All things tend toward excess. All things must recalibrate. Excess and recalibration are the universal rhythm of existence. From atoms to empires, from stars to souls, the pattern is the same: excess, collapse, renewal. We are not living through a moment of random chaos. We are living through a global polycrisis, where every excess of the past century is now demanding recalibration. Welcome to the world disorder of 2025.

In This Article

• What is a global polycrisis and why does it matter?
• How today’s “firefly” events reveal deeper structural shifts.
• Why excess in politics, finance, and climate demands recalibration.
• How Braudel’s cycles help us decode chaos instead of drown in it.
• Why renewal and cooperation remain possible even in disorder.

Why Everything Seems To Be Breaking at Once

The Fireflies of Chaos

Look around, and you see the flicker of chaos everywhere. The head of the Bureau of Labor Statistics gets fired for daring to publish numbers that don’t flatter the president. Tariffs on India suddenly jumped to 50%, sparking panic among exporters and threatening higher prices for consumers.

In Beijing, China, Russia, and India parade their unity as if daring Washington to respond. And let’s not forget the spectacle of a president openly musing about taking over the Federal Reserve. This move would once have been laughed off as lunacy, but now seems disturbingly possible.

These are the “fireflies” of history, to borrow Fernand Braudel’s term. They are bright, brief, and distracting. They grab headlines and dominate the news cycle, but by themselves, they don’t explain much. The temptation is to treat them as disconnected crises. But they’re not. They’re symptoms of something more profound: decades of excess finally reaching their breaking point.

The Medium-Term Excess

Step back from the fireflies and look at the medium cycle, the span of decades rather than days. Here we find the real story. The U.S.-led order established after World War II relied on a delicate balance: free trade under American protection, a dollar-backed financial system, and a network of alliances that, for the most part, maintained peace.

For a time, it worked. Then it went too far. Globalization promised endless prosperity but delivered hollowed-out industries, obscene wealth inequality, and political backlash. Financial innovation promised stability but delivered debt mountains so high they make Everest look like a hill.

This is Howe’s territory, the saeculum. Every four generations, societies face a reckoning. The institutions designed to keep order decay under the weight of their own excesses. Trust collapses. Crisis arrives. Howe calls it the Fourth Turning. Braudel would call it a structural recalibration.

Either way, the medium cycle is where the fireworks of today are anchored. Tariffs, Fed fights, geopolitical flexing, these are just the flares marking the end of a decades-long binge.

The Long-Term Reckoning

But beneath even the medium cycle lies the 'longue durée', a term coined by Braudel. These are the forces that shift over centuries: climate, geography, demographics, and deep cultural patterns. And right now, they’re all rumbling at once. Climate change is no longer a warning, it’s an unfolding reality. Droughts, floods, and fires are recalibrating where food can be grown and where people can live.

Demographic transitions, such as aging populations in the West and youth bulges elsewhere, are straining pensions, labor markets, and political systems. Geography, long ignored in an age of digital illusions, is back with a vengeance as supply chains snap and nations scramble for energy and water security.

The longue durée doesn’t care about elections or tweets. It grinds on, forcing societies to bend whether they like it or not. Ignoring it is like neglecting gravity. You can pretend it doesn’t exist, right until you step off the roof.

Polycrisis: When Cycles Collide

So here we are. Short-term fireflies flashing everywhere. Medium-term structures unraveling. Long-term bedrock shifting beneath our feet. This is what scholars now call a 'polycrisis': a convergence of crises that don’t just coexist but compound one another.

Financial excess meets political excess meets ecological excess, and suddenly the entire system appears to be on the verge of collapse. It’s not that the world has more problems than usual. It’s that the issues are interconnected, feeding on one another, multiplying their impact.

It's like an overloaded circuit. Each device plugged in is manageable. However, if you plug them all in at once, the system shorts out. That's where we are now-short circuits everywhere, sparks flying, and the smell of something burning in the walls.

Think of it like an overloaded circuit. Each device plugged in is manageable. However, if you plug them all in at once, the system shorts out. That’s where we are now, short circuits everywhere, sparks flying, and the smell of something burning in the walls.

Why Excess Is the Engine

Here’s the part the pundits miss. Chaos isn’t random. It’s rhythmic. Everything tends toward excess, and everything must recalibrate. Empires overextend and collapse. Markets inflate bubbles and crash. Ecosystems grow too dense until fire resets them.

Even stars consume themselves until they explode, seeding the cosmos with the elements of new life. Excess isn’t the exception, it’s the driver. Recalibration isn’t punishment, it’s the correction. Renewal is the gift. Emphasizing the inevitability of these cycles can help the audience feel the natural order of these processes.

The polycrisis feels unique because it’s global, fast, and interconnected. But at its heart, it’s the same old story written in bigger letters. The United States spent decades pretending it could police the world, pile up debt, ignore climate, and still coast forever on past glory.

Europe believed it could build prosperity on cheap Russian gas. China thought it could grow without limits in terms of resources or freedom. Every system pushed too far. Now every system must recalibrate.

