Thriving in tension
Narratives of contrasting but converging approaches
I've been somehow immersed in two seemingly opposing approaches that have emerged to address humanity's greatest challenges in the polycrisis. On one side, collapse narratives, invite us to confront the reality of systemic breakdown and learn to thrive within precarity. On the other, preferable futures narratives, focus on envisioning and prefiguring positive alternatives to our current systems.
These approaches are often perceived as incompatible: collapse narratives are dismissed as "doomer" thinking that paralyzes action, while preferable futures work is criticized as wishful thinking that ignores harsh realities. Here, I am arguing that such a dichotomy is both false and counterproductive. Instead, these ideologies converge on a shared goal of human and planetary thriving, and their integration offers a more nuanced and psychologically sustainable pathway forward.
But before we continue the analysis, I would like to make some important distinctions between polycrisis and metacrisis for those unaware.
Polycrisis refers to multiple crises happening at the same time, interacting in nonlinear and compounding ways, creating a situation more dangerous and unpredictable than the sum of the parts.
Polycrisis is what we see and feel (the burning issues).
Metacrisis is the crisis underlying all other crises. It’s a foundational dysfunction in how humans think, relate, build systems, and make decisions. It’s the crisis of sense-making, values, coordination, and meaning.
Metacrisis is what’s beneath and within (the dysfunction that causes and sustains the polycrisis).
An example: climate change causing a major drought is a crisis—but when that drought leads to food shortages, economic collapse, mass migration, political instability, and social unrest all at once, that’s a polycrisis. Multiple problems stacking up and making each other worse. The metacrisis is the reason we keep ending up in these situations: our short-term thinking, broken systems of governance, profit-driven economies, fragmented sense-making, and a worldview that sees nature as separate from us, our dominion.
Ok, now let’s talk about collapse and prefiguration!
Precarity as wisdom
Jem Bendell's Deep Adaptation framework doesn't present collapse as an apocalyptic end-times scenario, but rather as the breakdown of systems that provide food, water, shelter, power, and social and governmental structures. This perspective recognizes that our current systems are already failing many people and ecosystems, and that accelerating climate impacts will intensify these failures regardless of our mitigation efforts.
The wisdom of collapse narratives lies not in fatalism, but in psychological and practical preparation. When we accept that the systems we've depended on are unreliable, or better yet, built for an age that is no longer here, we can begin to develop different relationships with security, community, and meaning. This acceptance paradoxically becomes liberating: it frees us from the anxiety of trying to maintain the unmaintainable and opens space for more adaptive responses and thinking of what's next.
Daniel Schmachtenberger's work adds crucial depth to this understanding. Rather than viewing collapse as separate, isolated failures, it reveals how our global crises are interconnected symptoms of deeper systemic design flaws. His analysis shows that climate change, biodiversity loss, social inequality, and democratic breakdown are not independent problems occurring together as happenstance, but manifestations of the metacrisis.
Collapse awareness is evolving beyond simple doom narratives toward more nuanced approaches to living with uncertainty. The key insight is that precarity isn't something to be eliminated but something to be navigated with wisdom, community, and resilience.
Collapse narratives are essential: our current systems are structurally designed to generate the very problems they claim to solve. Our civilization has become increasingly fragile through what Schmachtenberger calls "complicated systems subsuming their complex substrate". In layperson's terms, we've built artificial, rigid structures that override natural, adaptive ones. This creates interconnected fragility where failures cascade through the system.
Designing possibility
The preferable futures approach takes a fundamentally different starting point: rather than beginning with what's breaking down, it begins with what we want to build up. Degrowth scholars like Jason Hickel articulate this vision clearly, arguing that degrowth is not the same as recession. It is rather deliberately scaling down destructive activities while investing in human well-being.
This approach recognizes that humans are meaning-making creatures who need positive visions to motivate action. Hickel suggests we should "degrow the parts of our economy that do not foster greater social wellbeing while having a heavy carbon and ecological footprint" while liberating "labor and resources for essential sectors". Meaning redirecting our attention and productivity toward what truly serves life.
