One simple (but not so simple) solution to our big global problems

We're in a polycrisis. What shall we do now?

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Several years ago, when I was the Director of Fundraising and Public Engagement for an NGO focused on food security, I proposed a new catchphrase for a brand revision. Our organization was a central agency for more than a dozen church agencies that represented hundreds of thousands of people, and our programs relied on a vast network of organizations spread across the world. Reflecting on this global web and the people we were serving, I came up with “Building relationships to end hunger”.

When I presented it to the leadership team, though, I got a surprising response. “Sometimes relationships get in the way of ending hunger,” my colleague said.

That conversation has stayed with me for years because it presented a paradox - both a truth and an untruth for me to wrestle with. On the one hand, yes, relationships add complexity to program delivery and, because people are flawed and messy, there can be less efficiency, less justice and more corruption when relationships muddy the waters. If we were all robots without bias, loyalty or tribalism, it would be much easier to develop smooth-running, equitable systems.

On the other hand, where would we be without relationships? Would we really care enough about hungry people if we weren’t inclined toward connection? Would there really be people, like many of my colleagues at the time, working tirelessly on behalf of marginalized people, if we were all robotic and without kindness?

Now, after years of reflection, I’m inclined to not only double-down on what I proposed, but to expand it... with a caveat.

Here’s my new, bolder statement: It’s not just hunger that relationships can help end – it’s ALL the world’s big problems.

It seems simplistic, but it’s also profoundly true – if we focused more on building relationships, we wouldn’t be facing so many global crises.

Here’s the caveat: It’s a specific kind of relationship I’m talking about. It’s a healthy, mature relationship between equals, where there is equity, reciprocity, accountability and care at the core. It’s a relationship that seeks to grow and evolve, where there is openness to new ideas and differing viewpoints, and where conflict is seen as an opportunity for growth. It’s a relationship of mutual benefit, mutual care, and mutual responsibility, where all parties give and receive.

In the kind of relationship I’m talking about, we see each other as kin – people whose lives are interwoven with ours, for whom we take responsibility and who take responsibility for us. It’s the way our traditional cultures treated everyone who lived in the same village - as mutually committed to the care and wellbeing of all in the collective, because when one in the village is at risk, the entire village is at risk. But we’d have to stretch this kinship beyond the village or tribe to include all beings, human and otherwise.

Here are a few places where relationships can help us solve big problems.

1. Addictions (and other mental and physical health issues). Especially since the social isolation of the pandemic, much has been said about the role that loneliness plays in both mental and physical health. In studying public health issues, former Surgeon General of the U.S., Vivek Murthy, became so concerned about the negative impacts of loneliness that he wrote a book about it. We make less healthy choices when we are isolated, and some of us live shorter lives because of loneliness. “If we don’t have the ability to connect socially, we are so ravenous for our social neurochemistry to be rebalanced, we’re likely to seek relief from anywhere,” says neuroscientist Rachel Wurzman. “And if that anywhere is opioid painkillers or heroin, it is going to be a heat-seeking missile for our social reward system.” By connecting with other people over and over again, Wurzman says, people with opioid-use disorders can reduce their compulsive behaviors and their chance of relapse or overdose. (from this article)

2. Bigotry, racism, and xenophobia. Again and again, we hear stories of people who changed their minds about things like same-sex marriage or gender-affirming care when they had someone in their own family who came out as queer. There are also stories of KKK members who changed their minds about white supremacy only once they got to know a Black person. It’s harder to hate a person or group of people close-up. It’s much easier to cast people as “other” when we don’t know them and can diminish them to a simple set of characteristics. “How can people change their minds about us if they don’t know who we are?” said Harvey Milk, the first openly gay man to be elected to public office in California. Relationships open us up to caring for people who are different from us - even those who entered our countries illegally.

3. Fascism. Systems of dominance, like fascism, totalitarianism, and colonialism are largely antithetical to genuine relationships. A fascist is “one who puts money and power ahead of human beings”, said Henry Wallace, Vice President of the U.S. under Roosevelt. There are only pseudo-relationships within these systems - either transactional (i.e. you scratch my back, and I’ll scratch yours) or hierarchical (i.e. obey me and you’ll be safe). When we build genuine relationships, we put people first, we share power, we dismantle systems of dominance, and we stand in solidarity against abusers.

4. Environmental destruction and climate change. We have done centuries of damage to nature largely because we lacked a relationship and let ourselves believe in separation and superiority. As Robin Wall Kimmerer says, in her paradigm-shifting book Braiding Sweetgrass, we need to transform our relationship with Mother Earth, shifting away from separation and domination and toward kinship and reciprocity. “Knowing that you love the earth changes you, activates you to defend and protect and celebrate,” she says. “But when you feel that the earth loves you in return, that feeling transforms the relationship from a one-way street into a sacred bond.”

Sadly, many of us have become unskilled in critical aspects of relationship-building because our social conditioning has trained us for individualism, self-protection, distrust, and inauthenticity. Capitalism has trained us to see ourselves as consumers rather than kin, accustomed to paying others to meet our needs rather than relying on (and contributing to) reciprocal care in our communities. Colonialism has trained us to hoard our resources, protect ourselves from scarcity, and defend our own little empires.

Most of us lack a lived experience of kinship (or we compartmentalize it to the degree that it’s hardly relevant), and we have no reason to trust that there is a collective that will care for us in times of need. In these unprecedented times, though, we need to disrupt old patterns to find a different way to live.

Relationship-building may be the most critical skill for us to develop in this time of polycrisis. We need each other, and we’re going to need each other even more as we face the increased challenges of climate change, fascism, and the looming collapse of capitalism.

In B.C., the province I now call home, an extreme heat dome killed 619 people in 2021 and most of those people were low-income seniors who lived alone. Especially in a crisis, social isolation and poverty increase a person’s vulnerability. With climate catastrophes happening increasingly frequently, and with capitalism and fascism thrusting more people into poverty, this will only get worse.

What will it take to build the kinds of relationships that will help solve these big problems? It will take self-reflection and personal growth, so that we can show up with more maturity, humility, and patience. It will take learning skills in conflict transformation, trauma healing, and nervous system regulation. It will take a willingness to make sacrifices, unlearn individualism, share resources, and build trust with each other. It will require that more of us see vulnerable people, like those who died in the heat dome, as our shared responsibility and our kin.

These are all skills that we focus on at the Centre for Holding Space, particularly in our How to Hold Space Foundation Program. The practice of holding space is about much more than just showing up for a person who’s struggling – it’s about building relationships where there is mutuality and care, where people are both sovereign individuals AND committed to reciprocity and collective responsibility, and where there is a commitment to conflict transformation, nervous system co-regulation and trauma healing.

We believe that this is crucial work. We believe it’s life-changing, world-changing work, and we’re even more committed to it now than ever. There are few things that feel more important in this moment we’re all living in.

We want you in our circles of kinship, working toward the same purpose.

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Registration is open for our next offering of the How to Hold Space Foundation Program, plus the Certification Program, both starting in October 2025.

Join us for the next webinar in Leadership for Liminal Spaces, on July 31 on “Becoming a Grounded Guide: Nervous system activation and regulation in times of liminality”.

If you’ve participated in any of our programs, you’re welcome to join us in-person on Vancouver Island in September for our Alumni Gathering.