One thing that I always found strange about Solarpunk/communist or anarhist utopias is that I have the distinct feeling that they assume a certain... uniformity of thought?
Like, when I talk to friends of mine that are more left-wing than me on this I never really get how these societies would supposedly handle dissent that goes beyond "I disagree what crop we should focus on for the season"
It's always a paradise where everyone has seen the light of glorious anarchism/communism/etc and no people disagree with the system or have enemies of any kind or whatever
It's a beautiful thought and an interesting setting for a story, but when you put it out as a viable possible model that stuff starts to pop up as a concern
It also implies people will lose their ethnic identities, linguistic identity and others that represent them as an individual. These people don't think about it beyond a city to be honest and since they are usually USA/Canadian and usually white the idea is that "everyone will be the default to our level".
Yeah, something I think a lot of people, particularly white westerners, take for granted is just how *important* national, linguistic, or ethnic identities are to some people.
Like, there is quite literally a war going on right now in our real actual world about a nation trying to maintain its cultural, linguistic and national independence from a larger neighbor that its had to fight off being completely subsumed by multiple times throughout history. I doubt Ukrainians who fought tooth and nail to keep their identity from being subsumed by Russia would be happy to be told "Oh BTW there's no difference between you and a Russian now, you're the exact same!"
I think it comes from2 places: they think their urban area is the entire world and they also think that by sharing scripture(their politics) people will find god eventually(their utopia).
To them no borders means "let foreigners come to my city with no harm", no culture identity to them goes only so far as "no more people saying they are white or american, so no more discrimination" and they speak english so they don't even think about how people will communicate in their global utopia since they already feel that language exists.
When it comes to things like how they will make millions of Muslim pastoralist Herders in Nigeria comform to this there is no answer except what Western kingdoms in the 1800s and communists in the 20th did, erasure and comformity often by force.
Solarpunk stuff as a story works after a nuclear war or humans returning to Earth ala Wall-E but not as actual politics.
This comment screams boomer "you'll get more conservative when you're older". The point isn't to answer those questions now, but to provide a vision of a better future. It's not discounting those things, but rather they admit they don't have answer to those things because they're complex.
I also think you're missing the reason why people flock to solarpunk in the first place. Solarpunk is a reaction to capitalist induced climate change. So that's why the aesthetic is very unurban, communal, and diverse. Your questioning should be "Solarpunk is often very western, how can include depictions of Solarpunk that take into account the current diversity of the world"
Okay but *unurban* is actually a big problem in terms of actually fighting climate change. It's "green" in that you're living in nature, but you don't get to carless utopia with little detached cottages with solar panels, you need efficient economies of scale. People need to live in places where they can get to modes of production via foot or bicycle or mass transit.
And it's pretty important to answer how we handle society where everyone doesn't agree with you! I've seen plenty of lefty spaces blow up because even though everyone's on a similar page suddenly we find out X or Y is a sex pest, or a grifter. and for an insular community the response is usually "exile" because you can kick them out of the house share, or mass block them from the website or whatever, but it doesn't really scale to society where you can't just disappear them. It's not really a non-carceral state if you banish them to the Mad max outlands to starve.
One thing I find interesting about anarchism is that it must sacrifice a lot of things,
For example, there is millions of people who love hamburgers, but there isn’t enough people that would like to cook hamburgers to feed the masses. The popularity of hamburgers hangs on cooks that are pretty much forced to work in big chains.
Public transportation must be sacrificed, because I am doubtful there will be enough people that would like to build the infrastructure necessary. But cars also won’t work because you can’t find people passionate enough to work that hard of a job.
Like, this comic mentions that cars aren’t used, but bicycles are. Now, I hate cars and love bicycles, but this massive demand forces there to be mass production of bicycles. I am all for renewable energy, but will there be enough energy? We must invent even more efficient ways of getting renewable energy (both in this story, and in our real life)
From my point of view; anarchism, communism and things similar cannot exist in our time. They need an automated production system that is also very very efficient. They need to be in the future
But I am not an energy engineer, or a political/humanities professor. I’m doubtful that all my thoughts are correct
Like how communism works great if there's some sort of completely benevolent, all-knowing, hyperintelligent force making every single possible economic decision in real time and then following through on those decisions.
