Psychological Barriers Preventing Us from Addressing the Global Polycrisis

Climate change, biodiversity loss, environmental degradation, social upheaval, and political chaos are all manifestations of a singular crisis—a global polycrisis.   The evidence is all around us. We are inundated by blaring alarms signaling multiple problems, yet we have not responded at a scale commensurate with the challenges we face.  Despite a mountain of compelling incentives our efforts are grossly inadequate. This state of affairs prompted Will Hutton to ask, “Why so little progress when the case …is so strong – and the alternatives so viable? “

A close examination reveals that the problems are more psychological than they are technical. Our inability to address the issues has a lot to do with the way we structure the world in our heads. Humans construct internal narratives to make sense of the world, or as described by Yuval Noah, “imaginary stories” in our minds. Some of our most widely held, deeply rooted beliefs are also psychological impediments that prevent us from responding.  Here are four examples of internal narratives that impede action:

Dystopic dualism and false dichotomies

“[D]ualist philosophy was weaponized for the capitalist cause and led to centuries of total apathy and destruction”

Our ability to address issues is confounded by dualism. It is important to understand that dualism is not universal; it has been described by some as a “habit of thinking”. It is the belief in binaries, especially the distinction between the material and immaterial. Dualism is the basis of a plethora of false dichotomies that cause us to look at things in constituent parts rather than inclusive wholes. This includes the dangerously flawed distinction between humans and the Earth’s planetary biosystems.

The idea that humans are separate from the natural world is evident in Judeo-Christian theology. Modern versions of dualism have their origin in the separation of mind and body elucidated by the 16^th century philosopher Rene Descartes. Cartesian dualism elevates humans above nature due to their rationality and their unique “capacity for self-consciousness” which, according to Descartes, is created in the image of God.

Mind/body dualism creates a schism that tears humans out of their natural contexts, separating them from nature, and subordinating the environment to society. People are further bisected into rational minds and a machine-like body. This creates an adversarial dualism that pits man against himself and nature which is cast as the ‘absolute other’ (Anderson, 2000).

Plumwood (1993) is among the researchers who have connected dualism to systems of inequality. The Manichean distinction between civilized/primitive, illustrates the way systems of inequality inform semantics. The domination of nature implied by dualistic conceptions of the world comprises the framework of a permission structure that has led to biophysical degradation and social conflict. 

Dualism limits our understanding of the complexity and interconnectedness that defines the polycrisis and its reductionism exacerbates social divisions and complicates ethical discussions. Dualism fragments and compartmentalizes the issues making it exceedingly difficult to develop solutions and foster sufficient agreement for collective action.

Techno-solutionism and digital misinformation

“The people will not revolt. They will not look up from their screens long enough to notice what’s happening”

We fail to act because people are distracted and being led astray by technology. Many who acknowledge the need to address issues subscribe to techno-solutionism, the false hope that innovations in applied science can ‘fix’ the myriad problems we face. This unwarranted optimism is magical thinking that impedes responsible action and diminishes our impetus to act.  

All the innovation in the world has not produced the degree of change we need to see. While technology has provided tremendous benefits, it is not a panacea, and it is often at the heart of the problem.

The role of information technology looms large in the polycrisis era. There is no better illustration of the dangers of technology than the vitriol, tribalism, division, and false information facilitated and amplified by the proliferation of digital media.

The Internet is revolutionary, it gives us access to an unprecedented wealth of information, but rather than make us more educated, more connected, and more tolerant, we are ever more misinformed, divided, and hateful. Rather than facilitating dialogue in a modern version of the public square, like-minded people coalesce to form self-reinforcing online communities that reaffirm falsehoods and spew contempt for dissent. The rancor is exacerbated by the propensity of social media platforms to widely disseminate the most extreme version of the opposing view.  The virality of hatemongering comments and fear-inspiring lies expands the chasm between groups.

According to a study by Suzuki and Yamamoto, people have difficulty distinguishing what is and is not true online (Suzuki and Yamamoto, 2021). “The credibility of web information has become a serious social issue,” the authors wrote. They found that people commonly succumb to confirmation bias when scrolling online, which they define as the tendency to, “preferentially view information that supports their opinions and beliefs.”

According to American astrophysicist, author, and science communicator, Neil deGrasse Tyson, our unprecedented access to information encourages us to believe we are right even when we are wrong.  “Type in any crazy idea that you have and it will find every other person in the world who shares that crazy idea, you’ll even find a website that extolls that crazy idea, and you will believe that you are onto something simply because other people have confirmed what you think is true,” Tyson said.

