What to Do About the Metacrisis
Author: Ken Homer Issue: 2025-06-04
What to Do About the Metacrisis
by Ken Homer
**Project: **No formal name, but if it had one, it would be something like: Coming to Grips with the Metacrisis or Learning to Cope with the Metacrisis.
People: My friend Joe Redston who founded something called the Metacrisis Diplomats, asked me if I would be interested in helping to design a series of learning conversations around the metacrisis. So the “leadership team” is Joe and myself.
We, in turn, invited several friends as participants. Out of all the invitees, a total of four were able to accept so there are six of us in the pilot cohort.
Pilot cohort: Consists of 5 two-hour conversations with some light homework or reading prep between sessions. We convened our first call last month and we will wrap in July.
Purpose: Explore how our current level of thinking - which might be labeled something like ModernityOS - needs to change to address the unintended consequences of that mode of thinking has created in the world.
Goals and objectives
- Learn how participants are framing, affected by, thinking about, and coping with the metacrisis.
- Learn what is effective/ineffective about those ways of relating to it.
- Where the edges of people’s thinking is with regard to the metacrisis.
- Explore different levels of action to be undertaken, such as: personal, community, cultural, policy, language, narratives, vocabulary and definitions, somatic responses, nervous system regulation and co-regulation, etc.
- Determine some appropriate responses to working with both the metacrisis and how people relate to it. One way of framing that is to identify those who are in denial, which fall into three categoriesPre-tragic - people who do not see a world that is imperiled, just one that needs some minor tweaking.
- Tragic - those who are waking up to the metacrisis and know things must change but are overwhelmed and perhaps even paralyzed by what they see and the fear that accompanies it.
- Post-tragic - those who have accepted the harsh reality of the reality that Earth has been in overshoot since 1970 and is now in various phased of collapse and are either wondering how to respond or are actively responding and looking to connect with others who recognize the threats and want to learn to be more effective.
Status and additional details
- Currently a volunteer/unfunded effort.
- Intentionally convened with white men, mostly older, who are located in and beneficiaries of the global north. We want to be able to explore and recognize our privileges on our own terms before we attempt to speak with those who do not enjoy such privileges so that we can be more transparent about them when the time comes.
- Very much a bootstrapped learning experience. We may move forward at a later date with additional offerings but we are holding it lightly now as a learning experience and until it has run its course and we’ve done an appreciative after-action review we are not committing to anything.
- Highly emergent design. We sketch out a general agenda a week before each meeting and then lightly facilitate conversations based around a few provocative ideas to get things going and we follow the threads that seem most alive. The we reflect on what arose during the session that seemed to be enlivening for participants and figure out how to weave those threads into the next session. Our planning sessions are likewise emergent with a lot of deep listening and sensing into what feels most appropriate versus trying to throw in some cool idea or process that either of us might be familiar with. I’ve never designed anything quite like this before. We are truly designing for both emergence and coherence rather than a pre-determined outcome.
- The designers/facilitators and the participants are all well versed (post-tragic) and we went deep into personal territory - which is paradoxically quite universal - in the first two sessions. This is a courageous group I am delighted to be associated with!
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