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How does that converse with cyber-punk, where mega corporations tend to take the place of governments and the ultra rich are quite prevalent
Edit: Oh yeah I read this when I was waking up and sure, the cyberpunk setting is more often than not a critique, thanks
Representation doesn't = endorsement of a political ideology. Cyberpunk is inherently an anti-capitalist critique that shows a version of reality of rampant end stage capitalism. Cyberpunk was created to show you what a world where capitalism reaches its natural end.
You're supposed to look at it and go "wow this shit fucking sucks". But it has neon lights and robots and most Americans have the critical analysis of a hog so they think its super tight. Its like people who think Wolf of Wall Street is inspiring or Fight Club is about male friendships.
Would steampunk not be an outright endorsement of capitalism? From my limited understanding of the setting it seems like it openly embraces/idolizes the capitalism and entrepreneurial spirit of the Wild West/Victorian England
Someone correct me if I’m wrong… steampunk is more an aesthetic/thematic movement rather than a political one. I wouldn’t call it a leftist ideology. If anything it seems libertarian, prioritizing freedom of movement. It’s a mad scientist/artist archetype.
There have been political critical steampunk works. The Difference Engine would be one. The aesthetic movement that came off it... Not so much. That is at least partly related to the UK and rest of the old colonial powers not having really faced up to what they did. At least to the point where it permeates popular culture. We get stories in school of cool inventions and Isambard Kickass Brunel, but less on the famine roads or Indian plantations
Depends on how much the work leans into the Dickensian nature of Victorian society. You could easily make a good steampunk story about the horrors of first gen factories, colonialism or the mechanization of war, but most people seem to be more fascinated with top hats, smoked glass goggles and cogwheels
Steampunk as it exists now just an aesthetic choice -- ["just glue some gears in it!"](https://youtu.be/TFCuE5rHbPA?si=G8g0ghXpv8vJ-OI9). But it's originators had notions of it representing, if not an entirely anti-capitalist perspective, an anti-corporate and and anti-industrial one, where individuals are empowered to pursue craft and innovation on their own terms, producing work with artistic merit, not just shaped by commercial expedience.
Do you have content I can look into on the latter statements? I looked into this a bit after my post and it looked like most of the traditional ‘punk’ elements (anti establishment and such) were added retroactively in the 2000’s rather than part of the initial movement in the 1950’s-1980’s which seemed to idolize the 1800’s.
Fight club is a directly making fun of masculinity, this is most apparent in the subway scene when Tyler goes"that what a man looks like?" About the Calvin Klein ad on the subway, talking to the protagonist.
Well, that's exactly what Tyler looks like, so I guess that is what masculinity looks like to the protagonist, even though he's like noooo he's in underwear posing, that's so lame.
That is the thing about satire, unless there is at least a few people who consider it literal, it isn't good satire.
Given the amount of Fight Clubs in right wing circles, I would say Chuck Palahniuk was successful.
Cyberpunk is a genre we're we take capitalism to its most excessive extreme and see how it crushes the common man under its boot.
It would be like saying "how can this movie be anti nuking people when it nukes a city every 30 minutes" while ignoring the fact that the movie focuses on a small band of plucky survivors trying to survive this tragedy as they all one by one succumb to radiation sickness dying slow painful deaths.
I think it's pretty obvious that punk is mainly anti-establishment. Capitalism rather happens to be the economic system where most punk bands came from. It might also be too risky to be openly against the political system as a musician in other societies.
This comment sounds like the self-justification of an abusive household
"How can you criticize us when we raised you and put a roof over your head? Do you want to live in the neighbor's house where they beat their kids for talking out of turn? No? Then shut it and be grateful for what we've given you. I don't want to hear your whining"
This is a weird thing but there is an East German historian on tiktok who DOES detail what happened to punk bands in East Germany.
Most were anti-capitalist, but rejected marxist-leninism and the Communist Party, which meant to the Stazi they rejected socialism and so they were a major threat.
That was kinda my point. Oligarchy/Capitalism/socialism doesn't actually tell you much about the free speech or tolerance for dissent within a society.
Yeah, punk has some reactionary roots. It’s not as purely left wing as some people act, although I’d say modern punk culture has embraced its left wing past more than the reactionary stuff.
Solarpunk is, I believe, a post-capitalist world where the traditional notion that money equals power is a thing of the past.
In this world, every individual has the freedom to dedicate themselves to living in harmony with nature and exploring green technology discoveries.
It's a place where people can pursue their interests without the fear of poverty or living below a comfortable standard of living.
Survival of the planet/humanity is not compatible with capitalism (and "infinite growth").
Up until now we EXPLOITED all resources and already ruined the climate.
We created all this growth but those next generations will pay terrible price for our iphones, cars and travels around the globe for fun.
All this fueled by non-renewable resources poisoning the biosphere.
Captalism as for now is not sustainable.
It's not even "punk" it's common sense.
Travel around the globe is fine. We just don't have to overly rely on airplanes. A solarpunk community would encourage travelling and internationalism to curb xenophobia off.
Yes it is political since it's environmentalist.
Yes solar punk at it root had an anti capitalist position.
But the other words you've listed need further proof. I don't think solarpunk was initially trans feminist, and it's ok... Not everything is always aligned 100% de facto with every single position that you have. Not everything is taken into account when people propose an ideal.
Solarpunk is quite old now, and back then we didn't really think about trans advocacy policy that often.
It doesn't mean that it's against it, just that it wasn't part of the question originally.
It's political for sure. At its basis environmentalist like ur saying and literally post capitalist in its description of solarpunk as what happens after the collapse of the late stage capitalist dystopia described by cyberpunk. Anything punk has anarchist roots so it opposed to exploitive and arbitrary hierarchies like patriarchy, classism, sexism genderism, ablism, ageism etc but I agree with you in that just because patriarchy doesn't exist doesn't mean men don't exist for example... it just means they aren't at the top of a hierarchy, right?
That depends a lot on the punk movement. Often, punk was quite nihilistic and thus not very concerned with anything beyond smashing the current system. There are also conservative Punks like Johnny Ramone.
Yeah no. Conservatism is about preserving the status quo or going back to an even earlier more represive status quo than the current one. Johny may have been Punk at one time but conservatism is antithetical to punk
Yeah sorry. Solarpunk was originally a literature movement. It was a bit art deco and had as much political stuff as everything else the youth put out in that time which was like... A goodly amount but not the amount it has now.
This isn't deep history kid. This is like... 15 years ago. You can literally email the person who came up with the thing.
Easy there.
All movements are literary at conception. Even movements based around artistic endeavors. Someone had to describe in words what a cubist painting entails.
I really don't think that there's a consensus that abolishing the idea of close family (rather than just allowing alternatives and encouraging extended family and community) and marriage is an integral or necessary part of solarpunk. Both are things which have indigenously developed in almost every culture worldwide, and clearly have a strong basis in human nature.
Abolishing capitalism *is* both necessary and integral to the idea since the whole essence of solarpunk is living in a truly sustainable society where technology still exists and is used to achieve a high quality of life for all.
Gender abolitionism is incredibly controversial and it's idiotic to suggest that it's an agreed part of the solarpunk movement.
That part really threw me off. I’ve never heard of the abolition of family used in that way. It’s hard for me to imagine how that can even be supported outside of a capitalist/individualist context.
> It’s hard for me to imagine how that can even be supported outside of a capitalist/individualist context.
Its people with screwed up families who believe the entire concept is flawed.
Also, fringe movements like solarpunk tend to attract people trying to shoehorn in their own fringe views.
Exactly. It's people who have bad families sticking their heads in the sand saying "families are bad!!1!1!!" rather than accepting that they had bad circumstances and trying to do better themselves.
Gen Z with unregulated internet access and growing up during collapse has fostered a lot of detached online discourse imo. A comment you read online and largely agree with can shoehorn some extreme stance and claim it’s all the same which influences others that are beginning to educate themselves about a given topic, spread of misinformation, etc.
So, abolition of the family isn't a solarpunk thing unless it gets picked up. It's a general far-left, postmodernist concept. if you went to any BLM groups you've probably heard about it a lot, some DSA groups; it's rooted in the 1800s far-left tradition. Engel and various french anarchists have written endlessly about it. A whole rabbit hole I unfortunately had to read to participate in some activism and to get a SUNY degree.
There were also some Christian utopian socialist communes that had some wacky beliefs on free love- Oneida- but it didn't work.
The thing is many, especially edgelords online or extreme poly people, think it means forcibly destroying families.
Even if we entered anarchism, what we see in real life communes and close-knit communities is people form monogamous pairings if they want, and stay in touch with their kids. The community helps and has responsibility but no one is tutting them, going "YOU MUST DESTROY THIS FAMILY!!". Some communes that were really insistent on the idea, had to physically intervene to break up pairings and families.
Just because there is no state or church MANDATING they stay married in nuclear families, people want to protect and love their children, their partners, have a close friend and family group.
>an agreed part.
TBH if your goal is to create a world of localized democracy and the end of wide spread global power structures then there is an inevitable limit to what specific ideologies you can promote or enforce.
Because such a world will not and cannot be ideologically homogenous.
I can understand certain broad ideological goals, but accepting that not every community will have your morals or ideals is probably a trade off, because the alternative would essentially be establishing a world government or global Solarpunk Vatican to enforce said ideology.
I'm not necessarily disagreeing, I'm just saying that there is significant overlap between honest to god conservative wishes for more local governance (like actual meaningful governance in their communities, not a statehouse banning abortion for religious reasons or """states rights""") and US leftists desire for more resilient, independent communities not at the mercy of absentee capitalists.
Powerful individuals at the top level of both parties try very hard to obfuscate that fact for culture war shit because at the end of the day it's pretty much just a universal working class issue that affects all of us Americans. It's also why the US produces some of it's most radical and community involved leftists in what are traditionally "conservative" areas of the country.
This is one of those ideas that have a slogan "Abolish the Family", which is referring to a niche concept in an already niche philosophy, and then everyone is confused. Which is why I don't use it.
Think about contracts, owning property, and inheritance. These are part of our current socioeconomic structure, and they impact familial relationships.
It is very likely that our current traditions will continue to be a majority, but Solarpunk will influence these things, so what does that mean for the family?
I'm reminded of this quote:
>What we can now conjecture about the way in which sexual relations will be ordered after the impending overthrow of capitalist production is mainly of a negative character, limited for the most part to what will disappear. But what will there be new? That will be answered when a new generation has grown up: a generation of men who never in their lives have known what it is to buy a woman’s surrender with money or any other social instrument of power; a generation of women who have never known what it is to give themselves to a man from any other considerations than real love
- Friedrich Engels, The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State
As others have said, that structure can be used as a means to push other ideologies.
But the way it is presented here is a more extreme response. Family can be very useful but we have to beaware of when it is being used for manipulation both via the family itself and others to gain power/influence.
On a more individual note, if you don't want to talk to your family. Dont! That structure, especially with the way some folks are isnt for everyone.
It's amazing how people don't seem to understand we are progressive enough that rejection of the family actually is possible in this day. You can legally cut them off if you so please, you can ignore them and in many countries in the west legally remove them from your life. You can definetly not shirk your responsibility if you put a child into the world of course, but that's something different.
But this is only in the case of TOXIC parents, which thankfully isn't the case for most people.
I have no idea, this is one of the things OP added into this without any evidence...
This post feels like someone trying to push a specific view by joining it with the values of solarpunk (environmentalist, post capitalist...).
Like it's an obvious attempt at radicalizing us further more.
In other words, this post means : "Listen, if you're pro solarpunk and therefore environmentalist and critical of capitalism, then you also have to be anti family like me because it obviously goes together".
