Asher Miller of the Post-Carbon Institute critiques Dan Drezner’s dismissal of the term polycrisis and his worry that it promotes fatalism and inaction. Miller counterargues that “only in understanding the true nature of our predicament and accepting the need for systemic shifts in virtually all aspects of the modern world can we find the agency […]
Is ‘Polycrisis’ the Right Word for Our Times? Read More »
Farwa Sial argues that the polycrisis neologism is a feint that allows international financial institutions to continue business as usual by obscuring their role in global problems. She critiques definitions of polycrisis for downplaying the role of capitalism and global power hierarchies in the perpetuation of contemporary crises, and for overlooking the experiences of the
Bo Harvey examines origins and recent popularity of the polycrisis concept, then rebuts critiques of the concept by Noah Smith and Guney Isikara. In response to the latter, Harvey problematizes the reduction of all the world’s problems to “capitalism” by noting the wide breadth of that term. “In other words, I want to argue that
On the ‘Polycrisis’ Part I: Issues in Abstract Conceptual Circumference Read More »
The author depicts “polycrisis as a wake-up call for siloed technocratic elites to peer out of the silos at the interaction term” – as a reaction to our tendency to address crises in isolation from one another. He highlights climate change as the “metacrisis” within the polycrisis that is increasingly correlating once separable risks, as
Notes on the Polycrisis Read More »
Güney Işikara argues that “obscure jargon” like ‘overlapping emergencies’ and polycrisis “serve, with or without intention, to conceal the culprit, namely the totality of capitalist relations” as the fundamental source of the world’s problems. “Within this depoliticizing and neutralizing narrative, capitalism at best looms as an imperceptible, shadowy figure in the background, not worth problematizing,
Beating Around the Bush: Polycrisis, Overlapping Emergencies, and Capitalism Read More »
Economics commentator Noah Smith opposes the term polycrisis, arguing that it overestimates the interconnectivity and severity of contemporary crises. He further posits that there are buffers in place in most systems and that people come together at times of crises, preventing them from escalating or compounding. “I don’t see a polycrisis; I see an emerging
Against Polycrisis Read More »
Cameron Hill discusses a “range of proposals to reform the international development finance architecture in ways that might alleviate some of the worst effects of the multiple global shocks for low- and middle-income countries. This blog canvasses several of the more prominent proposals, including the dilemmas and trade-offs they raise.” He focuses on “debt, global
The ‘Polycrisis’ and Global Development Finance: Options and Dilemmas Read More »
Camille Carlton and Maria Bridge argue that technology can amplify the metacrisis in two ways: by creating a centralized dystopia in which governments use technology to control citizens, or by creating decentralized chaos and catastrophe in which individuals wield immense technological powers in a free-for-all.
A Deeper Dive into the Meta Crisis Read More »
Jonathan Rowson reflects on the many ‘flavours’ of meta-crisis, framing them through personal anecdotes, emotions, and spirituality. “There is a broader crisis of civilisational purpose that appears to necessitate political and economic transformation, and there are deeper socio-emotional, educational, epistemic and spiritual features of our predicament that manifest as many flavours of meta-crisis: the lack
Tasting the Pickle: Ten Flavours of Meta-Crisis and the Appetite for a New Civilisation Read More »
