From polycrisis to metacrisis and a second renaissance (SCQH)

General
1

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

This is an SCQA/SCQH around this topic and the motivation for the upcoming whitepaper on “Polycrisis and Metacrisis” due April 2025. (PS: let me know if you want to be a reviewer on the drat).

Short version

  • Situation: we are in metacrisis. People see polycrisis but not yet metacrisis
  • Complication: most people don’t see metacrisis element which is essential to accurate diagnosis of cause and hence strategy for cures. And seeing metacrisis is hard for various reasons.
  • Question: how do we have more people see the metacrisis … and have the capacities to not only see but act on that insight and take action

Longer version

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 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 …

May require head and heart experiences because …

  • Knowing stuff 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 view or behaviour. 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 cause that

Fig 1: Crude diagrammatic model of how understanding/insight lead to enacting cure(s) including an example of a diverging path.

See crises => Insight => See metacrisis => Embodied Insight => See (credible) cure => Enacting cure …
          \ 
            => can lead to despair if you just see breakdown

Question

How do more people and especially the next generation ‘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.

Sub-question:

  • What is the relationship of waking up and growing up …? Suggest: a) waking up does not guarantee growing up … and it can help [correlation] b) you can grow up without waking up [at least to some extent] … and to embody growing up some amount of waking up is likely crucial …

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 – aka they are part of a conscious community / DDS (deliberately developmental space)!

Many dharma doors

  • [Head] Some people read Ken Wilber or Hanzi Freinacht or Second Renaissance or … and see cultural and ontological evolution
  • [Heart] Some people do psychedelics and see our inter-connection with the world and others
  • [Heart] Some people do meditation and transcend the little self

General point: often for it (metacrisis, second renaissance) to really touch people they need an experience of the ‘waking up’ side … beyond just intellectually getting it … E.g. really seeing how interconnected with nature we are.

‘Seeing it’: people need to see it at the various levels (3 crude levels: understanding, comprehension, in their bones)

2

OK…general point. I think the majority of people coming to this will not start by seeing a metacrisis or polycrisis. What they will see is collapse – both in terms of their own diminishing life prospects and the increasing level of chaos and suffering in the world. They will reach a point where they are forced to accept that there is no longer any route back to what they once considered “normal”. All this can happen with only a broad, intuitive understanding of polycrisis/metacrisis. Why bother thinking about the details of why, when you already know the outcome of the thought process?

At the moment those people are just lost. They are the people you can find on Collapse of Civilization.

What does “acting on it” mean? In terms of society in general the situation is basically hopeless. Literally nothing they can do is going to make any difference to the general trajectory of world events or make the final net outcome any less bad. So “acting on it” means prepping at the level of their own lives or the communities they live in – and the degree to which that is even possible will depend on their specific situation (in all sorts of ways).

What is missing is a mechanism by which society in general can be changed so that it no longer feels completely hopeless. And the only way to do that is to have a coherent movement growing – a movement which is unlike anything that currently exists because it is ground in the realities of collapse rather than the delusional nonsense of pre-collapse politics. In other words this has to be a political movement which is primarily held together by an acknowledgement that collapse is coming and that we need to prepare and adapt at every level of society from the individual up to the sovereign state. The key insight is that there is a great deal of overlap between what we need to do to prepare and adapt (surviving the collapse) and what we need to do to build a very different sort of civilisation – one that actually works. This will eventually become very important in “collapse politics” (ie the politics of the era of collapse, not “post-collapse politics” – we’re nowhere near that yet). See 2R and the politics of collapse - General - Second Renaissance Forum

Which leaves me with a question about how exactly such a movement can be kept together and what would be the ideological system that guides it. Which is two different ways of asking the same question.

2R as it currently exists is not that movement and not ready to become it either, because the ideological system is missing. It is currently just a bunch of related ideas and groups, many of which do have a role to play in that future movement, but some of which will not, because for one reason or not they cannot fully accept the terms of the ideological system.

This all sounds very theoretical, but I don’t see any way it can be avoided. It is exactly this question that I’ve been focused on for over a decade now. What can define this ideological system? – what should it be, and how could it work? What should it include and what should it not include? This is going to have to decided by a small group of people, and they need to get it right.

