Let's talk fractal politics!
We need more examples of how fractal politics is contributing to quantum social change. This week I talked Indra Adnan of The Alternative UK about fractals and her exciting new political project.
Alternatives
What does fractal politics look like in practice, and how does it relate to quantum social change? How do we create alternatives that truly support the well-being of people and the planet?
This week I caught up with Indra Adnan, whom I consider to be one of the most creative, committed, and inspiring activists working for quantum social change. Indra is, among other things, a writer, a psycho-social therapist, and the founder and co-initiator of The Alternative UK, a political platform that asks and answers a critical question: If politics is broken, what’s the alternative?
This is a great question, given the multiple crises that we are facing in the world today. Indra elaborates on this in her insightful book, The Politics of Waking Up: Power and Possibility in the Fractal Era, where she writes: “As we face a climate catastrophe capable of making our species extinct, we have no integrated alternatives to the failed system that caused it. Worse, we do not ourselves have response-ability.”
She goes on to point out that there are alternatives — and they are visible when you know what to look for.
Cosmolocal connections
Indra’s work focuses on reconnecting the interests of flourishing individuals, flourishing communities, and the flourishing planet – or reconnecting what she refers to as the ‘I-We-World.’
She uses the term cosmolocal to connect the big picture to the local, everyday world that we experience, relate to, and act in. In her book, she describes what a fractal approach to scaling looks like:
The way even small projects launch in one part of the world and suddenly appear almost identically in another suggests there is a more fractal quality to the relationship between the local and global. Fractal means having similar principles and patterns of activity, without necessarily appearing exactly the same.
The similar principles are not, she emphasizes, directly causal – they represents similar stages and patterns of development occurring in different places around the world. Fractals, as she sees it, are new units of action that deliver agency to people. Each one of us can play an active part in triggering and nurturing these waves of change – by doing our own work of waking up, becoming response-able and moving into action.
Relationships
This action, Indra stresses, is always in relationship with others – this is why relationships matter, communities matter, and you matter:
The global revolution is the human revolution you do in your communities of action. To be truly awake is to see the future arising from your every thought and act, knowing your story is shaping the I, the We, and the World of our shared reality. Your response-ability and that of those around you changes everything.
I love reading Indra’s newsletter, The Alternative Weekly, and her editorials because they show clear signs that change is underway. As she puts it, we are waking up to the joy of being in connection with others, “discovering that building trust and co-creating is not only the means to our survival but is also built in to our design as psycho-social beings.” In her mind, “breaking the trance of disconnection is the most revolutionary act of all.”
I find “breaking the trance of disconnection” to be a beautiful way of expressing the key to thriving in an intraconnected, entangled world. I decided it was time to reconnect with Indra on Zoom and talk about fractal politics.
Let’s Talk
Below is a recording of our informal conversation, which covered the importance of shifting patterns of relationships and included an overview of her new political project called Spring.
This is working with a fractal sensibility, not a linear one. Not looking at new kinds of behaviour as something that needs to be encouraged or controlled … but seeing the new formations that arise out of these new ways of acting and being together…
— Indra Adnan, The Politics of Waking Up