Key ideas
Short guides to the key ideas and terms behind Seeds of Renaissance.
A short guide to the terms and ideas we draw on, with pointers to where they come from.
- Second Renaissance: a major civilisational transition, from the breaking-down paradigm of modernity into what comes next.
- Metacrisis: a crisis in the foundations of our civilisation that generates many surface crises.
- Metamodern: a move beyond both modernism and postmodernism.
- Great Turning: Joanna Macy’s name for the shift to a life-sustaining civilisation.
- Liminal Web: an emerging subculture of sensemakers, meta-theorists and systems poets.
- Multipolar trap: when self-interest pushes many parties to act against their shared interest.
- Wisdom Gap: our technological power is growing faster than our wisdom to use it.
- Dark Renaissance: the idea that a dark age may come before a renaissance.
- Deliberately developmental space: a space designed for sustained personal and collective development.
- Many names: the different terms used for the ecosystem and its ideas.
We aim to be accessible and rigorous: a short introduction you can read on its own, then examples, quotes and further resources. Entries use US English and sentence-case titles. To suggest a term or improve an entry, get in touch.