The Alliance for Responsible Citizenship

7 talks from ARC 2025 have now hit over 1 million views on YouTube — in this thread we’re going to be diving into the highlights. Check out these standout moments from each speaker, and see why they’ve made such an impact 👇🧵

“Do you want to stop the madness, and revive man’s appetite for sanity? Do you want to restore clarity and conviction? Do you want to build a society on the foundations of wisdom instead of self-serving ambition? Then plant a garden. Plant a garden in Babylon." On the final day of ARC 2025, @JoshuaLukeSmith delivered a stunning spoken word that brought the whole room to its feet... It was a call to live sacrificially, to embed ourselves in the brokenness we see around us and bear the burden of redeeming it so that future generations may reap the harvest we sow. "Plant a garden in Babylon. Bury your seeds in the soil you have battled against for so long. For this is the only world to which you will ever belong. So turn your exile into your Eden, and turn your sorrow into a song Turn your rejection into birth pains of restoration and mine from your frustration the potential of growth. Pull from your suffering a morsel of hope. And forgive your captors, forgive the ones who made you bleed; let them go For it is time for us to build, no, it is time for us to sow, No, it is time for us to become the seed, To live in proximity, To lay our lives down so that others one day can simply breathe.” Watch the full video over on our YouTube channel

“Who has proven that this deluge of screen education is good for children? No one has.” Steve Jobs didn’t let his own kids use iPads Parents everywhere are beginning to wake up to the harm that excessive screen use can cause in children. Many make great efforts to give their children real-world engagement and nourishing activity, even when screens can provide what feels like an easy way out. But then their children go to school and all that hard work comes unstuck… In her ARC 2025 keynote, Sophie Winkleman sounded the alarm on the dangers of excessive technology in our classrooms, and urged for parents, schools and governments worldwide to work together to return to an ‘analogue’ form of education – books, paper, pens. “The Karolinska Institute in Sweden recently published research concluding that there’s clear scientific evidence that these tools impair rather than enhance learning.” If it’s not good at home, it's not good in the classroom. Sophie is calling for people everywhere to follow Sweden’s example, and take action to kick tech out of the classroom. Watch the full ARC 2025 talk over on our YouTube channel.

"I'm known as Britain's strictest headmistress." Katharine Birbalsingh runs Michaela Community School in London's inner city. Despite the challenges presented by a highly multicultural cohort of students from one of the most deprived areas in the city, the school is highly successful, and its results have ranked it as the top school in the country. Every year, over 800 visitors from all over the world come to see how they do it. Birbalsingh’s approach? High expectations. Strict rules. The team always trumps the individual. Students are taught to take personal responsibility, to reject victimhood, to have a sense of duty towards others, and to embrace self-sacrifice for the betterment of the whole. "No matter how often they are told that they are oppressed – that the establishment is against them because they are poor or black or live on an estate – it will always be the case that we have agency." In a world increasingly obsessed with identity politics and victimhood narratives, Birbalsingh offers something radical: the belief that our children are capable. That they have power. That their future isn't determined by their circumstances but by their choices. At ARC 2023, she made a compelling case: our schools should immerse children in values that promote cohesion rather than division. What if we stopped teaching children they're victims and started teaching them they're agents of their own lives?

Only 24hrs left to enter our Christmas giveaway! sign up for your chance to join us at ARC 2026: arc-conference.com/subscribe?utm_…

🔔 We’re giving away 2 tickets to ARC 2026 🔔 Over the past 3 years the Alliance for Responsible Citizenship has gathered in London to bring some together some of the best and brightest hearts and minds to explore some of the greatest challenges and opportunities facing our societies today. It is because of YOUR help and support that ARC has been able to touch and gather people from all world and build this global community. So this Christmas, we want to say thank you. For the first time ever, we’re giving away two tickets to the ARC Conference in London, 23-25th June 2026 – one for you, and one for whoever you’d love to bring. TO ENTER the giveaway, subscribe to our newsletter at the link below arc-conference.com/subscribe?utm_… The giveaway closes GMT on 8 December, with the winner announced by email shortly after. Merry Christmas from ARC 🔔