Digital media platforms take advantage of the way our brains are wired. Millions of years of evolution prime some of our worst impulses. As Robert A. Heinlein wrote in 1958, “You can sway a thousand men by appealing to their prejudices quicker than you can convince one man by logic,” (Heinlein, 1958).

Social media amplifies content based on engagement and we tend to engage with content that generates strong responses, so the vilest posts get the most attention. Our propensity to selectively attend to potential threats is a primitive evolutionary adaptation that has immense survival value, but this biological predisposition is easily exploited to manipulate people, and this is particularly true in the digital sphere.

Social media is a breeding ground for outlandish conspiracy theories and as such it is an incubator of ignorance. The Internet does not bring us together around facts, often, it brings us together around lies, some of which are deliberately spread by malevolent actors.   

The digital space is rife with acrimony, antipathy, and hate and this is fertile ground for misinformation. It also amplifies the most virulent disinformation from those who willfully manipulate public opinion with deceptive multi-pronged propaganda campaigns.

The fossil fuel industry and authoritarian governments are known to shape public narratives to control how people think.  These bad actors are a salient reason why we have failed to act on the polycrisis. According to research by Richard Matthews, (Matthews, 2014) we have failed to act on climate change because the narrative has been hijacked by those with political and economic agendas.

The vast profits digital providers reap from their hate-filled platforms make this an intractable problem that they are unlikely to voluntarily address. “[T]hese companies won’t fundamentally change because their entire business model relies on generating more engagement, and nothing generates more engagement than lies, fear and outrage,” (Cohen, 2019).

The impacts of the flood of false information are profound and getting worse.  According to the 2024 WEF Risk Report, we can expect more tumultuous elections, weakened governance, and violent protests. Division and disinformation have already eroded societal norms and reshaped the way many people see the world. Huge swaths of society are suffering from an identity crisis that is fueling cultural conflict, social unrest, and political upheaval.

The implications are dire. The promotion of conspiracies and lies undermines the idea of shared truth upon which societal cohesion depends. This represents a grave threat to democracy. Even more fundamentally, digital media is eroding the perceived value of reason and evidential argument, and this is contributing to the delegitimization of science and to the belief that “my lies are equal to your science”. 

Social media platforms divide us into factions and put us in silos that insulate us from the facts. We are inundated with lies that prevent us from coalescing around shared truths. The result is a misinformed public, rampant polarization, and paralysis in the face of looming civilization ending threats.

Short-termism and cost/benefit myopia

“We’ll go down in history as the first society that wouldn’t save itself because it wasn’t cost-effective.”

Our ability to act is undermined by our preoccupation with immediate gratification. Although investments that are good for people and the planet provide lucrative returns, many investors are wary of upfront costs and their impatience prevents us from capitalizing on the fact that the benefits of action far outweigh the costs.  

Investors tend to ignore longer-term time horizons. Risk Management Leader Carolina Klint said, “generally speaking, most of the things that we worry about are too short-term and modest.” This short-sightedness is woven into our culture and our laws. In the US, publicly held firms have a fiduciary responsibility to deliver maximum profits to impatient shareholders.

The consequences of this myopia could not be higher. According to Alec Tang, KPMG New Zealand Partner of Sustainable Value, “short-term thinking could cost us everything.”  The lens of short-termism prevents investors from appreciating the immense scope of what we stand to lose. Even if we approach the need for action from a purely economic perspective, we are forced to acknowledge that the benefits of action far outweigh the costs. This is illustrated by a slew of cost-benefit analyses that clearly support the merit of climate action. 

The costs of inaction are staggering. According to an article published in the Journal Nature, our failure to address climate change will cause world incomes to drop by nearly a fifth by 2050. A recent study published in the journal Nature Communications estimated that today extreme weather causes $16 million in damages an hour. Between 2000 to 2019, storms, floods, and drought have caused at least $2.8 trillion in damages. The annual average cost of extreme weather has increased from $140 billion in the first 2 decades of the millennium to $280 billion in 2022 and these figures do not include increasing food costs associated with declining crop yields. A recent University of Exeter analysis suggests that annual global GDP costs due to extreme weather could equal global GDP by the end of the century. 

The costs of climate inaction have been conservatively estimated to be around $1.26 trillion per year. A BCG report indicates that human activity is already costing the global economy $5 trillion a year.  This report suggests ecosystems could be worth as much as $159 trillion. Deloitte concludes that climate change could cost the global economy $178 trillion over the next 50 years. A more recent study from the National Bureau of Economic Research indicates the costs of climate change could surpass the astronomical amount of one quadrillion dollars.

