We've been through crises before, what makes the metacrisis so...deadly?

Part 2 of Chapter 9. Because it was a fat one.

So this chunk of my Book Serialisation continues directly from last week’s instalment that explains the “metacrisis”. Today, I take the opportunity to answer a question that comes up a lot, using the metacrisis framing.

You’re new here? You can start at the beginning and navigate around using this Table of Contents if you like. The audio version is at the bottom, available only to subscribers. Ditto the conversation in the comments section where we workshop things together.

One last thing: Please do get share-happy with this series.

I’d love to bring in as many concerned and curious humans as possible into the conversation. A good idea might be to share the first two chapters, which are free to everyone. I’ve created a button for you to do so immediately (also, don’t forget that for every three subscribers you refer, you get a month’s free subscription ):

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Q: Why is the metacrisis any different from previous crises?

I’m at a barbeque back in Sydney over Christmas. At the table are the hosts and two of their friends - a self-regarding science journalist and a radio producer. Invariably we get on to the subject of collapse (our hosts plant it on the table between the sausages and berry compote dessert), and I am met, as I’m sure many of you here have been too, with the very robust argument that history is dotted with periods in which everyone declared that the end of the world was nigh…and, yet, here we still are.

Over the course of the next hour I was told that humanity has endured crises of not-dissimilar magnitude before. The Black Plague, Dresdon, the Cold War and previous civilisational collapses were rattled off. Then, as per the usual trajectory of this kind of conversation, I was urged to accept that humanity will simply, once again, use its ingenuity to emerge victorious.

It can often feel very wobbly and lonely talking about collapse in everyday circles. There is incredibly entrenched psychological (and power-grabbing) reasons to want to push back on the thesis reality.

The historian Niall Ferguson has scoffed that the metacrisis is “just history happening.” He and others at barbecues around the world tend to argue that we can count on well-established counterbalancing forces, like price mechanisms and human ingenuity (yup, this word surfaces a lot, doesn’t it), to keep today’s crises from causing widespread devastation.

They might also bring out the growth-based optimist theorems of Steven Pinker, Johan Norberg and the techno-optimists (see the next chapter for more on this), the ones that tell us the rising tides of capitalist progress have managed to reduce global poverty and violence in the past century and, therefore, will simply do the same again (and “fix” climate collapse and the energy fiasco while they’re at it¹).

It can be hard to muster the clarity and confidence - and the mantle to be the Debby Down-vibes - to explain that….well…that’s…not quite how it goes. Because…hmmm…it’s more complex than that.

*

Back at the barbecue I listened to a version of the growth-optimist argument get volleyed across the outdoor table a few times.

I sat.

I listened.

Then I spoke.

“But this time is in fact different,” I said to my largely resistant audience.

I’m guessing many of you here have been in this kind of position, too? Where it’s You v’s The BBQ Table of Guests (or v’s The Crew Down At The Pub or The Family Dinner Assemblage). Indeed, you might also get the sense you get invited to such gatherings for the express purpose of being the controversial (colourful?) counterpoint. I do.

Consciously reminding myself to try my best not to be “right”, I took a deep breath and set out to explain that to reply responsibly and helpfully I would need to present a multitude of factors that add up to a broad response. I explained that the issue is complex and systemic. Linear or definitive explainers that counter one point at a time won’t get us there.

I then moved on to make the following points, with the caveat - again - they are not in linear order. They’re all at once.

🕊️ What follows is a rundown you might like to draw on yourself, with helpful bolded bits. You might also like to add other pithy points you’ve found helpful in similar situations in the comments. To be clear, at this particular Christmas barbeque I mostly failed in presenting things as succinctly as I’d have liked. I missed half the points below; it’s…a lot. The rundown that now follows is, therefore, more of a spirit d’escalier account of what I try to cover off in such situations. I should also add that I have more recently committed to avoiding these kind of debates or discussions where I can. It’s just not a conversation where I want to be “right”. But more on this to come 🕊️….

🕊️ Yes, humanity has faced many of the crises we now face, and others besides. However! We’ve not faced so many all at once.

We’ve also not experienced them at this scale and level of interconnectedness. That is, with so many people on the planet and so many factors implicated and meddling with all the systems at play. Nor with so many interconnecting tendrils – the internet, supply chains, trade routes - linking all the crises together in a gargantuan domino pile-up.

In short, it’s never been this complex. And so the individual crises (and their level of severity) are not the issue, per se; it’s the way they feed into, and accelerate, each other unpredictably and beyond our ability to model, pre-empt or control them.

🕊️Of course, systems have always existed. However, we used to live in a more attuned and manageable dynamic with them; many Indigenous cultures still do. We were able to adjust to, and not fight, the systems as they looped in different directions. We moved with seasons, we switched out crops, we ensured our linear tendencies didn’t land us in a feedback loop we couldn’t escape (per my explainer here).

🕊️ OK, so the argument that past complex societies simply rebuilt or recovered after a collapse (and so why wouldn’t ours?!) is also a great one to cover off. On Easter Island things got complexly out of hand (the inhabitants literally ate themselves up leaving only a bunch of sculpted rocks) without toppling the rest of humanity². True! However, back then such depravity could be contained to an island. Or to a section of the planet. When Rome fell, the Indigenous inhabitants of South America and Australia continued BAU. Plus, the average (albeit beleaguered) Roman was able to gather up their meagre belongings and be subsumed into the conquering - or some other nearby - society.