9 ms·

Solarpunk Is Not About Pretty Aesthetics. It's About the End of Capitalism

59 points by conanxin 5y ago

h2odragon 5y ago
How original, and timely. No one has ever thought to subvert art in order to deliver political messages before; certainly not anti-capitalist ones. Can we have an "artistic movement" that's about something else for once? Does the dogma really have to soak into every facet of life?
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- ruined 5y ago
  capitalist art is called ads. and sheesh, if you wanna talk about soaking into every facet of life...
- fallingfrog 5y ago
  One of the primary functions of art is to get people to question or examine their assumptions and understanding of the world, including questioning the dominant power structures. Here, and now, the dominant power structure is capitalism. So it makes sense, given the circumstances. Jingoistic art that upholds and celebrates power is usually pretty awful.
- asoneth 5y ago
  A lot of postmodern/neo-pop art is very pro-commercialism. And there are successful pro-capitalist artists such as Jeff Koons and Andy Warhol. Having said that, many pro-capitalist artists who don't make it big in their twenties seem to transition to advertising or design.
0xbadcafebee 5y ago
Woof. What a tremendous amount of hope with such a small amount of reality. Capitalism has been so successful, it's convinced people that they can have all of it's benefits with none of the pain. That we can achieve advanced technology, bountiful harvests (sans genetically engineered and ecosystem-destroying mass-produced industrial farming), and seeming social stability, without a global system of profit seeking. I'm not a fan of capitalism. But it's pretty clear when you look at other economies and the state of the world in the past that advancements and social stability don't come cheap. In a post-capitalist society, most of those resources wouldn't exist because there'd be a lack of capital to develop them. Where they did exist, they'd be too expensive for the common person to benefit from them. And where they were applied to the whole society, they'd be ineffective due to poor funding models. Solarpunk is a utopian dream. We all know how those turn out.
- buggythebug 5y ago
  What system are you a fan of if you're not a fan of capitalism? I often get these economic/political systems and ideologies all confused and mixed up. What I will say is no matter what you have, if there are evil people at the helm it won't work out and so the way I see what system is the least worse when there are bad players up top?
  - Miner49er 5y ago
    I'm not OP, but sounds like you're looking for anarchism? It's all about decentralizing power, to avoid evil people being in control, as you say.
  - 0xbadcafebee 5y ago
    Oh, they all suck. Strictly speaking, I believe every human-led system will end in tyranny. But it should be technically possible to modify most any system to optimize towards better outcomes. The problem is when people fight changes on principle, rather than compromise for greater good. Evil people don't really exist in the sense most people mean. The whole concept of an evil person is that there's something uniquely broken about them that we could avoid if we just selected the right people. But the truth is that all humans have the capability for evil, and circumstances and flexible morality conspire to lead people towards evil. Evil is more of an eventuality of humanity than some kind of bug, and people at the helm are just inherently more susceptible, like bacteria in a petri dish. Therefore, we can't just hope to remove evil people from the helm. We have to design the helm to work in spite of evil at it. For example, we've been incredibly lucky in the USA that our leaders have been ineffective at wielding their power for truly evil means, a la Hitler. But the system today completely supports evil actions. The only check on evil in the system today is its wildly differing political/cultural makeup. We could probably also add anti-evil properties to the system's design. The trouble is, the people at the helm are the least likely to apply those changes, because it reduces their capability for evil. It's a dilemma. And the final dilemma is, evil tends to dominate. If our system isn't capable of evil, we might not be able to fight off a more evil society. Evil might be a necessary component of a thriving political/economic ecosystem, like bacteria in nature.
- 5y ago
sambull 5y ago
Interesting topic, and timely with some key take-aways from the latest leaked IPCC report, pretty much stating we would need to end economic growth: "Mitigation and development goals cannot be met through incremental change". [0] "Transition pathways entail distributional consequences such as changes in employment and economic structure" [0] [0] - https://scientistrebellion.com/we-leaked-the-upcoming-ipcc-report/ https://scientistrebellion.com/we-leaked-the-upcoming-ipcc-r...
- Tarsul 5y ago
  if we so care about having larger GDP numbers (as we do), we should simply try growing those parts of GDP that do not necessitate devastating CO2 (equivalent). Simple as that. (however, me personally, I don't think growth is really necessary anymore. The real problem since at least the 80s/90s has been inequality, so the thing people should really look at is redistribution of wealth/income etc.) We have everything we need, we just don't have the political and economic systems to put it in good use.
  - aero-glide2 5y ago
    > I don't think growth is really necessary anymore Maybe true for developed nations, but not for the rest of the world. There is still much poverty which economic growth can solve.
    - Tarsul 5y ago
      You're right. Developing nations need a different mindset than developed nations and have every right for it to be so.
- marvin 5y ago
  Ending economic growth is the last thing we need to do, and even if we did, we would fail. This should be obvious on a forum for entrepeneurs, who work to achieve only one thing - economic growth. What we need to do is to ruthlessly tax externalities that haven’t effectively been considered before, and use the proceeds to transition to an economy with net zero climate gas emissions. Then repay the damage with large-scale CO2 sequestering, multi-gigaton scale. If economic growth is considered everything we value getting cheaper and more abundant over time, anthropogenic climate gas emissions can be considered a horrendous debt that needs to be repaid. This is achievable! It’s expensive, but doesn’t require a 1950s lifestyle for everyone.
sillyquiet 5y ago