A recent analysis is among an impressive body of research that dispels the myth that scaling clean energy is too costly. Another new report finds averted emissions provided $249 billion worth of climate and health benefits. Going forward health co-benefits associated with emissions reductions could be worth up to $100 a tonne. The co-benefits associated with action extend to gains well beyond economics.

Even if we ignore the raft of lucrative investment opportunities, when the potential savings are factored alongside the costs of inaction, the logic of engaging the issues in earnest is irrefutable. At a more granular level, a purely economic assessment reveals that investments in risk management are more than offset by averting projected financial losses.

Tang challenges what he calls the false belief of “narrowly focused short-termism” calling it a “sugar rush”.  He warns that failure to weave sustainability into all business decisions will expose firms to reputational risks, make them less resilient, and increase their costs. Tang also makes the obvious yet under-acknowledged point that our economies and our businesses are dependent on the health and well-being of the environment.  “Prioritising short-lived profits over long-term nature-focused opportunities…[and]…cheap workarounds” is a recipe for disaster, Tang wrote.  

Short-termism prevents us from seeing the scale of the opportunity and comprehending what we stand to lose. It keeps us from appreciating that what we do not do now will cost us much more later.  We are blinkered by short-term thinking, and this prevents us from acting at the required scale.

Imprisoned Minds and self-imposed incarceration

“Those who are able to see beyond the shadows and lies of their culture will never be understood, let alone believed, by the masses.’

We fail to act because we refuse to see, Chomsky called it, “looking away with a vengeance.” But it is not just that we choose to ignore the evidence, we cannot see the problems clearly because we are mired in a worldview that makes such insights difficult. 

According to political economist C.J. Polychroniou, people are unaware of what their governments are doing. The reason we can’t fix the most pressing problems is not just because people are unaware, it is also because the prevailing worldview prevents us from apprehending the seriousness of the issues. As Chomsky explained, “The problems are not just individual; they are institutional, hence much deeper and harder to overcome.”

Economic inducements have not augured the changes we need to see.  As explained by David Rushkoff, in a Big Think article, the reason why financial incentives fail to marshal an economy-wide response to these threats is because “basic economic sense” does not resonate.  According to Rushkoff, this irrationality is attributable to what he calls, “The Mindset” which he defines as a “fatalist drive to acquire enough money and technology to rise above and separate from the rest of humanity.”  People who are steeped in “The Mindset” have “lost the ability to think outside its unidirectional logic.”

According to Rushkoff we all unknowingly participate in The Mindset, “even if it was only to believe in the inevitability of our own victimhood.” Thus, people do not consider the implications of transgressing planetary boundaries just as they fail to appreciate the dangers of social dysfunction.

Australian academic and author Ted (F.E.) Trainer is among those who have been writing about our failure to appreciate the seriousness of these threats for decades. In a 2024 article, Trainer wrote, “Most people do not grasp the extent to which this society has become unsustainable.”  Even though the evidence is right before their eyes, people do not see, and we cannot address problems if we do not see them.   

There are insidious reasons why we fail to see. In the prescient 1981 film “My Dinner With André” the two protagonists André and Wallace, discuss the idea of psychological prisons built by unwitting inmates. The residents of this “new concentration camp” are both guards and prisoners, yet they do not see the prison in which they are confined, so they have no interest in escaping.  André goes on to describe boredom as a dangerous form of control, a “self-perpetuating unconscious form of brainwashing created by a world totalitarian government based on money,” adding, “somebody who’s bored is asleep. And somebody who’s asleep will not say no.” Wallace chimes in saying: “We’re just going around all day like unconscious machines, and meanwhile there’s all this rage and worry and uneasiness just building up and building up inside us.”

These passages are highly reminiscent of Foucault’s analysis of the panopticon (Foucault, 1977) – a prison in which prisoners who are watched self-regulate. Even when they are not being watched, people in such prisons internalize the watcher. This, according to Foucault, is how we become good citizens, or “docile bodies”. This self-surveillance is something cults do well, it is also a defining feature of authoritarianism.

The 13th-century poet Jalāl al-Dīn Muḥammad Rūmī, asked, “Why do you stay in prison when the door is so wide open?” Six centuries later the Russian novelist Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky, answered Rumi’s question saying, “The best way to keep a prisoner from escaping is to make sure he never knows he’s in prison.”

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