I spent over ten years in the Central Intelligence Agency as an undercover operations officer serving overseas after 9/11 where I carried out covert operations against al-Qaeda and other terrorist groups, as well as other countries who are 'hostile to liberty,' as I like to say.
Empathy is a tool for building people into groups, for allowing us to function as more than self-obsessed individuals.
I was friends with all different people and all different groups. And that led me to being friends with a few people who didn't even go to my school. Now I have the most amazing collection of friends of all ethnic backgrounds and upbringing and financial backgrounds.
I'm not a caterer. I just have to stay with my creative convictions. At some point, you have to just get past the special-interest groups and do what you're there to do, which is make a movie.
Ever since the romantic comedy-drama 'She's Gotta Have It' antagonized black women and black men in 1986, Spike Lee's films have enjoyed the outrage of various groups.
Bottom line is, you're not going to win the war against terrorism without the help of Muslims... as well as Hindus and a lot of other groups. That's a no-brainer. Many attacks have been thwarted because of information coming from people of different faiths.
As a freedom-lover and avid outdoorsman, I understand the importance of protecting the Second Amendment, which has been under attack by liberal special interest groups funded by elitist billionaires.
I don't divide my reading into demographic categories, any more than I'd divide my friends into groups along ethnic or sexual lines. The thing I look for most is a sense of literary rawness - bareback fiction, if you will.
In America, aren't we all supposed to see beyond class, see beyond ethnicity? Are all these lines drawn to set us apart and lock us into groups?
I love solving the problems of having groups work together and removing barriers. But to actually turn around and be in the center of that is an awkward place to be.
It's not unusual for socio-economic, even racial or ethnic, groups to cluster.
Business leaders, social justice groups, farmers and ranchers, doctors and nurses and people from all walks of life are concerned about the climate threat.
As a chef, I had started working with groups like Share Our Strength and various local food banks in New York, raising money for hunger-related issues. And not only me, but the entire restaurant industry has been very focused on this issue.
From day one, we always admired male R&B groups. They would go onstage with no shirt on and baggy jeans, and girls would scream.
Several groups have information evaluating seafood sustainability. I wrote the first such guide, and seafood pocket-guides and detailed evaluations of different seafoods are available for download from the group I founded, Blue Ocean Institute.
I don't like to run, train, in groups. But racing, it's the groups that are most inspiring to me. I love racing with 52,000 people. I don't like training with any more than one person. Ever.
We need more leaders speaking up for minority groups who have been marginalized and attacked.
The answer I found is you stay away from the people who make fun of you, and you join these ad hoc groups who understand your craziness.
Facebook is not very good at dealing with named groups; they're not very good at saying, 'We've got this book club and I'm a member and you're not.' But membership is one of the precursors to a lot of social action.
If we take a hard look at what poverty is, its nature, it's not pretty - it's full of trauma. And we're able to accept trauma with certain groups, like with soldiers, for instance - we understand that they face trauma and that trauma can be connected to things like depression or acts of violence later on in life.
Competing is intense among humans, and within a group, selfish individuals always win. But in contests between groups, groups of altruists always beat groups of selfish individuals.
Think of ISIS as a pathogen that preys on weak hosts in the Muslim world. In fact, there is something of a political law: The weaker a Muslim state, the stronger will be the presence of ISIS or like-minded groups.
I'm really interested in working with groups. It's a very simple thing for me, and if I'm given the option to work with two people or 10 or 20 people, I'm going to take 10 or 20. I just think there's so much more I can do with that.
In entertainment, whether it's movies or television or whatever, I'm a great audience, but I don't remember the names of the people I've seen or the groups that I've heard.
I realise that in an electoral campaign, you don't want to antagonise large groups which are highly motivated.
I don't know if it's irrational, and I would never say this before, but I think I'm a little bit agoraphobic when I'm in huge crowds of people. I mean, it's claustrophobic, probably - small spaces and large groups of people, anxiety rises for me.
Guantanamo Bay can be and has been visited repeatedly by the International Red Cross and other human-rights groups for observation in an open, regular, and transparent manner. Detainees receive the same medical care as the guard force and are able to participate in their daily prayer sessions.
Writers, as they gain success, feel like outsiders because writers don't come together in real groups.
As you will recall, soon after the 9/11 attacks, an international coalition led by the United States conducted an impressive campaign to defeat the Taliban, al Qaeda, and other associated extremist groups in Afghanistan.
