Grappling with the Metacrisis: Understanding & Responding Effectively to the Great Challenges of Our Time

Ep. 70 (Part 1 of 3) | Nicholas Hedlund & Sean Esbjörn-Hargens are big picture philosophers with extraordinary big hearts as well as big minds, dedicated to understanding how consciousness, culture, and nature relate to each other, and to forging a path for the Earth and civilization to flourish rather than fall apart. In this dialogue, the world of metatheories comes alive with urgent, purposeful meaning, because as Sean and Nick point out, integrative metatheories like Ken Wilber’s integral theory and Roy Bhaskar’s critical realism are the only tools that provide a useful framework for us to talk about and confront the vast web of interrelated and wicked problems we face on every level at this time. Now, we are only just beginning to understand the nature of the metacrisis—how the external crises are driven by interior crises of sensemaking and meaning making—but how do we bring everyone to the table to find solutions? How do we get the wisdom of these approaches to bear upon the crises we face? It turns out that heart connection—love, caring, and being willing to listen and to change—is a crucial, key ingredient for us to move forward in a positive way. Nick and Sean express both heartbreak and wild enthusiasm—heartbreak that our entire planetary community is so threatened and we have only a small window of time (till 2030) to transform our consciousness and culture into taking a cooperative and reverent approach to life, and enthusiasm to be alive at this pivotal time where everything hangs in the balance. Recorded December 7, 2022.“We really need both—we need big Heart to connect and be friends with each other and love each other and we need that in equal measure to big Mind.”(For Apple Podcast users, click here to view the complete show notes on the episode page.)Topics & Time Stamps – Part 1Introducing philosophers Nicholas Hedlund & Sean Esbjörn-Hargens, who coined the term metacrisis (01:30)Nick’s mystical experiences early on and awareness of the crisis the Earth is facing led him to find a way to study the big picture beyond the partial perspectives offered in different university departments (02:57)For Nick, the metacrisis is connected with his own spiritual path and the questions “Who am I?” “Why am I here?” and “What does it mean to be human at this time?” (06:34)Sean started with studying animal consciousness, then added philosophy, psychology, and biology for an interdisciplinary understanding, focusing on ways of relating to the natural world—environmental philosophy (07:10)Ken Wilber’s Integral Theory brought Sean into deeper contact with nature, culture, and consciousness, and opened his heart (10:45)Nick & Sean coined the term “metacrisis” to illuminate more than simply the sum of all the crises, but also how they overlap and intertwine: the holistic complexity (13:01)Wicked problems: if we solve any of the crises, the solution grows more problems (14:45)All the crises share a network of root causes, deeper causal structures that underlie the symptoms we are experiencing—crises of interiority & spirituality, sensemaking & meaning making, are drivers of the rest (15:17)Our global problems are actually global symptoms (16:55)Nick & Sean created a big picture symposium series where scholars/practitioners familiar with Roy Bashkar’s critical realism and Ken Wilber’s Integral Theory (and familiar with the work of Edgar Morin, who uses the...

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