In an era increasingly defined by overlapping and protracted crises, what many now term “polycrisis”, the challenge lies not only in the shocks of the crisis themselves but in our collective capacity to perceive, interpret, and respond to them. These crises, whether economic, environmental, or social, often unfold over extended periods, accumulating unnoticed until they reach a breaking point. Our failure to recognize and address the underlying issues in a timely manner exacerbates their impact, leading to reactive rather than proactive responses.
John Maynard Keynes once remarked that the man in the street, when finally made aware of unfolding events, often reacts not with measured insight but with a distorted sense of fear. He wrote that, “now that the man in the street has become aware of what is happening, he, not knowing the why and wherefore, is as full today of what may prove excessive fears as, previously, when the trouble was first coming on, he was lacking in what would have been a reasonable anxiety.”[1] This observation captures a timeless truth about public perception in moments of crisis. Crises do not simply erupt from nothing; rather, they are frequently preceded by long periods of systemic tension and unnoticed strain. When the rupture finally becomes visible, people are often unprepared, not because there were no signs, but because those signs were either misunderstood or ignored.
Economist Gabriel Palma[2] offered a complementary framework when he described the social psychology facing financial crises as moving through three phases. First comes a phase of “lack-of-awareness,” where underlying problems build quietly in the background. This is followed by a sudden moment of “awareness,” a brief period of shock and panic. Finally, and most paradoxically, the system enters a “new form of lack-of-awareness” in which the initial fear dissipates, and a revised normality sets in. The problems that gave rise to the crisis are neither solved nor fully understood; instead, they are obscured again, re-integrated into a worldview eager to move on. These cycles of awareness and denial make it difficult for societies to effectively respond to crises. Misdiagnosis becomes common, and reactive policy overshadows the deeper work of structural repair.
To understand how this misperception takes hold, we must consider the anatomy of a crisis not only as a disruption in material systems but as a breakdown in meaning. Crises are not just about economic crashes, political instability, or environmental collapse. They are about how we interpret change and disruption, how we assign causality, and how we organize our responses. They put the realities we take for granted on check, but also are fed by the behaviors that those realities encourage.
Hyman Minsky, an economist who studied financial instability, identified a key insight: stability breeds complacency, which in turn breeds instability[3]. In times of prolonged calm, actors begin to take on greater risks, believing that the system is inherently stable. Debt levels rise, speculative investments proliferate, and assumptions about the permanence of growth harden. When reality fails to meet these expectations, a sudden correction — the so-called “Minsky Moment” — occurs. Yet what appears to be a sudden collapse is in fact the final stage of a much longer, slower process.
History offers us many such examples. Eric Cline, in his study of the Late Bronze Age collapse [4], showed that what had been considered for almost 200 years an abrupt regional collapse — involving the disappearance of empires, trade networks, and entire cities - was in fact a slow cascading sequence of events triggered by overlapping stresses. Environmental shocks, migration pressures, political mismanagement, and trade disruptions all interacted over time. The archaeological record reveals that the collapse was not uniform, nor was it immediate. It was the product of long-term vulnerabilities converging into a tipping point. The myth of sudden collapse often masks the deep structural causes that make such collapses possible.
In our contemporary context, this inability to see slow degradation is further amplified by the speed and complexity of modernity. Shoshana Zuboff has written extensively about surveillance capitalism, a form of economic logic that monetizes human behavior at unprecedented scales[5]. Her key point is not just that privacy is being lost, but that the very terms through which we understand human agency and social organization are being rewritten faster than we can comprehend. When this happens, old frameworks are applied to new realities, and our cognitive tools fail to capture what is actually occurring. We end up with misplaced confidence. This disconnect is evident in what some social scientists call the gap between issue confidence and issue literacy. People often express high confidence in their understanding of topics that, in fact, they know very little about. This overconfidence hinders cooperation and policy dialogue because it substitutes feeling informed for actually being informed.
