by Jonathan Rowson in Perspectiva…The metacrisis is the historically specific threat to truth, beauty, and goodness caused by our persistent misunderstanding, misvaluing, and misappropriating of reality. The metacrisis is the crisis within and between all the world’s major crises, a root cause that is at once singular and plural, a multi-faceted delusion arising from the spiritual and material exhaustion of modernity that permeates the world’s interrelated challenges and manifests institutionally and culturally to the detriment of life on earth.
Keep humanity’s future in sight and integrate the polycrisis lens
from transformphilanthropy.wingsweb.org….The climate crisis is one of the most pressing global challenges of our time. However, only a tiny fraction of global philanthropic funding is dedicated to combating climate change effects, with some estimates as low as 2%. Most philanthropic funders already dedicated to other social issues do not feel they can divert resources at this stage.
RISD’s center for complexity developing design manual for maintaining life on earth
by Tim Maly on RISD.org…RISD’s Center for Complexity (CfC) has served as a think tank bringing together transdisciplinary experts and academics with real-world practitioners and policy makers. This summer the group is expanding its nuclear security research to include other threats to the planet and human civilization. Here CfC Senior Lead Tim Maly discusses the insights they have uncovered.
Yep, it’s bleak, says expert who tested 1970s end-of-the-world prediction
by Gaya Herrington in The Guardian…A controversial MIT study from 1972 forecast the collapse of civilization – and Gaya Herrington is here to deliver the bad news
Trevor Hancock: A polycrisis is greater than the sum of its parts
by Trevor Hancock in Times Colonist…..Today’s crises, they wrote, “simultaneously span natural, political, economic and technological systems, because they’re driven by a multiplicity of underlying ‘systemic risks.’ ”
How to resist cultic thinking in the end times
by Richard Heinberg in Common Dreams……People who are aware of society’s blind spots are often attracted to would-be cult leaders, because the former need a new worldview to replace the flawed one they are reacting against, and the latter fill that need.
More in this category
Trevor Hancock: A polycrisis is greater than the sum of its parts
by Trevor Hancock in the Times Colonist…The polycrisis, according to the UN and Cascade Institute, includes the climate crisis, war, extreme economic inequality, financial system instability, ideological extremism, pernicious social impacts of digitalization, cyber attacks, mounting social and political unrest, large-scale forced migrations and an escalating danger of nuclear war,
How to deal with a world of polycrisis?
by Steffan Heuer in Think:Act Magazine….While the term is not new, polycrisis has taken on a new meaning and new urgency as governments, think tanks and ordinary citizens try to get their heads around how to best respond and prepare for it.
What is the “Global Polycrisis” and how should journalists be covering it?
Watch EJN’s 2023 #EarthDay webinar on the global polycrisis — what does this newly-popular term mean, why is it important for climate and environmental journalism and how can reporters uncover relevant angles and story ideas?
Navigating polycrisis: long-run socio-cultural factors shape response to changing climate
by Daniel Hoyer, et al. in SocArXiv….Climate variability and natural hazards like floods and earthquakes can act as environmental shocks or socioecological stressors leading to instability and suffering throughout human history.
Are these the end times?
by Richard Heinberg in Resilience.org…Although we made great steps in understanding the structural factors driving “end times” in our societies, our theories, models, and data can be greatly improved. Such understanding, in my opinion, is key for developing effective reforms and policies that can take us on a better course out of this crisis. Beyond making science better we need a broad public discussion of its implications, and of what needs to be done. Ordinary citizens can help by educating themselves on these issues, by participating in the discussion of possible remedies, and ultimately by putting pressure on our ruling elites to act in ways that benefit the people broadly, rather than (as they’ve been acting over the past few decades) in their own narrow and shortsighted personal interest.
Global polycrisis: The causal mechanisms of crisis entanglement
by Dr. Michael Lawrence at The Cascade Institute….. In this framework, a global crisis arises when one or more fast-moving trigger events combines with slow-moving stresses to push a global system out of its established equilibrium and into a volatile and harmful state of disequilibrium. We then identify three causal pathways—common stresses, domino effects, and inter-systemic feedbacks—that can connect multiple global systems to produce synchronized crises.
Polycrisis, unraveling, simplification, or collapse: coming soon to a planet near you?
by Richard Heinberg in Resilience.org…If humanity descends into blame and desperate efforts to maintain a status quo that by its very nature cannot persist, the future looks dark indeed.
Manifesto for an ecosocial energy transition from the peoples of the south
by Enrique Viale and Maristella Svampa in Manifesto….More than two years after the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic—and now alongside the catastrophic consequences of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine—a “new normal” has emerged. This new global status quo reflects a worsening of various crises: social, economic, political, ecological, bio-medical, and geopolitical.
The ORA Fellowship announced 21 new fellows working to address the global polycrisis
Omega Resilience Awards announced their inaugural cohort of fellows working in the Global South.
Polycrisis? What polycrisis?
By Paul Arbair, Resilience…Human societies the world over are confronted with a growing number and range of difficult and compounding problems and crises, which they are increasingly struggling to address and failing to solve, and which are slowly but surely eroding their ability to function effectively and undermining their capacity to coexist peacefully.
What is the “Global Polycrisis” and how should journalists be covering it?
Watch EJN’s 2023 #EarthDay webinar on the global polycrisis — what does this newly-popular term mean, why is it important for climate and environmental journalism and how can reporters uncover relevant angles and story ideas?
Global polycrisis as a pathway for economic transition
By Zack Walsh, Polycrisis Transition Consultancy….This article is part of an ongoing collaboration between the United Nations Development Programme (Bureau for Program & Policy Support’s Strategic Innovation Unit & the Inclusive Growth/Chief Economist) and One Project. The purpose of the collaboration is to connect expertise in new economics with an emerging understanding of the global polycrisis. In this first article, we synthesize existing work and identify potential connections between these two fields. We seek to identify economic alternatives that provide systemic and proactive responses to the global polycrisis and propose potential supporting roles for development organizations like the UNDP.
On the ‘Polycrisis’: Part I
by Bo Harvey….“There is no single vital problem, but many vital problems, and it is this complex intersolidarity of problems, antagonisms, crises, uncontrolled processes, and the general crisis of the planet that constitutes the number one vital problem.”3
Navigating the polycrisis–life in turbulent times
By Michael Lerner, Angle of Vision…The polycrisis has many names—cascading crises, the metacrisis, the permacrisis, the great unraveling, the great simplification, “the end of the world as we know it” [TEOTWAWKI], and more. In Latin America it’s called “eco-social collapse.” The French call it “collapsologie.” Or one can simply call it turbulent times or a rapidly changing world.
The Long View Vol 22
Since the Long View started as a newsletter almost 2 years ago, our aim has been to curate the highest quality polycrisis news, research, and analysis to support this growing learning community. As this polycrisis work has gone global, so has the volume of content, debate over its relevance, and evolving language. Here are this month’s top picks of polycrisis news, curated by Omega Program Director Stanley Wu. It was quite a month, worldwide. These selections were chosen to help foster thinking about these times and how we consider resilience in light of the global polycrisis.