Radical Hope #1 Everything, All at Once
Everything, All at Once
Last week I introduced this 13-week series exploring how we engage effectively with a world in transformation (you can find it here). This week, we look directly at what we're facing, the "polycrisis".
Life as we know it is ending. Something new is trying to be born.
We're facing the greatest challenge humanity has ever confronted – a polycrisis, where everything amplifies everything else.
And yet, paradoxically, we also have access to more advanced approaches to consciousness, trauma, systems and healing than any generation before us.
The question isn't whether we can stop what's already in motion. We can't.
The question is whether enough of us can develop the embodied capacity to meet this moment with presence rather than panic, with participation rather than paralysis.
This newsletter series explores that question. Not with easy answers, but with practices that help us become people capable of navigating this moment in human history.
The most urgent thing we can do is NOT to try to fix everything. It's to develop the quality of consciousness that makes genuine transformation possible. As Báyò Akómoláfé says "The times are urgent; let us slow down."
The situation is hopeless. Let's start.
The polycrisis includes climate breakdown, mass displacement, accelerating inequality, democratic backsliding, ecological collapse, rising authoritarianism, increased corruption, global health vulnerabilities, and the erosion of shared truth.
These aren't separate problems – they amplify each other with interconnected catastrophes where the combination becomes more overwhelming than each of the parts. Climate change creates mass displacement, which fuels xenophobia, which strengthens far-right movements, which undermine environmental protections – each crisis feeding the next.
People no longer trust evidence-based sources – science, governments, institutions that once held authority. Politicians increasingly get away with sharing fake news that create false narratives. Online platforms amplify misinformation, and many of us now receive news only from within our digital bubbles, each echo chamber reinforcing what we already believe. And perhaps most fundamentally, identity now shapes belief more than facts ever could.
This collapse of shared truth deepens the polycrisis in ways that make coordinated action nearly impossible. For example, when someone doubts climate science, they're less likely to support policies that reduce emissions or accept the difficult trade-offs required. Powerful actors understand this – they exploit the scepticism, delay action, profit from confusion. The feedback loop tightens. Weakened trust reduces climate action. Worsening impacts erode trust further. Each turn makes the polycrisis harder to navigate, harder to name, harder to meet with anything resembling collective wisdom.
We're not just facing environmental breakdown.
We're facing the collapse of our capacity to think together about what's real, and to relate to each other across difference.
In America, millions believe the 2020 election was stolen despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary, leading to the Capitol riot as the logical conclusion of living in separate realities.
In Russia, state media has convinced much of the population that Ukraine is run by Nazis and the invasion is defensive.
In Israel and Palestine, each side sees only their own grief and justification whilst the other's suffering becomes invisible, filtered out by algorithms and tribal belonging.
These aren't separate crises. They're symptoms of the same breakdown – the shattering of any shared ground from which to listen, empathise, negotiate, compromise, or even acknowledge each other's humanity.
When "facts" become statements of tribal identity rather than testable claims about reality, politics becomes warfare by other means. Without shared ground, relating becomes impossible.
Decades of activism, protests, and policy proposals haven't stopped the crises from deepening. We've been trying to solve systems-level problems with individual-level consciousness.
We've been acting from the same mechanistic, separatist thinking that created these catastrophes in the first place.
Something deeper is required.
Not cleverer strategies or more urgent action, but a shift in how we understand reality itself – what we can perceive, what questions we can ask, what responses become possible.
Next Tuesday we explore this emerging paradigm – why it's needed, what it asks of us, and why it begins in the body, not the mind.
A Practice for This Week
Take a few minutes to sit with these questions. Not to judge yourself, just to notice honestly where you are:
1. When you think about the polycrisis – climate breakdown, democratic collapse, the erosion of shared truth – what do you actually feel?
Do you feel paralysed? Numb? Overwhelmed? Angry? Grief? Or perhaps surprisingly energised?
2. Are you taking any actions in response?
Large or small? If so, what moves you to act?
If not, what stops you?
There are no right answers. Hopelessness is a reasonable response to an overwhelming situation. So is fierce engagement. So is everything in between.
This week, just notice where you actually are, without forcing yourself to be somewhere else.
That honest noticing – feeling what you feel, acknowledging what you're doing or not doing – is itself the beginning of embodied consciousness.
In the coming weeks we'll explore the paradigm shift needed, discover radical hope, and learn practical tools for participating in the living systems we inhabit.
What's the one thing from today's newsletter that's staying with you?
These ideas are alive for me, and I'm always interested in where they land for others. If something has resonated – or troubled you – do write to me: julian.russell@lifetalent.com
With love, hope, and curiosity,
Julian
Julian Russell is a psychotherapist, executive coach, writer and committed fellow traveller through the territories of inner work and public life. Drawing on decades of somatic and contemplative practice, he helps people access the capacities they already carry. He is a co-founder of the Generative Citizen community — a gathering of people who understand that how we are matters as much as what we do. His forthcoming book, Standing at the Edge of Hope, explores why personal and spiritual development is not a retreat from the world's crises, but the very ground from which authentic engagement becomes possible. Julian.Russell@LifeTalent.com