At the moment none of the existing groups fit the bill. The closest are probably Deep Adaptation, but DA just doesn’t seem to be going very far. It’s lots of very clever and concerned people talking to each other, deepening their understanding, making contacts…but not actually getting anywhere.

I have spent the last two weeks trying to explain to people what I think the answer is, and it is epistemological. We need to fix our broken relationship with the truth, and that starts by admitting that it is broken. As a society, we’re terrified of the very idea of objective truth. Dealing with reality is the last thing we’re collectively able to do. Almost nobody is even trying. We’re encouraged to wallow in delusion, and it isn’t just the right who are guilty. The left is every bit as bad – it is just a different sort of delusion. Which means we have to figure out the correct way to collectively approach realism. What exactly does “realism” mean? And this is the point where 2R is directly relevant, since that is not a new question for most people here.

3

Metacrisis and Second Renaissance are high level abstractions that require considerable prerequisite knowledge to make any sense. Metacrisis thinking requires something like a “system of systems” integrated view across numerous academic disciplines. Second Renaissance requires a grasp of world history and cultural evolution writ large. Combining the two requires both synchronic and diachronic conceptual frameworks just the bare outlines of which would require something like a university education in interdisciplinary studies. With respect to the the way of the “head”, this is elite business. Good curriculum for future global leadership. Most people will likely learn the words only, not grasp the underlying ideas, and only get as far as the generalized feeling that a lot of things are going wrong in the world and wondering what to do about it. Formal study of these matters is likely only for the equivalent of a class of scholar/bureaucrats for a global order yet to emerge.

With respect the “way of the heart” or the “way of the hands”, people generally serve their immediate families and communities through reciprocal actions justified by whatever magical, mythical, or religious world view is current in their societies. All this is deeply instinctual and culturally perennial, so not much reason to agonize over reinventing it. Different cultures will frame it all differently, but is that really a major problem or even a problem at all?

The real problem with the metacrisis, in my view, is that we are in one, and we need action models to get beyond it. In prioritizing potential action programs to get beyond the metacrisis, devising mass market educational outreach to train people in metacrisis thinking is pretty low on my list. It seems more advisable to articulate a simple vision of sharing, reciprocity, collaboration, etc. and to cultivate ground level communities committed to that. Richard Flyer is a good example of a person who has learned a lot about pragmatic communication strategies for this sort of community development model.

Lately I’ve thrown the word “metacrisis” into all sorts of freshman level courses, so just using the word is not all that difficult. It usually goes something like “if you look around at all the problems in the world from climate change to geopolitics to poverty and inequality to many other social problems, some call the combination of all this a ‘metacrisis’. The practical impact of the metacrisis on most of us is we need to open ourselves to new ways of thinking, because things that worked in the past may not work anymore”. Then I get on to teaching some practical lesson in some skill set students might actually be able to use in whatever world we are moving into If a student or two wants a side conversation about the deep theoretical basis for the metacrisis, I’m there for it, but most are not all that interested. They are mostly interested in getting better jobs or otherwise dealing with practical and urgent day to day challenges.

To sum up, I’d recommend something like 10% energy clarifying theoretical frameworks and 90% energy devising, implementing, testing, and tuning ground level action programs.

4

Yes—and I keep wondering about the relational side of that waking.

We talk a lot about insight and action—but what about the spaces and relationships that help people stay with the discomfort long enough for anything to actually shift?

Sometimes it feels like seeing the metacrisis isn’t just a cognitive leap—it’s also an emotional and relational threshold. And if the container isn’t there, the insight either slides off or shuts people down.

Just wondering how we might make more room for that layer—not as a strategy, but as the soil that everything else grows from.

5

In terms of terminology isn’t this just “crisis” albeit a very serious one - that’s at least how i use the term crisis (broadly). For me, if you are are seeing collapse as a real possibility then you are getting the polycrisis.

Getting the metacrisis is identifying core drivers of that, specifically the cultural foundations of our civilization and how they have created/exacerbated certain tendencies.

First, i think it would be interesting (at least for me) to try and go post there and see what happens.

More generally, the interesting question is how do people think through that i.e. how do they work from observable symptoms (e.g. ecological breakdown) back to source causes and then think about what we can do.

