From chatting with folks this is a nice way to make clearer the general topic / area and show the broader remit.
I’m trying it out now and happy to revert if people think it is a not such a good idea. (or wants longer discussion).
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I really like the addition of Metacrisis it does a great job of making the forum’s core focus clearer to newcomers, and it ties the name more directly to the kinds of conversations we’re actually having here. From a messaging and positioning perspective, that clarity is definitely a strength.
Now from a branding perspective (if it matters), I find myself wondering whether a well-crafted tagline might achieve the same goal without changing the title itself. Second Renaissance has a certain poetic and evocative quality that works well as a brand anchor, and a tagline could help ground that in the concrete theme of the metacrisis, bridging inspiration and specificity.
Title: Second Renaissance
Tagline: Exploring the Metacrisis and Paths Forward
Title: Second Renaissance
Tagline: A Forum for the Metacrisis
Title: Second Renaissance
Tagline: Responding to the Metacrisis Together
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I definitely think this at least needs longer discussion - and I’ve changed the name back provisionally. The name of the forum is a critical part of branding as @Naeema says, and this is not just about communication to newcomers but internal clarity. ‘Second Renaissance forum’ clearly communicates that this is the forum associated with the Second Renaissance initiative - and people can look at secondrenaissance.net to understand more. Adding ‘Metacrisis’ could confuse people - they may wonder is this broader in scope that the second renaissance initiative? Is the idea of Second Renaissance separate from the idea of a metacrisis? If we want to emphasise the Metacrisis element my recommendation would be to start by amending the ‘About’ page text and guidance posts for new members to reference this - and amending the content on secondrenaissance.net?
Alternatively we could consider the idea of having a Metacrisis forum with a distinct identity from Second Renaissance…
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In a recent reading of a book on early Christian origins (Burton Mack, The Lost Gospel of Q), the passage below struck me has being a useful analog for our current circumstances.
“In the case of social fragmentation and the collision of many cultures, such as experienced by all peoples during the Greco-Roman age, no single epic tradition becomes the new model for social activity. And yet these patterns must be linked up with the past.”
To me, ideas like “metacrisis” and “second renaissance” involve the search for a good story line, a story that links past, present, and future. If social fragmentation and collision of many cultures were problematic in the ancient Mediterranean, they are scarcely less problematic today. However, for reasons it would be useful to explore, our visions for the future are inescapably conditioned by our appropriations of the past. So any sort of forward looking model must involve a renaissance of one tradition or another (or perhaps a fusion of several such traditions - the solution the ancient world eventually settled on).
When it comes to branding (i.e. the title of the epic tale), I don’t have much to offer. Call the forum whatever you like. On the substance of the matter - the structure of the under-construction epic tale itself, I likely have more to offer. The stakes are high. Action is needed. A band is drawn together to find its way through many challenges. Any parallels to that in world literature?
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While it’s true that the ancient Mediterranean world ultimately saw a degree of synthesis among cultural traditions, it’s important to recognize that the status quo in that period was far more fluid than often assumed. As scholars like Horden and Purcell argue in The Corrupting Sea, the Mediterranean was characterized less by static cultural traditions and more by dynamic networks of interaction, exchange, and adaptation. Similarly, theorists of cultural hybridity have shown that identity in the ancient world was continually being reshaped through colonization, migration, and local negotiation. The so-called “fusion” was less a fixed solution than an ongoing, contested process, an evolving mosaic rather than a coherent renaissance. Therefore, any forward-looking model that draws on antiquity should account for this historical fluidity rather than presuppose stable traditions as the foundation.
Late antiquity in the greater Mediterranean gave us Christianity, Rabbinic Judaism, Islam, and numerous philosophic schools, not to mention branches and variations on all of these, all of which emerged in competition with numerous other cults and practices since mostly faded away. So “fixed solution” does not occur to me in how the Axial Age ran its course in the West. The movements that persisted beyond that historical moment, however, did all generally share the characteristic of amalgamating many prior influences. That’s the parallel I see to today. Not that we will necessarily exit the metacrisis with one new religion to rule them all. But more like any truly viable sort of thinking in the current situation is going to need cognizance of a wide sweep of prior history and will also need to have something compelling to say about how it both builds upon and reaches beyond all that has come before.
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You definitely don’t want to split forums - you want critical mass.
For me this forum is a bit more than the forum for the Second Renaissance initiative it is a forum for the broader Second Renaissance ideaspace including metacrisis etc (@JonahW as you will recall we even first thought of calling this forum “Little Wiser” to echo “Less Wrong”).
For me that is quite important: yes, it is for the initiative and it should be broader sensemaking community reflecting the broader sense of the Second Renaissance [insert synonyms] “ecosystem”.
Aside connection of the terms
I also note that in terms of concepts Metacrisis and Second Renaissance go together in the sense that the Metacrisis Noble Truth/Belief no.2 and the Second Renaissance can be used in one sense to describe the rebirth after/through the metacrisis – i.e. Noble Truth no. 3 (and 4 to an extent) – as well as Second Renaissance describing the overall narrative and period.
Overall, i’m increasingly thinking that metacrisis and second renaissance are key conceptual components within the ecosystem (at least in the core narrative): i.e. there is a metacrisis and there can be a renewal/rebirth etc (i.e. a renaissance).
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Thanks @rufuspollock yes, that really helps clarify the intention.
I hear you: this isn’t just about semantics, it’s about signaling.
Signaling that the forum is not only a space for the Second Renaissance initiative, but for the wider intellectual and cultural terrain we’re inhabiting: the metacrisis, the sensemaking ecosystem, the broader inquiry into transformation and renewal.