With unprecedented events and unfamiliar systems proliferating, interacting at all levels from individual to planetary, individuals are increasingly confronted with a distinct form of cultural disorientation: future shock[6]. Future shock, as conceptualized by Alvin and Heidi Toffler, refers to the psychological and social dissonance experienced when change occurs faster than our capacity to adapt. What Future Shock captured decades before the rise of smartphones or algorithmic feeds was a profound intuition: that the human system of meaning-making is not equipped to handle the speed and volatility of contemporary life. When the pace of change outstrips our ability to absorb and respond to it, the consequences extend beyond individual stress to systemic dysfunction, as institutions and societies lose their long-term bearings and spiral into cycles of short-term reaction and crisis management.
This disconnect between the speed of change and our capacity to grasp its implications contributes to a phenomenon known as the gap between issue confidence and issue literacy[7][8]. Issue confidence refers to the belief that one understands a complex issue, often based on personal experience or exposure to superficial information. In contrast, issue literacy involves a deep, nuanced understanding of the issue, grounded in comprehensive knowledge and critical analysis. The proliferation of information through social media and other platforms has amplified issue confidence without necessarily enhancing issue literacy. People are inundated with opinions and narratives that reinforce their existing beliefs, leading to motivated reasoning, a cognitive bias where individuals process information in a way that aligns with their preferences and prejudices[9].
This dynamic is particularly evident in the realm of social sciences, where topics are inherently complex and intertwined with daily experiences. The politicization of these issues further exacerbates the problem, as individuals are more likely to accept information that aligns with their ideological leanings, regardless of its accuracy. The result is a general public that feels informed but lacks the depth of understanding necessary to engage in constructive discourse or support effective policy measures. This doesn’t only affect the general public, but also experts[10] and practitioners in cooperation.
A good example of this phenomenon surrounds the understanding of migration. Traditional models of migration, used to formulate a variety of projects and on which public policy supports itself, often rely on push and pull factors, as if human movement were a mechanical response to pressure. War pushes people out, economic opportunity pulls them in. While these factors are real, they offer only a shallow understanding of the motivations behind migration. They treat people as passive objects rather than as individuals with aspirations, values, and varying degrees of agency. Migration theorist Hein de Haas has challenged this narrative by proposing an alternative model based on aspirations and capabilities. According to this framework, but because they see the possibility of a better life and possess the resources — social, financial, educational — to pursue it. Those with the greatest need are often the least able to migrate. This model brings to the forefront the interplay between individual goals and structural constraints, helping us understand why some people move and others do not, even when facing similar conditions. Creating a full picture of this process, however, requires deep working knowledge of a variety of topics which is hard to acquire, and it’s not unusual to rely on oversimplifications.
The current information ecosystem compounds these challenges. While opinions and beliefs are disseminated widely and rapidly, technical studies and expert analyses often remain confined to specialized circles. This disparity means that the dominant understanding of complex issues is shaped more by the ability and resources to communicate persuasively than by the accuracy or depth of information. Moreover, the specialization of knowledge creates silos, where experts in one field may lack the context to fully grasp related issues, leading to misinterpretations and flawed decision-making.
The implications of this richer understanding are significant for how international cooperation is envisioned and practiced. In the face of crises such as conflict, climate change, pandemics, financial instability, forced displacement, effective cooperation must move beyond reactive, issue-specific interventions. It must begin with an acknowledgment that many of today’s crises are shared in origin, though unequal in impact. Historical responsibilities, economic interdependencies, and power asymmetries all shape who suffers most and who has the capacity to respond. Cooperation at its core is a recognition that structural factors can cause the system to go in an undesired direction, even causing major crisis, and that deliberate collective action is needed to solve the problems posed by this[11]. Recognizing this is necessary to shift cooperation from a charitable model to one of shared responsibility. However, for such cooperation to succeed, communication must be radically improved. Bridging the gap between issue confidence and issue literacy requires spaces where complexity can be acknowledged and negotiated, where diverse forms of knowledge can be brought into dialogue.
This is where participatory development models have shown promise. By involving stakeholders — especially those most affected — in the design and implementation of policies, these models aim to democratize knowledge and decision-making. They also challenge the myth that expertise is solely technical or centralized. While experts play a vital role, they must work in concert with communities whose lived experience is indispensable for crafting resilient, context-sensitive solutions.
