Has the World Gone Mad?

Do you have a sense that the world has gone a bit crazy?

If so, that’s the metacrisis you’re feeling.

The sense that there’s a lot going on at the moment, and much of it seems to reflect the darker side of who and what we are. In metacrisis language, we talk about the ‘perverse incentives’ that are driving leadership, politics, the economy, the media, and so on.

We also talk about how these areas are connected - how they overlap and interact with each other. You don’t have to be a genius to identify economic motivations behind recent political acts … or witness how a particular type of leader - be they ‘strong’ or ‘weak’ - responds in those situations … or see how different media outlets talk about the same event in totally different ways.

But if we can see it so clearly, why does it still happen?

Understanding the metacrisis does not help us ‘fix’ what is happening - it [unfortunately] does not give us the ‘solution’. However, individually and collectively, it can help us cut through the noise to see those underlying ‘perverse incentives’.

And once we can see them, we can start to think about different responses …