One idea about going beyond annoying leftist academic vocabulary to get to the world we need to build for ourselves. The OP posits that solarpunk is a way forward.
From a text message I sent my sweetie, a visual artist with a BFA in painting who is approaching her marketing efforts in pet portraiture as if itâs impossible for her to fail, just now. (Did I mention how much I love her?) A bit of background here⊠We were discussing an incident in the neighborhood where she lives: a 17-year-old child robbed a nearby liquor store at gunpoint and shot it upâno one was injured, fortunately. The police caught the young fellow (presumably drowning in trauma, abuse, and privation) just afterwards and itâs very likely he will be tried as an adult. I remarked that many Blacks donât get a proper childhood and are forced to grow up far too soon. That, and there are two systems of justice in đșđž: one for whites [and the wealthy], the other for Blacks [and poor people]. She then responded that where I see opportunity, she sees futility for at least another two years. This led me to write the following⊠[post-scriptum additions are contained in brackets]
As long as most đșđžs are kept fearful of deep systemic change, your prediction of futility is warranted. [As for me,] Iâd rather exercise revolutionary optimismâitâs healthier.
Once we have a vision of what we truly want in a society we can move forward. Alas, we have yet to reclaim the final of the Three Freedoms (as described by Davids Graeber and Wengrow in the book âThe Dawn of Everythingâ) we as humans have lost: the freedom to re-envision society and governance.
My biggest concern is that those who have hoarded wealth and power for themselves intend to take us down with them. We cannot allow that to happen; to do nothing about it and merely trust the institutions that really only serve them seals our doom. Just like your efforts to promote your artwork, we should approach this task with a canât-lose mentality. âCos all that wealth and power ultimately belongs to us, collectivelyâalways has.
Oh, the things we can accomplish if we succeed! The very thought of it makes my mouth water with anticipation and hope.
Like this person says, an âAI-fiedâ world is NOT inevitable. âIf thereâs been a way to build it, thereâll be a way to destroy it/Things are not all that out of [our] controlâ -Stereolab, âCrestâ
Donât be a Dystopian Dave. The fall of the US empire isnât our doom. Itâs our chance to make a clean break with these systems of oppression and tyranny: the surveillance state, hypermilitarization, corporate control, state and corporate violence, wealth inequality, labor and housing precariousness, racialization and marginalization of large groups of people, Calvinist Christian Identitarianism aka Christofascism aka White Christian Nationalism, white narcissism, white rootlessness, and so on. What will we create when we do finally get ourselves free?
Thinking about the future reshapes your brain. Thinking about the future together reshapes society itself. Too many of us think a dystopian future is inevitable. Well, it is if you donât start thinking positively about a future that youâd actually want to live in. What are some of its aspects? How would we govern ourselves, feed ourselves, what would our dwellings be like, our day-to-day, what tech would we use and what tech would we reject?
The starting-off point is to imagine that we collectively own all the capital the billionaires used to hoard: the technology, the facilities, the means of production, all in our hands. How would we ensure that we donât replicate their greed, their systems of tyranny and oppression, their violence?
None of us has *the* answer, but we together can come up with it. We all have part of the answer, however small. Therefore it makes sense for us all to contribute some brain processing to bring about our preferred outcome. Think of it as a get-collectively-rich scheme.
Now my feed is showing me some great, eco-friendly examples of urban redevelopment. Couldnât resist reposting this. My goal is to get people excited and enthusiastic about a revolution that leads to creating a new world to replace the old/current and dysfunctional one we are told there is no alternative to. Checkmate, cynics.
A planned community in Arizona has used time-honored Mediterranean strategies to keep temperatures down and attitudes high. Western civiliza
"A planned community in Arizona has used time-honored Mediterranean strategies to keep temperatures down and attitudes high.
Western civilization has grown remarkably climate conscious over the last 20 years, but not when it comes to building, civic planning, and especially zoning. Perhaps the interiors of buildings are becoming more climate adapted, and in some cases the facades as well, but in a way thatâs a little like inventing a freezer designed to keep ice cream frozen while sitting next to a fire.
Wooden or concrete boxes arranged side-by-side across leveled ground with sprawling, largely treeless gardens and concrete sidewalks alongside wide, blacktop roads is simply a culture of construction that has to be abandoned if living in a world of 2°C or higher annual temperatures [or, hopefully, less than that, but nonetheless likely over 1.5°C] is to be tolerable.
Fortunately for Arizonans, change may have finally arrived in the form of a carless, planned community that looks and feels like a Greek island village.
In the Phoenix suburb of Tempe, Culdesac has arisen as a 17-acre mixed-use neighborhood from the ground up to stay cool and local, taking the concept of the 15-minute city, where anything a resident might need is only 15 minutes away, and putting a Mediterranean spin on it.
Buildings are tall, thick, and totally white. The residential areas look like they were built atop of the ashes of the Phoenix zoning code burnt in effigy. Crammed together, they create narrow streets and alleys that are almost constantly shaded, through which wind is channeled and accelerated in passing.
Windows open towards each other, allowing wind that enters one building to exit into another, while the total lack of asphalt means that the ground temperatures are a staggering 50-60°F lower than pavements beyond the limits of Culdesac.
No privately-owned cars are allowed to enter the neighborhood, in which electric bikes, robotic mini taxis, and light rail shuttle people around town, to downtown Phoenix, or out to the airport.