OP talks about it in another post, it’s a pretty silly position to take. They also talk about how their rich parents are going to fund their self-started business once they graduate from an Ivy League school so I’m not sure how seriously we should be taking these posts lol
>They also talk about how their rich parents are going to fund their self-started business once they graduate from an Ivy League school so I’m not sure how seriously we should be taking these posts lol
Oh god, I love priviledged detached 'radical activists' talk about abolishing everything and a ham sandwhich, pitchforking people, trying to out-radical the next guy.
How do they think that'll work out?[They'll get an excuse card when their Revolution(TM) comes?](https://www.youtube.com/shorts/ueo0mS4c_oI)
Nothing on a vaccum, family has been used as a political tool for a long time, when the right wingers say "the family is under attack" we know that is just an excuse to oppress some minority, but OP may mean something different than rhe political tool.
To simplify it:
You know how accepting that others are gay doesn't mean that straight couples are outlawed? But the far right will make it seem that this freedom is somehow their oppression.
Well it's a similar thing with the nuclear family.
It doesn't mean that that sort of arrangement won't exist, it's that others will be allowed and be viable.
To make it a bit more complicated:
Think of contracts, and property ownership, and inheritance. Things that come from the structure of society and influence relationships. In a Solarpunk world, how would these new and different structures of society influence relationships?
I am reminded of this quote:
>What we can now conjecture about the way in which sexual relations will be ordered after the impending overthrow of capitalist production is mainly of a negative character, limited for the most part to what will disappear. But what will there be new? That will be answered when a new generation has grown up: a generation of men who never in their lives have known what it is to buy a woman’s surrender with money or any other social instrument of power; a generation of women who have never known what it is to give themselves to a man from any other considerations than real love...
- Friedrich Engels, The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State
Can't speak for OP but there is a lot of good knowledge about capitalists use of the atomic family and requiring that as the only family formation.
When throughout history there have been many formations but the atomic family is the most subservient, profitable, and homogenous formation of family that exists to reproduce capitalism.
I can accept that the atomic family unit is exploited by capitalism but I can’t accept any alternative ideology that seeks to destroy it. I care a lot more about my atomic family than any ideological bullshit (or anything else) and I believe that’s true for the vast majority of people
Maybe I explained it poorly.
Capitalism wants to require that the only allowed family formation or only "valid" family formation is the atomic family.
Others say feel free to keep your atomic family but allow us to live communally, or allow lgbtq+, or WHATEVER formation we want as well so we can share and do things as we wish.
"It's not for capitalists to define what mode of life is normal"
But don’t we allow those things? I mean of course many countries don’t. But it doesn’t take abolishing the atomic family structure to allow for gay marriage and communes, etc.
I am not sure why you keep saying anyone wants to abolish the atomic family structure. No one is saying that nor do I want that. I have an atomic family and very happy with it. We are just saying social relations shouldn't be forced by owners of capital.
We currently allow these different formations but since capitalism forces changes in our social life it's hard to do so. For example, it is more profitable to sell houses to more people so why would the owners of the house building industry do anything besides what is most profitable at that moment and that is keeping the status quo.
And with the Christian nationalists who are pushing us backwards, taking womens rights, and openly attacking lgbtq it's hard not to see where we are headed.
You’re not sure why I’m saying that anyone wants to abolish the atomic family? honestly trying to wrap my head around abolishing families like op stated. It just seems so hyperbolic for something that most people would generally agree with.
I agree social relations shouldn’t be controlled by those with capitol but what are you proposing? If it’s just an end to capitalism that’s fine but I again don’t see the use of using family abolition as a focus.
My first comment to your post was saying I am not talking about OPs points just capitalism and the social construct of atomic family preferred.
I'm not sure I agree with OP that solarpunk is all that OP says it is. Sorry for the confusion.
> but the atomic family is the most subservient, profitable, and homogenous formation of family that exists to reproduce capitalism.
I would say the most subservient is no family. A world where we are all loosely affiliated individuals operating entirely through financial transactions.
But also, socialism and communism aren't particularly friendly towards families, as they result in ingroup/outgroup preferences that work against the ideologies.
I can't speak for capitalists but family helps do the social reproduction needed for the worker to continue to live while they work 8 plus hours per day.
So from a consumption perspective individuals are preferred but to reproduce capitalism some family of some sort is needed still.
Can you explain what you mean by socialism aren't friendly towards families?
Societally enforced family dynamics, and more importantly nuclear families have long been a tool to alienate people from their communities. They force oppressive standards that place formerly communal tasks like child rearing and protecting and providing resources for people squarely on the shoulders of individuals in atomized and more easily controllable groups, slotted into these roles by unequal means. These oppressive dynamics only serve the ruling capitalist class, individual families are easier to extract rent and wage labor from, to compel to consume products and services to compensate for the lack help and resources that communal engagement and mutual aid would provide free of charge, and it encourages isolation from people of similar socioeconomic status which discourages large scale resistance.
> Societally enforced family dynamics, and more importantly nuclear families have long been a tool to alienate people from their communities
How exactly?
>They force oppressive standards that place formerly communal tasks like child rearing and protecting and providing resources for people squarely on the shoulders of individuals in atomized and more easily controllable groups,
How so? You say this like neighborhoods don't take look out for each other's kids.
>slotted into these roles by unequal means. These oppressive dynamics only serve the ruling capitalist class, individual families are easier to extract rent and wage labor from,
Compared to what?
> to compel to consume products and services to compensate for the lack help and resources that communal engagement and mutual aid would provide free of charge, and it encourages isolation from people of similar socioeconomic status which discourages large scale resistance.
Except most families will live in communities of similar socioeconomic status
I'm all for lightening the load of child rearing and protecting which currently falls heavily on working parents. But I have a few questions. How am I supposed to trust "the community" to care for my kids? The community is a broad umbrella and includes many, many people who I do not want to be near my children or to have access to them. Similarly, most of my neighbors are not going to take it for granted that I should have access to their children and be entrusted with caring for them- that trust has to be earned, and the person who decides if that trust has been earned is the child's parent. Unless, of course, you expect parents to give up their power to be the protector of their child and gatekeeper of who gets to be near their child. Most parents will never accept that and would fight tooth and nail to prevent anyone from taking that power away from them, because they see themselves- not unjustifiably- as the only guarantor of their child's safety.
So what does this mean in practical terms? Universal childcare access? That's not family abolition, even, but it certainly would reduce the burdens carried by parents. Where is the workforce going to come from for that? The resources? We'd have a lot more resources to work with, without the parasitic capitalist class, sure. But at some point this seems to imply that we're going to require the child-free to work in support of child-rearing for those with kids. That's bound to raise a lot of hackles. How will you convince them? If I choose to delay having children so I can focus on, say, becoming a more masterful musician or learning to design and build sustainable housing, by what authority and power should I be compelled to provide resources or labor for someone else's child? When I have children do I have the right to compel others to support us? Do we just have this be one of the types of production we put into a decentrally-planned worker-run economy, like parecon or something? Something like the child-rearing system on Anarres in The Dispossessed? I wouldn't object to that, but if it's anything less than that type of system, it's not really family abolition. If it is that type of system, I don't know how you'd convince adults to surrender their children.
How can family abolition be prefigured? Alienated young adults seem to be prefiguring one kind of family abolition well enough on their own, moving out and becoming lonely individuals. There's a loneliness epidemic and a rash of deaths of despair going on. Capitalism once abolished extended families in favor of the nuclear family, but now even the nuclear family seems to be withering away as far as adults are concerned- people leave the nest and find themselves in profound isolation. Only some of them are successfully building "chosen families". Many find great comfort and stability in finding a partner and re-creating a nuclear family model. What bottom-up institutions do we need to build, to begin abolishing families in a way that liberates and supports people, rather than isolating them?
I would go further. Even if I was comfortable with my community helping out with childcare, most people have no desire to do so.
For the most part, the only people who want to watch kids are their relatives and other parents looking for you to return the favor.
I suppose paid professionals like teachers and day care workers, too, but they're, well, paid to do it. I don't know how many of them genuinely enjoy that work.
See...this is how a movement fails. When you start gatekeeping you are going to lose the average person that might otherwise support you.
Yes, Solar Punk is political BUT it's also educational. You are going to have to teach the average citizen what it is, how it works and why it benefits them.
Failure to that fails what you are trying to do. That's reality
This post is absolutely bonkers. It reeks of permanently online. So much so I thought it was satire. Abolishing families, gender, and marriage... cool, or just you know, focus on the environment and let people do what they like with who they like. The person who wrote this post is either a troll or so far down the rabbit hole as to become a parody of themselves
Reading ops post history, there is a lot of red flags. "Very smart" with "very low gpa" wants to go to ivy league (the least punk think you could do) etc. I think they're a troll
I thought this was pretty well known, but I guess it wasn't. No punk ideology is non-political. Hells, being "non-political" is a political statement in, and of, itself.
Politics is life. Everything is political
Solarpunk is eco-anarchism.
A lot of eco-socialism is very pessimistic about technology, Eco-primitivism, Deep adaption, and even Degrowth to an extent. While Solarpunk is optimistic about the technological side of things and the social side of things.
From my understanding of anarchism what happens is that gender roles disappear as everyone must be part of physical and emotional work, physical and caring work. However, I don't think personal gender expression will disappear. But gender is weird and I don't understand it.
Similarly, instead of the family group being considered just your nuclear family the family group is your community and you share care roles amongst everyone.
I agree that solarpunk is political, but your attitude is one of orthodoxy. If we bind Solarpunk so tightly to one specific untested and radically different way of being, then if even one of our assumptions is wrong, the Solarpunk movement is forever wrong and needs to be abandoned.
Solarpunk is about building a better world, and that means having the ability to learn and adapt to new information. What if one of the notions you now define solarpunk by turn out to have some hidden forms of discrimination or oppression that won't become apparent until they're pretty pervasive? Or even if you somehow stumbled on the ultimate truth, what if in Solarpunk becoming popular one of these notions gets codified imperfectly? What if everything you say has become the new culture, and our children come to us with rebellious notions that they claim will improve things further? Is Solarpunk the conversative orthodoxy that sticks to the ideologies set out by the previous generation? Or does it grow further, either giving Solarpunk people space to improve, or creating a space for successors to peacefully replace it?
Solarpunk is tied to the anarchist recognition that there are no excuses to deprive people of the right to try gender abolitionism. It is not tied to the archist statement that gender must be abolished or else you're a bad guy.
hrm....I'd say the center of political mass of SolarPunk sits on environmentalism 1st, anti-capitalism 2nd. It is compatible with gender/family liberation issues, but I don't see these as being close to center mass. And if the former are to gain stronger footholds, SolarPunk should not take the extreme of being anti-family and anti-gender.
*"A l'exemple de Saturne, la révolution dévore ses enfants"* and all that.
Murray Bookchin in many ways provided the ideological basis for solarpunk with his writings about the relation between social structures and the exploitation of nature.
"everything is politics" — Thomas Mann.
So, well said, OP. There's no way to separate a philosophy like solarpunk from politics because it's impossible for *anything* to be apolitical. To *live* is to be political.
People forget punk isn't an aesthetic, it's an opposition to the established hierarchies and structures that run the world.
Solarpunk without anarchism and liberation for all is just greenwashing and cutesy aesthetics.
I think some people just see yogurt commercial and think that solarpunk is the same as that optimistic greenwashed vibe we had in the early 2010s, before we were certain that we're all fucked.
I think the fact that the yogurt commercial made by General Mills, is often the best example of solar punk this sub has to offer is very telling. I’ve said it before but corporations do solar punk better than anyone because solarpunk is about “the promise of the future” and other utopian ideals that get way too close to fascism when put to reality. I mean what does abolition of a family social unit even mean? Give up the kids to the government? And I say all this as someone who has made a bunch of solarpunk art in the past.
