The Magic of the Metacrisis

The following is a talk I gave to open the 2nd Alumni Gathering for the course ‘Leading Through Collapse.’ After 7 years we ended teaching the course, but invited the 300+ alumni to gather. The talk is available as a video, and transcript. I touch on some issues about how to remain outward in our focus, and the importance of thinking about what terms might help engage people in the transformative opportunities of accepting our predicament. Thx for watching or reading! Jem

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May 9th 2025, from Indonesia

Collapse is undeniably painful, especially for those directly affected, and it’s difficult to witness when it unfolds. However, within this process, there are spaces of possibility that arise when we stop denying the reality of our situation. A collapse of systems, while disorienting, also makes room for transformation.

In our relative privilege, many of us have been shy to speak about any of these upsides to what is otherwise a tragic situation. But I have come to realise that there could be a benefit for others, not just ourselves, if we are more open about those upsides. Because the way we are transformed can make us more open to others, and help people to recognise that there can be positive ways to live in this era of collapse.

To start speaking of the strange joys of collapse, does not mean to deny or downplay the pain. If you are staying alert, then you know the trends towards global decline are continuing. For instance, the new WWF report outlines a 73% decline in wildlife populations in my lifetime. And last year was the warmest, globally, since records began; it was the first year with an average temperature clearly exceeding 1.5°C above the pre-industrial average. That’s many years ahead of the projections made in official reports. The World Food Programme reports that now in 2025, 343 million people are acutely food insecure, which is a10 percent increase from last year. That was before the recently enforced famine of over one million people in Gaza. Meanwhile, the ‘cost of living crisis’ in most countries worsens, with global average inflation still around 6%, which indicates global causes (and that’s prior to the new tariffs).

The stress from this situation grows, of course. So the many distracting theories about why life is tough continue to be promoted to us by elites. Blame immigrants, blame a billionaire, blame a leader, blame a gender, blame a generation, blame a globalist cabal, blame net zero, blame newscasters, blame podcasters, blame whatever. Of course it is normal to have opinions on such matters — but if we focus on them as causal in societal decline, we are downplaying the underlying reality of a biophysical decline that is being handled so badly by incumbent systems and elites.

That situation is upsetting, as it should be. Many of us have experienced difficult emotions about specific problems, as well as when we woke to the broader collapse of societies. Many of us continue to experience waves of such emotions. But for myself, and most of us in this meeting today, something else is also true. We are not only worried and sad about what we know. We are not only worried and sad about the decline and disruptions to our previous way of life. Instead, our awareness has been, to varying degrees, transformative in our lives.

Some of us have experienced new depths of connection through our collapse awareness and openness about our emotions. It meant we became more comfortable to show up in our vulnerability and therefore become more self accepting. That parallels much wisdom on how tragedy can be heart opening. There is, however, a risk associated with the forms of bonding and group culture that can emerge from that process, which I will come back to in a moment.

Beyond that openness and vulnerability, many of us have been changing our lives. I don’t think I would have quit my full professorship, emigrated, and become a musician, if not for my collapse awareness. I would not have written a book that sought to integrate years of research to attempt philosophy for an era of collapse. I know many people who also have been changing their lives due to their collapse awareness. Some become community leaders, or activists, spiritual teachers, therapists, or just downshift to have more time for what they love and who they love.

We don’t talk about these upsides of our collapse awareness that much. Partly, as we recognise the upsides are a luxury from our relative privilege. But also because we think it might deprioritise the suffering of others and wider nature, or might be regarded as doing that. I want to address each of those reasons for our caution in allowing ourselves to accept and communicate the positive things in our lives.

To begin with, recognising and expressing the benefits we experience from our collapse awareness doesn’t mean we deprioritise the suffering of others and wider nature. Instead, with a deeper gratitude and calmness, that does not rely on fairytales of salvation, we can more readily notice, analyse, decide and act in positive ways for others and wider nature. This is also the old idea that if our hearts are full and open, it is more likely we can be there for others.

Likewise, if we stay in a place of worry, sadness, and apology, we might add to the problem of societal collapse: for we become the ones needing care, even in our privilege. Attention can turn to us as the ones who are stressed by what we see on our screens, rather than maintaining concern for the people being shown to us in their difficult situations. This can show up in decisions to ignore atrocities and thereby dismiss possibilities for activism, with the justification that it is for our own wellbeing.

This risk of making collapse mostly about ourselves can be compounded by the shadow side of those close bonds formed in our pain and vulnerability. That is, if such relationships become more important than the shared recognition that brought us together in the first place. Whenever a cult-like focus on cohesion and calm predominates in a group, then poor behaviour can be overlooked, robust dialogue can decline, and along with it, any real effectiveness and accountability.

