What Is The Metacrisis?
What even is the ‘metacrisis’?
It sounds kinda big … maybe even a bit intimidating …
[It’s both of those things - and a whole lot more].
Even if you’ve never come across the word before, you might still have a sense of what the metacrisis is -
🌍 Why are we still messing up the planet?
💰 Why is inequality rising?
💥 Why so many wars?
❓ And so on.
Many of us feel it - a nagging uncertainty as we look around at the world. We seem to be at the brink of multiple tipping points and boundaries involving the environment, geopolitics, economics, health, inequality, technology, and more.
The ‘metacrisis’ is the study of these overlapping crises. An attempt to figure out what they might have in common. What connections are there? Are they symptoms of the same underlying causes? And if so, what might we do about it?
There’s not a magic bullet. There are no clear ‘answers’, no 4-step ‘solution’ to our global predicament. Diving into the metacrisis is uncomfortable - it requires sitting with complexity and letting go of certainty.
It’s also an emerging field, and it can be tricky to find good information. Here’s some resources that I’ve found useful. Hope they help.