We can replace capitalism when we have a better system, that does as good a job as accounting for human nature, distributes the gains of the economic system in more egalitarian a manner, and doesn't concentrate the reigns of financial power in as few hands. Note I didn't say we can't reform capitalism, but all the ills and failings that will not doubt be enumerated ad nauseam in this thread almost all apply as well to EVERY OTHER economic system human beings have tried. The real solution is a post-scarcity economy, but we can't have that until we, you know, don't have scarcity.
- drewcoo 5y ago
  > We can replace capitalism when we have a better system That's not how those changes happen. Regular people everywhere constantly experiment with lots of changes. Some stick. Then we retcon a pretty story over it to make it seem like there was some monotonically "better" trend. It's certainly not as if humanity kept feudalism until a well-formed notion of capitalism was ready to replace it.
  - sillyquiet 5y ago
    No, I agree completely. That's not what all the petty revolutionaries are espousing though. Their rhetoric is pretty clear that they are demanding a complete replacement with something better, usually some flavor of collectivism. I am arguing that's not possible. Improvement will be incremental and evolutionary, by necessity, and will most closely resemble capitalism for a long time
- busterarm 5y ago
  The post-modernists are too busy "deconstructing"/destroying society's foundations to waste their time on something as silly as offering solutions.
  - loudtieblahblah 5y ago
    people are downvoting you but you are dead on. they're far more interested in tearing down existing systems, without any real plan that has any chance of being laid out and accomplished. What you have is a scattering of anarchist, socialist, and communist groups - all small in their own right, all with their own little ideas, and even vast deviations of those ideas within their little groups. Everyone has some alternate way to organize hierarchies, wealth/resource distribution... and they really don't get too hung up on the details of all those differences and hte problems each of those plans have. What they do have is a consensus that the "system" is so rotten to the core, so irredeemable that the whole thing must be torn down. In fact, in some ways, they court agreement with moderates, centrists and even some right-leaning anarchists and libertarians in some ways (at least as it might apply to government or corporate capture of government). So there's consensus in destruction. There's zero consensus in what to build in the wake of that destruction. Theres' little enclaves of DIYers, doomsday preppers, anarcho-houses, urban farmers, etc.. So what you will have, if said destruction ever gets anywhere is a power vacuum they're unable to fill. And instead what will fill it is foreign powers, capital forces worse than what you already have, criminal/mob groups, and a whole lot worse actors than we already have. Downvote me too. But 25 year old, often testosterone pumped up male, radicals normally can't see 5ft in front of their face. All they see is what they're mad at, at the moment, what is immediately unjust and they're willing to throw the baby out with the bath water like a Republican is to the entire taxation system.
zpeti 5y ago
So, why don't Solarpunk advocates just move to China? Seems like an ideal place with less and less capitalism over the last few years, 90% of the world's solar panel production, lots of futuristic skyscrapers. I mean seriously. Just do it. China. Great place. Leave the grubby capitalists to fight over Europe and the USA. It sucks here right anyway?
- ben_w 5y ago
  China may seem like another planet, but it’s actually part of Earth. When the question is “How do we fix this global environmental issue?” (which is part of solarpunk even if not all of it), you literally cannot just move county.
- asoneth 5y ago
  The "solarpunk" ideology seems to include things like decentralization, local governance, and anti-authoritarianism. In this respect, China seems like an ill fit.
  - Koncopd 5y ago
    Decentralization and local governance aren't foreign things for China. It has a remarkable amount of authority on a local level (at least provincial). You can also google ratings based on share of subnational public expenditure in total public expenditure, China is the top.
jessaustin 5y ago
Jay Springett describes this as the “poisonous pill” one most swallow when engaging with Solarpunk: “It means that there's the decentralization of technology, the decentralization of power.” Frankly that sounds excellent to me. I don't really trust the royalties at the tops of the various old-fashioned hierarchies to which we are subject to have my family's and community's best interests in mind. We're entirely capable of planting gardens and operating life-supporting equipment by ourselves.
- WJW 5y ago
  Planting gardens is fine, but operating life-supporting equipment? I for one have no idea how to do dentistry for example, let alone complicated heart surgery or semiconductor manufacturing. (or solar panel manufacturing for that matter) I don't particularly trust entrenched interests either, but they still seem better than the alternative. Imagine if the hospital electrical and oxygen grids were made and operated by the electric equivalent of script kiddies who are proud it hasn't fallen over in over 3 days now! Not to mention citywide sewage installations and whatnot.
  - danaris 5y ago
    This seems like it's misunderstanding the proposals. No one's suggesting that we democratize medical care by expecting everyone to do their own dentistry, or abandon the idea that the people who should do X are the people who are good at/well-trained at X. They're suggesting that we don't need to be beholden to centralized hierarchies for everything—like, for instance, electrical power.
    - jessaustin 5y ago
      Yes, that's right. Perhaps I could have chosen a more specific phrase, but I wanted to emphasize that we don't owe our lives to the CEOs.
  - KozmoNau7 5y ago
    The point is to be against unjust hierarchies, such as royalty, nepotism and the like. Anarchists and solarpunks alike abhor unjust hierarchies, instead they trust in experts and those with knowledge, not those who "fail upwards".
clipradiowallet 5y ago
> Solarpunk is radical in that it imagines a society where people and the planet are prioritized over the individual and profit. tldr; no capitalism in the solarpunk future. Am I grokking that right?
mikl 5y ago
I guess we might as well just call it Socialistpunk then.