Capitalism in Excess

Capitalism has lived off the myth of endless growth. More workers, more consumers, more production. For centuries, it worked: factories roared, markets expanded, GDP rose, and governments promised prosperity as if it were a birthright. But here’s the problem: nothing grows forever.

You can only squeeze so much labor out of people and so many resources out of the earth before limits hit. And now the limit is demographics. In advanced societies from Japan to Italy, populations are shrinking. Fewer workers, fewer consumers, fewer taxpayers. The whole growth machine grinds and sputters like an engine out of oil.

Is this a collapse? Not necessarily. It’s recalibration. A system addicted to expansion must now learn stability. Instead of chasing growth at all costs, societies will have to measure success by the quality of life, not sheer output. Productivity per person, sustainability per community, dignity across generations, those become the new metrics.

Adaptation means shorter workweeks, universal services, and perhaps even a reimagining of capitalism itself. The population bust isn’t just a problem; it’s nature’s way of forcing a rethink. Capitalism’s excess is colliding with biology’s hard stop, and the recalibration will change how we define prosperity in the twenty-first century.

Debt Mountains and the Reckoning of Inflation

Debt has been the drug of modern economics. When growth slowed, governments borrowed. When wages stagnated, households borrowed. When markets wobbled, corporations borrowed. Cheap credit was the miracle cure for every political headache. And for decades, it worked, until it didn’t.

Now we’re staring at debt mountains so high they make the Rockies look like speed bumps. Inflation is the alarm bell. Rising interest rates are the iron hand of recalibration, forcing societies to realize you can’t paper over structural problems with infinite IOUs.

What happens when the debt binge ends? Households face rising costs, governments face impossible budget math, and corporations face bankruptcy waves. This is the price of excess. The recalibration isn’t just numbers on a spreadsheet, it’s the restructuring of whole economies.

Adaptation will require new rules: debt forgiveness where collapse would destroy, higher taxes on wealth that ballooned from financial engineering, and a shift from speculation back to production. For individuals, it means ditching the illusion that you can borrow your way to security.

For societies, it means embracing hard truths about inequality. Debt mountains always collapse; the only choice is whether they fall on us or we dismantle them in an orderly way.

Fossil Fuel Addiction and Climate’s Invoice

Modern civilization is built on fossil fuels. Coal, oil, gas, they powered factories, cars, planes, and the illusion of endless abundance. The addiction was glorious while it lasted. But the invoice has arrived, stamped in fire and flood. Climate change is not an abstract warning.

It is the recalibration of nature itself. Heat waves kill crops, drought empties reservoirs, floods drown cities, and wildfires turn suburbs into ash. Fossil fuel excess is meeting its inevitable correction, and unlike financial markets, nature doesn’t negotiate bailouts.

So how do we adapt? First, stop pretending renewables are optional. They are surviving. Wind, solar, and storage are not feel-good green badges; they are the lifeboats in a storm. Second, shorten supply chains. A global food system stretched across oceans will not survive the shocks of climate recalibration.

Local resilience matters more than cheap imports. Ultimately, societies must regard energy efficiency as a civic responsibility, not just a personal preference. The era of cheap fossil excess is over. The recalibration is here, and survival depends on whether we accept that reality fast enough to avoid paying an even higher invoice.

Information Glut and the Collapse of Trust

We thought more information would make us smarter. Instead, it made us dumber. Social media promised connection but delivered outrage. News cycles promised knowledge but delivered noise. Every crisis became a clickbait war. Every fact was spun into a weapon.

The excess is apparent: a flood of words, images, and claims so overwhelming that truth itself seems optional. And now comes the recalibration: collapsing trust. People no longer believe the government, the press, the scientists, or even their neighbors. The very glue of society is dissolving under the acid of information excess.

Adaptation starts with literacy, not just reading, but filtering. Citizens will need to learn how to question without falling into cynicism and how to verify without succumbing to paranoia. Communities may rediscover the importance of smaller, local trust networks where relationships matter more than headlines.

At the structural level, tech monopolies will have to face regulation, because no society survives when its communication system is built on rage algorithms. The recalibration here is brutal but necessary: information has to serve truth again, not profit. If that means less noise and more silence, so be it. Sometimes, quiet is the only antidote to excess.

Globalization’s Overreach and the Return of Borders

Globalization was sold as the triumph of efficiency. Goods from everywhere, labor from anywhere, capital from nowhere. It promised cheap prices, endless choice, and a rising tide that would lift all boats. But tides also flood.

Globalization hollowed out industries, concentrated wealth, and left nations dependent on fragile supply chains stretched across oceans. The pandemic, trade wars, and now geopolitical conflict have revealed the excess. The recalibration is here: protectionism, tariffs, reshoring, and the rediscovery of borders.

Is this the end of the world economy? Not quite. It’s the end of a naïve version of it. Adaptation will involve striking a balance between global exchange and regional resilience. Countries will need to rebuild strategic industries closer to home.

Communities will need to relearn skills long outsourced. Individuals may have to accept higher prices in exchange for security. Globalization’s excess created vulnerability; its recalibration could create resilience, if we’re smart enough to see that a slightly more expensive but stable supply chain is worth more than a cheap one that collapses at the first shock.

