The Protopia Lab

We challenge the progressive consensus that has captured our institutions and left ordinary people without a voice.

[Micha Narberhaus @MichaNarberhaus]

https://t.co/aqxnJLfcAR

[Micha Narberhaus @MichaNarberhaus]

My latest essay:

"What the radical left, the spectacle activists, and the technocratic establishment all share is the same fundamental failure: none of them takes seriously the people they have lost. The working-class families in provincial France who wore yellow vests. The farmers across Europe who blockaded capitals in protest against green regulations. The millions of voters who turned away from green parties in 2024. These are not people who need to be radicalised, disrupted, or educated. They are people who need to be heard, and whose values the environmental movement has systematically excluded."

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[Micha Narberhaus @MichaNarberhaus]

Acabo de publicar esto:

"Hoy, 13 de marzo, se cumplen seis años del día en que el Gobierno español anunció el confinamiento estricto a causa de la pandemia de Covid-19. También fue un viernes 13. Recuerdo perfectamente la primera semana de confinamiento en mi barrio de Barcelona: la gente empezó a salir a la calle con mascarilla, sin nadie más alrededor. Seis años después, siguen ahí. No pocos. La mascarilla se ha convertido en un elemento fijo del paisaje urbano barcelonés. Y en uno de los símbolos más perfectos de la absurdidad de los tiempos que vivimos."

Enlace en los comentarios. 👇

[Micha Narberhaus @MichaNarberhaus]

I have just published this new piece:

"... Nowhere is this more apparent than in the domain of sustainability, where the right consumer choices have become markers of class and belonging. The problem is not only that this culture is socially divisive and frequently performative. It is that it actively misdirects attention from the collective action failures that actually matter. The guilt, the peer pressure, the endless private negotiation about whether one is living sustainably enough: all of this comes at a real human cost, and produces, at the level of the global climate, essentially nothing. ..."

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[Micha Narberhaus @MichaNarberhaus]

https://t.co/6qVzYvXc23

[Micha Narberhaus @MichaNarberhaus]

My new article on Substack:

The dark side of diversity politics – How the obsessive focus on victimhood comes at the expense of ordinary people's interests, thereby weakening society as a whole without actually improving the lives of those it aims to help.

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@mbauwens @brownstonespain @NAffects @fjjariego

[Micha Narberhaus @MichaNarberhaus]

My new article on Substack:

What is true? (Part 2): Conspiracies and conspiracy theories running wild

"Expanding one's media diet by listening to and reading independent journalists helps to bypass some of the propaganda we are exposed to by the mainstream media. It also helps us identify such propaganda. However, distrusting our elite institutions does not automatically help us make better sense of the world. ..."

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[Micha Narberhaus @MichaNarberhaus]

My new essay. Let me know what you think.

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When the elites believe they are saving the world

Germany (and Europe) will impoverish itself in its heroic but fruitless attempt to save the climate because our elites deliberately ignore the reality of collective action problems.

>> Those who argue that a country has a moral obligation to become carbon neutral regardless of what other nations do are making a fundamental mistake. If such a moral obligation exists, it must be coupled with measures that are effective in achieving the desired goal. Germany's current climate strategy is ineffective because it moves unilaterally without plausibly catalysing collective action. It is also leading to carbon leakage and, by imposing such a heavy economic burden on the population, it is leading to a populist revolt and the rise to power of the AfD, which has no interest in any climate agenda whatsoever. Hence, it cannot be a moral obligation.

On the contrary, it is rather immoral for the German and other European elites to impose such a transformative agenda on their people, which effectively reduces their standard of living without much chance of improving their environment and that of their children.>>

@gonzalodecastro @mbauwens @fjjariego
@NAffects

[Micha Narberhaus @MichaNarberhaus]

In my new two-part substack essay I explore the end of the era of the open society that we are living through, and what we should hope for in the new era that is now emerging. I describe how the era of the open society came about after the Second World War, and I explore the reasons why this era must eventually come to an end. In the second part of the essay I will discuss my ideas about the new emerging era, which is full of risks but also offers the opportunity to find a better balance between the open society and the closed society this time around.

Enlace al artículo 👇

[Micha Narberhaus @MichaNarberhaus]

Acabo de publicar un artículo en @brownstonespain sobre cómo la propaganda es contraproducente cuando va en contra de las percepciones de la realidad de la gente:

"Todos en nuestras instituciones de élite (ONG, medios de comunicación y gobierno) están ahora obsesionados con ganar la batalla de las narrativas. Donde el poder podría ser una de varias lentes útiles a través de las cuales explicar el mundo, el posmodernismo ha infectado ahora nuestras instituciones hasta tal punto que el poder, ejercido a través del discurso, se ha convertido en la explicación de todo."