In conjunction to this, transition design methodologies connect well towards this approach. Transition Design proposes that "more radically new ideas and compelling visions of sustainable futures are needed" and that these "longterm visions are conceived through a circular, iterative, error-friendly process that can inform small, discrete design solutions in the present". This methodology bridges the gap between inspiring futures and practical present-moment action.
Schmachtenberger's concept of "civilization design" complements this futures-oriented work by providing a framework for understanding how to create systems that are inherently regenerative rather than extractive. His approach recognizes that we need fundamentally different organizing principles (what he calls moving from "rival" to "anti-rival" dynamics). This systemic perspective ensures that preferable futures aren't just prettier versions of current systems but represent genuine alternatives to the structural drivers of the metacrisis.
Bridging the gap
The perceived conflict between collapse narratives and preferable futures stems from temporal misalignment, where collapse narratives emphasize immediate preparation while preferable futures focus on long-term visioning.
There's also emotional dissonance; the grief and anxiety of collapse awareness that feels incompatible with the hope and creativity needed for envisioning alternatives, making people feel they must choose between emotional honesty about loss and emotional investment in possibility.
Collapse-aware individuals may perceive preferable futures as insufficiently urgent or unrealistic, while futures-oriented people may view collapse narratives as demobilizing or overly pessimistic. These approaches often target different audiences using distinct languages, creating silos that prevent the cross-pollination of ideas.
Both approaches can suffer from sensemaking failures. Without proper sensemaking, collapse narratives can become fatalistic rather than adaptive, while preferable futures can become naive rather than realistic.
Despite these perceived tensions, both approaches share fundamental commitments to human and planetary thriving, recognizing that current systems are failing to support life and that radical change is necessary for survival and flourishing. Both use systems thinking, as well as emphasizing community resilience, local relationships, and reduced dependence on global systems.
Both approaches understand that surface-level interventions are insufficient. The collapse we're experiencing and the futures we're designing must address the underlying drivers of our civilizational crisis; the incentive structures, power dynamics, and ontological assumptions that generate systemic harm.
Synthesizing an approach
The most effective response to our current crises requires both collapse wisdom and futures imagination. An integrated approach involves realistic visioning (inspiring visions of the future that explicitly account for climate impacts, resource constraints, and social breakdown).
This synthesis requires multi-scale action, working simultaneously on inner resilience through psychological adaptation to uncertainty, community resilience through local systems and relationships, and systemic change through policy, economics, and cultural transformation. Following Schmachtenberger's framework, this means designing new systems that are simultaneously collapse-aware and generative. Systems that can function during breakdown while actively creating conditions for thriving through "anti-rival" coordination mechanisms.
Several emerging practices demonstrate this synthesis. Climate policy researchers are increasingly aligned around degrowth approaches, but effective argumnts recognize that degrowth must be designed to function even if larger systems collapse. Transition Design acknowledges that we are living in 'transitional times' and focuses on societal transition (systems-level change) to more sustainable futures, but this transition must be robust enough to work even if some systems fail. Local initiatives that simultaneously prepare for breakdown through food security and disaster preparedness while building alternatives through cooperatives, time banks, and skill-sharing networks represent a practical synthesis.
Perhaps most importantly, the integration of these approaches is psychologically necessary for sustained engagement with crisis. Pure collapse narratives can lead to despair and withdrawal, while pure preferable futures can lead to overwhelm and burnout when reality doesn't match vision and the change pace feels almost stale. Together, they create a more psychologically sustainable approach where together they create antifragility.
Convergence in tension
The apparent opposition between collapse narratives and preferable futures dissolves when we recognize their shared commitment to life and their complementary strengths. Rather than choosing either or, we need people who are fluent in both languages and can help bridge these communities.
The most effective response to our civilizational challenges will emerge from the creative tension between accepting what's ending and imagining what's emerging. This requires the ability to grieve and dream simultaneously, facing uncertainty while maintaining agency.
This might be the work of our time! Not to choose between despair and hope, but to compost our despair into hope, to transform our grief into gratitude, and to midwife the more beautiful world that wants to be born from the mourning of the old. It is work that requires both the courage to face endings and the creativity to imagine beginnings. It is both practical and spiritual, urgent and patient, local and global.