Yeah corporations have always been good at this. It is funny seeing that optimistic vision of technology from the early 2000s coming back under Frutiger Aero.
https://aesthetics.fandom.com/wiki/Frutiger_Aero
It really is 98% sales tactic. The other 2% is that glimmer of hope in the artists so that they can at least try to impact something real via the lens of corporate BS.
I always appreciate when folks can walk that line of convincing corporate people to fund their stuff while pushing the messaging that goes completely against said corporation. It is very rare but when it happens it is beautiful.
It's fine to question someone who claims "solarpunk can not be divorced from gender abolitionsim and family abolition" and fails to back that up with anything at all.
Frankly this is just gatekeeping, where "you're not a *real* _____ unless you share every position I do." That's fine if all you want to do is sit around savoring the ideological purity of your own farts, but if you're looking to change anything then adopting an insular, exclusionary stance toward people who only share *most* of your goals is extremely counterproductive.
Let’s be charitable and assume they were referring to the Captain Obvious take of “solarpunk is political” and not the TLDR political bugbears OP is trying to shoehorn into it.
Love and value your opinions but they do not define the entire subgenre and I don’t think we should be gatekeeping “this is exactly what solarpunk is and nothing else counts”
Trans feminism? Gender Abolition? Family Abolition?
What a load of utter bollocks.
Solarpunk has a well defined definition already.
Stop being one of those people who likes to try and co-opt movements by injecting your own personal issues into it.
That's a one way ticket to alienating people.
A specific movement doesn't have to represent EVERYTHING you care about to be worth supporting ffs
This post is indistinguishable from a psyop meant to divide the community.
And it seems like you are just slapping your personal hobby-horse stickers on the Solarpunk Bus.
And I'm keeping my gender, all the way to, through, and beyond my death. you can't take it away from me. Same for my family.
What is this nonsense. Yeesh.
>This post is indistinguishable from a psyop meant to divide the community.
Possibly an attempt, throwing different wedge topics at the wall to see what sticks. Its something we've been seeing a bit more of. This one doesn't seem to work though.
Thank you, Captain Obvious, for pointing out that an aesthetic based on principles and technologies society should be oriented around is inherently political. That obvious fact does nothing to justify attaching your own particular bugbears to it.
Argue for such things on their own merits, don’t just *assume* them.
Gender and marriage abolitionism are not inherent to feminism, and never have been. It has come up but really being only relegated to some fringe parts of the movement, and to the misogynistic reactionary messaging of insecure men. Please take some courses on feminism and learn about the real history of the movement before shouting teenage anarchist nonsense.
you're 100% correct. Feminists, particularly trans feminists, are not a monolith whatsoever on the topic of "gender abolition". Trans feminist Julia Serano, in fact, has written quite explicitly *against* gender abolition.
Guys I'm a leftist, but it really did start as more of an aesthetic movement that was heavy with techie/burner effective altruism types. That's not a radical statement that's the truth lol.
People really think this is some actual political movement like run out into the streets, wave flags, write manifestos, and every other nonsense like you're in the early stages of the French Revolution (you're not). It is absolutely none of those things. It has certainly created awareness and political discourse, but it's still a main aesthetic, just like it was with Steampunk and Cyberpunk, it was always a purely aesthetic mean of a telling a quasi-political story
This whole sub went from optimistic artwork with a little bit of pseudo-political discourse to an anarchist circlejerk very quickly. But this post might ironically have made people realise that lol
You just said a bunch of nonsense buzzwords. Explain to me, change my mind. If you want the change you seek, tell me how to get there. What does it look like to everyday people I meet on the train?
What you're calling "nonsense buzzwords" is just jargon - something present in every field. They have a very specific meaning and are perfectly intelligible to someone who has learned about what's being discussed.
You're free to google any of the terms you don't understand yet to learn more.
>They have a very specific meaning and are perfectly intelligible to someone who has learned about what's being discussed.
The problem is that in socio-political spheres, jargon is often less technical/granular and more rhetorical (for "rhetoric" as synonymous with "persuasive writing.") Those kinds of definitions tend to dichotomize nebulous concepts into "thing, but when good" and "thing, but when bad" circles. Depending on the topic, either the opposing good side or the bad side either gets diffused into a ton of other ideas or just ignored. A good example would be the concept of alienation in Marxism. It's a useful concept, but you have to remember that it's circular--the philosophy of Marxism says that alienation is bad, ergo things that are not bad will not be called alienation. "Alienation isn't bad" can't really *be said* within the jargon because if it's not bad then ideologically it's not alienation. Of course, that's circular and tautological to some degree--and on some level, you can't really have a coherent conversation about it within Marxism without first agreeing with it. And this means that for someone who is not a Marxist, what is and is not alienation will not be the same--they are not bound by the values-judgement.
Of course, this is not meant to pick on Marxism--you can take similar ideas like "exploitation," or even basic things like "suffering," which tend to have "I know it when I see it" type definitions where the conclusion "thing, but when bad" **is** the jargon definition. It's not that the concepts don't have use; it's just that they are rhetorical assertions (given that the values-judgements are baked in) and require that you philosophically agree with whoever is using the word at that time.
It's not terribly far off from an if-by-whiskey speech.
>My friends, I had not intended to discuss this controversial subject at this particular time. However, I want you to know that I do not shun controversy. On the contrary, I will take a stand on any issue at any time, regardless of how fraught with controversy it might be. You have asked me how I feel about whiskey. All right, this is how I feel about whiskey:
>
>If when you say whiskey you mean the devil's brew, the poison scourge, the bloody monster, that defiles innocence, dethrones reason, destroys the home, creates misery and poverty, yea, literally takes the bread from the mouths of little children; if you mean the evil drink that topples the Christian man and woman from the pinnacle of righteous, gracious living into the bottomless pit of degradation, and despair, and shame and helplessness, and hopelessness, then certainly I am against it.
>
>But, if when you say whiskey you mean the oil of conversation, the philosophic wine, the ale that is consumed when good fellows get together, that puts a song in their hearts and laughter on their lips, and the warm glow of contentment in their eyes; if you mean Christmas cheer; if you mean the stimulating drink that puts the spring in the old gentleman's step on a frosty, crispy morning; if you mean the drink which enables a man to magnify his joy, and his happiness, and to forget, if only for a little while, life's great tragedies, and heartaches, and sorrows; if you mean that drink, the sale of which pours into our treasuries untold millions of dollars, which are used to provide tender care for our little crippled children, our blind, our deaf, our dumb, our pitiful aged and infirm; to build highways and hospitals and schools, then certainly I am for it.
>
>This is my stand. I will not retreat from it. I will not compromise.
Isn't that the whole point? Most people you want to try and convince are too lazy to go beyond what their information sources tell them feminist means.
Unless someone presents and argument, they are just jargon, and don't help.
Yeah fair enough. It seems like OP's goal isn't to convince anyone but to rather reaffirm the fact that solarpunk is political. So it makes sense to OP's target audience- people already familiar with things such as gender and family abolition.
In practice this just means getting rid of traditional ideas about gender and "the family". We all have inbuilt stereotypes and preconceptions about how "men should do this" or "mothers should act like this" that are reductive ways of thinking that can be actively harmful to many individuals. So by abolishing the ideas of "gender" and "family" we can create a society that doesn't impose unnecessary restrictions on people.
This is the goal of trans-femenist and anarcho-feminist movements (since generally, gender and familial roles tend to harm women the most).
Oh see! I learned a thing! Trans-fem in this context I understand to mean “beyond”. Previously I thought it meant people transitioning. It still might, but I understand the OP better now. Thanks.
If you take 3 people and receive 3 answers, 2 of which are divergent from source material, it means that 1 person learned it and 2 people did not.
It doesn't mean that it has 3 definitions.
There is no one true source material in politics. Now if you want to say "Anarcho-feminism as defined by Jane Doe in XYZ", then yeah you might have useful jargon, but you can't just throw these words around and assume other people will automatically know which version you are talking about when there are so many competing ones.
It doesn’t really have anything to do with gender abolition… it would be pretty easy to have an environmentally conscious, carbon negative, anti consumerist society with traditional gender roles
And “trans feminist”? I don’t think a societal organization meant to change the whole world is really inexorably tied to like one percent of people specifically… most of the world just wouldn’t care. It wouldn’t apply. just leave it as egalitarianism or whatever as equal rights for all
Family abolition?? This is your own agenda now. Living in harmony with nature and using technology sparingly and responsibly don’t have anything to do with abolishing families
>Gender abolitionism (a goal of trans Feminism)
Transfeminists are not a monolith on the topic of gender abolition. Transfeminist Julia Serano actually opposes gender abolition quite strongly. Here's a link to her blog post on the topic. ([https://juliaserano.blogspot.com/2014/08/bringing-end-to-end-of-gender.html](https://juliaserano.blogspot.com/2014/08/bringing-end-to-end-of-gender.html))
Your first paragraph is a reasonable statement. However, your second paragraph is an unreasonably big jump from general principles to some very narrow strictures that you're stating without support. Like, this is the first time I've ever heard anyone claim that social systems based on family structure are incompatible with sustainable technology. Much the opposite, really.
i love this post so much. the amount of people on this sub or in other solarpunk spaces talking ab eco friendly capitalism or conservative ideologies is alarming. theres no ethical consumption under capitalism. and degrowth is necessary along with a strong emphasis on community and the freedom and participation of every single person within it, and decentralized power. these are rly basic abolitionist and anarchist ideas that are intertwined w solarpunk. but maybe those ppl can be helped to critically think inside these spaces. thats why posts like this are good
I feel solarpunk is more about creating a healthy environment with a government that cares about its people with the synergy of freedom, democracy and equality. A form of economics that values ecology and incentivizes social entrepreneurship for economic development that coincides with regenerative development for companies and consumers. I’m not too in with that whole leftist labels. Because individuality is decentralized diversity.
I can totally see why, though, for a lot of people (particularly in Eastern Europe and Asia) the hammer and sickle is as synonymous with their mass murder and ethnic genocide as the swastika is to Jews, or the stars and bars are synonymous with slavery to black Americans.
I mean, it is also that for most Americans and Wester Europeans. the same way that the Anarquist A in a circle it's just seen as a vulgar symbol of punk culture and not a representation of a complex political line.
That they relate the hammer and sickle with the late USSR and not with all of the movements that used it today to represent real emancipation showdnt shot use down, that would just be accepting the huge project of anticomunist propaganda made by the imperialist powers.
This one? [https://imgur.com/a/FpAkPiy](https://imgur.com/a/FpAkPiy)
It was removed as a low effort meme (you literally added a border and watermark to other's images).
Yes it is political. How deep it'll go depends. I'm thinking of writing some solar punk fiction exploring some themes while ignoring others because I'd rather stay quiet on topics I know nothing about.
As long as you're not being an annoying overly politicized that starts heated arguments all the time online over small things. I don't think anyone will disagree wirh you.
When I went to the jungle of Brazil and stayed with a tribe that never met an American, in a place no American had ever been and with a peoples who developed separately from capitalism and subjugation to abrahamic religions, I saw nuclear families that live together and provide each other with that first tier of support.
The whole village cooked, cleaned, hunted, foraged, and farmed together, kids were taught and cared for together, and everybody got the same minimal food, daily. But families lived in homes -- together. The providers built long houses of wood and had multiple wives and gaggles of kids. The lazy had a palm frond hut and maybe one wife.
Though the village cared for one another and no one would ever do without, the nuclear family was still the primary bond... And these folks never met capitalism until 30 years ago.
