Nayef Al-Rodhan Quotes

72 Sourced Quotes

Justice is paramount to civilisational triumph because of its centrality to human dignity needs, the success of individual geo-cultural domains and the well-being of human civilisation.

Nayef Al-Rodhan
Considerations of justice are also integral to efforts to generate transcultural security in the first instance and, ultimately, transcultural synergy.

Nayef Al-Rodhan
Security, stability and prosperity will depend on the application of the multi-sum security principle that captures the multi-dimensional aspects of security and insists on the centrality of global justice for lasting security.

Nayef Al-Rodhan
Harmonious interstate relations will be guided by the paradigm of Symbiotic Realism that stresses the importance of absolute rather than relative gains.

Nayef Al-Rodhan
There is a physical neurobiological substrate to all human knowledge, including thoughts, memories, perceptions and emotions. To this end, mental states and thought processes are physical.

Nayef Al-Rodhan
Civilisational triumph is important because if it is not actively sought, conflictual relations between members of geo-cultural domains may become a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Nayef Al-Rodhan
Human beings are emotional amoral egoists, driven above all by emotional self-interest. All of our thoughts, beliefs and motivations are neurochemically mediated, some predetermined for survival, others alterable.

Nayef Al-Rodhan
Globalization is a process that encompasses the causes, course, and consequences of transnational and transcultural integration of human and non-human activities.

Nayef Al-Rodhan
If states do not act according to principles of justice, the injustices they perpetrate will harm not just other states but ultimately also their own national interest.

Nayef Al-Rodhan
In a globalized world, security can no longer be thought of as a zero-sum game involving states alone. Global security, instead, has five dimensions that include human, environmental, national, transnational, and transcultural security, and, therefore, global security and the security of any state or culture cannot be achieved without good governance at all levels that guarantees security through justice for all individuals, states, and cultures.

Nayef Al-Rodhan
Indeed, collective triumph will also depend both on the application of reason and the recognition that a great deal of knowledge is indeterminate and may be temporally, spatially and perhaps culturally constrained.

Nayef Al-Rodhan
Civilisational triumph is thus not a zero-sum enterprise that favours one geo-cultural domain over another.

Nayef Al-Rodhan
Human and societal security should be seen as complementary to state security, and security must be thought of in multi-sum and multi-dimensional terms (human, national, transnational, environmental and transcivilisational).

Nayef Al-Rodhan
The enduring assumption that human behaviour is governed by innate morality and reason is at odds with the persistence of human deprivation, inequality, injustice, misery, brutality and conflict.

Nayef Al-Rodhan
Focusing purely on extremism, whether in the Arab-Islamic world or the West, will not alleviate the root causes of tensions between members of different cultures. It will only alienate those who do not recognise themselves in those stereotypes, and generate fear and misunderstanding.

Nayef Al-Rodhan
Cultural essentialism is, thus, intimately tied to power relations. Fixity, homogeneity and separateness are prioritised within an essentialist framework. Therefore, part of any effort to resist essentialism is recognising diversity within difference, contingency, mutability and connectedness.

Nayef Al-Rodhan
International cooperation is required to prevent anarchic situations developing and the unmasking of ever-present brutality and injustice that results from fear for survival in such situations.

Nayef Al-Rodhan
Addictive drugs misuse the brain's existing pre-programming, activating reward mechanisms and extreme feelings of pleasure. When stimulated, the brain's pleasure centres emit signals to repeat the behaviour. In this sense, the brain is pre-programmed to feel good.

Nayef Al-Rodhan
Strict ethical guidelines need to be developed in anticipation of significant technological and biotechnological advances in order to guarantee human dignity.

Nayef Al-Rodhan
The power of emotions as drivers of behaviour, especially when survival is perceived as being at stake, needs to be recognised and taken into account at all levels of society and governance.

Nayef Al-Rodhan
Institutions should focus on educating against clashes of culture and the promotion of a culture of tolerance and peace.

Nayef Al-Rodhan
Ultimately, I conclude that however we understand existence, what gives meaning to our lives are those things that serve our neurochemically based emotional self-interest in a sustainable way.

Nayef Al-Rodhan
Human nature is governed by general self-interest and affected by genetic predisposition, which implies that there are likely to be limits to our moral sensitivities.

Nayef Al-Rodhan
Morality, if present, should not be relied on because it will be trumped by self interest in most circumstances.

Nayef Al-Rodhan
3D printing is going to transform our societies, our freedoms and our sense of security.

Nayef Al-Rodhan
Human nature as we know it is, nevertheless, malleable and manageable. It may be radically modified as a result of advances in bio-, molecular, nano- and computational technologies. It will therefore be essential to establish a clear code of ethics regulating the use of these technologies sooner rather than later.

Nayef Al-Rodhan
A lesser-known fact about the geopolitics of resources has escaped public polemics. This refers to rare earth metals or rare-earth elements (REMs), a set of 17 naturally occurring non-toxic materials, which play a pivotal role for emerging technologies and which are predominantly produced and exported from China.

Nayef Al-Rodhan
Human beings are largely motivated by their emotional repertoire, manifested through their need for attachment, physical security, a sense of belonging and a positive personal and collective identity.

Nayef Al-Rodhan
A good governance paradigm that limits excesses of human nature and ensures an atmosphere of happiness and productivity by promoting reason and dignity is required.

Nayef Al-Rodhan
One of the key ingredients of coexistence and successful cooperation is trust.

Nayef Al-Rodhan