The End of the Adolescent World: Polycrisis, Collapse, and the Evolutionary Push Toward Meaning

Human development does not unfold randomly. It follows recognizable stages of maturation that appear across psychology, anthropology, and contemplative traditions. We begin in dependence, move into survival, then into power and self expression, and eventually arrive at purpose and meaning. Viktor Frankl observed that meaning becomes the central human motivation once the earlier scaffolding of identity collapses, once suffering exposes the inadequacy of goals that once seemed so important (Frankl, 2006). Meaning becomes visible only when all the lesser aims fail. It is not an ornament of stability. It is the evolutionary response when the ego meets its limits.

What applies to individuals applies equally to civilizations. Cultures too move through developmental stages. They begin in survival, build hierarchies, pursue expansion and power, and eventually reach a point where the worldview that sustained them can no longer support the complexity of the world they have created. This is the moment when a society must either mature into a new stage of meaning or collapse back into the very conditions it once transcended. Humanity stands precisely at this threshold now.

The signals have been accumulating for decades. Daniel Schmachtenberger describes this moment as the polycrisis or meta crisis, a convergence of ecological decline, institutional erosion, technological acceleration, economic instability, and epistemic fragmentation that together exceed the adaptive capacity of the current global system (Schmachtenberger, 2020). Iain McGilchrist frames it as a crisis of consciousness, where the relational and integrative mode of mind has been displaced by the analytic mode, giving rise to a civilization governed by abstraction, fragmentation, and control rather than relationship, meaning, and reciprocity (McGilchrist, 2012). Jung saw the same pattern as the eruption of the collective shadow after a century of repression, the moment when the unintegrated aspects of the psyche force their way into awareness through crisis and upheaval (Jung, 1959). Despite their different vantage points these thinkers converge on the same diagnosis. A world built on the adolescent stage of power and control is reaching the limits of that stage, and the pressure to mature has become unavoidable.

I watched the pattern unfold long before these ideas entered the mainstream. The energy crisis, the decline of freshwater systems, the collapse of soil and the broader food web, the silent erosion of biodiversity, rising global temperatures, intensifying storms, aging infrastructure, and a growing inability to trust political institutions, public health, or the media. These were not isolated challenges. They were warning signs of a deeper systemic transformation. What many treated as instability was in fact the beginning of a civilizational identity death.

And like individuals confronting their own mortality, societies cling to the familiar long after the familiar becomes destructive. I have seen this dynamic repeatedly in the lives of people I love. A man may grow far beyond a former version of himself and yet still hold on to that outdated identity because it once protected him. It becomes a soundtrack he returns to even when it no longer reflects the person he has become. The same pattern plays out on the scale of civilizations. We cling to the myth of endless growth because it once provided safety and coherence, even though it now ensures collapse.

This is why death plays such a central role in transformation. The ego does not relinquish a failing identity until it is forced to confront the truth that the identity is unsustainable. Addiction recovery illustrates this perfectly. Rock bottom is not the point of failure. It is the point where transformation becomes possible. Frankl noted that meaning becomes unmistakable only when all illusions fall away, when one stands at the edge of what no longer works and can no longer pretend otherwise (Frankl, 2006). The same mechanism shapes collective evolution. When a civilization faces the potential death of its worldview, its systems, or even its ecological foundations, it begins to ask the questions that belong to the meaning stage of development. What are we here for. What is sacred? What is worth preserving? What does it mean to be human in a world that is conscious at every scale?

This is not only psychological. It is epistemological. It is ontological. Quantum theory dismantles the worldview that treated consciousness as secondary. It reveals that reality is relational and participatory, that the observer and the observed arise together. Meaning is not something consciousness adds to the world. Meaning is woven into the structure of reality itself. When the worldview no longer fits the ontological structure of the universe the worldview must change. The crisis is not only ecological and political. It is the collapse of a model of reality.

Jung understood this when he argued that civilizations collapse not merely from external pressures but from an internal failure to integrate the truths emerging from the deeper psyche (Jung, 1959). McGilchrist understood it when he demonstrated that societies fall when the analytic mode of mind attempts to govern a world that can only be understood relationally (McGilchrist, 2012). Schmachtenberger understood it when he described a global system whose generator functions are incompatible with long-term planetary stability (Schmachtenberger, 2020).

When the worldview collapses, the self collapses with it. But collapse is not simply destruction. Collapse is the dissolution of a form that can no longer support the next stage of development. Nothing new emerges until the old pattern dies. This is true of ecosystems, where decay feeds renewal. It is true of the psyche, which reorganizes after identity death. And it is true of civilizations, which evolve only after the worldview that governed them becomes untenable.

The maturation of humanity requires a movement from the adolescent stage of power and consumption into the mature stage of meaning. This moment in history is the evolutionary push toward that stage. The survival of the species depends on it. The ecological limits of the planet demand it. The psychological and spiritual hunger of the culture reveals it. The collapse of the old world is not the end of humanity. It is the end of its adolescence.

The next stage will be defined by meaning rather than accumulation, reciprocity rather than extraction, relational consciousness rather than ego consciousness, and a recognition that all life exists within a single field of awareness. Death is not the opposite of life. Death is the threshold through which life reorganizes itself. Personal transformation arises from the death of an outdated identity. Collective transformation arises from the death of an outdated worldview. Civilizational transformation arises from the death of systems that can no longer hold the complexity of the world they created.

We are witnessing the death of the old story. But we are also witnessing the birth of a new one. A story in which consciousness is fundamental, meaning is central, ecology is sacred, relationships are primary, and the human species awakens to its place within a living universe. This is the maturation of civilization. This is the meaning stage of humanity. The polycrisis is not merely a warning. It is the evolutionary pressure that pushes the world toward a new form of consciousness. The end of the adolescent world is not a tragedy. It is the beginning of a deeper life waiting to be lived.