In the summer of 2019, the Guardian described the climate crisis as the “defining issue of our lifetimes.” That’s how it felt for us too, and we started a website about climate crisis, environmental and resulting social challenges, with contributions from personal and professional perspectives – as doctors, therapists and authors.
Since then, awareness of the fragility of our ecological balance has grown. But we now also see how complex this crisis is. We are not only experiencing an ecological crisis, and with it species extinction and extreme weather events, but also radical geopolitical changes. Growing social and economic extreme inequality. Increasing violence. Wars. There are numerous overlapping and interconnected global crises that reinforce and accelerate each other, so that we are now talking about a meta-crisis. It is becoming increasingly difficult to find meaning in all of this, to lead a meaningful and fulfilling life.
This is also a psychological and spiritual crisis.
John Vervaeke 1describes: “that the meaning of life is not just a tool for survival, but is essential to human well-being. It is no wonder that people search for it so insatiably.”
We are experiencing a “crisis of meaning, a disorienting feeling that we have forgotten an essential dimension of reality and lost our relationship to what is good, true and beautiful.”
How do we deal with all this? With powerlessness and helplessness. With our understandable but problematic desire for denial and distraction. What to do, so that we are not overwhelmed by fear, so that it not paralyses us, but rather hope arises. So that we do not live against each other, but in solidarity? How can we experience our lives as meaningful?
To deal with the meta-crisis, we need meta-meaning, a higher-level system of meaning
The anthropologist Clifford Geertz spoke of a worldview or meta-meaning: a system of meanings, such as social rituals, values or rules of behavior, that enable us to act in our own lives. We seek attunement with and meaning in the world.
Our own ability to act and our environment are mutually dependent. By giving meaning and significance to what we do, a coherent and functioning worldview emerges. Or, to put it more simply: if we try to play tennis on the football field, it will feel absurd. The rules don’t fit. The world doesn’t make sense. And that’s how we feel when our personal values and goals no longer seem to fit in.
So we would like to bring together meaningful contributions that can help us meet the challenges of our time. We quote experts from various fields, always with a reference to the source, of course. We welcome comments, additions or corrections – particularly suggestions for improvements to the translations into English, as we are not native speakers. The site is constantly being revised, in keeping with the topics and our limited capacity. Work in progress. We ask for your understanding.
Dr. Josef Rabenbauer
Simone Regina Adams
- from: “Awakening From the Meaning Crisis: Part 1: Origins” by John Vervaeke, Christopher Mastropietro, 2024 ↩︎