The Subtle Turn: Renewal in Disorder

Here’s the hopeful twist. Recalibration isn’t just collapse. It’s also a renewal. Forest fires may appear destructive, but they actually clear space for new growth. Financial crashes wipe out fortunes, but they also purge bad bets and open room for new enterprises.

Political crises destroy old regimes, but they also clear the path for new ideas and leaders. The challenge isn’t to avoid recalibration, it’s to survive it with enough imagination to build something better on the other side.

That means rethinking how we measure prosperity, not by stock tickers or GDP blips, but by whether people can live securely, with dignity, without destroying the planet that sustains them. It means realizing that nationalism, isolation, and zero-sum economics are dead ends in a world where climate, disease, and migration ignore borders.

And it means recognizing that cooperation isn’t just idealism, it’s a survival strategy. Excess forces recalibration. But recalibration offers the chance to choose renewal instead of decline.

Orientation, Not Prediction

Don’t look here for prophecies. I won’t tell you when the next market crash will hit or which politician will fall next. That’s a fool’s game. What matters isn’t prediction but orientation. If you understand that all things tend toward excess, you stop being surprised when systems wobble.

If you know that recalibration is inevitable, you stop clinging to illusions of permanence. And if you know that renewal is possible, you stop surrendering to despair. That’s how you navigate a polycrisis, not by guessing the following headline, but by reading the rhythm beneath them.

History isn’t a straight line. It’s a pendulum, swinging from excess to recalibration, collapse to renewal. Right now, the swing is wide and fast, and the air feels thick with sparks. But if Braudel taught us anything, it’s that the fireflies of today are just the surface.

The deeper forces will grind on, reshaping the world whether we like it or not. Our job isn’t to pretend the fireflies are the whole show. Our job is to prepare for the dawn that comes after the dark.

So yes, the world is disorderly. But it is disorder with a purpose. Excess has run its course. Recalibration is here. The only question left is whether we choose renewal, or wait until collapse forces it on us.

Where We Still Have Agency

The rhythm of excess and recalibration may be universal, but that doesn’t mean we are powerless. The closer we stay to our own lives, the individual, the family, the community, the more choice we still have. At those scales, recalibration can be intentional, not just something imposed from outside. Collapse is not inevitable; course correction is possible.

At the personal level, the examples are everywhere. Work too many hours, push your body to exhaustion, and burnout comes calling. However, most of us recognize the distinction between ignoring the warning signs and choosing to rest before the crash.

Overeat and you feel sick, but you can recalibrate your diet long before the doctor gives you a lecture on cholesterol. Spend too much on credit cards, and you can decide to cut back, draw up a budget, and reset before you’re staring down collection agencies.

These aren’t just minor annoyances, they’re the microcosm of the same excess and recalibration cycle we see everywhere else. The difference is, at the personal scale, you still hold the steering wheel.

Families face the same rhythm. A household can live beyond its means for a while, chasing bigger homes, fancier cars, endless subscriptions. Eventually, the strain shows up in stress, conflict, or debt.

That’s the moment recalibration becomes possible: cutting back, working together, finding new ways to share burdens instead of cracking under them. Even in relationships, the pattern shows itself.

Couples who ignore tension and let resentment build will eventually face a blowup. But those who pause, talk honestly, and recalibrate can often turn conflict into growth instead of collapse.

Communities, too, can choose how they respond to excess. Think of neighborhoods where people come together after a storm, pooling tools, food, and labor to help each other rebuild. Or towns that set up mutual aid networks when jobs disappear, keeping families afloat until things stabilize.

Some communities start co-ops to counter the excess of corporations, or launch local gardens to reduce dependence on fragile supply chains. In every case, the principle is the same: excess creates stress, but people working together can recalibrate before collapse takes over.

This is where agency lives, not in the boardrooms of multinationals or the halls of government, where inertia rules, but in the circles closest to us. When individuals, families, and communities recognize the rhythm of excess and recalibration, they can act before the crash.

That doesn’t stop the larger cycles from grinding on. Still, it does create pockets of resilience, places where renewal is chosen, not imposed. And that, in the end, is where hope is most real: not in stopping history’s tides, but in steering our own small boats toward calmer waters.

About the Author

Robert Jennings is the co-publisher of InnerSelf.com, a platform dedicated to empowering individuals and fostering a more connected, equitable world. A veteran of the U.S. Marine Corps and the U.S. Army, Robert draws on his diverse life experiences, from working in real estate and construction to building InnerSelf with his wife, Marie T. Russell, to bring a practical, grounded perspective to life’s challenges. Founded in 1996, InnerSelf.com shares insights to help people make informed, meaningful choices for themselves and the planet. More than 30 years later, InnerSelf continues to inspire clarity and empowerment.

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Article Recap

The global polycrisis defines today’s world disorder, as overlapping crises expose systemic excess across politics, economics, and climate. Understanding this rhythm of excess and recalibration gives us orientation in chaos and points toward renewal, cooperation, and long-term well-being.

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