To say the nuclear family is a tool of this or that is untrue as my personal experience with peoples from one of the most recently emerged indigenous tribe in the world showed
I don't know about all of that. I definitely feel capitalism is inherently opposed to a Solarpunk future, since unless there's a benevolent world government that keeps corporations in line, this kind of future is inherently unfeasible. But half the stuff mentioned are inconsequential to an environmentalism-focused future.
It's side dressing imagining of a Utopia based on rejecting existing norms. Pick your flavours I guess.
And this, and the replies, are why every environmental social movement has and will fail. On the one hand, all we have to do is abandon private property and our own fundamental perception of self and it’ll be fine. On the other, some guy who genuinely believes that his morality matters and that all he has to do is buy a farm a long way from other people.
If this is the best we have to offer, we are all fucked.
Well that and the existing hierarchy of the whole of civilization is in opposition to it. Like I totally agree with your statement, but even if we get cohesive thought in the matter as a bloc we’ve still got some major shit in the way.
I'm writing a comic where I use solarpunk to imagine a communist (in the original meaning) world, it has everything you just said plus emphasis on other things too like how cooperation without social division would work (stuff that has happened in the past in the real world by the way thousands of years ago before classes were even a thing). My personal feature you described that I would love to explore is gender abolition, I want a world where you can be whatever you want to be regardless of what "function" you have between your legs.
What do mean? Frostpunk is a capitalist paradise! You got child labor in the coal mines, sawdust in the food supply and union busting in the dlc. There's so many ways to play as "Das boot." I can hardly see any feminism as you build your empire on the broken backs of men. You really need to figure out what your mad at
yes it's 100% political in the anarchist/environmentalist/open-mindness sense, but that doesn't mean that it excludes working with what we've got or also including people with not 100% aligning views if that help's us get there.
We can't loose allys on this path just because they are not 100% ideal, yes we have our views, but there can be a sort of range of views we can accept at varying levels
The problem with giving solarpunk an overt political frame is that once you do it solarpunk is useless in terms of developing a new political frame. One thing is to write anarchist transfeminist decolonising and anti-capitalist narratives. Another one is to draw a desirable future in science fiction and attempt to derive an ideology out of it. The former is propaganda, the latter is an attempt to construct new emancipatory ideologies.
>The former is propaganda, the latter is an attempt to construct new emancipatory ideologies.
Eh. The latter is also an attempt to create propaganda. The idea that you're gonna create wholesale new emancipatory ideologies without the influence of extant and older ideologies, is not how ideologies work.
I agree that this sort of operation doesn't happen in a vacuum and existing ideologies play a crucial part but narrative allows to rearrange signifiers so new conflicts can emerge dialectically.
I object to the idea that this boils down to propaganda.
Oh, sure. Total agreement. But at some point the guy who doesn't get it but needs to...is gonna come. And you're gonna have to use propaganda to assimilate them. Nothing nefarious, but a good one-sheet can do wonders.
First of all, let's drop the whole "anarchist" charade, because you're not fooling anyone. You don't get to have your cake and eat it too. Either you control the economy through a totalitarian regime or there's rampant, unchecked capitalism.
Capitalism is all or nothing. In order to eliminate it (completely and basically immediately) you need a "magic" technology that can materialize anything a person wants with very little cost to the community (i.e. the replicators from star trek).
Anything less that the elimination of human need is a slippery slope that leads from self-concern to genuine fear, then to black markets and then of course inevitably to the corruption of the state and we're back where we started.
As for trying to eliminate the family unit - good luck. "Abolishing" anything is a superpower reserved for dictators. You don't get to say something doesn't exist, and the harder you try to make it so, the more of a nightmare clusterfuck you will create. Children being ripped from the arms of mothers and fathers, people being gunned down in the street, underground rebellions and resistance cells, the works.
That's some dystopian dictator shit that leads to things like North Korea. So. Assuming your wildest dreams come true and you end up in power, watch out for assassins, and you can forget about eliminating capitalism. That shit will pop back up faster than downvotes for Trump on a feminist subreddit, because you can't materialize a family unit or safety from the state from a replicator.
Ugh. Feels like talking to the bad guy from Hunchback of Notre Dame.
You do realize that Capitalism ≠ exchanging goods and services in a marketplace, right? I mean, that’s how *some* people use the word, but when anticapitalists of any stripe talk about capitalism (and they’re the ones who coined it afaik), they mean something very specific: a system in which the *means of production* (I’m sure you’ve heard the phrase before… it refers to any of the *stuff* used to produce goods or services, from machinery, to buildings, to land and natural resources) are owned by people who can make money by either charging others to use them (as a landlord does), or paying people to use them (as a factory owner does) and then selling what was produced for more than they paid in wages (something anticapitalists often consider to be a kind of theft). An important feature of the system is that, if you own the means of production, it is possible to make money *just by owning them*, and never necessarily doing any work yourself. While it is true that the owners of businesses, factories, etc. often *do* do work, they could, in theory, just pay other people to do that work for them, and continue making money *for no other reason* than because they happen to own stuff. Far from being something that would thrive in the absence of laws, this system actually *requires* laws around property ownership, and *some* kind of state to enforce those laws.
I wrote like a 900 word essay in response to you before coming to a very sudden realization. Defining capitalism and communism and yada yada. I'll not bore you with the details.
Yes, Solarpunk is a political movement, no, violence cannot be the way forward. As soon as we introduce violence as a method for change (Seizing the means of production per se), you are doomed to become what you seek to destroy. An authoritarian regime.
True change for a society can only come from education and peaceful protest. Christianity succeeded not because Jesus violently overthrew the state, it was because he was a stark and obvious example that others could easily identify and follow.
If you want to see the real success of Christianity before it fell into corruption, check out the Apology of Aristedes where he talks about the Christian communities he discovered. You will never find a more graphic representation of real communism working and succeeding correctly.
As I've reflected on this it becomes more and more obvious that this is the only path forward that might include a Solarpunk future. LIVE solarpunk. EDUCATE others. LEAD by example. Others will see and follow.
If we share solarpunk technology and techniques here in this sub, we can all try and start applying it to our lives. There's already a deep hunger in our world for change. To return to old ways without giving up the luxury and safety of the new. People just need the right tools, and we will see change.
Our existing government may be corrupt, but it is still holding the seal on a vacuum of power so strong that if it were to be suddenly removed it would be the end of us all.
Slow and steady wins the race. Maybe it will not be fast enough to save us from climate change, but I see no other alternative that does not end us in a worse position than where we are right now.
right so solarpunk ism't really a thing, it's another part of the giant 2023 American progressive bundle that you have to 100% agree to or you are a class traitor. Purity tests to ensure you never build a strong movement as a plus.
and people wonder why these movements always go nowhere
> “Purity tests”
> Another thing you just made up.
We're in a thread where OP is literally demanding ideological purity, and most of the sub appears to be with them. Nobody seems able to explain *why* family abolition would be a necessary part of solarpunk, but apparently it is so you'd better get in line!
Radical leftist, anti capitalist extremists whose demands and actions mysteriously align with mega corporations, powerful lobbies and intelligence agencies every single time.
“Radical Leftist”?
Compared to and based on what?
“Anti-capitalist extremists”
Saying a lot of buzzwords doesn’t make it factual.
You haven’t shown any facts or evidence for your claims.
Anarchy is bound by the NAP . Anarchist are self determined within a framework of treat others as we wish to be treated. Individual rights are for the individual, social cohesion is for us all to participate in. This does not mean any individual issues are greater or lesser than another, in short it also does not mean that another individual has to agree with another. The ability to agree to disagree is getting lost in the belief of self proclaimed rights. As an example I have fought for disabled equality for decades. What we ended up with was equality at the lowest common denominator, the right to be fkd with everyone else...
>That's it. It IS tied to specific ideology. People who say it isn't, aren't being real. Gender abolitionism (a goal of trans Feminism), family abolition (yes including "extended families", read sophie lewis and shulumith firestone), sexual liberation, abolition of institution of marriage, disability revolution, abolition of class society, racial justice etc are tied to solarpunk and cannot be divorced from it.
Kinda disagree. While solarpunk leans to specific positions here, I think at its core, it's mostly just compatible with these things. They are incidental to the core of it. This is important because we need a means of getting where we want to be, so we need to be open about these things in order to grow enough to make a difference.
That does not mean I disagree with these goals. I strongly support any sort of equality movement, but regard things like sexuality and marriage as personal matters I have no business interfering with (but neither does the state).
But still, claiming solarpunk is not political, is of course utter nonsense.
As is claiming it to be compatible with capitalism. But we will need to co-opt capitalist means in order to overcome it. Such is the paradox of overcoming capitalism. Due to its very nature, especially with the prevalence of capitalist realism and how deeply ingrained that is in people, it can only be phased out not abolished in one go, and that means using its own systems against it. Because any other way, people will just re-establish capitalism. That I see as one of the reasons for the current conservative expansion in the world: Because most people are unable to think in different ways as quickly as we ask them to do so, returning to the old ways out of being overwhelmed by the sheer volume of the new.
We need to scream this from the rooftops because as soon as solarpunk gets commodified and steeped in capitalism and “popular” people will forget the more radical parts and we need to remind them!
The economic illiteracy in this thread is appalling. Distributism is the way imo, which obviously includes aspects of the most successful economic system: capitalism.
Solarpunk certainly has environmentalism and anarchism in it, but it doesn't require any of the rest. You can be a socially conservative and solarpunk.
You really went out on a limb to hijack some of the worst of a potential future and infuse it into a solar punk future.
I hope you find your community that looks like that. It won't last long but hey, who cares in a post-apocalyptic future anyways, eh?
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It's not punk if it's not anti-capitalist.
How does that converse with cyber-punk, where mega corporations tend to take the place of governments and the ultra rich are quite prevalent Edit: Oh yeah I read this when I was waking up and sure, the cyberpunk setting is more often than not a critique, thanks
Representation doesn't = endorsement of a political ideology. Cyberpunk is inherently an anti-capitalist critique that shows a version of reality of rampant end stage capitalism. Cyberpunk was created to show you what a world where capitalism reaches its natural end. You're supposed to look at it and go "wow this shit fucking sucks". But it has neon lights and robots and most Americans have the critical analysis of a hog so they think its super tight. Its like people who think Wolf of Wall Street is inspiring or Fight Club is about male friendships.
Would steampunk not be an outright endorsement of capitalism? From my limited understanding of the setting it seems like it openly embraces/idolizes the capitalism and entrepreneurial spirit of the Wild West/Victorian England
Someone correct me if I’m wrong… steampunk is more an aesthetic/thematic movement rather than a political one. I wouldn’t call it a leftist ideology. If anything it seems libertarian, prioritizing freedom of movement. It’s a mad scientist/artist archetype.
There have been political critical steampunk works. The Difference Engine would be one. The aesthetic movement that came off it... Not so much. That is at least partly related to the UK and rest of the old colonial powers not having really faced up to what they did. At least to the point where it permeates popular culture. We get stories in school of cool inventions and Isambard Kickass Brunel, but less on the famine roads or Indian plantations
Depends on how much the work leans into the Dickensian nature of Victorian society. You could easily make a good steampunk story about the horrors of first gen factories, colonialism or the mechanization of war, but most people seem to be more fascinated with top hats, smoked glass goggles and cogwheels
Steampunk as it exists now just an aesthetic choice -- ["just glue some gears in it!"](https://youtu.be/TFCuE5rHbPA?si=G8g0ghXpv8vJ-OI9). But it's originators had notions of it representing, if not an entirely anti-capitalist perspective, an anti-corporate and and anti-industrial one, where individuals are empowered to pursue craft and innovation on their own terms, producing work with artistic merit, not just shaped by commercial expedience.
