Hippies didn’t have the internet. Some had some of the right ideas, but it wasn’t easy to connect the dots of information or insight people had, so a lot of early ideas of improving the world just had to fail against the onslaught of capitalism. Currently we live in a period where the mainstream system seems to fail. The real dystopia doesn’t just happen somewhere else to some unfortunate few, it’s quite obviously popping up everywhere in many forms.
Solarpunk steps in and imagines that we could build a future that isn’t more dystopian. We could take stock of what we have - technology, skills, limitations - and dare to imagine a future that is actually less dystopian than what happens now. We refuse to accept that this is the best version of humans inhabiting the universe that we could possibly come up with, and collect material, information, documentation to support a worldbuilding effort that aims for a better future.
Have the hippies failed? Or did they point the way towards a lot of the right directions? Is punk dead? Don’t think so, and it’s all in favour of DIY. So we basically DIY our future here.
It is a practical gospel of hope. I work in tech and I hate what we have done with tech. Let’s do better! This is the opposite of dropping out, it is digging in and making positive change informed by a humane and rational value system.
So, no, not hippie redux. But any old hippies are certainly welcome.
Solarpunk is a Science Fiction genre. I don’t think the Hippie movement was a sci-fi genre?
Short answer: Yes
Long answer: Yeeeeesssssss
Apparently you didn’t read the article. And no it isn’t. It shares some superficial similarities and some roots (as the article explains), but contrary to the hippie movement it isn’t about personal (and sexual) liberation.
It’s a movement more or less built on aesthetics, it’s doomed to go a similar path of getting a lot of steam and then doing nothing with it.
There’s a lot more to solar punk than aesthetics. Sure, it started out there to a decent degree but it’s grown to take on a life of it’s own. Its a vehicle to realize liberatory politics at the community and global level through social ecology (among other things). It’s an answer to the all too common question of what a post capitalist society would look like, particularly for many varieties of libertarian socialism.
The only way solarpunk would lose steam is if it abandons it’s political foundation. Which is a part of what happened to the hippy movement but we’ve learned from past mistakes and I have faith that solarpunk can be realized in some meaningful fashion
I think you have a point but I can also see how
- Art inspires science and engineering
- Solarpunk art already includes extremely dense information about how to accomplish the goals and of course the aesthetic
And while the art is the most iconic part of solarpunk, there is more to it as well.
Again you show your complete ignorance of Solarpunk. Why are you commenting in this community if you don’t even understand the basics of it?
If communities on slrpnk are anything to go by, it is more than aesthetics. !abc@slrpnk.net !abolition@slrpnk.net !anarchism@slrpnk.net !antiwork@slrpnk.net !infrapolitics@slrpnk.net !landback@slrpnk.net !shoplifting@slrpnk.net
