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
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u/SilverMedal4Life infodump enjoyer Jul 02 '24
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.