Question: How do we enable more people to look at the meta-crisis and its likely consequences in a way that empowers them to respond constructively rather than avoid or deny it?
My reflections
Recognition – The central task is enabling people to actually see the metacrisis. Recognition has three dimensions:
- Evidence – Present clear stories, data, and scenarios that make probable futures tangible and hard to ignore.
- Hope – Balance the dark diagnosis with narratives of renewal and rebirth, so recognition does not collapse into despair.
- Holding – Provide psychosocial containers and community spaces where people can process grief and fear, and “sit with the trouble” together.
Action – Once recognition is possible, offer credible and varied ways to engage: local initiatives, personal practices, and broader movement-building pathways that channel awareness into constructive participation.
Link to source: Excalidraw+
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Nice perspective @rufuspollock — however, there isn’t just one perspective on “the metacrisis”. Even if there were universal agreement that there was some kind of metacrisis (which obviously there isn’t) people would still have quite different takes on it.
Rather than getting people to “see the metacrisis” (which I take it means, see it from your perspective, within your framing) how about framing the key questions that will lead people into their own reflections as to what is going on, whether they see it as collapse, or otherwise? And then, sharing imaginative stories about what might be our future; comparing/contrasting’; getting into dialogue (and naturally I would offer the meta-perspective of Ontological Commoning) and working towards some kind of unity or solidarity as to a next step forward that would work for different people’s belief systems?
After the next step is taken, the world subtly shifts, so I would hope that there is even more room for dialogue and further steps.
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In my part of the collapse community, a passage through “despair” is considered a prerequisite to effective action. Though I do not subscribe to the analysis, “hope” is often derided as “hopium,” i.e. an anesthetic denial to dull the pain of truth.
My crowd is often called “doomers,” though there are many species of doomer. I personally cannot abide the purely scientific doomers who seem to revel in endless reports of bad news culled from climate reports. The news is bad; so what? The question is: “What is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?” (Mary Oliver)
“Dark diagnoses” are not necessarily anathema. Integration of the Shadow is necessary to become adult, which is why I (in a peculiar and esoteric way) celebrate collapse as an opportunity to discover what it means to be fully human.
Further on hope:
HOPE
Either we have hope within us or we do not.
It is a dimension of the soul and is not essentially dependent on some particular observation of the world.
HOPE is an orientation of the spirit, an orientation of the heart. It transcends the world that is immediately experienced and is anchored somewhere beyond its horizons.
HOPE in this deep and powerful sense is not the same as joy that things are going well or willingness to invest in enterprises that are obviously headed for early success, but rather an ability to work for something because it is good, not because it stands a chance to succeed.
HOPE is definitely not the same thing as optimism. It is not the conviction that something will turn out well, but certainty that something makes sense regardless of how it turns out.
It is HOPE, above all which gives the strength to live and continually try new things.
Agreed. That was my epiphany on a mountain hike 6 months ago. The whole Ikigai model I’ve been developing ever since is a practice hack to accomplish just what you are saying above. IMO, there really is no proper way to teach “the metacrisis” on mass scales, but there is also no need to do that. People need to address the problems they see, as they experience them. Those who are rigorous about that will eventually achieve global views in which discussion of “metacrisis” or comparably scoped ideas will make perfect sense. What has also worked for me in practice, however, is to just drop the term “metacrisis” into conversation casually with a sort of “as ever schoolboy knows … “ nonchalance. That gets the term out there, and perhaps piques curiosity. It also sets the table for revisiting the term theoretically, if the need arises.
Getting psyched up for the coming school year, I presented my dean with a grand strategy for essentially restructuring education on a new basis. Although the shell of the organization will look the same, all key relationships will be radically transformed and energy will flow very differently. Such a proposal would be preposterously idealistic, were it not for the grounding of the model in very real, nitty-gritty, pain points all our institutional stakeholders are currently grappling with. To achieve this synthesis, all I needed to do was to release all attachment to 20th century paradigms and to allow myself to imagine the world we now enter - a world that will become obvious to all a generation or so from now.
To get that level of freedom, I’m not sure despair on an emotional level was exactly the process. But it absolutely was a “rite de passage”. Structurally, my process conforms well to the Hero’s Journey archetype. During the past three years or so I gave up on the prior system (globalized, high-tech, late capitalism) and spent some time on the liminal web (note the meaning of “liminal”), exploring what Zak Stein has called “the time between worlds”. But catalyzed by the events of early 2025, I exited the rite de passage and arrived mentally and spiritually at a new normal. Normal for me, that is, and for tiny bands of fellow travelers. Statistically speaking, still quite abnormal. But it’s the likely seed crystal of what comes next.
For me, “despair” was not the real change driver. Probably because I was not really that emotionally attached to globalized, high-tech, late capitalism in the first place. All that was more like means to an end - Ikigai “what can I get paid for?” far more than Ikigai ‘what do I love?” I’ll venture to speculate that gut-level despair requires surrender of hope or confidence in something that one truly loved to begin with. In my case, it was more like frustration. Like frustration that a model that used to work to produce desired results just was not delivering the goods anymore. It’s like that moment in the life of every vehicle owner when the “fix it or trade it?” question tips decisively in the direction of “trade it”. Trying to patch the old ride up and nurse it back on the road is just wasted effort at that point. Better to walk away. But for me anyway, when the old rust bucket is over with, no tears required. My last car just limped in to a dealer late at night, and I came back on foot the next day and made a handshake deal for cash. The cash was not much, but all I really wanted was out from under the fees and repair costs hanging on to it would have cost me. Cleaned it out and walked over to the light rail station. Pretty much the same way I am handling the collapse of the post World War II US-led global order. Just junk it. It’s over.
