From Polycrisis to Metacrisis: a short introduction

Our new white paper on the polycrisis and metacrisis: what they are, how they are distinct, how they are related and why it matters.

We’re happy to announce the release of a new white paper: “From Polycrisis to Metacrisis: a short introduction”.

Our world shows signs of multi-systemic breakdown. In this context, polycrisis names an entanglement of interconnected crises that affect one another. Metacrisis, by contrast, identifies foundational conditions that generate these crises. Just as symptoms signal an underlying illness, polycrisis points to metacrisis. While the reality of a global polycrisis is increasingly acknowledged, awareness of metacrisis is less common.

A metacrisis is a crisis at the “meta” layers of civilization, and especially at the cultural base.

This paper provides an accessible introduction to the polycrisis and metacrisis: what they are, how they are distinct, how they are related and why it matters. In addition, the paper contains short case studies showing how one can apply a polycrisis and metacrisis frame to three major areas: climate breakdown, runaway AI, populism and democratic retreat. This helps ground these ideas in live, visible and real-world issues, making them more understandable and relevant.

This is the third whitepaper in the second renaissance series. Authored by two members of the Life Itself Sensemaking Studio, Rosie Bell and Rufus Pollock, it was created with the support of Commonweal to whom we are very grateful. We also wish to thank members of Life Itself Research for their comments and review on early drafts.

Finally, if these topics interest you, please join us on May 2-3 at Harvard for a conference and unconference on “Human Flourishing in a time of Metacrisis”.

Summary

Our world shows signs of multi-systemic breakdown. In this context, polycrisis names an entanglement of interconnected crises that affect one another. Metacrisis, by contrast, identifies foundational conditions that generate these crises. Just as symptoms signal an underlying illness, polycrisis points to metacrisis. While the reality of a global polycrisis is increasingly acknowledged, awareness of metacrisis is less common.

Noticing the interactions between our symptoms is an important first step towards addressing them. However, deeper diagnosis of an issue is vital to effective strategies for healing. This essay investigates how dominant worldviews, particularly within a dominant cultural paradigm of modernity, lie at the root of systemic failures — and offers a number of case studies for rethinking polycrisis as symptoms of metacrisis.

Within a metacrisis frame, the deep stories foundational to our modern worldview shape our ways of relating to self and world, in ways that produce dysfunction. While its symptoms (polycrisis) can be perceived in manifest forms from climate breakdown to inequality and more, metacrisis itself can be more difficult to see: we commonly mistake the core ideas of modernity for reality itself. As such, adopting the frame of metacrisis requires more than learning new facts. To sustain the necessary shift in view, integration through practice, community and lifestyle shift can be necessary.

Polycrisis to Metacrisis: three layers

Fig 1: A simplified schematic logic of the relationship of polycrisis to metacrisis.

A metacrisis is a polycrisis with a common root (generator function) in the meta layers of our civilizational systems and worldviews. The metacrisis encompasses the bottom two layers. However, the ultimate/primary causes are at the bottom layer: in the cultural paradigm and deep human tendencies. In short, a metacrisis is a crisis at the “meta” layers of civilization, and especially at the cultural base.

A metacrisis is a polycrisis with a common root (generator function) in the meta layers of our civilizational systems and worldviews.

The three layers of the metacrisis outlined

1. Surface Layer – Manifest Crises (Polycrisis): Concrete global crises: ecological collapse, AI risk, geopolitical instability, mental health epidemics. These are symptoms, emerging from failures in the intermediate layer, which in turn are rooted in deeper cultural-ideological and ontological substrates.

2. Intermediate Layer – Meta-Systemic Dysfunctions (Metacrisis):

   1. Collective action failures (e.g., climate inaction, regulatory capture)

   2. Wisdom gap (mismatch between technological capacity and moral/epistemic maturity)

   3. Degradation of sense-making and collective intelligence

   4. Value misalignment and multi-polar traps (e.g. race-to-the-bottom dynamics)

3. Root Layer – Foundational Ideologies (Cultural Paradigms) & Deep Human Tendencies (Metacrisis):

   1. Deep ideological features of modernity (e.g., anthropocentrism, individualism, mechanistic rationality)

   2. Amplification of latent human tendencies (e.g., greed, fear, control)

   3. These do not cause the polycrisis directly, but predispose systems toward fragmentation, extractivism, etc.

Appendix: Major factors at the intermediate layer

At the intermediate layer, we can distinguish three major categories of causation: collective action problems, principal-agent problems and value misperception:

• Collective action problems aka coordination problems, prisoner’s dilemma, multi-polar traps, Moloch, races to the bottom. These are cases like arms races: even if everyone wants to restrict some dangerous technology such as powerful AI or nuclear weapons because of the fear that another state will speed up (and do so secretly) then everyone speeds up.