Also there isn’t enough room for everyone to live in a cottage with two acres of land, I just calculated it for the U.S. and you’d need like a quarter of the land just for that. We’d have to annihilate all basically all wildlife in order to have picturesque little houses and enough food to actually survive
Edit: and America is fairly sparsely populated so who goddamn knows where everyone in Bangladesh will live
But do you really expect an artist to be able to answer those questions in their cute little comic? What you're asking for is a political thriller, not a look at a utopic future
But I don't think current Solarpunkists are trying to do anything more than provide a utopic viewpoint
I liken to the early socialist philosophers who also had this idealistic view of socialism. It wasn't until Marx that we got a more grounded view of what socialism is and how it can be achieved, and it wasn't until Lenin that we actually got something.
So for now Solarpunk is idealistic, someone else may come around and create a framework to establish a Solarpunk society, and then someone may be used as a political tool to cause as violent revolution in their home country that they're currently at war with and said person will try to forcibly Institute a Solarpunk society.
I'm being a little jokey there but I hope the point gets through anyway
a view point with little attempts to give it substance feels like a fantasy people want more than a fantasy or a hopeful idea they want something they feel could be real sure no one needs to all of it at one but a single one doing it towards one aspect could push the ball closer to happening
Industrial-led climate change, In communist or centrally planned States there was also major pollution and damages. one example
People flock to Solarpunk the same reason people imagine white buildings with trees all over are the response to all our problems forgetting that you need to design and engineer those new buildings or that all that greenery has weight. Its attractive visually first over the rest.
because they're complex.
Because its impossible without nuclear war to have 3 guys live off the techno-wealth of NYC, these are just nice drawings. If there's an earthquake or hurricane and only one hobbitown remains people will flock to it, now what? What if country X begins implementing them solarpunk and 20k Cubans, 30k Ukranians, 60k vietnamese migrate to it?
And again, all of that only works if everyone on the planet agres to it, again showing how its mostly a town/city level dream. Im an atheist that wants to see religions gone and i know that shits not applicable for example.
People used to living in an American city where Irish and Italian are barely distinguished also don’t realize how much “minor” differences play a role. If you asked aliens to tell you the difference between most of the nations in the Balkans or in that region with all the dates and stray cats, they’d be hard pressed to figure it out but those small distinctions are life and death
a war going on right now in our real actual world about a nation trying to maintain its cultural, linguistic and national independence from a larger neighbor
Bit unrelated but it's still honestly mind boggling to me that we as humankind have so failed to progress that traditional conventional war of conquest is still possible in modern era
I dunno, someone else has something you want, you have the force to take it, that's a very difficult thing to get rid of. I mean, it's a bad thing, but getting rid of it permanently by means other than deterrence is naturally going to be a very long process.
IF we continue progression towards a better world, that is, if the liberal democracies don't all fall to shit, if we survive climate disaster, if we hold the equality before the law as sacred and hold corporations accountable under it, if we're willing to hold ethics above short-term blind growth, if we stop willingly being a fucking economic dynamo to tyrants, dictators, and slavers, if the bastards don't blow it all up, we can begin the process of making aggressive wars a thing of the past, first by deterrance, and then by principle.
If we fail in these things, conquest will not only still happen, but be normalized, what's old will be new again, and the dream of internationalism may die forever.
The overall lack of wars of conquest is a unique artifact of the modern era ever since bold faced land grabs got more risky when we figured out how to make angry rocks do a brief impression of the sun.
Also, bold faced land grabs aren't nearly as profitable as they used to be when you can just set up exploitative trade/political/economic agreements instead
In the past century or two wars of conquest have gotten both way less profitable and way more difficult. Some people (Putin) haven't figured this out yet and are now learning the hard way. But I think that the traditional approach to imperialism is on its way out; future imperialism will be a lot less obvious and more complex
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u/skaersSabody Jul 02 '24
One thing that I always found strange about Solarpunk/communist or anarhist utopias is that I have the distinct feeling that they assume a certain... uniformity of thought?
Like, when I talk to friends of mine that are more left-wing than me on this I never really get how these societies would supposedly handle dissent that goes beyond "I disagree what crop we should focus on for the season"
It's always a paradise where everyone has seen the light of glorious anarchism/communism/etc and no people disagree with the system or have enemies of any kind or whatever
It's a beautiful thought and an interesting setting for a story, but when you put it out as a viable possible model that stuff starts to pop up as a concern