Bringing Metacrisis into the title does serve that purpose; it gives visibility, it makes the content legible to aligned thinkers and communities, and it honors the philosophical architecture you laid out: the metacrisis as the condition, the second renaissance as the response.
At the same time, I still feel the elegance and strength of Second Renaissance as a brand and narrative center. So perhaps there’s a synthesis: something like a subtitle woven directly into the title, rather than a tagline or full rebrand. For example:
- Second Renaissance: A Forum for the Metacrisis
- Second Renaissance | Metacrisis Forum
- Second Renaissance – Navigating the Metacrisis
- Second Renaissance (Metacrisis & Renewal Forum)
This way, the core identity remains intact, but we explicitly name the metacrisis as the territory we’re exploring. It’s a small shift that could make a big difference in perception and reach especially for those scanning for spaces aligned with these concerns.
Happy to workshop more possibilities with you, but this feels like a good step toward that broader visibility and legitimacy you’re pointing to.
My current musings about all this run roughly like so:
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a person attracted to this forum is likely experiencing a meaning crisis on a personal level. Or perhaps this person has the core of a resolution to a personal meaning crisis in hand and wants to work out details of a more comprehensive view.
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symptoms of such a “meaning crisis” would include things like cognitive dissonance (Habermas), anomie (Durkheim), incoherence (@martin) or quite a few other descriptors from various sources. More prosaically - old stories are failing to clarify current experiences; predicted outcomes fail to materialize; what used to be common sense no longer seems sensible; the pathway to constructive action is not at all obvious.
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a personal meaning crisis elevates to a polycrisis or metacrisis view when doing root cause analysis or contextualizing systems of systems until global scale is achieved.
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meaningful action in the world requires a narrative structure that suggests particular clusters of actions will carry desirable consequences beyond themselves.
*the notion of a “second renaissance” suggests a particular approach to crafting an updated narrative, because on recovery of values once common but now forgotten.
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I agree with all of that. I wasn’t suggesting splitting forums, just Metacrisis forum as an alternative name for this forum similar to the Little Wiser idea.
Second Renaissance Initiative for me includes the Ecosystem within its scope, given the centrality of mapping within the initiative. And totally agree Metacrisis is closely connected to Second Renaissance - which is precisely why preserving the Second Renaissance name can work. When I’ve introduced the idea of Second Renaissance to people in a couple of sentences I always reference the metacrisis - and this is clear from the SecondRenaissance.net homepage too.
We could call it Metacrisis forum, and that would broaden the scope to include other conceptions of what is required to deal with the crisis, which may be good. But if we want this to be a space more aligned with the Second Renaissance as our framing of and solution to the metacrisis, I’d suggest sticking with Second Renaissance. ‘Metacrisis and Second Renaissance’ is just too long. It’s too much of a mouthful. It’s a branding thing. I know this is not at all a corporate space, but the same principles of simplicity, identify and brand recognition apply here. And I’d say the same thing about you’re suggestions @Naeema.
While procrastinating from other work, my mind kept going over the core logic of Second Renaissance + Metacrisis. Schematically, it kept coming out like this:
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the metacrisis becomes evident because of Global Population Plus its Economy (Pogany) crashing into planetary boundaries.
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evidence of this crashing includes loss of species diversity, climate anomalies, and a host of social tensions. Root cause of the social tensions generally points to resource competition.
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none of this is obvious through direct perception. Noticing the metacrisis involves specific sorts of cultural framings of thousands if not millions of data points.
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people who notice all the problem systems, but lack a framing to interpret them, generally suffer from what is known as a meaning crisis.
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The mission of Second Renaissance is to encourage the development of cultural framings adequate to the task of grasping the metacrisis, analyzing its causes and components, and facilitating personal pathways within the larger global system.
In a nutshell, the metacrisis is the reason a Second Renaissance is required. A 2R is not just “nice to have”. It’s a “must have”, because the alternative is a civilizational hard crash into planetary boundaries, with social tensions escalating in dangerous ways.
On the level of how to title the forum - I really can’t say. But the basic logic sums up as the metacrisis is driving the need for the forum, and the forum is exploring ways to mitigate the metacrisis.
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Exactly 
The other logic is the sequencing:
Metacrisis & (then) Second Renaissance.
Reflecting on my own reasons for being here, schematically it ran like this:
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experience of social tensions around DEI and high tech capitalist workforce training.
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realization that existing values (like pro-growth economics) needed transvalued.
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realization of the need for a spiritual center to navigate many layers of social tensions.
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outward-rippling contextual and root cause analysis, leading to a grand tour of liminal and metatheories.
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needing to put all that into practice and needing a lean personal synthesis for a practice model.
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checking out this forum largely on the strength of personal relationships that pointed here.
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sticking with this forum because it meets a very specific need I have to pull together a large range of metatheories in a practice context.
So looking at all that, it appears the metacrisis was causal, but I did not identify the “metacrisis” as such till fairly deeply engaged with the process itself. Also, the “Second Renaissance” name was not as important to my experience here as the content and relationships that came with the label. It would be interesting to hear from others and to see what other sorts of pathways led them here and what the attractors were.
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Is this proposal a direct result of the May 2-3 conference? That’s the guess in my head re the timing and how this was raised.
My vote is for keeping forum title as-is. Metacrisis can feature prominently in explaining 2R, but I recall part of the point of 2R branding a year ago was to focus on what we want to see more than problem-oriented framing.