To deepen this kind of engagement, we need tools that can help us unpack not only the surface-level symptoms of crises but also the underlying narratives and worldviews that sustain them. One such tool is Causal Layered Analysis, developed by the futurist Sohail Inayatullah[12]. CLA invites us to analyze issues on four interconnected levels. The first level, the litany, reflects the surface discourse — headlines, data, and public debates. The second level examines systemic causes - institutions, structures, and policies. The third level explores dominant discourses and worldviews - the assumptions that frame what is considered normal or inevitable. The fourth and deepest level considers myth and metaphor - the unconscious stories and archetypes that shape how we feel about change. By moving through these layers, CLA helps reveal not just what is wrong, but why we think about problems the way we do. In complex, multi-stakeholder environments, this method can illuminate possibilities for action that would otherwise remain hidden.
It is a method that is by definition participatory, functioning in multistakeholder environments where those involved have the opportunity to discuss their visions, check their biases, and understand the objectives, interests, and desires of other parties. As a tool to deconstruct current visions of preferred, probable, and possible futures in order to generate holistic policies, it is a good example of the kind of political imagination we need. It is a model that creates opportunities for horizontal learning and communication, enabling the development of ideas both about how the systems at play function and about the priorities and aspirations of the different stakeholder groups.
Ultimately, the breaking point is not a singular event. It is the moment when multiple hidden tensions finally intersect with visible triggers, forcing a reckoning that was long in the making. To respond meaningfully, we must become better at detecting the difference between a shock and a symptom, between what is loud and what is deep. This requires more than reactive policy or technical fixes. It demands political fantasy — not in the sense of escapism, but as a disciplined and generative capacity to transcend dominant visions and narratives, and to imagine alternative futures grounded in justice, care, and sustainability. Political fantasy allows us to interrogate inherited assumptions, to widen the field of the possible, and to chart paths toward futures that are not simply extensions of the present. In times of prolonged crisis, it is not a luxury, but a necessity: the compass we need to navigate complexity, reclaim agency, and move from reaction to transformation.
1 J. M. Keynes, “The Great Slump of 1930,” in *Essays in Persuasion* (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010), https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-59072-8_10.
2 José Gabriel Palma, “How the Full Opening of the Capital Account to Highly Liquid Financial Markets Led Latin America to Two and a Half Cycles of ‘Mania, Panic and Crash,’” *Cambridge Working Papers in Economics* 1201 (Faculty of Economics, University of Cambridge, 2012).
3 Hyman P. Minsky, The Financial Instability Hypothesis, Working Paper No. 74 (Annandale-on- Hudson, NY: Jerome Levy Economics Institute of Bard College, 1992), https://www.levyinstitute.org/pubs/wp74.pdf.
4 Cline, Eric H. 1177 B.C.: The Year Civilization Collapsed. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2014.
5 Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism: The Fight for a Human Future at the New Frontier of Power (London: Profile Books, 2019), 123.
6 Toffler, Alvin, "The Future as a Way of Life", Horizon magazine, Summer 1965, Vol VII, Num 3
7 Park, K., C Rim, H. (2020). Social media hoaxes, political ideology, and the role of issue confidence. Telematics and Informatics, 54, 101466. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tele.2020.101466 8 Kahan, D. M., Peters, E., Wittlin, M., Slovic, P., Ouellette, L. L., Braman, D., C Mandel, G. (2012).
8 The polarizing impact of science literacy and numeracy on perceived climate change risks. Nature Climate Change, 2(10), 732–735. https://doi.org/10.1038/nclimate1547
9 Taber, C. S., C Lodge, M. (2006). Motivated skepticism in the evaluation of political beliefs. American Journal of Political Science, 50(3), 755–769. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1540- 5907.2006.00214.x
10 Tetlock, P. E. (2005). Expert political judgment: How good is it? How can we know? Princeton University Press.
11 United Nations Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC). (2020). Building a new future: Transformative recovery with equality and sustainability. Santiago: UN- ECLAC. https://www.cepal.org/en/publications/46425-building-new-future-transformative- recovery-equality-and-sustainability
12 Sohail Inayatullah, "Causal Layered Analysis: An Integrative and Transformative Theory and Method," in Futures Research Methodology, Version 3.0, ed. Jerome Glenn and Theodore Gordon (Washington, DC: The Millennium Project, 2009), ISBN 978-0-9818941-1-9.