The Protopia Lab

Our public conversation has become highly dysfunctional. More and more people are afraid to speak out publicly on certain issues because they don't have the 'right' opinion. The shutdown of pluralistic conversation stifles the creativity needed to tackle our most pressing and deep-rooted social and environmental problems. Protopia Lab is an independent think tank and social innovation lab based in Barcelona, Spain, that fosters a new pluralistic and non-dogmatic conversation to rebuild our sensemaking mechanisms. We bring together open-minded people from across the Western world, synthesising ideas from different bodies of wisdom without falling into the trap of creating a new ideological bubble. We believe that in order to have a chance of a peaceful and self-determined future, we need to break out of the current impasse and have honest and plural conversations about the causes of our cultural crisis and how we can creatively use the crisis to take steps towards genuine human flourishing. The default direction of more authoritarianism and digital surveillance that the world seems to be taking will not achieve this. We aim to stimulate fresh, open and non-dogmatic debates in Western societies about what we have lost and gained in the last decades of the liberal world order, and how our culture can evolve in ways that are more conducive to human flourishing. Our mission is to sow the seeds of a new conversation to rebuild our sensemaking mechanisms. We bring together open-minded people who are willing to engage in deep and challenging conversations about the causes of our cultural crisis, and how we can use the crisis creatively to plant the seeds of genuine human flourishing. Would you like to join us?