#eco-anarchy

[dailyanarchistposts]

The Politics & Art of Solarpunk

Although solarpunk never had a particular political ideology assigned to it, it’s been embraced by liberatory ideologies of all flavours. From social ecologists to post-civ anarchists to green socialists.

The philosophy of solarpunk and the politics of anarchism are practically built for each other. Anarchism emphasises personal freedom and collective liberation from hierarchies, authoritarianism, and exploitation. It seeks, as an ongoing project, common ownership, voluntary cooperation, horizontal organization, and mutual aid. Anarchism has generally been ahead of its time on many political issues, from queer to women’s liberation, and its approach to ecology has been no different.

Solarpunk can easily be synthesized with anarchism, and many of its various strains, as it explores the possibilities of liberatory technology, the localization of production, an end to destructive and wasteful consumption, and a reorientation of our relationship with society, work, nature, and ourselves.

It all sounds pretty gooey and feel good. But I want to briefly address those that have lost hope in a better world. Who are stuck thinking that this, largely, is the best that we can do. There’s this idea in politics these days that imagination has no place in our “pragmatic”, no-nonsense world. Which is just false. Humans are flexible creatures, capable of a whole range of social arrangement. If everyone limited themselves to the confines of what is, we wouldn’t be where we are today. It’s time to take some steps forward, with a variety of tactics in hand.

One of which is art. Art has a tremendous influence on us. Music, books, paintings, TV shows, movies, etc, they shape our ideas of what humanity is and what humanity can be. While there haven’t been many major examples of solarpunk art and entertainment yet, I think we can change that. There are interesting stories to be explored and debates to be had, through art. Imagine a novel that explores the different sides and dimensions of the debate on meat consumption in a solarpunk world or a comic that follows a community’s journey as it seeks to rewild and resuscitate the surrounding ecology.

Or picture this. Maybe alongside a game that imagines a horrifying endgame that maintains capitalism, like Cyberpunk 2077, we imagine an uplifting, yet still challenging game that exercises our ability to balance the needs of our local ecosystem and deal with the difficult decisions and conflicts that arise as we reorient our place in the world. Could call it Solarpunk 2033 or something. There’s a free idea right there.

[anarcho-catboyism]

Horrible fact of the day: Chevron just released a new boat fuel that WILL give you cancer.

Not "might", not "could", WILL. It has a cancer ratio of 1.3:1, as in, in a group of 10 people, 10 would contract CANCER.

(Edit: apparently some articles are now saying 1.4:1, and some are saying a little under that. Either way, the consensus seems to be anywhere between a 95-100+% of contracting cancer, with some expectations of this fuel not even needing a full lifetime of exposure for you to get Cancer.)

The EPA's safety limit is 1:1,000,000 as in 1 in a million people get cancer.

The EPA approved it anyways. I am not joking. The EPA approved a boat fuel that has a near 100% chance of giving someone cancer. It has such a good chance of giving someone cancer that if you DIDN'T get cancer YOU WOULD BE AN OUTLIER.

Fuck the oil industries.

Edit: If you find this (rightfully) horrifying, have you considered industrial sabotage? /hj

This isn't something we can vote away. This isn't something the rich are gonna apologize and make a 10 minute apology video for this. They don't care if you starve or wither in hospitals or get blown up in their wars.

If you don't know where to get started:

If you already know what to do, then it's time to do it. Participate in mutual aid, raise awareness in real life as well as online, participate in or train in self defense and emergency medical training classes.

[ecosaboteurmemes]

[gayhenrycreel]

"humans are inherently violent theres no way we could survive without a dictator to control us. its like wolves"

wolves only do that in captivity.

in the wild, an "alpha" wolf is just the breeding male, and the beta his mate. the puppies eat first. the alpha even hides food so the pups can learn to find it themselves. he cares for the pack.

in captivity, the wolves get stressed. they are trapped and react by becoming aggressive, fighting over resources simply from stress of lack of freedom.

capitalism forces us to fight over resources. there is no lack of resources, our dictators just withhold it from us. this makes us stressed, and much like the captive wolves, we get aggressive.

we make enemies where there are none, because like the wolves, we are captive.

[anarchist-art]

[jeanjaquesrousseou]

every time someone uses anarchic as a synonym of chaotic the ghost of Henry Kissinger gets a little stronger

[shroobles]

"...Political violence is not the irrational outcome of a rational system but the rational outcome of an irrational system."

[continentaldivide]

Many politicians pledge to be dedicated to the environment, and to put environmental issues first, but in reality many people often prioritize their own needs before those of the earth's. If we want a place to live in the future, action needs to be taken now!

[canisvesperus]

I don’t have all the answers. I may have some of the answers. I may just have a few good suggestions or questions, but I know this:

I am not a “consumer” or a “citizen” or a “man.” I do not want to press 0 to speak to a customer service representative. I do not want to open a can, a box, a wrapper, or go through a drive through to eat. I do not want to find my “community” behind a screen. I do not want to stay off the grass. I do not want to fill out and return this form. I do not want my ethnicity to be used as a weapon. I do not want my water to come from a bottle or a faucet. I do not want my understanding of the world to come from what someone inside a box or wearing a lab coat tells me. I do not want to do what I’m told. I do not want to live in a way that kills everything around me. I do not want to wipe my ass with the rainforest. I do not want to live among that which is produced and consumed. I want to hug you. I want you and I to be able to love one another without fear, reservation, or pretense. I want to eat food directly from the earth and act directly from my heart. I want to live and laugh and cry and love in a community the way our ancestors did for millions of years. I want you to be there with me. I want us to stop destroying everything. I need you. You need me. We don’t need any of the rest of this shit that we manufacture, and produce, and throw away. Beneath the concrete, and alcohol, and uppers, and downers, and anti-depressants, beneath the fashion trends, and social networks, and cell phones, and TV shows, and gender roles, and street lights, and gas stations, deep within this cage we call civilization you are still wild. I am still wild. Inside of me beats the feral heart of the animal that I am. I am flesh and bone, blood and spirit, earth and light. I long to be a part of the earth on which I live, to drink from clean rivers, and breathe clean air. I don’t want to be a cog in a machine. I want to dismantle the machine. I am a human being and I want to live as one. As such, civilization is my enemy and this is my battle cry. If it is yours as well, then let us go about creating the world we want to live in.