"There is a worldwide epidemic of mental illness in children." At ARC 2025, @EricaKomisarCSW shared a difficult truth that cuts deep: the mental health epidemic in our children is rooted in emotional and physical neglect in early childhood. Her keynote breaks down insights from over 33 years working with parents and children: "Children are born neurologically fragile not resilient. They need attachment security as the foundation for mental health. Mothers serve a unique biological function." Children need love, attention, parental presence, and sacrifice in their formative years. These are the building blocks of feeling lovable and valuable. Without them, they spend their adult lives trying to compensate—endlessly trying to fill a void that should never have existed. Komisar gave this rallying call: "The more we can be there physically and emotionally, the greater the chance that your children will become healthy individuals. We must turn around the narrative that work outside the home is more important... Parents must make better choices and make the sacrifices." None of this is easy. For the vast majority of families, going back to a single working parent isn't affordable even if they want to. We've built an economic system that makes it nearly impossible to raise children the way they need to be raised. But if we are to turn around the mental health crisis in our children, the first step is to understand it's root causes. Children need their parents. In the words of Erica's book - the first step is just "Being There". At ARC, we are convinced that the building block of a flourishing society is the family. We live in a culture that has forgotten the value of the very basic things in life. But for the sake of the next generation we must imagine a better path forwards - one that above all values our children first. Watch this full talk from Erica Komisar on our YouTube channel

Money. Freedom. Family. Knowledge. Safety. Fame. Comfort. Every single one of us is running after something. Living for something. But in his punchy keynote at the first ARC Conference - @PageauJonathan confronted us with this: "Whatever you think is most important…is not." We live in a world of competing absolutes. Every ideology, every movement, every advert planting suggestive ideas in the subconscious: makes a claim that they can satisfy. Every cause claims to hold the ultimate answer. But the moment we stop at any single good and say "this is it", we've made it into a god. Pageau says we can do better. "Always look higher. Don't let your perception stop at the goods you care about today." The answer isn't to abandon these goods. It's to organise them properly, to recognise their place. Not to allow a love for delicious food to become gluttony, or a right self-respect to become narcissism. Pageau's claim is that everything good in life sits in a hierarchy beneath something greater. We can order our lives well, and our loves well, but first we must answer the fundamental question: What is the supreme good?

30,000 hours of algorithmically induced hypnosis. That's how much time the average American teenager will have spent on social media by the time they turn 30. The average American now spends 6-9 hours a day staring at screens. In an ARC 2025 speech that has since been viewed almost 3 million times, Oliver Anthony @AintGottaDollar provided a stark warning… “neuroplasticity has made us increasingly digitally proficient, but at a cost of being digitally dependent… …if being hired on as a London cab driver, can change your brain on an MRI scan, and if life experiences like PSD can alter the DNA in sperm, What irreversible alterations will 30,000 hours of staring into an algorithmically fed state of hypnosis do to the human mind or to their offspring?” Spend five minutes on a train and you see face after face plugged in… physically present but living in augmented reality. Everywhere you turn, you see the same struggle—people fighting to maintain conscious attention in the real world against the overwhelming pull of the digital one. We are the first generation of digital natives. At ARC, we are asking 'how can we flourish in the technological age?' What do you think?

“We’re stuck in the psychodrama of life every day. My job. My commute. My money. My lunch. My television shows. It’s so boring. What we need is relief and peace and perspective. And the only way to do that. The only way to do that… is to get small and make the universe large. To cut our narcissism and pay attention to what's greater than us.” We are living in a meaning crisis. You see it in the mental health figures, feel it in the nihilistic news-headlines. As everything shakes, we all need roots if we are to stand tall. We were honoured to welcome @ArthurBrooks to ARC 2025. Arthur is a professor at Harvard Business School and a world renowned author. He shared from his years of experience and study on what he believes are the 4 key ingredients to finding happiness. He argued that the key to living well is “to get small and make the universe large. To cut our narcissism and pay attention to what’s greater than us.” Do you agree? What steps are you taking to find meaning in these times? Watch his full talk on our YouTube channel

The West won the Cold War, then gave up trying. 30 years of government creep, regulation explosion, and "managed decline." @DavidGHFrost asks: do we accept economic stagnation as permanent, or fight for abundance again?

