Genealogy × words
Texts, dates, and translations show how terms emerge, travel, and change in scope.
Follow the dates ↗Compare usage ↗Start here · English pathway
Polycrisis: several histories, several scales
In brief · a starting point
The word polycrisis helps examine situations in which several crises meet and interact. Their relationships may intensify some effects, ease others, redirect them, or transform the situation. Their scope varies with the crises selected, their duration, scale, and the mechanisms observed. Morin, the Cascade Institute, and the Polycrise Mondiale proposal offer distinct frameworks for these questions.
The term brings together several questions: how crises connect, how languages name them, and how different thinkers describe their interactions at the planetary scale.
The number of crises matters less than the interactions between them
- Multiplication
Several crises emerge or become visible within the same period.
- Overlap
They may affect the same people, places, or systems and meet through their effects.
- Intersolidarity
Their relations may intensify, ease, redirect, or transform crises. They may also activate latent difficulties and bring new crises into view.
- Intensification
- Easing
- Activation
- Transformation
The arrows illustrate a possible feedback loop, not a universal sequence. Relationships may be reciprocal and several loops may cross.
These reference points do not form a required sequence. The word complexus, “woven together,” offers an image for following strands and their meeting points while keeping their distinct paths visible.
Frameworks × mechanisms
Comparing frameworks clarifies the scales they examine and the relations they identify among crises.
Compare frameworks ↗Examine mechanisms ↗Timescales × feedback
A slow pressure can create vulnerabilities that a brief hazard activates, with effects that spread or reinforce one another.
Follow timescales ↗Connect to frameworks ↗The lines gather four ways into a shared question. The intersections below are reading paths; influence or causality must be established from sources and context.
Choose a way in
01 · History of ideas
How did the strands come together?
Follow Edgar Morin’s work, cybernetics, systems thinking, and the genealogy begun in 2023.
Explore the genealogy 02 · DefinitionsWhat do the different frameworks describe?
Distinguish Morin’s polycrises, the Cascade Institute’s Global Polycrisis, and the Polycrise Mondiale proposal.
Compare frameworks 03 · Word historiesWhat happens when terms travel?
Explore krisis, Fukugō kiki, Chinese terms, and contemporary translations.
Explore words 04 · Events and risksHow can a brief shock meet a long crisis?
Connect timescales, hazards, vulnerabilities, latent crises, and cascading effects.
Explore timescalesA pathway with several levels
Start with the short definition, then choose a question. Each page develops its main strand, points to related pages, and offers sources for further reading. Relationships are qualified to distinguish documented influence, comparable frameworks, and a proposed synthesis.
Crises can multiply and overlap. They can also ease one another, activate latent processes, or transform their effects. These ways of observing a situation intersect rather than forming a required sequence.