The Sun Burns Everywhere the Same. The Damage Does Not
12 February 2026 · René de Baaij
The sun burns equally on every skin, you would think. But the map of overheating darkens precisely where life should be lighter.
Heatwaves hit hardest where windows are single-glazed, where trees are absent, where air conditioning is unaffordable.
It is an uncomfortable truth: even the climate is not colour-blind to inequality. The temperature rises, and with it the visibility of a systemic injustice that has long existed, but that can now literally be read off a thermometer.
What at first glance looks like a natural phenomenon becomes, on closer inspection, a mirror of how we organise societies. And that mirror asks something of all of us, certainly of those who can influence how cities, organisations and systems are built.
What looks natural is often the result of centuries of choices, visible and invisible. The neighbourhoods that now suffer most under heatwaves were not built that way by accident. They reflect decades of political decisions, economic inequality and spatial planning that reproduce vulnerability, generation after generation, without anyone consciously deciding at a specific moment that it should be this way.
Systems tend to perpetuate themselves. They repeat patterns, even harmful ones, sometimes so subtly that we only see it once the consequences become undeniable.
And we all work within such a system. We fulfil roles in it, sustain structures, often without noticing. Those at the top sometimes feel responsible, but also trapped. For how do you repair something bigger than yourself, when you yourself are part of the pattern you are trying to change?
Real change does not begin with yet another policy plan, but with the willingness to truly see, and to be moved by what you see.
I once coached an executive who despaired over why her inclusion policy made no difference. The figures stayed the same. The stories from within the organisation just as painful as before. And yet she had done everything right: policy drafted, training rolled out, working groups formed, exactly as any handbook prescribes.
In a confidential conversation, the revelation came. I come from a neighbourhood like this myself, she said. And I have spent my entire career running from it.
Her commitment to others touched on an inner avoidance. The system within her knew the pain, but had organised itself around survival: adapt, keep going, perform, and above all never dwell on where she once came from. When she dared to meet that dynamic, her leadership changed. She became less controlling, listened with more openness. Not as a saviour, but as a fellow human being. And slowly something began to shift, in her team, in the organisation, and in her own relationship to power.
In every system there is a layer that stays beneath the surface: discomfort, pain, guilt, shame, matters that do not fit the group's desired identity.
In organisations, that can involve decisions that came at the expense of people or communities. Unnoticed favouring of some groups over others. Unspoken loss, of colleagues, of projects, of trust that was once broken and never truly rebuilt. As long as that layer goes unseen, it keeps influencing the system, sometimes visibly in conflict or turnover, sometimes more subtly in the loss of energy or initiative that nobody can quite place.
It takes courage to enter that layer, not to resolve it immediately, but simply to stay with it. That is often already enough to create movement, because acknowledgement is itself already a form of change, even before there is a concrete plan.
Anyone who wants to act consciously within a system can ask themselves three questions. Where do I stand, not only in function or hierarchy, but in the whole of relationships, interests and history that brought me here? What am I sustaining, sometimes unintentionally, by moving along with habits that perpetuate inequality or exclusion without my meaning to? And what do I dare to feel, knowing that not everything has to lead to action immediately, and that change sometimes begins with allowing discomfort, grief or anger rather than reasoning it away?
These questions are not a one-off exercise, but a way of staying awake in your role, even on the days when it would be easier not to look.
When we see inequality, we often want to act immediately. But acting without feeling can lead to technical solutions that leave the underlying dynamic untouched.
A new project, extra budget, a campaign, they are valuable, but not always sufficient. Sometimes the system merely becomes more efficient at avoiding the core, better at producing the appearance of progress without anything truly shifting. That is why slowing down is sometimes the most radical thing you can do. Only once we make genuine contact with what is at play, within ourselves, within the group, within the history that has shaped us, can action take root that lasts longer than the next policy cycle.
What does your place in the system ask of you, right now? Not as policymaker, leader or person in charge, but as a human being with a story, a history, and an influence greater than you sometimes realise. Perhaps your contribution does not begin with a plan, but with a conversation. Not with a solution, but with acknowledgement.
What becomes visible when you stop trying to fix, and start trying to feel?
Notes for further reading:
- Bert Hellinger, Ordnungen der Liebe (1991, Carl-Auer). On systemic orderings and how individuals unconsciously sustain patterns larger than themselves.
- Robin DiAngelo, White Fragility (2018, Beacon Press). On the psychological mechanisms that make acknowledging systemic injustice so difficult, even for people with good intentions.
- Otto Scharmer, Theory U: Leading from the Future as It Emerges (2009, Berrett-Koehler). On the necessity of slowing down and truly perceiving before action can take root.
- Wilfred Bion, Learning from Experience (1962, Heinemann). On containment and the capacity to bear collective tension rather than avoid it.
- Pierre Bourdieu, The Logic of Practice (1990, Stanford University Press). On how social structures reproduce themselves through habits and routines that are rarely consciously recognised.