Speculating a bit more, it’s possible that “despair” is the emotional dimension not so much of a time between worlds, as of a time between true loves. Despair, as such, may well be for lost love. The rebirth of hope on the far side of despair may well involve the recovery of love, now reinvested in new objects and new directions. For me, recycling generational social systems is as prosaic as taking the trash barrels out on Tuesday. My true love - the ineffable - is quite beyond historical epochs and circumstances in any case. I find that One in all historical situations. Tear down the old set. Start building the new one. The show will most certainly continue to go on!
Lets us travel with what this looks like?
Anyone on the research call yesterday (9/19) saw me in my element - doing “what I love” - and I dare say, doing it with people I love. Below is a photo from a recent vacation (with my wife) that illustrates other loves.
We can conceptualize the practices and the lived experiences to any degree required, but in some sense that’s all just commentary and the practices and the experiences are love itself.
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That is so beautiful, I can almost imagine I am there. Here is a tiny painting I did in the quiet shade in the secret garden of an old house, in Norfolk. For me painting is a meditation and an act of devotion to the now. Time disappears.
Thanks! For me, going to places like that (Salt Creek, WA) is “participatory knowing”. It informs all other forms of cognition. All those rocks, sea, and foliage are to me tantamount to the divine Logos made manifest. Of course, in the moment, the best approach is not to think too much about any of that, but rather just be there and soak it in.
The same could be said for experiencing your art work, BTW.
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This points to a difficulty. We have problems of scale; timing, place and perspective.
Timing:
An unfortunate aspect of human nature is to be slow on the uptake when it come to very large movements. Just as the ant cannot comprehend the human that is going to step on them. We have increasingly shorter windows in which to act effectively. We have built culture and collective perspective practices and psycho technologies that allow as to see both time and scale better. We need to use poets, prophets, and data scientists.
Place:
Those that have the opportunity and power to insist on change; Western entitled beings, are not those who are currently experiencing the full effects of climate and social upheaval. By the time they are caught up it will be too late.
Perspective
A Marine Biologist, a Climate Scientist, and an Aid worker, a Farmer, and a city executive, are all seeing very different personal perspectives on the state of the world, none wrong, but all deeply incomplete.
Our scientists have made studies that show that we are not cognitively well built aggregate risk.
Designing a story for meaning and action.
This is why I think Rufus and others attempt to unearth conceptually simple underlying cause/s, the metacrisis is the most vital task, that and the effective communication of such message.
What we probably need is not more philosophers, deep thinkers and educators, but those from advertising and marketing, pop stars and filmakers.
Good framing.
On timing - introspectively, I began life in the 1950s, with no special sort of urgency. My childhood world seemed properly constructed. Things began unraveling in the 1960s and 1970s. That was the background to my adolescence. A lot of rather awkward sorting out involved in all that. My main problem in the 1980s was “adulting”, which in my case meant adjusting to the world of work to support a family. Somewhere in all that conformity I also felt the need for something more fundamental, so a lot of searching around the edges. Like many, I was generally concerned that Reagan would blow up the world, but was delighted when the Berlin Wall fell instead. The urgency of the 1990s was rushing like mad to jump on the Internet craze. I did that effectively enough to have not had any serious professional problems ever since. The world in general seemed as peaceful and orderly as a world might be. Each passing year of the 21st century, however, has brought with it increasing cause for concern. I first encountered “metacrisis” thinking about 3 years ago, but it resonates.
I’m able to visualize vast time scales because even in preschool I was into paleontology, and world history was my college major. But history also documents many circumstances in which urgent action was required. I am very, very capable of pulling all-nighters and throwing myself into to breach, so to speak, when circumstances require. However, to do that constantly leads to burn out, so on an average day, more patient and disciplined practices are more advisable. There is nothing about 2025 that suggests to me that any of us should be resting on our laurels.
Place. Working in Seattle, I have no excuse for not architecting the future of the world. Seattle does that. Not just Seattle, of course, but it is on the short list of those sorts of places.
Perspective. Short answer: collective intelligence. I love being in rooms where I am one of the slower and least capable!
Designing a story. Spot on! As you so often are! Narrative, narrative, narrative. I consumed a lot of media along the way, and in recent years I’ve been drawn to the Hollywood process involving writers rooms, story breakdowns, storyboards, and shooting scripts. Lately I have found myself effectively in the equivalent of writers rooms in which I help very talented people bring metacrisis-addressing productions closer to fruition. Feels like right action.
In general, if one looks at any successful film, personification is vital to narrative dramatization. Even with cosmic apocalyptic stakes (Star Wars, Lord of the Rings, Avengers, etc.) the audience needs characters to identify with. To make metacrisis thinking popular, it must become personal. I generally recommend a slow, progressive reveal. Something is amiss … it’s hard to pin down … problems are surfacing locally … quick fixes are attempted, but nothing seems to work … there are encounters with other characters, rumblings of larger forces over the horizon … … … … by the third act we’re in full on Metacrisis Mordor. But the narrative has to grow into that perspective, it can’t just start there.
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