Crisis

A crisis (pl.: crises; ADJ: critical) is any event or period that will lead to an unstable and dangerous situation affecting an individual, group, or all of society. Crises are negative changes in the human or environmental affairs, especially when they occur abruptly, with little or no warning. More loosely, a crisis is a testing time for an emergency.

The English word crisis was borrowed from the Latin, which in turn was borrowed from the Greek κρίσις krisis 'discrimination, decision, crisis'. The noun is derived from the verb κρίνω krinō, which means 'distinguish, choose, decide'.

In English, crisis was first used in a medical context, for the time in the development of a disease when a change indicates either recovery or death, that is, a turning-point. It was also used for a major change in the development of a disease. By the mid-seventeenth century, it took on the figurative meaning of a "vitally important or decisive stage in the progress of anything", especially a period of uncertainty or difficulty, without necessarily having the implication of a decision-point.

A crisis is often linked to the concept of psychological stress and used to suggest a frightening or fraught experience. In general, crisis is the situation of a "complex system" when the system functions poorly (the system still functions, but does not break down), an immediate decision is necessary to stop the further disintegration of the system, but the causes of the dysfunction are not immediately identified (the causes are so numerous or unknown that it seems impossible to take a rational, informed decision to reverse the situation). By "complex system" we mean something like a family, economy, or society; simple systems do not enter crises. We can speak about a crisis of moral values, an economical or political crisis, but not a motor crisis.

The crisis has several defining characteristics. Seeger, Sellnow, and Ulmer say that crises have four defining characteristics that are "specific, unexpected, and non-routine events or series of events that [create] high levels of uncertainty and threat or perceived threat to an organization's high priority goals." Thus the first three characteristics are that the event is

Apart from natural crises that are inherently unpredictable (volcanic eruptions, tsunamis, etc.) most of the crises that we face are created by man. Hence the requirements of their being 'unexpected' depend upon man failing to note the onset of crisis conditions. Some of our inability to recognize crises before they become dangerous is due to denial and other psychological responses that provide succor and protection for our emotions.

A different set of reasons for failing to notice the onset of crises is that we allow ourselves to be 'tricked' into believing that we are doing something for reasons that are false. In other words, we are doing the wrong things for the right reasons. For example, we might believe that we are solving the threats of climate change by engaging in economic trading activity that has no real impact on the climate. Mitroff and Silvers posit two reasons for these mistakes, which they classify as Type 3 (inadvertent) and Type 4 (deliberate) errors.

The effect of our inability to attend to the likely results of our actions can result in a crisis.