We're all in this together, for good or ill
We're all in this together, for good or ill
LF72 | UK urban theorist Indy Johar shares his perspectives on complexity, economics and avoiding mutually assured destruction. The first of a two-part series.
RegenMelbourne hosted a conversation with Indy Johar last night that ranged from quantum theory to civilization’s collapse and much in between.
Indy’s non-profit, Dark Matter Labs has been at the forefront of civic innovation, combining tech futurism and systems change with a strong voice of the individual and the collective. Their work often takes a fresh perspective on topics, reframing them to uncover shared civic value. For example, repositioning trees as infrstructure or reimagining common spaces. For the latter, they studied New York’s HighLine and found that 95%+ of the ~$4bn of value accrued to private landlords, rather than the city. This helps other city innovators consider how to better capture value for their residents and tax payers.
We’re living in a ‘planetary economy’
A common theme was that we’re all in this together. There’s no escape route, and we’re currently barrelling down the wrong path. We’re past the point where we can talk about prevention and tweaks of the current system, we need wholesale systems change. We’re facing a stark choice - “between mutually assured destruction, or mutually assured thriving”. And as such, there’s no real choice. “We’re at a fork in the road”, and therefore as Yoda might say, we must take it. The alternatives are too frightening to think about, and it seems that we’re “setting up a landscape of war” over increasingly scarce resources.
We’re at a fork in the road. And we must take it.
Many of our devices that we take for granted - for example the iPhone - are products of a ‘planetary economy’. It’s a fiction to think that we can go it alone.
Transitioning from a ‘Newtonian’ to a ‘quantum’ world view
Cartesian dualism and the scientific method has been amazingly effective at powering economic growth and improvements in the standard of living globally, but is not a particularly useful approach for long-term sustainable living within our planetary boundaries. We’re “at the intersection of the bioregional and planetary economy” and we need to create a new model that recognises this interconnectivity, i.e. a quantum model.
This is a shift from “World2.0” - that of Newtonian mechanics, the scientific method and humans as separate and apart from machines and nature to a “World3.0”, in which quantum theories rule the roost. Everything is connected and influenced by everything else, and the mindsets and language of indigenous people start to make a lot more sense. To Indy, humans, nature and machines are “entangled”. We can’t keep doing things to the planet with no regard for its outcome, nor should we be ‘othering’ technology, but instead co-opting it to improve our lives.
A surprising idea for me was what he saw as a coming singularity of religion and modernity. Rather than rejecting religion as backwards looking, irrelevant in a world of modernity, this view sees them both converging. Indy sees most scriptures as based on quantum entanglement, and which is where ‘traditional’ science is now moving towards. The goal, according to Indy, is a harmonious ecosystem of humans, ecology and technology. The reality however is that we’re well behind.
The need for 10x change
Indy said that 68% of today’s S&P100 companies would be non-viable if our economy properly priced social and environmental goods. So two thirds of our economy is net extractive and non-viable.
The work to be done to shift our system is at least 10x more than we’re doing today. For example, there are arguably 10x too many houses being built in Europe. If Europe sticks to the Paris accord, there’s a carbon budget for the whole continent of about 140,000 homes annually. However, across the continent there are plans to build 1.5m homes a year, and the UK along is aiming for 300,000. Similarly, consumer prices are 10% of what they ‘should’ be, if they accounted for the actual costs of externalities that are ignored. Today’s cost for the shirt Indy was wearing was around £40, but he estimates that the real cost, taking into account the currently ignored externalities, would be around 10x this.
We’re an order of magnitude from where we need to be
An economic theory of dead things
Our economic system is based on dead things - extracting resources from the ground and not accounting for their use or the mess. A more interesting approach would be that of abundance and exploring ways to measure and track human potential and contribution, for example in the field of care.
Next week I’ll share a summary of some of innovative new frameworks and solutions Indy discussed which gives some rather tangible approaches that policy makers and program designers can use to address some of the above ‘wicked’ crises.