"We have art so we shall not die of reality."
- Nietzsche
The Necesarium is a utopian think tank conducting experiments in better living.
We're reinventing the think tank
More and more people feel that there is less and less freedom in the world and the "good life" is not good or sustainable.
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The Necesarium is an attempt to research and offer solutions to this problem. We do that through the study of what Foucault called heterotopias: "Hetero" meaning Other / "Topia" meaning places. Foucault defined heterotopias as "worlds within worlds," places such as ships, bars, playgrounds, cemeteries, gardens, schools, and saunas where the rules of life are different, providing incubators for Other ways of Being.
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Small groups of people coming together to do their own thing has always been the secret success of most historical innovations, art movements, and social progressions. Examples include the dadaists, surrealists, afro-futurists, abolitionists, goths, punks, jazz, Bad Brains, Parliament-Funkadelic, and although we hate to admit it... the Grateful Dead.
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It is the study of heterotopias today that promises the best chance for people to create better worlds, in which we can live more authentically and playfully as explorers, artists, poets and innovators.
We work at the nexus of micro-economics/climate resilience/art/culture
We operate as an online journal and incubator, nurturing transformational ideas and small projects that attempt to make our lives better while refining projects through a process of creative experimentation. Our bottom line is we have art so we shall not die of reality: we believe in the untapped power of the imagination and the arts to make our society a more liveable place for everyone, particularly those with under-represented voices. This website is a chronicle of that work and those ideas - examples we draw upon in our daily work.
"All great things have ridiculous beginnings."
- Albert Camus
Death by a thousand cuts
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How institutional-thinking ruins our lives
The top 20 U.S. think tanks have a median annual budget of $29 million.
Most think tanks are stuffed with professionals who engage in the same one dimensional thinking that got us here - pushers of the rat race, a mindless culture of banality and status quo existence that nobody particularly enjoys - the total administration of daily life. Do you know anyone who is really happy? Do the people you know ... seem free?
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Under the modern crush of work, mortgages, student loans, debt, and "the cost of living" more and more people are experiencing less and less freedom.
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With all the emphasis on innovation - is it not amazing that we have not imagined or implemented better ways to live?​​
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We are an art collective invested in exploring better ways to live. We've re-imagined a 21st century crowd sourced think tank for everyone that is driven by possibility, art and play - rather than one dimensional institutionalized thinking, fear and bureacracy. We don't just produce white papers. We produce results and hilarity. Give us two years and we'll give you the best results we can imagine for a fraction of the price.
Our Approach​
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We have a black box that contains all the answers.
The secret is that all the solutions are already out there. There is nothing new under the sun. What's missing is recognizing the solutions that have worked reliably through history; because we live in an ahistorical culture that continues to try to re-invent the wheel.
Our Principles:
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Small projects can have enormous impacts. The butterfly effect doesn't just create hurricanes. It is be a force multiplier for enormous good when used through intersectionality.
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Many of the worlds most difficult problems can be solved with what is called the outsider's perspective, also known as "beginners mind."
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We exist to incubate the small ideas that change society for the common good.
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We help pioneers turn their best ideas into small pilot projects with the aim of creating platforms, and policies that may usher in a better world for all of us.
How We Get Super Human Results
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RADICAL HYPOTHESES
We search for the outsider's perspective. Maybe it is to tackle an "intractable" problem. Perhaps it is an unsexy (read: unprofitable) solution. An untested insight that, if correct, could produce an outsized impact where other approaches have failed.
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PILOT PROJECTS
We staff, resource and test small-scale projects, turning radical ideas into moonshot efforts in the lab without compromising on means or goals. This includes securing funding and assembling talented teams that can achieve superhuman results.
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FINDING A CHAMPION
Once a project has a track record of success we tap sympathetic partners in business, government, and non-governmental organizations to elevate or mainstream these solutions drivers as independent organizations and legislation.
We're building a global community. Why is joining important?
As Hannah Arendt noted, complicity in great evil does not require a great lack of humanity. Instead she wrote, the moral problem posed by Nazism was that “the many were neither perverted nor sadistic, but they were, and still are, terribly and terrifyingly normal. From the viewpoint of our legal institutions and of our moral standards of judgment, this normality was much more terrifying than all the atrocities put together.”
Help us create a less oppressive, less one-dimensional world.
Creative thinking is a rare skill set that can be cultivated through rigorous methods of artistic daring and absurdity. Houdini inspired millions of people around the globe by showing them that it was possible to escape from even the most perilous and impossible situations: handcuffed, chained, under water, people watched in amazement and disbelief as he managed to escape from the most improbable circumstances - which should have killed him. The same kind of thinking is needed today.
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The impossible situations are different. But they still include: economic indentured servitude, low wages, and high cost of living. Want to do some art?
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