When More Became Less

The poly-crisis of our civilization

We are living through what many now call a polycrisis — not a single emergency, but the convergence of many. Climate change, inequality, mental illness, extinction, exhaustion — all symptoms of a civilization that has mistaken growth for progress.

At the root of this convergence lies a deeper fracture: humanity’s growing separation from nature, from one another, and from ourselves. We have built a global industrial society powered by fossil fuels and sustained by the belief that energy and resources are infinite. This has allowed us to create vast technological systems — yet also to forget the cycles and limits that sustain life.

This disconnection runs deeper than material scarcity; it touches our spirit. The same logic that exploits the Earth’s resources also exploits our time, attention, imagination, and emotions. We are surrounded by abundance, yet haunted by emptiness.

In what follows, we explore the two sides of this crisis:

• The Material Crisis, which reveals the exhaustion of the planet and the unsustainability of our technological systems.

• The Spiritual Crisis, which exposes the inner depletion — the loss of purpose, connection, and joy — that mirrors the Earth’s own exhaustion.

Together, they form the true face of the polycrisis. Understanding them is the first step toward imagining a different path — one rooted not in domination, but in relationship. Yet before we can move forward, we must come to grips with our immersion in this system — our dependence on it, our complicity in it, and the comforts it has afforded.

To find new ways of living, we must first face what is ending. We may need to mourn what has already been lost: the abundance of nature, the simplicity of community, the rhythm of a slower life. This grief is not a barrier to change but its beginning — a space where denial gives way to clarity. Only by acknowledging the world we have consumed can we begin to see the contours of what might come next: smaller, slower, and more human worlds waiting to be reimagined.

Our Material Crisis

Throughout human history, our access to energy and our ability to reshape natural resources into tools and products have evolved dramatically. Two and a half centuries ago, coal emerged as the powerhouse behind the Industrial Revolution, reshaping societies across the globe. As the 20th century dawned, oil took the lead — embedding the belief that energy is cheap and abundant, a notion that still underpins our global industrial society and its sprawling technology suites.

Depletion

In the industrial age, we are confronted with a harsh reality: our once abundant energy sources are rapidly depleting. Over half of the Earth’s oil reserves have already been tapped, pushing us toward ever more difficult and damaging extraction. Resources once taken for granted — sand, phosphorus, clean air, freshwater, and rare earth metals — are becoming scarce.

This transformation is starkly visible in a single statistic: the total weight of human-made matter now exceeds that of all living biomass on Earth. It took nature millions of years to grow forests, reefs, and soils — and just a century of industrial expansion to outweigh them.

Waste and Pollution

Capitalism, powered by cheap labor and energy, has driven the rapid conversion of nature into products. Every step — extraction, manufacturing, trade, transportation — relies on intricate global systems fueled by fossil energy.

But in pursuing this progress, we externalized the true costs: waste, pollution, and the slow unraveling of ecosystems. The air thickens, soils erode, oceans acidify. What we once called growth now resembles exhaustion — of both planet and people.

Technology Suites

Our contemporary lives depend on a dense web of technological systems — interconnected, invisible, and largely dependent on fossil fuels. They sustain energy-intensive lifestyles in the developed world while deepening inequalities elsewhere.

Their complexity hides the true scale of what they demand. A simple voice command to turn off the lights sets in motion a global chain of servers, satellites, and data centers — to perform what once took a human hand. For the average person in the Global North, the energy embodied in their daily consumption equals the labor of about 400 human workers pedaling bicycles.

We’ve built civilization on a false belief in limitless energy and endless growth. For generations, we ignored the consequences: products that become waste instead of returning to nature’s cycles; the depletion of soils, forests, and minerals; the pollution that poisons air and water. This denial was a conscious bargain — to preserve economic expansion and comfort in the Global North, even as the costs were offloaded elsewhere.

Now, that bargain is collapsing. As we use up half the planet’s oil and watch vital resources dwindle, the signs of strain are everywhere: climate change, loss of biodiversity, soil depletion, ocean acidification. Together they form an undeniable truth — that the industrial mode, built on extraction and externalization, cannot endure.

Our Spiritual Crisis

When was the last time you truly felt alive? For many, it’s in moments money can’t buy: being humbled by nature, feeling the wind on your skin, sharing work and laughter with friends, creating or discovering something with your own hands.

So why do we persist in the illusion that happiness can be purchased? And why have we structured our lives around a single job whose purpose is to earn money to do so?

This mindset is relatively new in human history. It stems from Enlightenment ideas that framed progress as unstoppable, viewed nature as external, and split the mind from the body. These illusions still shape how we define prosperity — as the growth of material wealth — even as they erode the very conditions that make us feel whole.

From Exploitation to Alienation

When humans declared themselves masters of nature, they severed a sacred bond. Nature, women, “less civilized” peoples — all were cast as resources to be used. This mindset justified land grabs, slavery, colonialism, and deforestation.

The division of mind from body made labor itself a commodity. Work was no longer an expression of life but a tradable asset, subject to efficiency and control. The result was alienation — from nature, from one another, and from ourselves.

From Commodification to Emptiness

The pursuit of profit has yielded immense material wealth — but at the cost of meaning. We once held many roles: tending land, crafting tools, raising children, supporting one another. Today, most of us hold one job that funds our consumption of others’ work.

As everything becomes a product — care, education, creativity, even attention — life grows narrower. When relationships and time themselves are commodified, it is no surprise that we feel empty.

From Consumerization to Anxiety

In the logic of homo economicus, well-being is measured only in economic growth. To keep the promise of prosperity alive, we are encouraged to consume more each year. Media, advertising, and policy all reinforce this cycle — one that rewards constant striving and comparison.

We compete to maximize income and status, measuring success by possessions, not purpose. At the same time, global connectivity exposes us to endless ideals and crises beyond our control — fueling a sense of inadequacy and despair.

Alienation, emptiness, and anxiety manifest as modern ailments: burnout, depression, eating disorders, attention deficits. Added to these are newer afflictions — guilt, eco-anxiety, solastalgia — the pain of witnessing the world we love deteriorate.

Progress, it turns out, is not a measure of health or happiness. Material wealth has not brought fulfillment; instead, it has hollowed out the inner life of humanity. We face not just a material collapse, but a spiritual one — the loss of meaning in a world that has forgotten how to belong.

Seeing with New Eyes

If the material crisis exposes the exhaustion of the Earth, and the spiritual crisis reveals the exhaustion of the self, then the task before us is not to rebuild the same world, but to reimagine our place within it.

This begins not with innovation or growth, but with recognition — that we are part of what we have exploited, dependent on what we have depleted, and diminished by what we have destroyed.

Grief, then, is not despair. It is the moment when illusion gives way to truth. From there, we can begin to see with new eyes: to rediscover smaller, slower, and more symbiotic ways of living — ones that restore relationship where there was control, and care where there was consumption.