A New Word: Polycrisis

The first time I came across “polycrisis” was in the Sunday newspaper. It was coined by Edgar Morn and Anne Brigitte, but it is actually a comparatively older word, coined in the 1990s. Polycrisis describes many crises happening all at once. It was used to explain why more and more people are deciding not to have a family. But I think it also explains what happens when we move from one age to the next. 

Most couples will purchase a home before they have a child. But the medium first time home buyer is now 40 years old. The Great Recession was the first major impact on those who are the homebuying age. In addition, we seem to be having more and more natural disasters. There are wars. Segregation by zip codes keeps people distant. The economic uncertainties erode trust in institutions and each other. The vaccine skepticism is one such example. And we just don’t know the impact of AI.

This polycrisis impacts everyone’s life in one way or another. While there is no certainty that a natural disaster will impact you directly, there remains that uncertainty. War may not directly affect your life, but that too is uncertain. The fact that there may be a financial calamity that befalls us leads to more uncertainty and general uneasiness. 

This crisis of the polycrisis neatly fits into the upheaval and tumult and chaos we experience when society enters a new age. The transition from the Age of the Brain to the Age of Heart is the polycrisis we feel.