Questions to Map How We See the (Meta)Crisis

This is a first pass on creating a structured set of questions to get a sense of how someone sees our current civilizational situation: both the symptoms we're facing and how they diagnose their root causes.

The questions are deliberately constrained to make it easier to see where people align, where they differ, and where the real cruxes are.

Whilst the overall structure is generic, it aligns with the metacrisis & Second Renaissance framework we have been developing and its four noble beliefs, specifically here the first two:

Are we seeing symptoms of a serious civilizational illness? (First noble belief)
And, if so, what is the diagnosis of root cause(s)? (Is this a metacrisis? Second noble belief)

Introduction

Constrained questions

I'm deliberately keeping the questions yes/no or multiple choice as much as possible to keep this focused and structured – otherwise conversations can go off in lots of different directions very quickly.

For example, if we ask something like "what are the limits of techno-solutionism?" or "where does technology genuinely enable collective intelligence?", that opens up a huge space.

Of course, this won't do full justice to this very complex subject so think of this is a starting point not an endpoint. What we are aiming for is an initial clear signal: what does one agree with, what does one disagree with, and where does one locate the crux?

Symptoms and Diagnosis

Here is focused on the first two noble beliefs:

Symptoms (polycrisis): what crises (if any) people are seeing.Things like the ecological crisis, existential technological risk, failures of governance
Diagnosis: what do they see as the root causes? Is it markets, institutions, technology, culture, human development, some combination?

We can open this up later, maybe even using diagrams, but for now this is just about asking a set of questions out loud that help us locate where we are relative to one another in this sensemaking space.

First Noble Belief: Are we facing a civilizational pathology?

1. Overall assessment

Which of these is closest to your view?

A. We are facing several serious but ultimately tractable problems.
B. We are facing a systemic crisis that threatens long-term human flourishing.
C. We are facing a civilizational-level breakdown that current institutions cannot handle.
D. None of the above.

2. Severity

Do you think humanity is currently on a trajectory that includes a non-trivial risk of civilizational collapse or irreversible regression within this century?

Yes
No
Uncertain

3. Symptom cluster: ecology

Which best describes your view of the ecological crisis?

A. Primarily a resource-management and policy failure.
B. A market and incentive-design failure.
C. A symptom of deeper cultural and civilizational dynamics.
D. Overstated or likely to be resolved by adaptation.

4. Symptom cluster: technology

How do you see advanced technologies (AI, bio, cyber, etc.) in relation to existential risk?

A. Net-positive if properly regulated.
B. Dangerous mainly because governance lags innovation.
C. Inherently amplifying underlying human and cultural pathologies.
D. Not a major existential concern.

5. Symptom cluster: epistemics and governance

Do you think current democratic and knowledge institutions are adequate for coordinating action at planetary scale under conditions of high complexity?

Yes
No
Only with incremental reform

Second Noble Belief: What is the diagnosis?

6. Root cause framing

If you had to pick one primary diagnosis, which is closest?

A. Institutional failure (bad rules, incentives, governance).
B. Economic failure (capitalism, inequality, growth dynamics).
C. Technological failure (pace, misuse, misalignment).
D. Cultural failure (values, meaning, narratives).
E. Anthropological failure (human development, cognition, motivation).
F. A combination, with no clear primary driver.

7. Depth of diagnosis

Do you believe the crisis can be resolved without significant changes in prevailing values, worldviews, or models of the self?

Yes
No
Unsure

8. Modernity check

Is modernity (as a civilizational paradigm) best understood, in your view, as:

A. Fundamentally sound but incomplete.
B. Historically successful but now maladaptive.
C. Deeply pathological at its core.
D. Still our best available option.

9. Inner–outer relation

Do you think changes in human capacities (attention, ethics, psychological development) are necessary for resolving the crisis, not just helpful?

Necessary
Helpful but not necessary
Largely irrelevant

10. Naming the condition

Would you agree that today’s crises are better described as symptoms of a single underlying condition rather than many unrelated problems?

Yes
No
Depends how “single” is defined

Diagnosis: what is the underlying condition or conditions?

What are the root cause(s) of the issues identified above.

11. Locating the bottleneck

When you look at current failures (ecology, tech risk, governance), which of these feels like the hardest to shift in practice?

A. Formal institutions and laws
B. Economic incentives and markets
C. Technologies and infrastructures
D. Underlying values, norms, and worldviews
E. Human psychological capacities (attention, maturity, empathy)

Follow-up probe (if useful): when you say “hardest,” do you mean slowest, most resistant, or least directly addressable?

12. Direction of fit

Which direction do you think change most often fails in?

A. We change systems, but people don’t internalize them.
B. People change attitudes, but systems don’t follow.
C. Technologies change faster than either people or institutions.
D. No consistent pattern.

13. Failure mode diagnosis

When reforms fail, which explanation feels closest?

A. Poor implementation.
B. Misaligned incentives.
C. Power capture.
D. Incompatible underlying assumptions about humans, nature, or progress.
E. Historical contingency.

Rhizomic causation, leverage, and primacy (gently tested)

14. Leverage under constraint

Suppose you had reliable leverage over only one domain for 20 years—which would you choose to maximize long-term flourishing?

A. Governance and institutions
B. Economic incentives
C. Technology design norms
D. Education, culture, and meaning-making
E. Psychological and developmental capacities

15. Path dependency

Which layer do you think most strongly conditions the others over long time scales?

A. Institutions condition culture
B. Culture conditions institutions
C. Technology conditions both
D. Human cognition/psychology conditions all
E. No layer consistently conditions the others

16. Time-horizon framing

Over a 5-year horizon, where does change matter most? Over a 50-year horizon, where does change matter most? (Forced choice each time from the same list as above.)

Naming what must evolve

17. Steering vs propulsion metaphor

Which feels closer to your view of culture and worldview?

A. Culture is like steering: it doesn’t generate power but determines direction.
B. Culture is like propulsion: it generates the force of change.
C. Culture is more like context: it shapes what is even thinkable.
D. Culture is downstream of material conditions.

18. Hemispheric framing (optional)

If forced into a metaphor:

A. Our crisis comes from over-reliance on abstract control, optimization, and decomposition.
B. From insufficient coordination, scale, and systemization.
C. From imbalance between the two.
D. From neither.

Optional follow-up: which side currently sets the terms?

19. Evolutionary delta

Which one or two shifts feel most necessary for a next civilizational phase?

A. Relationship to nature (from extraction to participation)
B. Model of the human (from rational actor to developmental being)
C. Model of progress (from growth to flourishing)
D. Model of power (from control to coordination)
E. Model of truth (from certainty to plural sense-making)

20. Closing crystallizer

Even if causation is rhizomic, do you think some layers are better entry points for intervention than others?

Yes
No
Depends

If yes: which, and why?

Future work

Do a shortened “core 12” version for public interviews
A branching version where later sections only activate based on earlier answers