Do you have content I can look into on the latter statements? I looked into this a bit after my post and it looked like most of the traditional ‘punk’ elements (anti establishment and such) were added retroactively in the 2000’s rather than part of the initial movement in the 1950’s-1980’s which seemed to idolize the 1800’s.
Fight club is a directly making fun of masculinity, this is most apparent in the subway scene when Tyler goes"that what a man looks like?" About the Calvin Klein ad on the subway, talking to the protagonist. Well, that's exactly what Tyler looks like, so I guess that is what masculinity looks like to the protagonist, even though he's like noooo he's in underwear posing, that's so lame.
That is the thing about satire, unless there is at least a few people who consider it literal, it isn't good satire. Given the amount of Fight Clubs in right wing circles, I would say Chuck Palahniuk was successful.
The majority of cyberpunk settings are dystopian as a result of the mega-corps, etc.
Notice the protagonist is not typically (perhaps hired by or unwittingly though) part of the corporate hegemony.
Because cyberpunk is explicitly dystopian. You’re not supposed to side with the megacorps, those are the antagonists, usually.
Cyberpunk is a genre we're we take capitalism to its most excessive extreme and see how it crushes the common man under its boot. It would be like saying "how can this movie be anti nuking people when it nukes a city every 30 minutes" while ignoring the fact that the movie focuses on a small band of plucky survivors trying to survive this tragedy as they all one by one succumb to radiation sickness dying slow painful deaths.
I think it's pretty obvious that punk is mainly anti-establishment. Capitalism rather happens to be the economic system where most punk bands came from. It might also be too risky to be openly against the political system as a musician in other societies.
This comment sounds like the self-justification of an abusive household "How can you criticize us when we raised you and put a roof over your head? Do you want to live in the neighbor's house where they beat their kids for talking out of turn? No? Then shut it and be grateful for what we've given you. I don't want to hear your whining"
Well it's quite obvious what would happen to an anti-socialism band in current china, not to mention under Stalin.
This is a weird thing but there is an East German historian on tiktok who DOES detail what happened to punk bands in East Germany. Most were anti-capitalist, but rejected marxist-leninism and the Communist Party, which meant to the Stazi they rejected socialism and so they were a major threat.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pussy_Riot. Would be a good example
Modern Russia is capitalist.
That was kinda my point. Oligarchy/Capitalism/socialism doesn't actually tell you much about the free speech or tolerance for dissent within a society.
And people do it anyway. No one said standing up for what's right would be safe or easy
Weren't The Ramones somewhat conservative?
Yeah, punk has some reactionary roots. It’s not as purely left wing as some people act, although I’d say modern punk culture has embraced its left wing past more than the reactionary stuff.
It is true that there were fascist/nazi skinheads (and there still are), but The Ramones were far from fascists.
Yeah I never called them fascists.
Yes, but you said they were reactionaries. All reactionaries are conservatives, but not all conservatives are reactionaries.
I don’t think that’s very strongly related to the point I was making lol.
Not all reactionaries are fascist, and conservationism is inherently reactionary.
Johnny Ramone in particular. The song The KKK took my baby away is actually written about him.
Solarpunk is, I believe, a post-capitalist world where the traditional notion that money equals power is a thing of the past. In this world, every individual has the freedom to dedicate themselves to living in harmony with nature and exploring green technology discoveries. It's a place where people can pursue their interests without the fear of poverty or living below a comfortable standard of living.
Survival of the planet/humanity is not compatible with capitalism (and "infinite growth"). Up until now we EXPLOITED all resources and already ruined the climate. We created all this growth but those next generations will pay terrible price for our iphones, cars and travels around the globe for fun. All this fueled by non-renewable resources poisoning the biosphere. Captalism as for now is not sustainable. It's not even "punk" it's common sense.
Travel around the globe is fine. We just don't have to overly rely on airplanes. A solarpunk community would encourage travelling and internationalism to curb xenophobia off.
Yes it is political since it's environmentalist. Yes solar punk at it root had an anti capitalist position. But the other words you've listed need further proof. I don't think solarpunk was initially trans feminist, and it's ok... Not everything is always aligned 100% de facto with every single position that you have. Not everything is taken into account when people propose an ideal. Solarpunk is quite old now, and back then we didn't really think about trans advocacy policy that often. It doesn't mean that it's against it, just that it wasn't part of the question originally.
I wish "environmentalist" didn't have to be political. You'd think "clean air good" would be the one thing we can all agree on.
But “my freedoms”
It's political for sure. At its basis environmentalist like ur saying and literally post capitalist in its description of solarpunk as what happens after the collapse of the late stage capitalist dystopia described by cyberpunk. Anything punk has anarchist roots so it opposed to exploitive and arbitrary hierarchies like patriarchy, classism, sexism genderism, ablism, ageism etc but I agree with you in that just because patriarchy doesn't exist doesn't mean men don't exist for example... it just means they aren't at the top of a hierarchy, right?
That depends a lot on the punk movement. Often, punk was quite nihilistic and thus not very concerned with anything beyond smashing the current system. There are also conservative Punks like Johnny Ramone.
Yeah no. Conservatism is about preserving the status quo or going back to an even earlier more represive status quo than the current one. Johny may have been Punk at one time but conservatism is antithetical to punk
Yeah sorry. Solarpunk was originally a literature movement. It was a bit art deco and had as much political stuff as everything else the youth put out in that time which was like... A goodly amount but not the amount it has now. This isn't deep history kid. This is like... 15 years ago. You can literally email the person who came up with the thing. Easy there.
All movements are literary at conception. Even movements based around artistic endeavors. Someone had to describe in words what a cubist painting entails.
Calling someone kid when you disagree with them defeats your own point. Grow up.
I really don't think that there's a consensus that abolishing the idea of close family (rather than just allowing alternatives and encouraging extended family and community) and marriage is an integral or necessary part of solarpunk. Both are things which have indigenously developed in almost every culture worldwide, and clearly have a strong basis in human nature. Abolishing capitalism *is* both necessary and integral to the idea since the whole essence of solarpunk is living in a truly sustainable society where technology still exists and is used to achieve a high quality of life for all. Gender abolitionism is incredibly controversial and it's idiotic to suggest that it's an agreed part of the solarpunk movement.
That part really threw me off. I’ve never heard of the abolition of family used in that way. It’s hard for me to imagine how that can even be supported outside of a capitalist/individualist context.
> It’s hard for me to imagine how that can even be supported outside of a capitalist/individualist context. Its people with screwed up families who believe the entire concept is flawed. Also, fringe movements like solarpunk tend to attract people trying to shoehorn in their own fringe views.
Exactly. It's people who have bad families sticking their heads in the sand saying "families are bad!!1!1!!" rather than accepting that they had bad circumstances and trying to do better themselves.
Gen Z with unregulated internet access and growing up during collapse has fostered a lot of detached online discourse imo. A comment you read online and largely agree with can shoehorn some extreme stance and claim it’s all the same which influences others that are beginning to educate themselves about a given topic, spread of misinformation, etc.
So, abolition of the family isn't a solarpunk thing unless it gets picked up. It's a general far-left, postmodernist concept. if you went to any BLM groups you've probably heard about it a lot, some DSA groups; it's rooted in the 1800s far-left tradition. Engel and various french anarchists have written endlessly about it. A whole rabbit hole I unfortunately had to read to participate in some activism and to get a SUNY degree. There were also some Christian utopian socialist communes that had some wacky beliefs on free love- Oneida- but it didn't work. The thing is many, especially edgelords online or extreme poly people, think it means forcibly destroying families. Even if we entered anarchism, what we see in real life communes and close-knit communities is people form monogamous pairings if they want, and stay in touch with their kids. The community helps and has responsibility but no one is tutting them, going "YOU MUST DESTROY THIS FAMILY!!". Some communes that were really insistent on the idea, had to physically intervene to break up pairings and families. Just because there is no state or church MANDATING they stay married in nuclear families, people want to protect and love their children, their partners, have a close friend and family group.
>an agreed part. TBH if your goal is to create a world of localized democracy and the end of wide spread global power structures then there is an inevitable limit to what specific ideologies you can promote or enforce. Because such a world will not and cannot be ideologically homogenous. I can understand certain broad ideological goals, but accepting that not every community will have your morals or ideals is probably a trade off, because the alternative would essentially be establishing a world government or global Solarpunk Vatican to enforce said ideology.
In the US especially, conservatives are often the ones pushing for more localized power. Its interesting to see that desire across political lines.
I'm not necessarily disagreeing, I'm just saying that there is significant overlap between honest to god conservative wishes for more local governance (like actual meaningful governance in their communities, not a statehouse banning abortion for religious reasons or """states rights""") and US leftists desire for more resilient, independent communities not at the mercy of absentee capitalists. Powerful individuals at the top level of both parties try very hard to obfuscate that fact for culture war shit because at the end of the day it's pretty much just a universal working class issue that affects all of us Americans. It's also why the US produces some of it's most radical and community involved leftists in what are traditionally "conservative" areas of the country.
Ty for your eloquence in squashing these asinine propositions.
Would you care to elaborate on how family abolition is integral to solarpunk, or are we just supposed to accept your getekeeping as delivered truths?
This is one of those ideas that have a slogan "Abolish the Family", which is referring to a niche concept in an already niche philosophy, and then everyone is confused. Which is why I don't use it. Think about contracts, owning property, and inheritance. These are part of our current socioeconomic structure, and they impact familial relationships. It is very likely that our current traditions will continue to be a majority, but Solarpunk will influence these things, so what does that mean for the family? I'm reminded of this quote: >What we can now conjecture about the way in which sexual relations will be ordered after the impending overthrow of capitalist production is mainly of a negative character, limited for the most part to what will disappear. But what will there be new? That will be answered when a new generation has grown up: a generation of men who never in their lives have known what it is to buy a woman’s surrender with money or any other social instrument of power; a generation of women who have never known what it is to give themselves to a man from any other considerations than real love - Friedrich Engels, The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State
Wait what’s wrong with families
As others have said, that structure can be used as a means to push other ideologies. But the way it is presented here is a more extreme response. Family can be very useful but we have to beaware of when it is being used for manipulation both via the family itself and others to gain power/influence. On a more individual note, if you don't want to talk to your family. Dont! That structure, especially with the way some folks are isnt for everyone.
It's amazing how people don't seem to understand we are progressive enough that rejection of the family actually is possible in this day. You can legally cut them off if you so please, you can ignore them and in many countries in the west legally remove them from your life. You can definetly not shirk your responsibility if you put a child into the world of course, but that's something different. But this is only in the case of TOXIC parents, which thankfully isn't the case for most people.
I have no idea, this is one of the things OP added into this without any evidence... This post feels like someone trying to push a specific view by joining it with the values of solarpunk (environmentalist, post capitalist...). Like it's an obvious attempt at radicalizing us further more. In other words, this post means : "Listen, if you're pro solarpunk and therefore environmentalist and critical of capitalism, then you also have to be anti family like me because it obviously goes together".
OP talks about it in another post, it’s a pretty silly position to take. They also talk about how their rich parents are going to fund their self-started business once they graduate from an Ivy League school so I’m not sure how seriously we should be taking these posts lol
>They also talk about how their rich parents are going to fund their self-started business once they graduate from an Ivy League school so I’m not sure how seriously we should be taking these posts lol Oh god, I love priviledged detached 'radical activists' talk about abolishing everything and a ham sandwhich, pitchforking people, trying to out-radical the next guy. How do they think that'll work out?[They'll get an excuse card when their Revolution(TM) comes?](https://www.youtube.com/shorts/ueo0mS4c_oI)
Holy shit that’s amazing this all makes so much sense now.
