, the U.S. comes 21st,
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Mexico comes 66th,
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and then we have some of
the big developing countries
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like Russia at 95th, China at 107th.
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Countries like China and Russia and India,
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which is down in the same sort of part of the index,
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well, in some ways, it's not surprising.
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They've spent a great deal of time
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over the last decades building their own economy,
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building their own society and their own polity,
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but it is to be hoped
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that the second phase of their growth
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will be somewhat more outward-looking
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than the first phase has been so far.
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And then you can break down each country
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in terms of the actual data sets that build into it.
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I'll allow you to do that.
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From midnight tonight it's going
to be on goodcountry.org,
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and you can look at the country.
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You can look right down to the
level of the individual data sets.
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Now that's the Good Country Index.
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What's it there for?
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Well, it's there really because I want to try
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to introduce this word,
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or reintroduce this word, into the discourse.
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I've had enough hearing about competitive countries.
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I've had enough hearing about
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prosperous, wealthy, fast-growing countries.
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I've even had enough hearing about happy countries
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because in the end that's still selfish.
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That's still about us,
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and if we carry on thinking about us,
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we are in deep, deep trouble.
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I think we all know what it is
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that we want to hear about.
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We want to hear about good countries,
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and so I want to ask you all a favor.
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I'm not asking a lot.
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It's something that you might find easy to do
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and you might even find enjoyable
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and even helpful to do,
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and that's simply to start using the word "good"
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in this context.
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When you think about your own country,
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when you think about other people's countries,
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when you think about companies,
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when you talk about the world that we live in today,
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start using that word
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in the way that I've talked about this evening.
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Not good, the opposite of bad,
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because that's an argument that never finishes.
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Good, the opposite of selfish,
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good being a country that thinks about all of us.
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That's what I would like you to do,
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and I would like you to use it as a stick
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with which to beat your politicians.
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When you elect them, when you reelect them,
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when you vote for them, when you listen
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to what they're offering you,
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use that word "good,"
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and ask yourself,
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"Is that what a good country would do?"
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And if the answer is no, be very suspicious.
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Ask yourself, is that the behavior
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of my country?
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Do I want to come from a country
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where the government in my name
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is doing things like that?
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Or do I, on the other hand,
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prefer the idea of walking around the world
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with my head held high thinking, "Yeah,
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I'm proud to come from a good country"?
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And everybody will welcome you.
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And everybody in the last 15 seconds
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before they drift to sleep at night will say,
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"Gosh, I'm glad that person's country exists."
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Ultimately, that, I think,
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is what will make the change.
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That word "good"
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and the number 6.8
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and the discovery that's behind it
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have changed my life.
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I think they can change your life,
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and I think we can use it to change
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the way that our politicians
and our companies behave,
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and in doing so, we can change the world.
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I've started thinking very differently about
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my own country since I've been
thinking about these things.
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I used to think that I wanted to live in a rich country,
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and then I started thinking I
wanted to live in a happy country,
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but I began to realize, it's not enough.
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I don't want to live in a rich country.
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I don't want to live in a fast-growing
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or competitive country.
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I want to live in a good country,
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and I so, so hope that you do too.
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Thank you.
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(Applause)