R.With months until 2025, the feeling of awe is clear. In the United States, the year began with a terrorist attack; Then he came Fires He destroyed the city, destroying lives, homes and ways to live. The extremist billionaire came to power and proudly began to dismantle the government. Disasters occur once in the century more once a month, all amid destructive wars and on the aftermath of a pandemic.
The word “unprecedented” has become routine. It seems as if we are stuck in an uncompromising cycle of disaster, with no time to recover from one before the next starts.
How do we understand any of this – not to mention all of this, all of that once?
A number of terms have appeared in the past decade to help us describe our moment. We live in Anthroposin The era that has the effect of humanity is similar to that in the geology itself. Or we are in the “Beyond Truth” era, where we no longer share the same sense of reality. We are facing a permacrisisAn endless state of the disaster.
But the word that describes this moment may be the best that appeared at the beginning of the millennium, which was taken in 2010, and has recently performed the global tours again: Polycrisis.
It should not be confused with a “perfect storm” or “clusterfuck”, “Polycrisis” – The term formulated By the authors Edgar Mourin and Ann Brigitte Cernin – indicates the idea that we are not only facing one disaster after the other, but this chaos is all linked, which makes things worse. Or, like Adam Tuzi, a professor of the history of Columbia University and the general thinker who defended the term, Put it: “In polycrisis, the shocks are mixed, but they interact so that everyone is quieter than the total parts.”
Our globalized world is based on interconnection systems, and when one shakes, others also – a heating climate, for example, increases the risk of epidemics and columns that undermine economies, the shaky economies nourish political turmoil. “There is a kind of greater instability, or a greater imbalance in the system,” says researcher Thomas Homer Dixon. To clarify the situation, Home-Dixon uses a video of Metronomes on a soft surface. Although it all started at different times, it ends with synchronization, as the rhythm of each device skillfully affects the rest. When people see it for the first time, “They don’t actually see what is happening properly. Homer-Dixon says:” They do not realize the forces that work to actually synchronize Metronomes with each other. “
In the same way, it is often clear even for experts how global systems interact because they are known in their specialties. This limits our ability to face crosses: compels the migration climate crisis; Aquinovobia feeds the rise of the far right in receiving countries; Extreme right -wing governments undermine environmental protection; Natural disasters are more destructive. However, immigration experts may not be experts in the climate crisis, and climate experts may have a limited knowledge of political geography.
For this reason, Homer Dixon believes that the best communication is necessary-not only to create a consensus on what we are Call Our current dilemma, but also how to treat it. The CASCADE Institute, which enhances a “society of scientists, experts, scientists and policy makers around the world who use this concept [of polycrisis] In constructive ways. “
“Building” is an essential word here. “You must get the diagnosis directly before you can go to the prescription,” he says. Finding this diagnosis means looking at the extent of pressure on the various systems – climate, political policy, transportation, information, etc. – intersects and determining what his team calls “high -leverage intervention points”: “places where you can enter and influence the really large investment relatively.”
the CASCADE Institute proposals It targeted what he identified as major pulp engines, such as polarization and climate change, through, for example, improving the curricula to enhance students’ understanding of misinformation and expand the use of deep Earth thermal energy.
In addition to combining people with experience together, the CASCADE Institute, a part of the Royal Roads University in British Columbia, has developed an analytical framework for understanding polycrisis, and runs a website, says Home-Dixon, who works as an ingredient for the latest thinking in the case-including criticism of the concept of this concept. The site contains a set of resources from academic circles to blogs that explore Polycrisis, for example, on What actually happened in 2025 (A ceasefire in Gaza, California fires, and Trump in the status of the global order, the sale of Amnesty International, and the outbreak of bird flu).
There was some violent reaction to the idea of Polycrisis. Historian Nyal Ferguson She described it as “Just a history happens.” Political scientist Daniel Drezner says that her supporters “assume that there are strong negative reactions that may not be already exist” – in other words, when the crisis overlap Short environmental benefits). Some previous crises as evidence that what we are witnessing is not new.
Homer Dixon is different. He wrote in 2023: “We have moved so far and soon outside our gender experience that many elites do not have the cognitive framework to understand our situation, even if they tend to do so,” he wrote in 2023.
Everything is a bit overwhelming, as Homer Dixon admits. “If you are not really afraid of what is happening in the world, then you are Braindead,” he says.
On the other hand, “the crisis can actually be a moment for a really major change,” he says, “because it disturbs a kind of current way to do things, currently current stakeholders who are subjected to abandonment and do not want to change anything.” For example, while he sees Homer-Dixon Donald Trump As a “hateful” character, it is also noted that it is “like acid”, the president melts the standards around him. This creates disaster danger but also provides opportunities to change the world for the better.
“This is really a critical moment in human history and things can be done,” says Homer Dixon. “We don’t know enough about how these systems work to know that the game has ended.”
The term itself, terrifying as it is, can also be strange comfort. “I think this is useful, while giving the name. Tooze said,” It is my treatment. ” Radio Davos. When the world feels like a nightmare, determining the condition gives us something we stick to – a kind of understanding amid chaos.
