Reflection on our recent Protopia Lab workshop in Barcelona, October 2022.
Finally, after two years since the founding of Protopia Lab, we were able to hold our first face-to-face workshop last month in Barcelona. For the first time I really felt that a group of people I brought together were able to have truly pluralistic conversations that were not predictable and boring, but exciting and often surprising. The conversations were respectful and constructive — but it wasn't a feel-good bubble, an ideological echo chamber. There was no groupthink or spiral of silence. It felt like the beginning of some really meaningful conversations.
We invited 20 people to have "difficult conversations in polarised times". The main idea was that we wanted to have truly pluralistic conversations where we are not constrained by the often ideologically narrow space of public discourse. We tried to assemble a group of people who are able to listen to people with different worldviews and are willing to challenge their own biases.
I had an additional goal in mind: I had the fixed idea that the workshop would be a space to talk about post-liberalism — the idea that many of the problems we are currently suffering in the Western world are actually the result of the excesses of liberalism, both culturally and economically. My idea of post-liberalism is really a very open space of creative thinking about the coming paradigm — not a new dogmatic space of reactionaries and resentment against liberalism, but yes, a space where the failures of liberalism are clearly named and understood.
If we had only had post-liberal thinkers in the room, we would have run the risk of creating another bubble where everyone more or less agrees and is happy to have their views constantly confirmed. This would run counter to our understanding of human evolutionary reality, that we are all biased in our thinking.
The goal of such a workshop and the goal in general in society should not be that we all end up agreeing on ideas, policies and worldviews. People are different. We have different moral intuitions, different experiences and different interests. It is important that we stop seeing those with whom we fundamentally disagree as our enemies and start seeing them as opponents who have the right to defend their positions in public discourse.
Judging by these premises, our workshop was a great success. All participants seemed to really listen to the others and try to understand their ideas. No one considered the other person in the room as their enemy. It was a space of free thinking where the boundaries of what can be said were refreshingly wide.
This workshop was a success because of the openness and willingness to engage in meaningful dialogue that the participants brought. During the event, some participants asked for tools to fight polarisation. Indeed, what we did at the workshop was the tool: difficult, meaningful conversations.
