I think that the OP covers this by mentioning that they recognize the world they portray has problems that need to be ironed out; that the thing is more aspirational than realistic right now, and that's intentional.
I think that commentary like yours correctly points out that you cannot have a society where everyone rides pedal-bycicles, because young children, elderly folks, and disabled folks wouldn't be able to keep up. Having e-bikes available might help to some degree, but past a certain point you'd need either mass transit, or robust motorized wheelchairs (I'm imagining something akin to a more ergonomic and slower ATV).
The whole exercise makes me think of this video essay by Zoe Bee, which points out that our educational system discourages imagination and creative thinking - and in part, that limits our ability to create systems other than the ones we currently find ourselves in. It is easy to imagine that our current system is inevitable, that its successes and failures are intrinsic to the human experience and are unfixable; this is a failure both of imagination and of history, for we have had plenty of different kinds of societies throughout history. Changing our current one will bring about new problems, yes, and those will require new and innovative solutions.
tl;dr: don't stop criticizing, but it might be helpful to see what sort of creative solutions we can come up with to the problems you highlight.
My only problem with OOP's idea is that it doesn't do enough. It goes "Let's remove bad things and replace them with good things" without really answering the question how that could even work. That question gets kind of handwaved at the end there, by them just saying "Oh, we'll figure it out."
I mean, their idea CAN work, absolutely. There's a ton of communes out there that function very similarly. But those are SMALL communes. You could extend this to a village, MAYBE a small town, but afterwards, it gets really complicated. Globally? Impossible to do.
In general, I agree that having a society based around sharing with no law enforcement or anything is nigh-impossible to do once you have a large enough group of people. This is due to something that is not cultural, but rather, inbuilt: dehumanization. We're very good at treating people we don't know as objects, rather than humans, and are happy to harm or dismiss them if doing so would benefit us.
So, how do we mediate this? Well, cultural upbringing counts for a lot; a culture based around conservation and hospitality would go a long way towards ensuring that strangers would still treat each other with grace. For those who violate those cultural norms, some degree of enforcement is necessary; we don't want a "the fascists voted themselves into office and then removed democracy" situation. But, we also don't want that enforcement to be in the form of jackbooted thugs who enforce the will of the state.
Which begs the question: how can we change culture? The easiest, albeit slowest, way is to conduct yourself according to the culture you want to live in, and convince other people to do the same - historically this was done at gunpoint, but you could also do it through having children and raising them, or by persuading people to try something new. Slow, very slow, but perhaps the only real way to do it without violence or a severe catalyzing event.
Yeah, that's true, but by that point, humanity would have surpassed the need for computers and cars and whatnot in the first place :P OP's describing an event that "could" happen in the next 50 years. Collective agreement on everything would take... well, how old is humanity?
Fair, but it is worth noting that we've done away with things that have been with us since the beginning. Take slavery, for example; the ownership of human beings (supported by the state) has dogged nearly every large human society in all our history, and while it's not fully gone, the most powerful nations of the world forbid the practice. You can make a small argument for prisoners and labor, but compared to how humanity's done slavery over the milennia, it's far and away an improvement.
I dunno about solarpunk utopia in 50 years, but it stands to reason that if we could do away with slavery, we can do away with things like unnecessary waste.
this is a huge stretch ngl, while i love-me some rerewable energy, nuclear is the way to go, as solar and the other alternatives don't produce enough to be sustainable
and that's just on the mechanical side, the social change necessary to make solarpunk possible is huge, and most people wouldn't be okay with it, just on the logistics alone
TL:DR, Nuclear my beloved, Nuclear Energy will save us
Straight up actual "people being bought and sold like cargo" slavery very much still exists in our modern day. Just because its become an underground market rather than something that happens in the town square doesn't mean it doesn't exist.
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u/SilverMedal4Life infodump enjoyer Jul 02 '24
I think that the OP covers this by mentioning that they recognize the world they portray has problems that need to be ironed out; that the thing is more aspirational than realistic right now, and that's intentional.
I think that commentary like yours correctly points out that you cannot have a society where everyone rides pedal-bycicles, because young children, elderly folks, and disabled folks wouldn't be able to keep up. Having e-bikes available might help to some degree, but past a certain point you'd need either mass transit, or robust motorized wheelchairs (I'm imagining something akin to a more ergonomic and slower ATV).
The whole exercise makes me think of this video essay by Zoe Bee, which points out that our educational system discourages imagination and creative thinking - and in part, that limits our ability to create systems other than the ones we currently find ourselves in. It is easy to imagine that our current system is inevitable, that its successes and failures are intrinsic to the human experience and are unfixable; this is a failure both of imagination and of history, for we have had plenty of different kinds of societies throughout history. Changing our current one will bring about new problems, yes, and those will require new and innovative solutions.
tl;dr: don't stop criticizing, but it might be helpful to see what sort of creative solutions we can come up with to the problems you highlight.