Until the Earth is Wild Again,

Bobby Whittenberg-James

My Battle Cry

[dailyanarchistposts]

Introduction

One of my favourite fusions of art and politics. Solarpunk is everything from a positive imagining of our collective futures to actually creating it. It derives its name from the cyberpunk genre, and all the other punks it has spawned.

Rell quick, there’s steampunk, which focuses on the Industrial Revolution and steam-powered tech. It’s one of the most popular after cyberpunk. There’s dieselpunk, focused of the designs of the interwar period. There’s atompunk, focused on atomic power. Steelpunk, focused on late 20th century hardware. Stonepunk, which is neolithic. There’s even nowpunk, which is set...today.

Solarpunk is a shining vision of a positive future, grounded in our existing world, that emphasizes the need for environmental sustainability, self-governance, and social justice. It’s a movement dedicated to human-centric and eco-centric ends. It looks beyond the limitations of capitalism and beyond the current rift between humanity and nature. It’s a futurism that focuses on what we should hope for rather than on what to avoid.

Solarpunk recognizes that climate change, the consequences of centuries of damage, aren’t averted in the future. Yet it still manages to incorporate hope. A future where we’ve got a lot of work to do, but we’re doing better. We’re using technology for more uplifting ends. Like seed bombing drones and solar ovens. Solarpunk emphasizes real-world application. It’s all about what we do here and now, from DIY projects to larger organization. Solarpunk is also very aesthetic, as I’m sure you’ve realized. It uses a lot of nature motifs and takes inspiration from art nouveau, upcycling, and Asian and African styles and artistic movements.

Sidenote: lemme talk real quick about what isn’t solarpunk. It isn’t slapping flowers and trees on concrete buildings or steel skyscrapers with some green on it. That’s greenwashing. It has the appearance of sustainability, but it’s actually really damaging to the environment. A lot of water is used to maintain those “green” buildings and they often aren’t built with sustainable or durable material. Don’t get mamaguy.

In the short time it has been conceived of, solarpunk has found a place in contemporary media. It’s a literary genre, after all, but it has been retroactively assigned to other things, since the term was really popularized in 2014. Solarpunk, for example, includes films like Miyazaki’s Princess Mononoke or literature like Starhawk’s The Fifth Sacred Thing.

Cyberpunk might be grim and depressing, exploring a world of unchecked corporate power, but solarpunk rejects it entirely. It emphasizes collective living and the fulfillment of both nature and humanity in a mutually beneficial relationship.

[nihildes]

“If the politics of cruelty follows from the belief that we must destroy what destroys us, the emotion of cruelty is revenge. Only this taste for revenge offers resistance to the voices of this world that tell us to put up with the daily violence done to us. To feel cruel is to know that we deserve better than this world; that our bodies are not for us to hate or to look upon with disgust; that our desires are not disastrous pathologies. To feel the burning passion of cruelty, then, is to reclaim refusal. We refuse to compromising ourselves and the million tiny compromises of patriarchy, capitalism, white-supremacy, heter/homo-normativity, and so on. As such, the subject of cruelty no longer convinces themselves to love the world or to find something in the world that redeems the whole. Simply put: the subject of cruelty learns to hate the world. The feeling of cruelty is the necessary correlate to the politics of cruelty; learning to hate the world is what correlates to the political task of destroying what destroys us all.“ - Hostis

[ecosaboteurmemes]

[gayhenrycreel]

a lot of leftists think that they wouldn't have to work in an anarchist society. this is not true. we would absolutely work a fuck of a lot less, and happier workers who work less are more efficient, but we would still work. someone has to tend the crops and livestock. someone has to build homes.

the thing is, we would work to benefit everyone. not everyone is able to work. some people are disabled. if some people put a little time into work a few times a week, not that much because we wouldn't need to mass produce stuff that is never used like capitalism forces us to, the small amount of work would help everyone.

also, there would absolutely be people who want to work. when you work to help people, most people want to put effort into it. the reason current exploited workers are unhappy is because they are payed next to nothing for too much work that only benefits a select few people who refuse to pay people.

i love working when it helps my family. i can spend hours in the garden, and i dont even need to work that long for the plants to be healthy. i do it because i enjoy it. ive met other people who love to work as well. i know someone who loves being an electrician.

work can be fun when its to help our communities. its enjoyable when we work when we want to. it feels good to provide in our own free will.

[kazimirkharza]

Today we lost Ted Kaczynski. It's not surprising, we all knew that day was around the corner, considering his diagnosis, but hearing about it still shook me a bit. He was certainly not a flawless person, but his uncompromising devotion to defending the wild against the system of civilisation will forever earn him my respect. We need more people of such powerful character, determination and wit. Rest in power, Uncle Ted 💚

[jeanjaquesrousseou]

The body is wasting too many resources in trying to get oxygen to those cells who were born further from the veins. I propose cutting on spending for the circulatory system, so that those in need work for a better place in the body and to get rid of all those lazy cells who take from working cells who got to where they are by moving contrary to what the left might say.

[fabric-and-thread-art]

Finished eco anarchy patch for my friend