When they try, we tend not to take any notice.

we tend to forget that Britney is human like the rest of us.

Too often, we yield to the temptation to offer weak formulas that are never implemented.

We tend to be less demanding of China than of Russia, because we tend to see Russia as European (at least culturally).

Second, with transparency we tend to see more of humans at their worst.

And we tend to fall in love with somebody from the same socioeconomic background, the same general level of intelligence, the same general level of good looks, the same religious values.

But we tend to retain into adulthood the same views of God that we formed in childhood.

Why do we tend to underinvest in the resilience of our economies key systems?

And if I go down and look at Niger, where there was such a terrible famine, lastly, it's like this. The 20 percent poorest of Niger is out here, and the 20 percent richest of South Africa is there, and yet we tend to discuss on what solutions there should be in Africa.

We tend not to be bothered by people who are either vastly more successful or vastly less successful.

There are exceptions, but we lean towards being a nation of bullies.

We have a tendency to underestimate both the probabilities and consequences of what in the investment world are called left tailed events.

Not trusting that officials will be candid about alarming information, we rely more on rumors.

Failed States or States under stress, as we tend to call them today are ideal safe havens for terrorist networks.

And one of the things we tend to do as adults, again, is we edit things.

This is an exercise we in South Africa are not accustomed to undertaking, for as a people we tend to sell ourselves short.

In our market driven times, we tend to think about the price of everything and the value of nothing, as Oscar Wilde put it.

We tend to think of diplomacy as something carried out in secret sometimes, however, it is better to hide in plain sight.

We need each other.

We have not looked back.

Unfortunately, when it comes to policies marketed as reining in global warming, protecting the environment, or creating green jobs, we have a tendency to make hasty decisions that don t pass the test.

Economists usually compute urban land value by subtracting the estimated construction cost of the home from the home price, so that land value is inferred as a residual.

If traffic is stalled for hours and no one else is making progress, we tend to relax and accept the situation resignedly.

All of this may seem obvious, but we tend not to think of oil prices as being determined by expectations of future prices.

The most fundamental problem is that, in examining stock market investments, we are selecting an economic activity because it was a consistent success in the past.

Mr. Dimanche Lissou said that, as human beings, we are inclined to generalize, characterize and categorize in order to help us to understand the world and our place in it.

We lack critical assets and personnel.

We need a comprehensive strategy for success.

We now need to implement them with urgency.

We also need the regional organizations we need civil society we need the non governmental organizations.

We need many more resources.

We need an exercise. We need a framework to learn how to be more mindful.

True, we tend to align ourselves these days more with Venus than Mars, something for which the rest of the world should be deeply grateful.

That leads to a second and more plausible explanation, which is psychological and behavioral in character. We have a tendency to underestimate both the probabilities and consequences of what in the investment world are called left tailed events.

As humans, we are highly evolved to adjust to our surroundings we tend to adapt to a culture, well conceived or not, and lose sight of its failings.

We now need the opposite.

We all know where that led.

There is a lack of self examination.

And we are now well on the way to diminishing returns.

We are now entering the peak of the lean season .

We need to act now with the same urgency.

We support its contents and join in the consensus.

We look forward to a productive exchange of information and ideas.

One side note here is that I believe we tend too often, when considering the situation in Darfur and in the Sudan, to look at those problems separately.

For example Bertrand Russell notes the paradox in his Analysis of Matter (1927) we appeal to ordinary perception to arrive at our physical theories, yet those same theories seem to undermine that everyday perception, which is rich in meaning.