• Externalities & Principal agent problems aka perverse incentives, externalities etc. this is where the system (be that the market, democracy, the bureaucracy) mis-incentivizes for the result it wants leading to the over or under production of some important good. e.g. market capitalism rewards financial profit but fails to include externalized costs like pollution. For example, you pay people to capture rats or to reduce emissions and and this leads some people to farm rats or create pollution so they can get paid for the reduction.

• Mis-perception of value: we mis-perceive the value of things. We think a tree is more valuable dead than alive, that uploading our minds to machines is the way to go, that eating donuts is good for me etc.

Regarding the metacrisis (and social problems in general) all three are relevant. However, collective action problems are generally by far the most significant — and hardest to address.

Appendix: seeing the metacrisis frame

Why is expanding from a polycrisis frame to a metacrisis and second renaissance frame important? Why is it hard and what paths there might be to support people in making that shift?

These are some of the questions motivating our work on this paper. More specifically,

• Situation: we are in metacrisis, but at best people are seeing polycrisis but not yet the metacrisis aspect

• Complication: first, most people don’t see metacrisis element which is essential to accurate diagnosis of cause and hence strategy for cures. Second, seeing the metacrisis is hard for various reasons.

• Question: how do we have more people see the metacrisis … and have the capacities not only to see but act on that insight and take action

The following sections explore this in more detail.

Situation

We are in a polycrisis that is a metacrisis, however whilst more and more people are aware of the polycrisis very few see the metacrisis. Correct diagnosis of an issue is normally important for finding good strategies for healing.

E.g. WEF are talking about polycrisis but don’t (yet) talk about metacrisis.

Complication

Most people aren’t (yet) seeing metacrisis element which is essential to accurate diagnosis of cause and hence strategy for cures … Seeing the metacrisis and second renaissance is harder (than seeing polycrisis) for various reasons – e.g. less visible, creates cognitive dissonance, “water we swim in issue” ie. needs awareness of culture and cultural evolution – and may require a combination of ‘head’ and ‘heart’ experiences, especially if the insight is to be embodied.

Harder to see because …

• Relates to our ways of being and knowing exacerbated/driven by the socio-cultural paradigm of modernity.

• Physical evidence e.g. extreme weather can help us see a polycrisis but metacrisis is more hidden. Climate deniers has kind of disappeared as we saw evidence in daily life … [but hard to see evidence in metacrisis].

• People see polycrisis and then say “oh well this is human nature, we are power-hungry and greedy” without seeing deeper cultural and ontological roots – and seeing that those can change.

• Buy-in to modernity is so strong that there is a big shift to see it. This is whether on the capitalist side or the activist side e.g. people who work in justice world may find it hard get over the pure activist stance (i.e. not just condemning modernity but transcending and including it) just as billionaire may find it hard to question source of their wealth.

• Hard to break out to a broader perspective from just seeing what is happening right now. Step up meta-cognitive domain. It is a step-up in the evolutionary spiral …

All of this may require head and heart experiences because …

• Knowing something often doesn’t lead to a change of beliefs and action especially if these are core beliefs. e.g. people come to cancer programs and get info and evidence of friends and still don’t shift views or behaviours. More at Open-mindedness and Non-attachment to Views

• Some of this information is very confronting at multiple levels e.g. a) seeing major crises that threaten life as we know it b) seeing our role in causing that

More on this in this related second renaissance forum post.

Question

How do more people ‘see’ the metacrisis & second renaissance at increasing levels of depth e.g. head or heart first, then both and then deeply embodied (i.e. shaping being and behavior) and then finally to ‘be in action’ (head, heart and hands) with and on that insight – i.e. seeing paths to action and following them.

Hypothesis

There are many dharma doors to seeing cultural evolution and the metacrisis … and for it to be seen, especially more deeply, likely requires evolution along multiple developmental lines e.g. both shifting worldview (‘growing up’) and expanding consciousness (‘waking up’). And for states to turn into traits and for this to become an active part of someone’s life likely requires sustained engagement with others on a similar path – for example, they are part of a “conscious community”