What's the difference between a contract and a covenant? @OsGuinness argues this forgotten distinction explains why our democracies are failing. Watch him explain this forgotten political bond that laid the foundations of western civilisation.

What are we doing to our children? Mental health problems in our children and young people have skyrocketed over the past decade. There is growing evidence that points to screen use, and social media as a major factor. One of the voices leading the fight to keep this technology out of our children’s classrooms is Sophie Winkleman. She joined us at ARC 2025 to call for urgent changes to limit screen use in our children, in a talk that has now reached millions worldwide. @JonHaidt ’s book The Anxious Generation is now the seminal text on this subject, and Jonathan described Sophie’s ARC speech as ‘the best talk I’ve ever seen on what computers and tablets on the desktops of children do to the child’s education.’ Sophie’s words ring in our ears: “I visited schools up and down the country, and too often I saw children distracted in classrooms yet silent in playgrounds. Screens were taking their attention away from their teachers during lessons and away from each other during break time. I also observed children in general becoming a different species. The raucous exuberance of youth was being replaced with an anxious, irritable insularity, which was disturbing to see.” From social isolation to cognitive decline, Sophie warned of the irreversible damage caused by constant screen exposure in childhood. Her solution? A return to 'analog' childhood—classrooms alive with discussion, playgrounds filled with laughter, and homes where books and imagination take precedence over digital distraction. What do you think? Can smartphones and iPads be part of a flourishing childhood? Or is now the time to take radical steps for the future?

We’ve turned "rights" into weapons and "freedom" into selfishness. @NigelBiggar explains how we confused dignity with autonomy, and why it's destroying us.

Teen anxiety up 52%. Depression up 63%. Suicide rates soaring. What is causing this fragility in our children? Psychoanalyst Erica Komisar has the answer no one wants to hear: We are. @EricaKomisarCSW talks with @BenedictRogers about the causes of the mental health crisis in our young people.

From Communist Somalia to Islamic theocracy to Western freedom. @Ayaan 's journey spans every major worldview of our time. Her warning to the West: "Our culture is a flower, cut off from its roots. It may wither and die." We were privileged to hear her unique perspective in this ARC 2025 interview with @BenedictRogers, exclusively on X.

David Stroud contributed a chapter for ARC Research’s book: The Best of Our Inheritance, called The Power of Networks: A Legacy of Renewal His thesis: Real transformation doesn't come from institutions or individuals—it comes from relational networks of leaders. Get your copy: arcforum.com/store/p/the-be…

History is filled with small groups of people who have had a disproportionate impact. The Clapham Sect ended slavery. Victorian High Minds transformed a nation in crisis. The Inklings influenced literature for generations. What did they all share? They weren't institutions or lone wolves—they were creative minorities. In this ARC Research interview, David Stroud reveals how small networks change the world.

"Your societies are fading away, and that's mathematical" @elonmusk @StephenJShaw presented the shocking numbers behind the population crisis at ARC 2025

(4/4) Why does this matter right now? While we've been regulating ourselves into stagnation, the conditions that created the modern world are disappearing. We've proven human innovation can solve almost any problem. Extreme poverty, disease, material scarcity—all dramatically improved. But if we want continued progress, we need to rebuild the environment where human ingenuity can flourish—before we lose it entirely.

(3/4) Ridley's thesis: Innovation flourishes in very specific conditions. Destroy them, and progress dies. Throughout history, innovation has exploded in just a few places and times: - Classical Greece & Ashokan India (2,000+ years ago) - Abbasid Arabia & Song China (~1,000 years ago) - Renaissance Italian city-states (500 years ago) - Industrial Revolution Britain (200 years ago) What did they all share? Freedom. Not perfect freedom, but enough breathing room to experiment, fail, try again, and spread new ideas without being crushed. The formula is simple: Rule of law, abundant energy, and freedom to experiment Get these right, and human creativity explodes. Get them wrong, and stagnation follows. So why has the West stagnated in recent decades? Ridley points to three innovation-killers: 1. Government overreach strangling experimentation 2. Vested interests protecting existing monopolies 3. A culture of fear that sees danger in every new idea The result? We're drowning breakthrough technologies in regulation, choking off energy abundance, and treating every innovation as guilty until proven innocent.