From Polycrisis to Polytunity

Popularized by Adam Tooze and used by organizations like the World Economic Forum, "polycrisis" serves as therapy-speak for elite paralysis. Instead, our essay of the week proposes "polytunity" not as breakdown but as a once-in-a-generation opportunity for deep transformation.

Every September, world leaders gather in New York City for the United Nations General Assembly. They come weighed down by climate disasters, widening inequality, democratic erosion, trade wars, and threats to multilateralism. They leave with heavier burdens than when they arrived. 

We now have a fashionable word for this convergence of problems: polycrisis. It has become the apocalyptic buzzword of the decade. 

Why? Because it is comfortable. Polycrisis is a descriptor that the establishment can agree on without challenging itself. It abstracts the causes of crises, making them appear as natural convergences rather than the systemic outcomes of extractive and exclusionary orders. And it makes the concept appear global when in fact the voices, experiences, and priorities it reflects are overwhelmingly Eurocentric.

The virality of polycrisis reveals something deeper: the enduring power of elite discourse. Even though the term is empty, its followers amplify it—and the echo reinforces paralysis. If leaders remain content with only naming fear, they will consign themselves to irrelevance.

Read the full essay by Yuen Yuen Ang