 ‘Globalisation has obliterated distance, not just physically but also, most dangerously, mentally. It creates the illusion of intimacy when, in fact, the mental distances have changed little. It has concertinaed the world without engendering the necessary respect, recognition and tolerance that must accompany it.’ (Martin Jacques) At a Chinese New Year celebration meal last week, I looked around the dinner table at my family: my brother who lived in Brunei, his Malaysian wife, my sister who lived in Germany, her husband who travels the world with work, my niece who lived in Spain, my nephew who also lived in Spain and my Mum who has visited more countries than she can remember. My daughters are internationally-minded too: one taught herself Japanese and the other recently visited Austria. It struck me how much the world has changed in my own lifetime. The ability to communicate and build relationships with people all over the world has never been easier, thanks to advances in technology. International travel has never been easier too, at least for those who have the financial resources and visa permits to do it. Given these opportunities to rub shoulders with our global neighbours, we might expect a ‘one world’ outlook increasingly to predominate. Yet, take a cursory glance across current news headlines and we see an increasingly polarised world, divided along national, political and ideological lines. We see a profound fracturing in the breakdown of the rules-based international order with nationalism on the rise, and within nations where different -isms or -phobias tear at each other in heated culture wars. Perhaps global idealists forgot a deep human desire for distinctive identity, belonging, security – and power?
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 ‘Father, forgive them because they don’t know what they’re doing.’ (Jesus Christ) I spent some days last week on a retreat at a Franciscan friary in the bitterly-cold North East of England. It’s something I choose to do each New Year these days – a retreat, that is, not to half freeze to death in a stone-built monastery. It’s a way of transitioning from the past year to the new, a spiritual defragmentation or reset of sorts, with a renewed and refreshed focus on God. The biggest challenge each time is to get over myself, to somehow disentangle myself enough from the fog of my own mental and emotional hopes, fears and preoccupations to see...Jesus. A recurring theme that emerged for me during my times of prayer and reflection was power. I read two starkly-contrasting accounts of people at Auschwitz during the Nazi era: the brutal guard Irma Grese who used her structural power to commit the most unspeakable acts of violence against prisoners, vs the self-sacrificing Franciscan friar Maximillian Kolbe who used his personal power to die in the place of another prisoner. Both were ordinary human beings. A critical, defining difference in that moment, in that context, was how each abused or used their power. I sat now in the candle-lit chapel, gazing at a harrowing figure of Jesus Christ, represented here as apparently-powerless, cruelly-beaten and tortured on a cross, straining upwards to glimpse his heavenly Father. It struck me how the world has become dominated (again) by power figures and ideologies, finding their voice through polarising politicians and political religions, and how so many people are flocking to support them. It’s symptomatic of widespread feelings of powerlessness and a desire to increase our own power via their power. Grese vs Kolbe? Father, forgive us.  ‘Christianism: A crude political ideology and the triumph of empty symbolism.’ (Ben Ryan)
The UK has spent decades sleepwalking toward secularism, where faith has been driven relentlessly into the personal-private sphere. Now we're waking up to something very different. A muscular version of Christianity is re-emerging, not as a spiritual faith but as a political identity. It’s a re‑branding of national belonging where being 'British' feels increasingly identified with being ‘Christian’. I'm not talking about the gospel of Jesus Christ or about spiritual renewal here. I am talking about identity politics. It’s about casting Christianity as a default badge of belonging and using that badge to redraw the boundaries of who counts as ‘us’ vs ‘them’. Anxiety and frustration are fuelling that shift in the face of mass migration, cultural disruption and a fear that who ‘we’ are is slipping away. ‘Christian’ is being used increasingly as a political brand. Once any religion becomes a marker of national or cultural identity, it becomes a de facto test of belonging. Tests always leave people, the ‘others’, outside. It chips away at the humility and compassion that are, for followers of Jesus, core to their lives. Religion becomes less about conscience or community and more about raw power. For Christians who believe authentic faith should question power, who see gospel values as both universal and counter‑cultural, the appropriation of Christianity into nationalism feels like a dangerous distortion. Jesus said, ‘Love your enemies’ (which suggests there are those we may rightly regard as enemies). True faith lays in reaching out in love – not in alienation or conquest.  ‘Borders are scratched across the hearts of men, by strangers with a calm, judicial pen. And when the borders bleed we watch with dread, the lines of ink across the map turn red.’ (Marya Mannes) It’s one thing to read social media reports of irregular migrant pushbacks between EU states. It’s another thing to see actual soldiers guarding a border crossing. I was surprised therefore this weekend to pass by regular police at one end of a small footbridge in Görlitz, Germany, facing soldiers dressed in military fatigues and carrying assault rifles in Zgorzelec on the Polish side of the border. It felt like a sign of the times, a tension and tightening on so many different fronts. Poland says its deployment of soldiers at the border is a direct response to Germany’s push back into Poland of irregular migrants who cross through Poland into Germany. Germany says its own deployment of border guards aims to prevent irregular migrants from crossing from Poland into Germany in the first place. Both governments, like so many others in Europe and beyond, are responding to growing popular anger and resentment against irregular migrants and migration. I walked across the bridge, the border, several times and wasn’t stopped by the guards. Neither side checked my passport nor my immigration status nor gave me a second glance. I did see the police on the German side step out of their van to speak with two men who looked North African by appearance. Perhaps it was just a casual chat. I also saw a young family in Muslim attire scurry across into Poland when the soldiers weren’t there. Perhaps it was just coincidental timing.  ‘When seeing is not believing.’ (Rob Toews) While Hurricane Melissa was wreaking real and devastating havoc in the Caribbean yesterday, reports of an incoming super-typhoon wreaked havoc of a different kind in the Asia Pacific. Deep fake news reports triggered disaster risk reduction measures, people raced out to panic buy emergency supplies and the prices of essential goods soared, hitting the poorest the hardest. The government’s meteorological authorities sent out urgent counter-messages to reassure a very nervous public – but who could know which messages were real and which were fake? This felt like a dark glimpse into an AI-generated future. Let’s be honest. Media news reports have always contained subtle (and some not-so-subtle) blends of information, drama and propaganda, but global politicians, social media and deep fake technologies in malicious hands have created a whole new era of confusion. How can we know what’s real and true when fake masquerades as truth and truth is framed as lies? Aspiring dictators create and seize on mass bewilderment and anxiety to offer simplistic solutions with claimed-clarity and security. As I reflect on this critically and reflexively, I can’t help but do some personal soul-searching too. How far is the persona I present, for example as a follower of Jesus, genuine and true? Jesus himself called out spiritual leaders of the time as hypocrites (literally, those who wear a mask), of hiding their true selves behind a façade to win approval. They had fallen into an elaborate form of deception, a self-destructive self-deception, akin to imposter syndrome in reverse. If we believe our own lies, what hope is left for us? God, help me be an authentic agent of truth.  ‘Bad things do happen in the world like war, natural disasters and disease. But out of those situations always arise stories of ordinary people doing extraordinary things.’ (Daryn Kagan) A recent qualitative research study in Peru in the aftermath of El Niño (2025) could have equally applied to life and communities in places like the Philippines. In terms of psychosocial impacts of ‘natural’ disasters and their intersecting contributory causes, the pattern is all too painfully familiar. People and communities in various parts of the Philippines this week are living with the physical, psychological and emotional aftershocks of shattering earthquakes, compounded by the damaging effects of devastating typhoons. I hesitate to use the word natural. Although we wouldn’t attribute the underlying causes of earthquakes to human activity, we couldn’t say the same of violent tropical storms where human-impacted climate change is an increasingly significant factor. A disaster occurs when hazard meets vulnerability. The poor are often the most vulnerable to the causes and impacts of hazards, including the ability to avoid, mitigate or recover from them – and poverty, albeit a complex phenomenon itself, is