Spending a minute or two looking out on the bustling scene of Piccadilly Circus from a nearby rooftop, there are so many observations you can make about the state of much of today's world.
The first thing that catches your eye is the massive array of advertising boards. Then, you've got the plethora of stores underneath them. Both of these highlight just the importance of the roles of advertising, products and consumption in our modern society.
Then, look on a level down from that, and you see the traffic. The buses, the limousines, and the cyclists sandwiched in between- you see people are busy, people are going places. In doing so, many people are actually causing damage- releasing all sorts of pollution, and, over time, in aggregate causing substantial damage to their city and their planet. And they may never see the results of this damage- but their children and grandchildren most likely will.
Take an even closer look, and observe the people who are in these vehicles, and the people being sucked into these stores. You see people from all corners of the world. Whether they are tourists or migrants, you realise the sheer diversity of today's metropolis. The world is perhaps as small as it has ever been.
It's just one scene, but the world today is such that there are a million different observations that can be made about it.
How to do business, how to care for the environment, they are two topics which I am incredibly excited to hear about and discuss at this year's One Young World conference. But what I look forward to perhaps even more is the collection of people I'm about to meet- people from all nationalities, with different backgrounds and different reasons to be there. Because just like the photo above, OYW is a place to learn massive lessons about the state of today's world.
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