Introduction

We open by exploring the metacrisis and its cultural roots. You will delve into the transformative power of narratives and their role in shaping systems and actions in the world. We share the Culture Hack Labs approach to Narrative-Led Systems Change: Justice plus Onto-Shift, which emphasizes that demands for justice must be paired with a deeper shift in ontologies—the fundamental ways we perceive, relate to, and engage with the world.

Step 3: Understand

First you will analyse the Attention, Network and Power, as well as the Language of your Narrative Communities. You will then Map the Communities using Justice-Ontology axes to reveal key patterns and positions - building on the “Justice plus onto-shift” approach introduced in the Introduction. Finally, you will identify where the Window of Discourse sits and where we want to shift it. This is the foundation for your narrative intervention strategy.

Culture & the Metacrisis

REPLACE WITH CORRECT VIDEO

We are in the midst of a metacrisis. At its core, is a crisis of culture.

Inequality, ecological collapse, climate change, biodiversity loss, rising authoritarianism, and institutional racism are not just symptoms of systemic breakdowns—they are the result of a deeper cultural paradigm.

Culture is the values, belief systems, and ontologies that drive human behavior. Culture shapes how we relate to ourselves, each other, and the network of life. Our current growth-driven, capitalist culture, particularly in its neoliberal phase, commodifies life and resources, reinforcing separation, hierarchy, white supremacy, and exploitation.

To address the metacrisis, we must rethink and transform the cultural narratives that sustain it.

The deep structure of Culture:

If we boil down culture to its core ingredients, it is the relationship between self and other.

Self: Unit of the conscious human.

Other: Everything that is not self: the entire “external” world, including animals, objects, trees, water, etc.

Cultures are full of constructs which define our reality. This includes worldviews, ontologies, frames and metaphors.

The relationship between self and other is mediated through cultural constructs.

Cultural constructs are carried through narratives. Narrative practitioners aim to shift these cultural constructs.

Dominant western cultural constructs often frame anything non-human as “other” – something separate from us (for example: nature, animals, ecosystems etc). This separation between humans and nature is carried through the narrative:“nature is a resource” justifies extraction and destruction of ecosystems. which justifies extraction and destruction of ecosystems. The separation of self and other runs deep within the foundations of Western philosophical thought

We will learn about how narratives function in the next section.

NEXT STEPS: Understand how narratives function and CHL’s approach to Narrative-led Systems change.

The Culture Hack Method

The Culture Hack Method

Introduction

Step 1: Ask

Step 2: Listen

Step 3: Understand

Culture & the Metacrisis

The deep structure of Culture: