How this began.
Metachrysalis began with a question:
How do we help people find a meaningful way into the work of this moment?
We are living inside what’s often called the Metacrisis — not a single breakdown, but an intertwined pattern of ecological, social, and cultural strain. Many people want to help. Some don’t know where to plug in. Others are already deep in the work and lack time to find collaborators. Some are holding a seed of an idea and aren’t sure how to help it take root.
Metachrysalis began as an experiment in building connective tissue between those realities.
It took shape during a six-month exploration called Mycelial Approaches to the Metacrisis, asking:
If the crises of our time are emergent and interconnected, what would emergent, relational work look like in response?
Collapse is not a binary event. It is a process. The quality of our participation shapes what comes next.
Buckminster Fuller once wrote:
“You never change things by fighting the existing reality.
To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete.”
Metachrysalis is a practice of prototyping those new models — in real places, with real people.
It borrows from game design not to trivialize the moment, but to make engagement sustainable. Chosen work, shared work, can be joyful.
Fuller also spoke about the trim tab — the small adjustment that shifts a much larger vessel.
Metachrysalis is about helping people begin making coherent Moves aligned with their vision — and continuing them. Over time, sustained Moves generate momentum. Relationships reorganize. Systems respond.
Agency scales through relationship.
This work is grounded in bioregions — watersheds, landforms, climate, culture. Not abstract systems, but living places. Regeneration happens somewhere.
Metachrysalis continues to evolve through practice: bioregional experiments, crisis response, cohort programs, open-source toolbuilding.
It is not a finished system.
It is an invitation to participate in collective metamorphosis.