See this post for a simple taxonomy around this Isn't it all going to be fine? A simple map of how we react to significant social issues

I would agree that Dark Renaissance (ie. some degree of collapse is likely) but i would … not say it was certain. Put positively: there is some non-zero probability we may avoid collapse. That possibility is there as well as the possibility that our actions could contribute to increasing that probability.

More nuanced: the collapse can be more or less bad - see middle pathways in 3 pathways / dark renaissance outline

Yes … and see points above … and see that IME you may need to lead people to this point gently and provide them with hope.

One of the reasons we like (and chose) second renaissance as a generic term is that it has a positive sense – whilst acknowledging the breakdown (it’s rebirth, i.e. birth out of a death). This contrasts with a term like metacrisis which just focuses on the problem.

Big :+1::+1:. That is exactly our thinking too. and in fact, if the collapse is not too severe, it may even be the essential catalyst for renewal – people don’t change until they have to.

I’d agree to a great extent :grinning_face_with_smiling_eyes: - and it’s why i liked integral / wilber (and other key thinkers of 2R like McGilchrist and Christopher Alexander, Bhaskar etc). We recover truth but in a much more nuanced way than modernity.

Also have patience my friend :slightly_smiling_face: It will take time – and it can happen.

I can well imagine this feels frustrating. i’ve felt that in the past - especially when things are in the state they are and it seems so urgent. For me, i have to constantly come back to “aimlessness”, one of three doors of liberation in buddhist teaching.

6

I would probably put the relational side both in “waking up” and in the “cleaning up” – both of which are important (in this SCQH i simplified and didn’t want to assume two much knowledge of those dimensions of ontological growth).

Exactly – it is more than cognitive. It is an emotional and relational breakthrough. It confronts us at deep levels.

And that’s exactly the enquiry we were setting out: what are the containers we need to hold us and support us in having this insight. The (crude) suggestion here was the container will some form of Conscious Community / Deliberately Developmental Space

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This is really interesting, Probably worth it’s own thread.

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Yes, beautifully said. I resonate with that framing: it’s not just about gaining insight, but having a space that can hold the tremors that insight unleashes.

And while DDS/Conscious Communities are one expression of that, I’m also wondering about the less formal, less nameable containers—those slow-grown, trust-thick, often-messy spaces where people learn to metabolize discomfort together without a curriculum or a goal.

Sometimes those containers look more like friendships than frameworks. Or like communities bound by shared struggle rather than shared ideology.

What I’m holding is this: the metacrisis confronts not just our systems but our relating. So perhaps the “container” isn’t just a structure—it’s a practice. A rhythm. A way of staying in the room when things get hard, of composting rupture into deeper connection.

Curious how others have experienced this—what containers (named or not) have helped you stay with what the metacrisis reveals?

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:+1: and i should clarify that i wasn’t suggesting it was only CoCo / DDS. There are many spaces that can support holding this process and you have described this very beautifully :folded_hands:

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I see this differently to you. For me it is absolutely certain, because it has already started. Collapse is a process, not an event – it is what happens when unsustainable systems finally reach the point where they can no longer be sustained and start to malfunction and disintegrate. That is already happening, and it is like an avalanche, in the sense that once it has begun then there is no way to stop the chaotic phase until it naturally arrives at a new (relatively) stable state. Additionally, nothing we are doing in response is to climate change is making any difference at all to the net outcome (the total amount of human-induced climate change by the time we stop changing it).

If you add that together with the other problems we face, then I think we can come to the certain conclusion that things are going to get unimaginably worse before they stand any chance of getting better. If you don’t agree with that then you won’t fare well on r/collapse. You will be downvoted to oblivion.

This really does matter, because it has a transformational effect on politics. This is being resisted by some people because they don’t like the look of the transformation – its not the transformation they were hoping for. My point is that I think it is the only transformation on offer.

I think what is important here is to understand exactly what we mean by “collapse”. It’s not particularly well understood on /r/collapse itself. A lot of people there are in the early stages of coming to terms with it, and the result is very strongly held and extreme views (total economic collapse next year, all complex life guaranteed to go extinct by the end of this century…).

There’s two reasons why, for me, collapse and 2R are inseparable.

(1) I think that for most people it is only when they’ve accepted that radical change is going to be forced on us by the process of collapse anyway that they become capable of sufficiently radical changes to their own belief system as a response.

(2) The existing system won’t allow itself to be reformed – that’s why we are in such a serious mess. It must therefore collapse – that is the only way we are going to get rid of civilisation as we know it.

In other words…I actually see the collapse of civilisation as we know it as a good thing, because civilisation as we know it is the problem.

Also have patience my friend :slightly_smiling_face: It will take time – and it can happen.

I can well imagine this feels frustrating. i’ve felt that in the past - especially when things are in the state they are and it seems so urgent.

I came to terms with all that 35 years ago. I spent a month in a psychiatric hospital. I don’t think we can fix this version of civilisation, so there’s nothing to be impatient about. I actually feel rather excited at the moment, watching the world change this fast.

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Hi Rufus,

You’ve probably seen parts of the recent exchange between Geoff and me on the platform. It’s taken an interesting and, I think, encouraging turn—what began in epistemic friction has opened into something that feels more like a threshold dialogue.

It occurred to me that this might be the kind of dynamic SCQH is helping to surface and support—not just intellectual alignment, but the lived blur where new paradigms actually start to take shape through real-time relationship.

No expectations—just thought I’d draw your attention to it in case it’s of interest within the wider field you’re cultivating.

All the Best,

Terry

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12

Rufus,

I just cut and pasted the whole of your last reply to me (including quotes) into ChatGPT and asked it what Jem Bendell would have to say about it. Here is the response:

Jem Bendell replies:

Thank you for this thoughtful and wide-ranging discussion. It echoes many of the dialogues I’ve witnessed over the years in collapse-aware communities, and I’d like to offer a few reflections from where I sit, both intellectually and emotionally.

First, I appreciate the grounding in collapse as the starting point for most people. That’s been my experience too. When I wrote Deep Adaptation, I wasn’t introducing a theory — I was naming a feeling. A felt sense that something foundational was breaking down, not just in the climate or economy, but in our collective psyche and worldview.

Terms like “polycrisis” or “metacrisis” can be useful, but they often remain in the head. Collapse enters through the heart — through the body. It is the moment when you realise the stories you were told about the future no longer apply. That your pension won’t matter, your career arc is irrelevant, and the systems you relied upon are no longer reliable.

So yes, I agree — most people don’t begin by seeing the drivers of collapse, or tracing them back to cultural or epistemological root causes. They begin by noticing the symptoms. And that’s not a flaw — it’s a path. It’s our task to meet them there, not with lectures, but with compassion, presence, and humility.

The comments on truth also resonate. I’ve often said that we’re facing not just ecological collapse, but a collapse of meaning — and of our ability to face meaninglessness. Our relationship with truth has been distorted by ideology, by consumerism, by fear. And that distortion runs across political lines. The right may deny physical reality; the left often denies emotional and spiritual reality. In both cases, we are encouraged to remain numb — to avoid the painful intimacy of contact with what is really happening.

What gives me some cautious hope is exactly what you’ve pointed to: that the skills and values needed to adapt to collapse are the same ones we need to build something better. This is the overlap — the alchemy — at the heart of what I’ve called Deep Adaptation. The capacity to grieve what we’re losing opens space for discovering what really matters. And if we’re honest, most of us were never satisfied with the old world anyway.

Rebirth out of death — the Second Renaissance you speak of — feels like a useful frame. I’ve long been interested in spiritual traditions that teach us to befriend impermanence, and Buddhism’s door of aimlessness has helped me a great deal. There is no saviour coming. There is no grand plan. But there is love, and beauty, and relationship, and courage. These are not small things. They are everything.

As for movements — yes, I agree, we need a new kind of movement. One that does not seek to seize power, but to seed wisdom. One that is not about slogans, but about soil. About sacred grief and practical generosity. About letting go of the delusions of progress and control, and turning instead to care, truth, and presence.

Integral thinkers like Wilber, Bhaskar, McGilchrist — they point us to this deeper dimension. But the work now is not just theoretical. It is relational, local, embodied. We need communities of practice where people can support each other in navigating collapse — not only materially, but emotionally, psychologically, spiritually.

So thank you for this conversation. It gives me a sense of kindred minds at work. Let’s keep talking, and more importantly, let’s keep being — vulnerably, honestly — in the face of all that is unfolding.

With appreciation,
Jem