A Critique of the Polycrisis Narrative and Development Paradigms.

3 days ago7 min read

The fashionable term 'polycrisis' now tripping so readily from the tongues of Western leaders functions as a masterclass in political obfuscation, a lexical sleight-of-hand that neatly sidesteps any meaningful accountability for the industrial-colonial paradigm that remains the true, beating heart of our global predicament. This isn't merely a cascade of unrelated bad events; it is the logical, long-foretold consequence of a system built on extraction, exploitation, and the concentration of power, a system where development has historically been a synonym for domination.To frame our challenges as a 'polycrisis' is to surrender to a narrative of helplessness, a chaotic storm we can only weather, rather than a structural failure we have the agency to dismantle and rebuild. What we need now, with a fierce and purposeful realism, is to pivot from this language of fear and toward a collective, global study of our development challenges, one that actively seeks out and elevates the creativity, knowledge, and solutions emanating from communities traditionally sidelined by the old paradigm.This requires looking beyond the boardrooms of Davos and the halls of Western power to the indigenous land stewards, the urban agricultural pioneers in the Global South, and the feminist economists redesigning care systems. It demands we ask not 'how do we manage this crisis?' but 'who have we been excluding from the conversation, and what wisdom have we been ignoring?' The personal impact of this shift is profound; it moves us from being passive consumers of a doom-laden narrative to active participants in a genuinely global community, one capable of forging a future that isn't merely a less-bad version of the present but a fundamentally different, and more equitable, reality.The work is arduous, the path fraught with the entrenched resistance of those who benefit from the status quo, but the alternative—continuing to treat the symptoms while ignoring the disease—is a guarantee of further escalation. The critique of this narrative, therefore, is not an academic exercise; it is the essential first step in a much larger, more courageous project of reclamation and redesign, one that centers human dignity and ecological integrity over profit and power.

#editorial picks news

#industrial-colonial paradigm

#global development

#polycrisis

#Western leaders

#purposeful realism

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