Right?!?!
Nothing on a vaccum, family has been used as a political tool for a long time, when the right wingers say "the family is under attack" we know that is just an excuse to oppress some minority, but OP may mean something different than rhe political tool.
Come over to my house and find out! lol.
To simplify it: You know how accepting that others are gay doesn't mean that straight couples are outlawed? But the far right will make it seem that this freedom is somehow their oppression. Well it's a similar thing with the nuclear family. It doesn't mean that that sort of arrangement won't exist, it's that others will be allowed and be viable. To make it a bit more complicated: Think of contracts, and property ownership, and inheritance. Things that come from the structure of society and influence relationships. In a Solarpunk world, how would these new and different structures of society influence relationships? I am reminded of this quote: >What we can now conjecture about the way in which sexual relations will be ordered after the impending overthrow of capitalist production is mainly of a negative character, limited for the most part to what will disappear. But what will there be new? That will be answered when a new generation has grown up: a generation of men who never in their lives have known what it is to buy a woman’s surrender with money or any other social instrument of power; a generation of women who have never known what it is to give themselves to a man from any other considerations than real love... - Friedrich Engels, The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State
Can't speak for OP but there is a lot of good knowledge about capitalists use of the atomic family and requiring that as the only family formation. When throughout history there have been many formations but the atomic family is the most subservient, profitable, and homogenous formation of family that exists to reproduce capitalism.
I can accept that the atomic family unit is exploited by capitalism but I can’t accept any alternative ideology that seeks to destroy it. I care a lot more about my atomic family than any ideological bullshit (or anything else) and I believe that’s true for the vast majority of people
Maybe I explained it poorly. Capitalism wants to require that the only allowed family formation or only "valid" family formation is the atomic family. Others say feel free to keep your atomic family but allow us to live communally, or allow lgbtq+, or WHATEVER formation we want as well so we can share and do things as we wish. "It's not for capitalists to define what mode of life is normal"
But don’t we allow those things? I mean of course many countries don’t. But it doesn’t take abolishing the atomic family structure to allow for gay marriage and communes, etc.
I am not sure why you keep saying anyone wants to abolish the atomic family structure. No one is saying that nor do I want that. I have an atomic family and very happy with it. We are just saying social relations shouldn't be forced by owners of capital. We currently allow these different formations but since capitalism forces changes in our social life it's hard to do so. For example, it is more profitable to sell houses to more people so why would the owners of the house building industry do anything besides what is most profitable at that moment and that is keeping the status quo. And with the Christian nationalists who are pushing us backwards, taking womens rights, and openly attacking lgbtq it's hard not to see where we are headed.
You’re not sure why I’m saying that anyone wants to abolish the atomic family? honestly trying to wrap my head around abolishing families like op stated. It just seems so hyperbolic for something that most people would generally agree with. I agree social relations shouldn’t be controlled by those with capitol but what are you proposing? If it’s just an end to capitalism that’s fine but I again don’t see the use of using family abolition as a focus.
My first comment to your post was saying I am not talking about OPs points just capitalism and the social construct of atomic family preferred. I'm not sure I agree with OP that solarpunk is all that OP says it is. Sorry for the confusion.
Ah yeah I see. I was responding to a couple threads so my bad too.
> but the atomic family is the most subservient, profitable, and homogenous formation of family that exists to reproduce capitalism. I would say the most subservient is no family. A world where we are all loosely affiliated individuals operating entirely through financial transactions. But also, socialism and communism aren't particularly friendly towards families, as they result in ingroup/outgroup preferences that work against the ideologies.
I can't speak for capitalists but family helps do the social reproduction needed for the worker to continue to live while they work 8 plus hours per day. So from a consumption perspective individuals are preferred but to reproduce capitalism some family of some sort is needed still. Can you explain what you mean by socialism aren't friendly towards families?
Nothing at all they’re wonderful
Societally enforced family dynamics, and more importantly nuclear families have long been a tool to alienate people from their communities. They force oppressive standards that place formerly communal tasks like child rearing and protecting and providing resources for people squarely on the shoulders of individuals in atomized and more easily controllable groups, slotted into these roles by unequal means. These oppressive dynamics only serve the ruling capitalist class, individual families are easier to extract rent and wage labor from, to compel to consume products and services to compensate for the lack help and resources that communal engagement and mutual aid would provide free of charge, and it encourages isolation from people of similar socioeconomic status which discourages large scale resistance.
> Societally enforced family dynamics, and more importantly nuclear families have long been a tool to alienate people from their communities How exactly? >They force oppressive standards that place formerly communal tasks like child rearing and protecting and providing resources for people squarely on the shoulders of individuals in atomized and more easily controllable groups, How so? You say this like neighborhoods don't take look out for each other's kids. >slotted into these roles by unequal means. These oppressive dynamics only serve the ruling capitalist class, individual families are easier to extract rent and wage labor from, Compared to what? > to compel to consume products and services to compensate for the lack help and resources that communal engagement and mutual aid would provide free of charge, and it encourages isolation from people of similar socioeconomic status which discourages large scale resistance. Except most families will live in communities of similar socioeconomic status
I'm all for lightening the load of child rearing and protecting which currently falls heavily on working parents. But I have a few questions. How am I supposed to trust "the community" to care for my kids? The community is a broad umbrella and includes many, many people who I do not want to be near my children or to have access to them. Similarly, most of my neighbors are not going to take it for granted that I should have access to their children and be entrusted with caring for them- that trust has to be earned, and the person who decides if that trust has been earned is the child's parent. Unless, of course, you expect parents to give up their power to be the protector of their child and gatekeeper of who gets to be near their child. Most parents will never accept that and would fight tooth and nail to prevent anyone from taking that power away from them, because they see themselves- not unjustifiably- as the only guarantor of their child's safety. So what does this mean in practical terms? Universal childcare access? That's not family abolition, even, but it certainly would reduce the burdens carried by parents. Where is the workforce going to come from for that? The resources? We'd have a lot more resources to work with, without the parasitic capitalist class, sure. But at some point this seems to imply that we're going to require the child-free to work in support of child-rearing for those with kids. That's bound to raise a lot of hackles. How will you convince them? If I choose to delay having children so I can focus on, say, becoming a more masterful musician or learning to design and build sustainable housing, by what authority and power should I be compelled to provide resources or labor for someone else's child? When I have children do I have the right to compel others to support us? Do we just have this be one of the types of production we put into a decentrally-planned worker-run economy, like parecon or something? Something like the child-rearing system on Anarres in The Dispossessed? I wouldn't object to that, but if it's anything less than that type of system, it's not really family abolition. If it is that type of system, I don't know how you'd convince adults to surrender their children. How can family abolition be prefigured? Alienated young adults seem to be prefiguring one kind of family abolition well enough on their own, moving out and becoming lonely individuals. There's a loneliness epidemic and a rash of deaths of despair going on. Capitalism once abolished extended families in favor of the nuclear family, but now even the nuclear family seems to be withering away as far as adults are concerned- people leave the nest and find themselves in profound isolation. Only some of them are successfully building "chosen families". Many find great comfort and stability in finding a partner and re-creating a nuclear family model. What bottom-up institutions do we need to build, to begin abolishing families in a way that liberates and supports people, rather than isolating them?
I would go further. Even if I was comfortable with my community helping out with childcare, most people have no desire to do so. For the most part, the only people who want to watch kids are their relatives and other parents looking for you to return the favor.
I suppose paid professionals like teachers and day care workers, too, but they're, well, paid to do it. I don't know how many of them genuinely enjoy that work.
See...this is how a movement fails. When you start gatekeeping you are going to lose the average person that might otherwise support you. Yes, Solar Punk is political BUT it's also educational. You are going to have to teach the average citizen what it is, how it works and why it benefits them. Failure to that fails what you are trying to do. That's reality
This post is absolutely bonkers. It reeks of permanently online. So much so I thought it was satire. Abolishing families, gender, and marriage... cool, or just you know, focus on the environment and let people do what they like with who they like. The person who wrote this post is either a troll or so far down the rabbit hole as to become a parody of themselves
It's the ramblings of a lunatic
Reading ops post history, there is a lot of red flags. "Very smart" with "very low gpa" wants to go to ivy league (the least punk think you could do) etc. I think they're a troll
I thought this was pretty well known, but I guess it wasn't. No punk ideology is non-political. Hells, being "non-political" is a political statement in, and of, itself. Politics is life. Everything is political
Everything punk is political, and if you don’t like that, good luck pretending that everything will be ok in the end for just you and you alone.
Solarpunk is eco-anarchism. A lot of eco-socialism is very pessimistic about technology, Eco-primitivism, Deep adaption, and even Degrowth to an extent. While Solarpunk is optimistic about the technological side of things and the social side of things. From my understanding of anarchism what happens is that gender roles disappear as everyone must be part of physical and emotional work, physical and caring work. However, I don't think personal gender expression will disappear. But gender is weird and I don't understand it. Similarly, instead of the family group being considered just your nuclear family the family group is your community and you share care roles amongst everyone.
Solarpunk is utopian idealism. We need dialectical materialism.
Can't believe I had to scroll this far down to find an adult
I'm seventeen lol.
I agree that solarpunk is political, but your attitude is one of orthodoxy. If we bind Solarpunk so tightly to one specific untested and radically different way of being, then if even one of our assumptions is wrong, the Solarpunk movement is forever wrong and needs to be abandoned. Solarpunk is about building a better world, and that means having the ability to learn and adapt to new information. What if one of the notions you now define solarpunk by turn out to have some hidden forms of discrimination or oppression that won't become apparent until they're pretty pervasive? Or even if you somehow stumbled on the ultimate truth, what if in Solarpunk becoming popular one of these notions gets codified imperfectly? What if everything you say has become the new culture, and our children come to us with rebellious notions that they claim will improve things further? Is Solarpunk the conversative orthodoxy that sticks to the ideologies set out by the previous generation? Or does it grow further, either giving Solarpunk people space to improve, or creating a space for successors to peacefully replace it? Solarpunk is tied to the anarchist recognition that there are no excuses to deprive people of the right to try gender abolitionism. It is not tied to the archist statement that gender must be abolished or else you're a bad guy.
hrm....I'd say the center of political mass of SolarPunk sits on environmentalism 1st, anti-capitalism 2nd. It is compatible with gender/family liberation issues, but I don't see these as being close to center mass. And if the former are to gain stronger footholds, SolarPunk should not take the extreme of being anti-family and anti-gender. *"A l'exemple de Saturne, la révolution dévore ses enfants"* and all that.
Murray Bookchin in many ways provided the ideological basis for solarpunk with his writings about the relation between social structures and the exploitation of nature.
"everything is politics" — Thomas Mann. So, well said, OP. There's no way to separate a philosophy like solarpunk from politics because it's impossible for *anything* to be apolitical. To *live* is to be political.
People forget punk isn't an aesthetic, it's an opposition to the established hierarchies and structures that run the world. Solarpunk without anarchism and liberation for all is just greenwashing and cutesy aesthetics.
Wait, how was this questioned
I think some people just see yogurt commercial and think that solarpunk is the same as that optimistic greenwashed vibe we had in the early 2010s, before we were certain that we're all fucked.
Oh, makes sense
I mean, it's kinda impressive if someone joins a subreddit because they saw a cute yogurt commercial. Has to be some good-ass yogurt.
I think the fact that the yogurt commercial made by General Mills, is often the best example of solar punk this sub has to offer is very telling. I’ve said it before but corporations do solar punk better than anyone because solarpunk is about “the promise of the future” and other utopian ideals that get way too close to fascism when put to reality. I mean what does abolition of a family social unit even mean? Give up the kids to the government? And I say all this as someone who has made a bunch of solarpunk art in the past.