Enlace al artículo 👇

[The Protopia Lab @protopialab]

https://t.co/yFecgcqZeJ

[The Protopia Lab @protopialab]

"Estamos avanzando a ciegas hacia el colapso demográfico y el reemplazo de la población autóctona, y aparentemente nadie quiere hablar de las graves consecuencias. [....] ¿Puede Barcelona seguir siendo la misma con una población distinta? Claramente, la respuesta es no. A medida que su mayoría demográfica y cultural se debilite, la voz política de los autóctonos catalanes y su control sobre las instituciones y los recursos se verán inexorablemente socavados, por lo que acabarán como extraños en su propia tierra."

Enlace al artículo 👇

[Micha Narberhaus @MichaNarberhaus]

My new article on Substack. Let me know what you think.

Link in comment.

[Micha Narberhaus @MichaNarberhaus]

My new article on Substack:

"Before the recent US election, 96% of Danes wanted Kamala Harris to win, as did 85% of Germans and 80% of Spaniards. The mainstream media in Europe openly supported Harris across the board. They basically copied the pro-Harris election propaganda of the major US TV networks. So it wasn't surprising that most Europeans believed (and probably still believe) that Harris was a far better candidate than Trump. "

https://t.co/kYLjrNT32b

[The Protopia Lab @protopialab]

Un nuevo artículo de @MichaNarberhaus sobre el tema del progreso en el contexto de España:
https://t.co/4c8hjTAu2d

"A pesar de estos grandes cambios y logros, se sigue con el mismo discurso de los últimos 40 años: ¡a por más progreso, que todavía no hemos llegado! Esto nos lleva a unos objetivos cada vez más difíciles de alcanzar o, en muchos casos, abiertamente absurdos, a pesar de que el discurso público nunca se cuestiona la validez de dichos objetivos. ¿Acaso el progreso es un viaje interminable sin destino? ¿Es bueno por definición el progreso?"

[The Protopia Lab @protopialab]

Nuevo artículo:

"Está claro que 2024 es el año en que los ciudadanos de Occidente deben salvar la democracia. No importa qué medio de comunicación abras estos días, y no importa en qué país occidental te encuentres. Es muy probable que alguien intente convencerte de que este es el momento de «salvar nuestra democracia» y que, por tanto, cualquier cosa está justificada para evitar que la democracia sea destruida de alguna manera."

https://t.co/3FYbbySo3s

[Micha Narberhaus @MichaNarberhaus]

My new Substack article.

"Everyone in our elite institutions - NGOs, media and government - is now obsessed with winning the battle of narratives. Where power could be one of several useful lenses through which to explain the world, postmodernism has now infected our institutions to such an extent that power, exercised through discourse, has become the explanation for everything."

"The blind adherence to the postmodern notion that the problem is almost exclusively a matter of normalised narratives is probably due to the fact that our political and academic elite now live so far removed from most ordinary people, and are so transfixed by their moral righteousness, that they have completely lost touch with reality."

https://t.co/AhvT1sNZG8

[Micha Narberhaus @MichaNarberhaus]

My new article:

"In our obsession with individual freedom, we have dismantled our core institutions of family and community. Already 24 years ago, Robert Putnam described in his seminal book Bowling Alone how little was left of the small platoons and how we were abandoning our social networks and becoming a society of lonely individuals. Since then, the internet has dramatically exacerbated these trends.

Now we are totally dependent on the state to solve our problems. The tragic irony of this story is that we end up in a situation where we are culturally poorer, less connected to family, friends and community, and also begin to see that the state is becoming tyrannical. We end up less free than we were when our lives were (at least partly) coordinated by traditional institutions."

https://t.co/OxiJ7xOGZu

[Micha Narberhaus @MichaNarberhaus]

"Everyone should accept that the climate is changing and that it's going to be a long and bumpy road - that doesn't mean life has to be miserable, instead we should trust our human ingenuity to preserve the common good over the coming decades. We need to move away from the concept of emergency. Emergencies are situations with a clear time horizon and clarity about what needs to be done to solve a problem. This is not the case. Emergencies also make governments feel entitled to take away our civil liberties, but our recent experience with Covid has shown that authoritarian measures rarely solve anything, but instead create a lot of suffering. Change can only be positive if it is done with the people and without installing fear and anxiety. With such a different mindset, we can have much better conversations about how best to adapt to a changing climate, while seeking better ways to live in harmony with and regenerate our natural world."
https://t.co/BL7lc73tkA

[Micha Narberhaus @MichaNarberhaus]

I recently published a two-part essay on the growing totalitarian tendencies in the Western world. In this new essay I reflect on what can be done in this situation, and what we should focus on collectively and individually.

https://t.co/5M1WOtvznY

I come up with four areas to focus on:

- A new institutional settlement that is acceptable to the people
- A digital architecture for the common good
- Getting rid of woke indoctrination
- Restoring social trust, shared norms and values

Let me know what you think.