This has bugged me since I was a teenager. The tendency to social Christianity – claiming it as a badge of social respectability, especially when it’s obviously hollow. I have an over-developed sense of integrity, and as a young man it caused me great stress that I couldn’t call myself a Christian while my upbringing […]
The control reaction driving the world
There are two kinds of people in the world, those who believe there are two kinds of people in the world and those who don’t. – Robert Benchley There are a zillion ways to classify people, and one of the most important is by mental elasticity. Most of us like to know what’s what. If […]
Tribalism – shielding ourselves from an inconvenient world
This is so common these days. People use labels as a form of angry dismissal. ‘You remainers, liberals, leftists, feminists…’ It’s taking refuge in a tribe, using it as a structure to make sense of a world that stretches and inflames us. Tribes can be good, but not when they’re at war with the Other. […]
The two towers – Trump vs fellowship
OK, let’s get this out of the way. I hate that Trump won. My weary core sighs that a walking embodiment of ignorance, denial, delusion and prejudice will be the steward of that grand, fractured country where my friends live. A country that desperately needs vision, healing and common purpose. With dismay I see him […]
The main cause of climate change is politicians
Yes, yes, I know that greenhouse gases come from agriculture and transport and energy generation and deforestation. But take a different angle on the cause and effect of the situation we’re in. How long have we had to take serious action on climate change? 25 years, give or take. Of course it’s been a long process […]
Big and little fields – a quick idea for working on your ‘purpose’
Do you get pulled between an inner urge to make a big contribution to the world and the need to do something useful in the moment, so that you go round and round and don’t get anywhere? Looking back, that’s been part of my experience. This is a simple idea I hit upon for my […]
‘What do I want to do?’ Make the early steps easy on yourself
Are you in that space of wondering what to do with your life, or maybe making a big change looking for something better? That can lead to wonderful things. It can also lead to long periods of uncertainty and beating yourself up. I was propelled on to that journey five years ago when my mum died. […]
Politics wandering in the story desert
I’ve become more aware of story in the last few years. And it’s been ever clearer that recent UK national politics is all about story. The Conservatives constructed a mythology and hammered it in with brutish repetition. Labour failed to build a distinctive story that people wanted to follow. The Liberal Democrats spoke about a […]
The foreground fallacy (video)
When we’re having conversations about change, we can assume the other person is in an active-focus rational or emotional mode like we are. But often they’re not. And that mismatch of modes can lead to frustration and conflict. We need to understand that a lot of people, a lot of the time, are in a […]
Brexit: pain won
People were suffering. From austerity, hardship, erosion of their mental health, state-sponsored discrimination, and the uncertainty of a changing world. The government wasn’t listening. The government wasn’t leading. Then visitors turned up in shiny buses. They spoke of important things like control, democracy, money, jobs. They talked about a distant shadowy entity that was doing […]