far from a ‘natural’ state. The research report I alluded to above identifies a number of interrelated issues that impact on psychosocial health: personal memories and lived experience of previous disasters; chronic and acute effects of the disaster (‘It’s not a now problem; it’s an always problem’); attributing blame and responsibilities; coping and resilience (including faith and relational dimensions); psychosocial distress (including personal and vicarious trauma); perceived (un)fairness in aid distribution; systemic corruption and distrust. Against this complex and, in some ways, overwhelming backdrop, I’m still inspired and find hope in the faith and actions of those people who transcend self-interest to stand alongside those in need. Jasmin lacks the material and political resources to address the macro issues, yet persistently steps out of her comfort zone directly into disaster zones equipped only with a spiritual presence (a ‘sacred encounter’) – Divine love – that, in its own unique way, offers deep psychosocial healing and hope – and the strength to go on.  ‘A repeat of last year’s summer riots is inevitable as government has failed to act.’ (ITV News) My parents used to say, ‘There’s none so deaf as those that won’t hear and none so blind as those that won't see.’ They were right. A new report came out last week, The State of Us – Community Strength and Cohesion in the UK, as the output of research in response to widespread protests and riots in the UK last year. With tensions at breaking point once again in places like Northern Ireland and Essex, it’s a timely reflection on what lays behind such boiling discontent and what radical solutions may be needed to address it. One could argue: far too little and far too late. Dame Sara Khan, the Government's own Independent Adviser for Social Cohesion and Resilience, had already commented astutely on last year’s unrest: ‘While the police were excellent in dealing with the summer riots under very difficult circumstances, we have to remember and appreciate that’s a downstream approach.’ In other words, addressing effects. Khan offers a sobering critique: ‘The lessons have not been learned (from last year). The signs (then) were flashing red.’ She goes on to question pertinently, ‘Where is the upstream approach to identify, prevent and respond to tensions when they are breaking out, or to address the grievances that people have? …There is no central government guidance or strategy to prevent such activity.’ Mark Fairhurst, Chair of the UK Prison Officer’s Association, echoed her deep frustration in a recent press release: ‘The Justice System lurches from crisis to crisis. The prison estate cannot cope with the existing prison population and now the Government has announced they can cope with unpredicted rises in the prison population without explaining where all the additional staff will come from.’ He was reacting to news that the Government is preparing emergency prison spaces in case of summer riots. ‘Maybe, just maybe a better option would be to address the fundamental issues that fuel unrest, in some cases that is poverty and a sense of hopelessness and alienation and in others it is the lack of police on the streets and a failure to crack down on political groups who stir up civil unrest.’ The Government’s response? To clamp down on free speech. God help us.  ‘Rhetoric is the art of ruling people’s minds.’ (Plato) Following the pattern of previous UK governments, the current Prime Minister and government often talk about putting the priorities of 'working people' first. It has a clear rhetorical ring to it. It’s less clear, however, who exactly they mean by working people. It’s unclear, too, what that means for everyone else who falls outside of their definition. When the BBC challenged him on this question, Keir Starmer responded enigmatically that the UK’s working people, ‘know exactly who they are.’ His Chancellor of the Exchequer tried to elaborate: working people are ‘strivers who graft.’ Later, Sir Keir made another attempt at clarifying who he was talking about: someone who ‘goes out and earns their living, usually paid in a sort of monthly cheque’ and who can't ‘write a cheque to get out of difficulties.’ Things got more muddled still when he said that wouldn’t include earnings from savings – a claim contradicted afterwards by his own spokesperson. The Treasury Minister told the BBC that ‘working people are people who go out to work for their income’, then refused to comment on whether that would also include landlords and people with shares. It gets politically-sensitive when we consider that a significant proportion of the total UK population is too young, too old, too sick, has serious disabilities, is studying or is fulfilling caring responsibilities that prevent them from earning. Do we really want to say that such people shouldn’t be considered a priority too? That would be a hard utilitarian view of society in which people’s value and usefulness are measured solely in terms of economic productivity and output. So, when faced with political and media rhetoric, we do well to ask: Who’s saying it? Who to? What's their goal?  ‘Today is a day of shame. Shame on the perpetrators on both sides of this terrible conflict who have inflicted unimaginable suffering on civilians. Shame on the world for turning away while Sudan burns. Shame on the countries that continue to add fuel to the fire.’ (Erika Guevara Rosas) Two years to the day since the latest conflict in Sudan broke out with brutal ferocity, the UK and (some) other countries are finally paying attention to the world’s worst humanitarian crisis. It’s a complex picture on the ground with geopolitical and ethnic tensions that create a devastating mix. While the world’s attention has been fixated on Russia-Ukraine and Israel-Gaza, Sudan’s civilian population has suffered horrific atrocities at the hands of merciless armed groups. Conferences are too often a forum for noble speeches, hand-wringing and hand-shaking, virtue signalling on a public stage and, behind it all, a pathetic substitute for tangible action. (It’s as if talking earnestly about an issue makes us appear, believe and feel like we’re actually doing something). In the meantime, the violence continues unabated with no relief whatsoever for vulnerable people on the ground. Today's event must make a difference. Sudan needs action now. What can you do? *Pray for peace and hope in Sudan. *Contact David Lammy, UK Secretary of State for Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Affairs to urge follow-through from this Conference initiative. *Write to your local Member of Parliament (MP) to advocate for urgent and tangible action on relief, security and peace in Sudan.  ‘Capabilities are freedoms conceived as real opportunities.’ (Amartya Sen) I keep coming back to this question: what is it that makes the difference? I’ve been drawn recently to reflections on this theme by Indian economist and philosopher, Amartya Sen. He distinguishes between capabilities, which are our resources (including our abilities and our potential), and conversion factors, which are influences on the real opportunities we have to use and fulfil them. Sen focuses his work on wellbeing and on the kinds of lives people and groups are effectively able to lead. He moves on to questions of what people, groups and societies need. Sen offers some interesting illustrations. Two people have the same resources. One is able-bodied and the other has physical disabilities that confine them to a wheelchair. All else being equal, the able-bodied person has more net resources because the person with disabilities has more related expenses. The former may also have greater net opportunities in society because the latter may be limited to places that are wheelchair-accessible. This could lead us to the conclusion that the person with disabilities should be given more resources to ensure equity. Sen then asks, what if the able-bodied person is hard to please and needs more resources to achieve a sense of wellbeing? What if the person with disabilities is content with their life and needs fewer resources to achieve wellbeing? If the goal is wellbeing, should we therefore provide more resources for the able-bodied person? Sen poses two challenges before we leap to this conclusion: sometimes disadvantaged people lower their expectations as a coping mechanism; and society has a moral imperative to support the disadvantaged and vulnerable. Sen provides another example of a person who owns a bicycle. The bike is a means to an end, to ensure mobility rather than an end in itself. Yet to convert the potential of bike ownership to greater mobility, certain conditions need to be in place. These could include, for instance, the physical ability to ride a bike; a social-cultural context that allows the person to ride a bike; and environmental conditions such as safe roads or suitable bike paths that make using a bike feasible. It’s a combination of capabilities and conversion factors that make this difference. So, what does this look like real situations? As far back as 2003, I wrote a research paper as part of an organisation development (OD) masters’ degree that aimed to identify and address common factors that influence engagement and effectiveness in organisations. I proposed that culture, complexity, capability and climate were critical variables. It’s about releasing and harnessing individual potential on the one hand, whilst creating the conditions in which people thrive on the other. This is, in my view, where coaching, action learning and OD intersect. What do you think? |
Nick WrightI'm a psychological coach, trainer and OD consultant. Curious to discover how can I help you? Get in touch! 
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