The Boring Revolution.
The matter of this Better Worlds episode is far from mundane. As advocated by Indy Johar, co-founder of Dark Matter Labs, who visited with Green Planet Blue Planet Host Julian Guderley for this podcast episode, a boring revolution is a fundamental shift in how we as humans perceive ourselves, our relationships, and the institutional frameworks that reinforce those perceptions. The old world view created over time, positions humans as dominion over everything instead of recognizing the agency and aliveness of everything, including objects.
This episode explores multiple facets of this paradigm shift challenges us to fundamentally rethink what it means to be human and how we relate to each other and the planet. Indy suggests our current worldview and societal structures are extractive, guided by externalities, and they put humanity at risk of self-termination.
In other words, we have constructed a language of humans being in dominion over the world, in control of the world through theories constructed in various ways, including by religions. Next, Indy says, we constructed perspective, which put distance between us and put control into bureaucracy, governance, kings etc. Humans then separated themselves from the world, turned things into objects rather than perceiving them as entanglements in relationship with humans. That led to classifications and language shifts from verb - action oriented terms - to nouns, and finally moved into a thesis of property as a universal means of organizing. The worldview became one of control over, and property - ownership - became an enslavement of things.
To hear more about these fascinating and complex theories, tune in now, let us know what you think, like it and share, and then visit us at betterworlds.com for more shows and podcast subjects.
About Indy Johar
Indy Johar is focused on the strategic design of new super scale civic assets for transition - specifically at the intersection of financing, contracting and governance for deeply democratic futures.
Indy is co-founder of darkmatterlabs.org and of the RIBA award winning architecture and urban practice Architecture00 - https://www.architecture00.net, a founding director of open systems lab - https://www.opensystemslab.io (digitising planning), seeded WikiHouse (open source housing) - https://www.wikihouse.cc and Open Desk (open source furniture company) https://www.opendesk.cc.
Indy is a non-executive international Director of the BloxHub https://bloxhub.org (Denmark Copenhagen) - the Nordic Hub for sustainable urbanization and was 2016-17 Graham Willis Visiting Professorship at Sheffield University. He was also Studio Master at the Architectural Association - 2019-2020, UNDP Innovation Facility Advisory Board Member 2016-20 and RIBA Trustee 2017-20. He has taught & lectured at various institutions from the University of Bath, TU-Berlin; University College London, Princeton, Harvard, MIT and New School.
Most recently, he was awarded the London Design Medal for Innovation in 2022.
About Dark Matter Labs
Dark Matter Labs is not-for-profit designing and building the underlying infrastructure to support this new civic economy, exploring how ownership, legal systems, governance, accountancy and insurance might begin to change.
The boring revolution︎ is designed propel wider societal transition. The team is establishing toolkits and blueprints, pilots, and case studies, supporting communities and institutions with applications, digital products and civic technologies that challenge established thought and demonstrate that an alternative is possible.