If collapse aware people stay stuck in the heavy emotions and huddle in our new groups of common interest, we risk becoming what our vociferous critics claim: privileged people who benefit materially from ongoing destruction and oppression while being more interested in our own emotions than in trying to reduce harm now and in the future.

There is no denying the luxury from relative privilege that enables many of us to experience upsides from our collapse awareness, but the issue that matters is what we do with that privilege. So rather than feeling guilty, or keeping quiet, we can choose to take responsibility to attempt to help. That involves something way beyond outrage, exasperation and indignation at injustices and destruction. Such emotions can become ways of simply letting off steam or of virtue signalling. The ethos and frameworks for Deep Adaptation are about integrating our troubling conclusions to move forward with positive ideas on how to reduce harm. A way of being in the world that welcomes joy and wonder can help with that shift beyond either avoidance or exasperation into positive action.

Taken together, what I have concluded is that there would be a public benefit in us collectively ‘lightening up’ the mood of the communities and movements of collapse-aware people that we engage with. That is another reason why we can become more self-assured as ‘doomsters’ who have integrated collapse awareness into our lives.

This recognition that there is even a joy of collapse, or a magic in the metacrisis, doesn’t mean we want to speed up societal collapse. I recognise that some people think that if societal collapse happens faster, then ultimately more of the natural world might be saved and more people might have a positive future. That is a kind of ‘green accelerationism’. I disagree with them. That is not only because I like my life as it is at present. It is also because extractivist and oppressive systems will not stop overnight, yet some of the restrictions on them will degrade as societies become more unstable. For instance, we will see more militaries and private security enforcing mining operations. Only a sudden total global collapse would stop all of that, but that’s not how collapses occur. Therefore, I am a ‘decelerationist’, and would prefer we see policies that soften the crash, even though such policies are rare.

If you agree, then one issue becomes how to bring this into our way of being in the world, including how we communicate.

The first step is to check where we are at in our own journey with collapse. Am I currently capable of engaging in the world in ways that might help others and wider nature? If not, then perhaps I am stuck in a phase of my processing of news of this tragedy, whether that’s involving some emotional huddling, distracting hedonism or continual outrage. We might then admit to ourselves that we need some support and time to regain a more outward orientation.

Once clear that we do wish to engage positively in the world — large or small — then the second issue is to avoid becoming blasé about the harm involved in collapsing ecosystems and societies.

Third, we can remember that all of us are at our own stages of engagement with this tragedy; we cannot expect everyone to be in a ‘postdoom’ mindset of gratitude, positivity and re-commitment.

Fourth, we can prepare ourselves for the backlash that may come when we express ourselves, as our own equanimity and access to joy may be misconstrued as our ignoring, or even welcoming, the suffering of others and wider nature.

Fifth, we can learn from one another about how to reach different people about this aspect of collapse awareness. Which brings me to the concept of ‘metacrisis’.

We all know that the word and concept of ‘collapse’ is shocking. Those of us who look into it eventually realize that a societal collapse is an unfolding process rather than an overnight crash. But the shock to the uninitiated means that a useful term for our global predicament, for some of our conversations, can be “the metacrisis.” That is also because this term invites us to discuss what is in crisis in the deeper structures, assumptions, values, beliefs, norms and habits of our societies. So it can invite us to consider what is in crisis within ourselves as well — which can be the beginning of deeper transformations.

The term appears to help people consider the crumbling of old ideas and identities with less fear and resistance than discussing “societal collapse”. So, for me, “the magic of the metacrisis” may lie in the helpfulness of the term itself. Fundamentally, the multiplicity and magnifying of crises near and far call for those of us in the Deep Adaptation community to maintain an inner and outer focus as we seek to embody and enable loving responses to our predicament, so that we reduce harm and save more of the natural world.

What I mean by “the magic of the metacrisis” is of course not in the collapse itself, but in the ways we, together, can respond. There are surely ways to live in mutual support with one another while remaining open to possible fruitful actions in the wider world. I believe that we can bring meaning to this moment and allow ourselves to grow from it. In this way, collapse acceptance can mesh with metacrisis engagement to be truly generative. To do that, it is time to shine our own light in the world with both less apology and more gratitude.

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I know some of you are awaiting updates on the dispute about moderation practices within the main Deep Adaptation Facebook group. I am awaiting more decisions from, and perhaps consultation with, relevant ‘circles’ within the Deep Adaptation Forum before I’ll update people publicly. Unfortunately I am witnessing people overlook the attempts I made to find a suitable internal complaints process, before my public statement and information gathering. That enables typical ‘shoot the messenger’ distraction from the issues I raised – issues which are no less urgent today. That is as disappointing as it was predictable, but I will await more feedback from DAF before rejoining the issue on this blog.

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