Dear Crisis — Metacrisis Salons & Events in NYC

About Dear Crisis

Dear Crisis is a community based in New York City for people who refuse to navigate the metacrisis alone. The metacrisis refers to the interconnected web of global challenges — climate change, political polarization, institutional decay, economic inequality, loneliness, and the erosion of trust — that define our era. Rather than treating these as separate problems, Dear Crisis brings people together in person to make sense of it all, build meaningful relationships, and take collective action.

Founded by Benjamin Von Wong and a growing network of collaborators, Dear Crisis hosts monthly Metacrisis Salons in Brooklyn, creative incubators called The Creationship, and community-generated gatherings. We believe the antidote to overwhelm is not more information — it's meaningful relationship. We believe that when people come together in the same room, crisis becomes a starting point rather than an endpoint.

Dear Crisis is not an organization. It's not a brand. It's a community of people in New York City who showed up.

What is the Metacrisis?

The metacrisis is a term used to describe the interconnected nature of the many crises facing humanity today. Unlike individual challenges like climate change, economic inequality, or political polarization, the metacrisis recognizes that these problems share root causes — extractive economic systems, institutional decay, epistemic breakdown, and the erosion of social trust. The metacrisis framework, developed by thinkers like Daniel Schmachtenberger, suggests that solving any one crisis in isolation is insufficient. Instead, we need to address the underlying patterns that generate crises: coordination failures, misaligned incentives, and the breakdown of collective sensemaking. Dear Crisis offers a space in New York City to explore these interconnected challenges together, in person, through salons, creative incubators, and community gatherings.

Closely related is the polycrisis — historian Adam Tooze's term for multiple global crises colliding and amplifying one another — and the permacrisis, the feeling that emergency has become the permanent weather. People arrive at Dear Crisis searching for many things: polycrisis events, a metacrisis meetup, a climate anxiety community, systems thinking conversations, an intellectual salon in Brooklyn, preparedness workshops in NYC. They stay because of the people in the room.

Metacrisis Salons in Brooklyn

Monthly gatherings to make sense of the metacrisis together. Each month picks a thread — climate stabilization, polarization, capitalism, artificial intelligence, democracy, empire — and pulls on it together. Two speakers bring the spark, breakout groups bring the depth. ~65 attendees, $15, Brooklyn, food included. Past recaps cover the full conversation: speakers, standout insights, poll-tracked shifts in how the room thought before and after.

Resiliency Action Labs — community resilience workshops in Brooklyn

Hands-on workshops for building a neighborhood that takes care of itself. Past labs: off-grid communication with Meshtastic mesh radios taught by Signals Rising; Two Weeks, No Grid — mapping fourteen days of household preparedness without power, water, or internet; Rooftop Reciprocity — turning a bare Brooklyn rooftop into food and pollinator habitat. Climate resilience, mutual aid skills, and preparedness with neighbors instead of bunkers. Full recaps at dearcrisis.com/salons.

The Creationship in New York City

A Sunday creative incubator for people who'd rather build the next world than doomscroll this one. Pitch an idea. Find your team. Make something real by sundown. Free, team-based building sprints in the East Village.

Upcoming Dear Crisis events in New York City

Join the Dear Crisis Community in NYC

Dear Crisis is based in New York City. Attend a Metacrisis Salon in Brooklyn or a The Creationship session in the East Village — RSVP through luma.com/dearcrisis. To host an event, speak at a salon, or collaborate, use the contact form on dearcrisis.com or email hi@vonwong.com.

Dear Crisis — Metacrisis Salons & Events in NYC

Join us. Everyday people, scientists, philanthropists, bestselling authors, AI safety engineers, climate-grief therapists, movement organizers, urban gardeners, founders, artists — and even a guy who performed on an iceberg in the Arctic. If you feel called, you're invited.

Latest recapMetacrisis Salon #11 — How we build an Ecocivilization→

From our speakers

The people who came to share. And chose to stay.

If we avoid catastrophe it will be because of groups like Dear Crisis. A group which brings people together to understand and tackle the biggest risks of our time. It's a grassroots space, an intellectual refuge, and most importantly a community.

Luke Kemp

Author, Goliath's Curse

Electric, affirming, and disarmingly fun. The Metacrisis Salon blends depth education, embodied practice, and community — a critical recipe for resilience at any scale. Relieving and inspiring in equal measure.

Samantha Sweetwater

Author, True Human

Being part of a community of people grappling with the hard questions together — not just what's broken, but how to fix it — is exactly what the world needs more of.

Shia Levitt

News Ambassadors

It's rare to have the opportunity to speak to a group about not just the technicalities behind the moment we're facing (when it comes to climate change in specific, or the meta crisis in general) — but also to be able to anchor into and explore these topics from the heart and body, and with community. I was so impressed by the level of engagement of the audience, and was grateful to have the opportunity to gather and build new stories together.

Kelly Erhart

Director, Outlier Projects

I've been doing book-launch events all week — but this is something very different. This is a real community thing happening, people actually working out how to build the world we want. And I love it.

Jeremy Lent

Author, Ecocivilization

In an era of growing hopelessness and despair, Dear Crisis offers something radically different: connection, solidarity, and inspiration to imagine something better. 10/10 would speak here again.

Michael Mezzatesta

Economics & climate storyteller

So many contexts where we discuss things genuinely going badly in the world carry a tone of sadness or defeat. Dear Crisis gatherings are a celebration, where a bold community makes sense of our world and finds purpose collectively in reimagining our future. These parties aren't just fun ways to meet wide awake new friends; they're where flourishing new civilizations are most likely to be born.

Raman Frey

Founder, Good People Dinners

Come find your people.

Dear Crisis is a volunteer-run community convening around the metacrisis — the crises underneath the crises. Every month we pack a Brooklyn room to make sense of it together at a Metacrisis Salon, and learn the skills resilience actually takes at hands-on Resiliency Action Labs.

The vision: an island of coherence, right here in New York City — a community that knows its neighbors, learns together, and is ready to take action.

Join the conversation. Show up. Bring a friend.

Join the WhatsApp community →

Takes a minute — tell us who you are, check off our community agreements, and you're in.

Get Involved

Want to host an event, speak at a salon, or collaborate? Drop us a line.

Looking to join the WhatsApp community? Request to join here →