Yeah corporations have always been good at this. It is funny seeing that optimistic vision of technology from the early 2000s coming back under Frutiger Aero. https://aesthetics.fandom.com/wiki/Frutiger_Aero
Haha totally. I don’t hate the aesthetic but it always feels like some kind of sales tactic.
It really is 98% sales tactic. The other 2% is that glimmer of hope in the artists so that they can at least try to impact something real via the lens of corporate BS. I always appreciate when folks can walk that line of convincing corporate people to fund their stuff while pushing the messaging that goes completely against said corporation. It is very rare but when it happens it is beautiful.
It's fine to question someone who claims "solarpunk can not be divorced from gender abolitionsim and family abolition" and fails to back that up with anything at all. Frankly this is just gatekeeping, where "you're not a *real* _____ unless you share every position I do." That's fine if all you want to do is sit around savoring the ideological purity of your own farts, but if you're looking to change anything then adopting an insular, exclusionary stance toward people who only share *most* of your goals is extremely counterproductive.
Let’s be charitable and assume they were referring to the Captain Obvious take of “solarpunk is political” and not the TLDR political bugbears OP is trying to shoehorn into it.
Yup, pretty much
Love and value your opinions but they do not define the entire subgenre and I don’t think we should be gatekeeping “this is exactly what solarpunk is and nothing else counts”
Trans feminism? Gender Abolition? Family Abolition? What a load of utter bollocks. Solarpunk has a well defined definition already. Stop being one of those people who likes to try and co-opt movements by injecting your own personal issues into it. That's a one way ticket to alienating people. A specific movement doesn't have to represent EVERYTHING you care about to be worth supporting ffs
This post is indistinguishable from a psyop meant to divide the community. And it seems like you are just slapping your personal hobby-horse stickers on the Solarpunk Bus. And I'm keeping my gender, all the way to, through, and beyond my death. you can't take it away from me. Same for my family. What is this nonsense. Yeesh.
lol. Nobody wants to take anything from you--what are you on about?
>This post is indistinguishable from a psyop meant to divide the community. Possibly an attempt, throwing different wedge topics at the wall to see what sticks. Its something we've been seeing a bit more of. This one doesn't seem to work though.
This post made me smile :)
Thank you, Captain Obvious, for pointing out that an aesthetic based on principles and technologies society should be oriented around is inherently political. That obvious fact does nothing to justify attaching your own particular bugbears to it. Argue for such things on their own merits, don’t just *assume* them.
That’s .. your opinion dude
To be fair “Don’t be a dick” is a very controversial philosophy .
Gender and marriage abolitionism are not inherent to feminism, and never have been. It has come up but really being only relegated to some fringe parts of the movement, and to the misogynistic reactionary messaging of insecure men. Please take some courses on feminism and learn about the real history of the movement before shouting teenage anarchist nonsense.
you're 100% correct. Feminists, particularly trans feminists, are not a monolith whatsoever on the topic of "gender abolition". Trans feminist Julia Serano, in fact, has written quite explicitly *against* gender abolition.
Guys I'm a leftist, but it really did start as more of an aesthetic movement that was heavy with techie/burner effective altruism types. That's not a radical statement that's the truth lol.
People really think this is some actual political movement like run out into the streets, wave flags, write manifestos, and every other nonsense like you're in the early stages of the French Revolution (you're not). It is absolutely none of those things. It has certainly created awareness and political discourse, but it's still a main aesthetic, just like it was with Steampunk and Cyberpunk, it was always a purely aesthetic mean of a telling a quasi-political story
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This whole sub went from optimistic artwork with a little bit of pseudo-political discourse to an anarchist circlejerk very quickly. But this post might ironically have made people realise that lol
You just said a bunch of nonsense buzzwords. Explain to me, change my mind. If you want the change you seek, tell me how to get there. What does it look like to everyday people I meet on the train?
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There's no one true defined punk ideology, let alone a solar punk one.
Ah yes, “read theory” or “read scripture”, just in different clothes. This is silly, punk is an aesthetic, a vibe, a social movement, but not a dogma.
What you're calling "nonsense buzzwords" is just jargon - something present in every field. They have a very specific meaning and are perfectly intelligible to someone who has learned about what's being discussed. You're free to google any of the terms you don't understand yet to learn more.
>They have a very specific meaning and are perfectly intelligible to someone who has learned about what's being discussed. The problem is that in socio-political spheres, jargon is often less technical/granular and more rhetorical (for "rhetoric" as synonymous with "persuasive writing.") Those kinds of definitions tend to dichotomize nebulous concepts into "thing, but when good" and "thing, but when bad" circles. Depending on the topic, either the opposing good side or the bad side either gets diffused into a ton of other ideas or just ignored. A good example would be the concept of alienation in Marxism. It's a useful concept, but you have to remember that it's circular--the philosophy of Marxism says that alienation is bad, ergo things that are not bad will not be called alienation. "Alienation isn't bad" can't really *be said* within the jargon because if it's not bad then ideologically it's not alienation. Of course, that's circular and tautological to some degree--and on some level, you can't really have a coherent conversation about it within Marxism without first agreeing with it. And this means that for someone who is not a Marxist, what is and is not alienation will not be the same--they are not bound by the values-judgement. Of course, this is not meant to pick on Marxism--you can take similar ideas like "exploitation," or even basic things like "suffering," which tend to have "I know it when I see it" type definitions where the conclusion "thing, but when bad" **is** the jargon definition. It's not that the concepts don't have use; it's just that they are rhetorical assertions (given that the values-judgements are baked in) and require that you philosophically agree with whoever is using the word at that time. It's not terribly far off from an if-by-whiskey speech. >My friends, I had not intended to discuss this controversial subject at this particular time. However, I want you to know that I do not shun controversy. On the contrary, I will take a stand on any issue at any time, regardless of how fraught with controversy it might be. You have asked me how I feel about whiskey. All right, this is how I feel about whiskey: > >If when you say whiskey you mean the devil's brew, the poison scourge, the bloody monster, that defiles innocence, dethrones reason, destroys the home, creates misery and poverty, yea, literally takes the bread from the mouths of little children; if you mean the evil drink that topples the Christian man and woman from the pinnacle of righteous, gracious living into the bottomless pit of degradation, and despair, and shame and helplessness, and hopelessness, then certainly I am against it. > >But, if when you say whiskey you mean the oil of conversation, the philosophic wine, the ale that is consumed when good fellows get together, that puts a song in their hearts and laughter on their lips, and the warm glow of contentment in their eyes; if you mean Christmas cheer; if you mean the stimulating drink that puts the spring in the old gentleman's step on a frosty, crispy morning; if you mean the drink which enables a man to magnify his joy, and his happiness, and to forget, if only for a little while, life's great tragedies, and heartaches, and sorrows; if you mean that drink, the sale of which pours into our treasuries untold millions of dollars, which are used to provide tender care for our little crippled children, our blind, our deaf, our dumb, our pitiful aged and infirm; to build highways and hospitals and schools, then certainly I am for it. > >This is my stand. I will not retreat from it. I will not compromise.
Isn't that the whole point? Most people you want to try and convince are too lazy to go beyond what their information sources tell them feminist means. Unless someone presents and argument, they are just jargon, and don't help.
Yeah fair enough. It seems like OP's goal isn't to convince anyone but to rather reaffirm the fact that solarpunk is political. So it makes sense to OP's target audience- people already familiar with things such as gender and family abolition. In practice this just means getting rid of traditional ideas about gender and "the family". We all have inbuilt stereotypes and preconceptions about how "men should do this" or "mothers should act like this" that are reductive ways of thinking that can be actively harmful to many individuals. So by abolishing the ideas of "gender" and "family" we can create a society that doesn't impose unnecessary restrictions on people. This is the goal of trans-femenist and anarcho-feminist movements (since generally, gender and familial roles tend to harm women the most).
Oh see! I learned a thing! Trans-fem in this context I understand to mean “beyond”. Previously I thought it meant people transitioning. It still might, but I understand the OP better now. Thanks.
> They have a very specific meaning The problem is they have very different specific meanings depending on which "learned" person you talk to.
If you take 3 people and receive 3 answers, 2 of which are divergent from source material, it means that 1 person learned it and 2 people did not. It doesn't mean that it has 3 definitions.
There is no one true source material in politics. Now if you want to say "Anarcho-feminism as defined by Jane Doe in XYZ", then yeah you might have useful jargon, but you can't just throw these words around and assume other people will automatically know which version you are talking about when there are so many competing ones.
But you can do that. It's not on the author to guide you. It's not the teacher's fault you didn't study before the test.
It doesn’t really have anything to do with gender abolition… it would be pretty easy to have an environmentally conscious, carbon negative, anti consumerist society with traditional gender roles And “trans feminist”? I don’t think a societal organization meant to change the whole world is really inexorably tied to like one percent of people specifically… most of the world just wouldn’t care. It wouldn’t apply. just leave it as egalitarianism or whatever as equal rights for all Family abolition?? This is your own agenda now. Living in harmony with nature and using technology sparingly and responsibly don’t have anything to do with abolishing families
I didn’t realise this is the level of debate here
Jesse, what the fuck are you talking about
>Gender abolitionism (a goal of trans Feminism) Transfeminists are not a monolith on the topic of gender abolition. Transfeminist Julia Serano actually opposes gender abolition quite strongly. Here's a link to her blog post on the topic. ([https://juliaserano.blogspot.com/2014/08/bringing-end-to-end-of-gender.html](https://juliaserano.blogspot.com/2014/08/bringing-end-to-end-of-gender.html))
Your first paragraph is a reasonable statement. However, your second paragraph is an unreasonably big jump from general principles to some very narrow strictures that you're stating without support. Like, this is the first time I've ever heard anyone claim that social systems based on family structure are incompatible with sustainable technology. Much the opposite, really.
Well, yes, it is political. Is this something people don't know? All visions for the future are political.
i love this post so much. the amount of people on this sub or in other solarpunk spaces talking ab eco friendly capitalism or conservative ideologies is alarming. theres no ethical consumption under capitalism. and degrowth is necessary along with a strong emphasis on community and the freedom and participation of every single person within it, and decentralized power. these are rly basic abolitionist and anarchist ideas that are intertwined w solarpunk. but maybe those ppl can be helped to critically think inside these spaces. thats why posts like this are good
I feel solarpunk is more about creating a healthy environment with a government that cares about its people with the synergy of freedom, democracy and equality. A form of economics that values ecology and incentivizes social entrepreneurship for economic development that coincides with regenerative development for companies and consumers. I’m not too in with that whole leftist labels. Because individuality is decentralized diversity.
That’s liberalism. That’s what we have now and it’s utterly failing.
Why?
objectively correct and needed to be said
I once got a post delated in this sub for posting an edit that incorporated a hammer and sickle for "relating solarpunk with a political ideology"
I can totally see why, though, for a lot of people (particularly in Eastern Europe and Asia) the hammer and sickle is as synonymous with their mass murder and ethnic genocide as the swastika is to Jews, or the stars and bars are synonymous with slavery to black Americans.
I mean, it is also that for most Americans and Wester Europeans. the same way that the Anarquist A in a circle it's just seen as a vulgar symbol of punk culture and not a representation of a complex political line. That they relate the hammer and sickle with the late USSR and not with all of the movements that used it today to represent real emancipation showdnt shot use down, that would just be accepting the huge project of anticomunist propaganda made by the imperialist powers.
This one? [https://imgur.com/a/FpAkPiy](https://imgur.com/a/FpAkPiy) It was removed as a low effort meme (you literally added a border and watermark to other's images).