The street life is livelyâthere are no cars to bisect movement between the 21 different businesses and eateries, among which is a James Beard Award-winning Mexican restaurant, DIY ceramic business, and some stores run out of apartmentsâa big no-no under Phoenix zoning laws.
âOnce you pull the cars out,â Architect Daniel Parolek who designed Culdesac, told BBC, âthereâs so much more opportunity to make a vibrant, thriving community.â
His inspiration was sun-soaked locales like Italy, Greece, and Croatia, where town centers were designed before the automobile and before air conditioning.
Technically speaking, the entire Culdesac neighborhood is one apartment complex, but the paseos, or little alleyways, open up into plazas of open space exactly liked one would expect in a little village in the Cyclades.
Because no one has to jump in a car to get from place to place, people run into each other, sparking conversations, relations, and breaking through the counterintuitive phenomenon of big city loneliness, which in Phoenix hits particularly hard.
âCuldesac Tempe has shown that people do want to live car-free in the US, even in a metro area like Phoenix thatâs often seen as the poster child for car dependency,â says Erin Boyd, Culdesacâs government relations and external affairs lead. âThis success has shifted the conversation around whatâs possible in American development.â
This could be us, everywhere in this country. This is a great example of literally creating a new world, one neighborhood at a time. In fact, this should be the blueprint for all cities and towns in hot climates or with hot summers. Makes me wonder what a 15-minute community with cooler weather would look like.
I usually eschew posting plugs for anything, but the substance of this post is extremely salient to this accountâs objectives. Each of these five points arenât necessarily sequential, linear prerequisites for the next pointâany effort toward one no matter where it is on the list is worthwhile.
There are 5 side quests that are actually pretty crucial if we are to have a direct democracy that works for all of us. Authcomm is the poor outcome, and the seemingly-better-at-first half-measure outcome of social democracy + imperialism will both lead us right back to fascism. Mass liberatory education, the 5th step, is absolutely necessary for all ages, even and especially the olds. Itâs via these 5 side quests that we will be able to sidestep authoritarianism from the left, aka authcomm (authoritarian communism), aka state capitalism, or the grotesque that most Americans (and other people in wealthy imperialist countries) think of when one says the word âcommunismâ. In other words, this is how we identify and dismantle the systems of oppression that existed under fascism/capitalism so that they are not replicated in the society we have been fighting for.
I try not to deal in doom and gloom here. I aim to keep it positive. That said, this reel starts with the doom that awaits us if we stay on the current path of end-stage capitalism. But he points to some solutions that are backed by data science and even archaeology. The latter is how we know that people who lived to experience the fall of the Roman Empire became healthier and taller. Itâs how we know what ended mighty ancient empires like that of the Mayans and the Han Dynasty. All the evidence points to inequality and inequity run rampant. The climate crisis is fueled by inequality. Itâs an interesting point he makes that even a 1° (presumably Celsius) increase in temperature caused societies to collapse. The takeaway here: Increase societal equity, increase our chances of survival for generations to come.
We may be experiencing what is being called an extinction burst. A bunch of conservative types slide ever further to the right because they know their viewpoint is being thoroughly discredited and abandoned. Theyâll howl, theyâll threaten, they may even be moved to commit and/or cheerlead senseless violence. This is the point where we know that theyâre on the ropes but not entirely down. Time to get ready to deliver that sockdolager. đđ„đ”
Thereâs a succinct phrase I just learned that sums up this Tumblr: prefigurative politics. Start practicing for the world you want to live in. Itâs a bit like âdress for the job you wantâ, but with less possibility for fatuous hilarity. It takes not only imagination but also courage to go beyond your conditioning, your indoctrination. Get out of your dystopian comfort zoneâdid you really want to be there anyway, or did you kinda just end up there? A new world is not only possible, but necessary.
Our resistance is a two-pronged approach. As we fight back against fascist repression to protect ourselves and our communities, we absolutely must start to envision what to replace the current regime with. Itâs no good to wish for âa return to normalcyââthat ânormalâ is what got us here in the first place. Donât let what is get in the way of what could or should be. Think past capitalism. Think past liberal vs. conservative, Democrat vs. Republican. Get past the fear of envisioning something you believe others are going to ridicule you for. Thatâs just exposing how unimaginative others have been conditioned, indoctrinated to become.
And when you share your vision, you may very well find out that you are not alone. Sure, facing off against the American Gestapo requires courage. Envisioning and sharing that vision also takes courage and conviction. And you donât need to have all the answers. No one person has them. But together we just might.
Reject any demand to justify what that vision is with all these âWhat aboutâŠ?â and âWhat would happen ifâŠ?â questions, anything in the spirit of bad faith. Anything that demands that you have it all figured out. Itâs not one personâs task. Instead, deflect those bad-faith questions with questions of your own. You turn the tables on them and do the interrogation yourself.
Ask them why they believe as they do. Ask them for the answers on how capitalism/the status quo is going to solve our problems. Ask them if they think that whatâs currently going on is normal. Ask them why they feel the need to cling to this sense of normalcy. Ask them if itâs okay to normalize this sort of repression and law-flouting. Get the dialogue going. This is how to struggle with people. Itâs called Material Dialectics, now demystified.
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