If we assume the best in people, we can radically redesign our democracy and welfare states.
Rutger BregmanRead
Since long workdays lead to more errors, shorter workdays could reduce accidents. Overtime is deadly. Tired surgeons have been found to be more prone to slip'ups, and soldiers who get too little shuteye are more prone to miss targets.
Interpretation
Shorter workdays can improve performance and safety by reducing fatigue.
The quote emphasizes the negative impact of long work hours on productivity and safety, particularly in high-stakes professions such as surgery and military operations. It suggests that reducing work hours can mitigate errors and accidents caused by fatigue, therefore promoting a healthier work-life balance that ultimately benefits both individuals and their professions.
In practice
During a team meeting discussing work-life balance, the quote can highlight the importance of reducing work hours.
If we assume the best in people, we can radically redesign our democracy and welfare states.
My hope is that the corona crisis will help bring us into a new age of cooperation and solidarity and a realization that we're in this together.
This is what a crisis does: It makes you question the status quo. That doesn't mean that after a crisis we move into some kind of utopia. But it is an opportunity for political change.
While it won't solve all the world's ills - and ideas such as a rent cap and more social housing are necessary in places where housing is scarce - a basic income would work like venture capital for the people.
Believing in the good of humanity is a revolutionary act - it means that we don't need all those managers and CEO's, kings and generals. That we can trust people to govern themselves and make their own decisions.
We so often tend to think our democracies are ruled by procedures and laws, but they are also governed by implicit rules and assumptions and one of them is the ability to feel shame - that you can be shamed.
Here we have the great irony of modern nutrition: at a time when hundreds of millions of people do not have enough to eat, hundreds of millions more are eating too much and are overweight or obese.
The physicians are the natural attorneys of the poor, and the social problems should largely be solved by them.
In Paris, AIDS was dismissed as an American phobia until French people started dying; then everyone said, 'Well, you have to die some way or another.' If Americans were hysterical and pragmatic, the French were fatalistic: depressed but determined to keep the party going.
Physical well-being is not only a priceless asset to oneself-it is a heritage to be passed on. With good health, all other activities of life are greatly enhanced. A clean mind in a healthy body enables one to render far more effective service to others. It helps one provide more vigorous leadership. It gives our every experience in life more zest and more meaning. Robust health is a noble and worthwhile attainment.
They don't actually see the real world, where 95% of the people with HIV are not treated and are dying. And even though we have some blue sky now in our country, the sky could become cloudy again very soon.
Food is medicine. We can actually change our gene expressions with the foods we eat.
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