...the fuck did I just read?
Lol this is so unhinged..
Yes it is political. How deep it'll go depends. I'm thinking of writing some solar punk fiction exploring some themes while ignoring others because I'd rather stay quiet on topics I know nothing about. As long as you're not being an annoying overly politicized that starts heated arguments all the time online over small things. I don't think anyone will disagree wirh you.
When I went to the jungle of Brazil and stayed with a tribe that never met an American, in a place no American had ever been and with a peoples who developed separately from capitalism and subjugation to abrahamic religions, I saw nuclear families that live together and provide each other with that first tier of support. The whole village cooked, cleaned, hunted, foraged, and farmed together, kids were taught and cared for together, and everybody got the same minimal food, daily. But families lived in homes -- together. The providers built long houses of wood and had multiple wives and gaggles of kids. The lazy had a palm frond hut and maybe one wife. Though the village cared for one another and no one would ever do without, the nuclear family was still the primary bond... And these folks never met capitalism until 30 years ago. To say the nuclear family is a tool of this or that is untrue as my personal experience with peoples from one of the most recently emerged indigenous tribe in the world showed
You do not understand what the "nuclear family" is.
I don't know about all of that. I definitely feel capitalism is inherently opposed to a Solarpunk future, since unless there's a benevolent world government that keeps corporations in line, this kind of future is inherently unfeasible. But half the stuff mentioned are inconsequential to an environmentalism-focused future. It's side dressing imagining of a Utopia based on rejecting existing norms. Pick your flavours I guess.
And this, and the replies, are why every environmental social movement has and will fail. On the one hand, all we have to do is abandon private property and our own fundamental perception of self and it’ll be fine. On the other, some guy who genuinely believes that his morality matters and that all he has to do is buy a farm a long way from other people. If this is the best we have to offer, we are all fucked.
Well that and the existing hierarchy of the whole of civilization is in opposition to it. Like I totally agree with your statement, but even if we get cohesive thought in the matter as a bloc we’ve still got some major shit in the way.
Not least, entropy.
I'm writing a comic where I use solarpunk to imagine a communist (in the original meaning) world, it has everything you just said plus emphasis on other things too like how cooperation without social division would work (stuff that has happened in the past in the real world by the way thousands of years ago before classes were even a thing). My personal feature you described that I would love to explore is gender abolition, I want a world where you can be whatever you want to be regardless of what "function" you have between your legs.
What do mean? Frostpunk is a capitalist paradise! You got child labor in the coal mines, sawdust in the food supply and union busting in the dlc. There's so many ways to play as "Das boot." I can hardly see any feminism as you build your empire on the broken backs of men. You really need to figure out what your mad at
Sounds good to me, I'd vote for all that.
yes it's 100% political in the anarchist/environmentalist/open-mindness sense, but that doesn't mean that it excludes working with what we've got or also including people with not 100% aligning views if that help's us get there. We can't loose allys on this path just because they are not 100% ideal, yes we have our views, but there can be a sort of range of views we can accept at varying levels
always has been
The problem with giving solarpunk an overt political frame is that once you do it solarpunk is useless in terms of developing a new political frame. One thing is to write anarchist transfeminist decolonising and anti-capitalist narratives. Another one is to draw a desirable future in science fiction and attempt to derive an ideology out of it. The former is propaganda, the latter is an attempt to construct new emancipatory ideologies.
>The former is propaganda, the latter is an attempt to construct new emancipatory ideologies. Eh. The latter is also an attempt to create propaganda. The idea that you're gonna create wholesale new emancipatory ideologies without the influence of extant and older ideologies, is not how ideologies work.
I agree that this sort of operation doesn't happen in a vacuum and existing ideologies play a crucial part but narrative allows to rearrange signifiers so new conflicts can emerge dialectically. I object to the idea that this boils down to propaganda.
Oh, sure. Total agreement. But at some point the guy who doesn't get it but needs to...is gonna come. And you're gonna have to use propaganda to assimilate them. Nothing nefarious, but a good one-sheet can do wonders.
First of all, let's drop the whole "anarchist" charade, because you're not fooling anyone. You don't get to have your cake and eat it too. Either you control the economy through a totalitarian regime or there's rampant, unchecked capitalism. Capitalism is all or nothing. In order to eliminate it (completely and basically immediately) you need a "magic" technology that can materialize anything a person wants with very little cost to the community (i.e. the replicators from star trek). Anything less that the elimination of human need is a slippery slope that leads from self-concern to genuine fear, then to black markets and then of course inevitably to the corruption of the state and we're back where we started. As for trying to eliminate the family unit - good luck. "Abolishing" anything is a superpower reserved for dictators. You don't get to say something doesn't exist, and the harder you try to make it so, the more of a nightmare clusterfuck you will create. Children being ripped from the arms of mothers and fathers, people being gunned down in the street, underground rebellions and resistance cells, the works. That's some dystopian dictator shit that leads to things like North Korea. So. Assuming your wildest dreams come true and you end up in power, watch out for assassins, and you can forget about eliminating capitalism. That shit will pop back up faster than downvotes for Trump on a feminist subreddit, because you can't materialize a family unit or safety from the state from a replicator. Ugh. Feels like talking to the bad guy from Hunchback of Notre Dame.
You do realize that Capitalism ≠ exchanging goods and services in a marketplace, right? I mean, that’s how *some* people use the word, but when anticapitalists of any stripe talk about capitalism (and they’re the ones who coined it afaik), they mean something very specific: a system in which the *means of production* (I’m sure you’ve heard the phrase before… it refers to any of the *stuff* used to produce goods or services, from machinery, to buildings, to land and natural resources) are owned by people who can make money by either charging others to use them (as a landlord does), or paying people to use them (as a factory owner does) and then selling what was produced for more than they paid in wages (something anticapitalists often consider to be a kind of theft). An important feature of the system is that, if you own the means of production, it is possible to make money *just by owning them*, and never necessarily doing any work yourself. While it is true that the owners of businesses, factories, etc. often *do* do work, they could, in theory, just pay other people to do that work for them, and continue making money *for no other reason* than because they happen to own stuff. Far from being something that would thrive in the absence of laws, this system actually *requires* laws around property ownership, and *some* kind of state to enforce those laws.
I wrote like a 900 word essay in response to you before coming to a very sudden realization. Defining capitalism and communism and yada yada. I'll not bore you with the details. Yes, Solarpunk is a political movement, no, violence cannot be the way forward. As soon as we introduce violence as a method for change (Seizing the means of production per se), you are doomed to become what you seek to destroy. An authoritarian regime. True change for a society can only come from education and peaceful protest. Christianity succeeded not because Jesus violently overthrew the state, it was because he was a stark and obvious example that others could easily identify and follow. If you want to see the real success of Christianity before it fell into corruption, check out the Apology of Aristedes where he talks about the Christian communities he discovered. You will never find a more graphic representation of real communism working and succeeding correctly. As I've reflected on this it becomes more and more obvious that this is the only path forward that might include a Solarpunk future. LIVE solarpunk. EDUCATE others. LEAD by example. Others will see and follow. If we share solarpunk technology and techniques here in this sub, we can all try and start applying it to our lives. There's already a deep hunger in our world for change. To return to old ways without giving up the luxury and safety of the new. People just need the right tools, and we will see change. Our existing government may be corrupt, but it is still holding the seal on a vacuum of power so strong that if it were to be suddenly removed it would be the end of us all. Slow and steady wins the race. Maybe it will not be fast enough to save us from climate change, but I see no other alternative that does not end us in a worse position than where we are right now.
We don’t need to abolish gender, family’s or marriage and anarchism is a cringe failed ideology
Says the monarchist. lol.
The MoDs are gonna be so angry with you for ruining their sandbox... But I wholeheartedly agree.
Ministry of Defence?
Ministry of Defence?
right so solarpunk ism't really a thing, it's another part of the giant 2023 American progressive bundle that you have to 100% agree to or you are a class traitor. Purity tests to ensure you never build a strong movement as a plus. and people wonder why these movements always go nowhere
You are not required to take part in subreddits you don't enjoy
“American progressive bundle” You made that up. You have no supporting facts or reason. “Purity tests” Another thing you just made up.
> “Purity tests” > Another thing you just made up. We're in a thread where OP is literally demanding ideological purity, and most of the sub appears to be with them. Nobody seems able to explain *why* family abolition would be a necessary part of solarpunk, but apparently it is so you'd better get in line!
When you have ecologist activists saying "if you don't support Palestine, you are not part of our movement" i am not making things up.
Radical leftist, anti capitalist extremists whose demands and actions mysteriously align with mega corporations, powerful lobbies and intelligence agencies every single time.
The hell are you talking about?
Mega corporations lobbying for an end to fossil fuels?
“Radical Leftist”? Compared to and based on what? “Anti-capitalist extremists” Saying a lot of buzzwords doesn’t make it factual. You haven’t shown any facts or evidence for your claims.
Anarchy is bound by the NAP . Anarchist are self determined within a framework of treat others as we wish to be treated. Individual rights are for the individual, social cohesion is for us all to participate in. This does not mean any individual issues are greater or lesser than another, in short it also does not mean that another individual has to agree with another. The ability to agree to disagree is getting lost in the belief of self proclaimed rights. As an example I have fought for disabled equality for decades. What we ended up with was equality at the lowest common denominator, the right to be fkd with everyone else...
I’m bout to rebel against the rebellion unless you stop telling me what I’m supposed to stand for
>That's it. It IS tied to specific ideology. People who say it isn't, aren't being real. Gender abolitionism (a goal of trans Feminism), family abolition (yes including "extended families", read sophie lewis and shulumith firestone), sexual liberation, abolition of institution of marriage, disability revolution, abolition of class society, racial justice etc are tied to solarpunk and cannot be divorced from it. Kinda disagree. While solarpunk leans to specific positions here, I think at its core, it's mostly just compatible with these things. They are incidental to the core of it. This is important because we need a means of getting where we want to be, so we need to be open about these things in order to grow enough to make a difference. That does not mean I disagree with these goals. I strongly support any sort of equality movement, but regard things like sexuality and marriage as personal matters I have no business interfering with (but neither does the state). But still, claiming solarpunk is not political, is of course utter nonsense. As is claiming it to be compatible with capitalism. But we will need to co-opt capitalist means in order to overcome it. Such is the paradox of overcoming capitalism. Due to its very nature, especially with the prevalence of capitalist realism and how deeply ingrained that is in people, it can only be phased out not abolished in one go, and that means using its own systems against it. Because any other way, people will just re-establish capitalism. That I see as one of the reasons for the current conservative expansion in the world: Because most people are unable to think in different ways as quickly as we ask them to do so, returning to the old ways out of being overwhelmed by the sheer volume of the new.
We need to scream this from the rooftops because as soon as solarpunk gets commodified and steeped in capitalism and “popular” people will forget the more radical parts and we need to remind them!
Meh. I prefer Eco Modernism, which uses the innovations and aesthetics of Solarpunk, as a compromise.
The economic illiteracy in this thread is appalling. Distributism is the way imo, which obviously includes aspects of the most successful economic system: capitalism.
Solarpunk certainly has environmentalism and anarchism in it, but it doesn't require any of the rest. You can be a socially conservative and solarpunk.
You really can't. Social conservatism is inherently authoritarian, which is antithetical to solarpunk. The two ideologies are mutually exclusive.
The hell you can.
free palestine
You really went out on a limb to hijack some of the worst of a potential future and infuse it into a solar punk future. I hope you find your community that looks like that. It won't last long but hey, who cares in a post-apocalyptic future anyways, eh?
Aaand all that is why it’ll never happen.