If we're at the moment of choice between flourishing and destruction, what would you choose?
We are at a moment of decision: We either step forward into our own Great Destruction, which could theoretically see us wipe out all of humanity and most of the More than Human World…Or we could step into what Indy Johar calls 'The Great Peace', claiming our birthright as the Interstitial Generation between the old paradigm of extraction, consumption and pollution—and the new one that could arise where we accept the interbecoming of all things, where we as individual humans take our place in a community of care and experience that encompasses all of the world.
This is our potential, laid out in clear terms, by thought leader and evolutionary, Indy Johar of Dark Matter Labs. Indy is an architect by training and a maker by practice; he is a Senior Innovation Associate with the Young Foundation, and, amongst many other things, he co-founded Impact Hub Birmingham and Open Systems Lab, was a member of the RSA’s Inclusive Growth Commission, and was a good growth advisor to the Mayor of London. He is an explorative practitioner in the means of system change & the dark matter design of civic infrastructure finance, outcomes, and governance. Indy is a co-founder and Director of 00 and Dark Matter Laboratories - a field laboratory focused on building the institutional infrastructures for radicle civic societies, cities, regions and towns.
Dark Matter Labs says, 'Around the planet, we’re feeling the consequences of outdated institutions and inadequate infrastructures incapable of coping with planetary-scale challenges. At Dark Matter, we believe in taking on these challenges via a new, civic economy.'
Their many strands of work include the Radicle Civics experiments (where 'Radicle', is the first part of a seedling to emerge from the embryonic seed of a plant), which explores, amongst other things, how we could re-imagine houses as autonomous beings, not things we own . One of the many exciting things about Dark Matter Labs is that they create these experiments on the ground: I've put a link to their blog post on Repermissioning the City in the show notes and really, if you have time, I encourage you to read it for ideas of things that are actually happening as we speak.
Beyond that, Indy and Dark Matter explore so much of what this podcast is about: governance systems, economics, management, the nature of the world if we were able to take our place within it as fully conscious beings in a fully conscious web of life. This took me right to the edge of my thinking, which is such an exciting, enlivening place to be: walking the knife edge between what we know (or think we know) and what might yet be possible.
Both Indy and I had various viruses so there's some coughing and some rough-speaking, particularly from my end, but if you can manage that, I think this is one of those episodes that has the power to change worlds. So people of the podcast, please do welcome, Indy Johar of Dark Matter Labs.
Dark Matter Labs https://darkmatterlabs.org/
Radicle Civics https://drive.google.com/file/d/1U9LXY3CTN2upEG38oz4j4vW8Vb0Yq21u/view
Project 00 https://www.project00.cc/
Dark Matter Blog https://provocations.darkmatterlabs.org
Repermissioning the City https://provocations.darkmatterlabs.org/re-permissioning-the-city-unlocking-cities-growing-underutilised-spatial-assets-for-an-emergent-1550997714a4
Indy on LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/indy-johar-b440b010/
Dark Matter on LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/company/darkmatterlabs/
Dark Matter Labs on Twitter https://twitter.com/DarkMatter_Labs
7Gen Cities https://www.7gencities.org/
7Gen Cities CiFi Gathering Report https://uploads-ssl.webflow.com/6462104f72fa898a55556e56/651ec633d3229a3920f0c03a_CiFi_Report_7GenCities_0410.pdf
Emily Harris, AG podcast #176 https://accidentalgods.life/bridging-from-the-necessary-to-the-possible-with-emily-harris-of-dark-matter-labs/
Systems change needs Democratic change https://ddc.dk/why-systems-change-will-lead-to-democratic-renewal/#
Accidental Gods