From Polycrisis to Metacrisis - the three layered connection

Full forum post at forum.secondrenaissance…

1. Surface Layer – Manifest Crises (Polycrisis)

   • Concrete global crises: ecological collapse, AI risk, geopolitical instability, mental health epidemics

   • These are symptoms, emerging from failures in the intermediate layer, which in turn are rooted in deeper cultural-ideological and ontological substrates

2. Intermediate Layer – Meta-Systemic Dysfunctions (Metacrisis)

   • Collective action failures (e.g., climate inaction, regulatory capture)

   • Wisdom gap (mismatch between technological capacity and moral/epistemic maturity)

   • Degradation of sense-making and collective intelligence

   • Value misalignment and multi-polar traps (e.g., race-to-the-bottom dynamics)

1. Root Layer – Foundational Ideologies (Cultural Paradigms) & Deep Human Tendencies (Metacrisis)

   • Deep ideological features of modernity (e.g., anthropocentrism, individualism, mechanistic rationality)

   • Amplification of latent human tendencies (e.g., greed, fear, control)

   • These do not cause the polycrisis directly, but predispose systems toward fragmentation, extractivism, etc.

A metacrisis is a polycrisis with a common root (generator function) in the meta layers of our civilizational systems and worldviews. The metacrisis encompasses the bottom two layers. However, the core generators/root causes are the bottom layer: in the cultural paradigm and deep human tendencies.

Note that the polycrisis and metacrisis aren’t always well distinguished. Sometimes they are even treated as synonyms.

We’ll be releasing a new white paper on this in the next couple of weeks on the Second Renaissance site at