59 points by conanxin 5y ago

How original, and timely. No one has ever thought to subvert art in order to deliver political messages before; certainly not anti-capitalist ones. Can we have an "artistic movement" that's about something else for once? Does the dogma really have to soak into every facet of life?

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
ruined 5y ago
capitalist art is called ads. and sheesh, if you wanna talk about soaking into every facet of life...
fallingfrog 5y ago
One of the primary functions of art is to get people to question or examine their assumptions and understanding of the world, including questioning the dominant power structures. Here, and now, the dominant power structure is capitalism. So it makes sense, given the circumstances. Jingoistic art that upholds and celebrates power is usually pretty awful.
asoneth 5y ago
A lot of postmodern/neo-pop art is very pro-commercialism. And there are successful pro-capitalist artists such as Jeff Koons and Andy Warhol. Having said that, many pro-capitalist artists who don't make it big in their twenties seem to transition to advertising or design.

0xbadcafebee 5y ago

Woof. What a tremendous amount of hope with such a small amount of reality. Capitalism has been so successful, it's convinced people that they can have all of it's benefits with none of the pain. That we can achieve advanced technology, bountiful harvests (sans genetically engineered and ecosystem-destroying mass-produced industrial farming), and seeming social stability, without a global system of profit seeking. I'm not a fan of capitalism. But it's pretty clear when you look at other economies and the state of the world in the past that advancements and social stability don't come cheap. In a post-capitalist society, most of those resources wouldn't exist because there'd be a lack of capital to develop them. Where they did exist, they'd be too expensive for the common person to benefit from them. And where they were applied to the whole society, they'd be ineffective due to poor funding models. Solarpunk is a utopian dream. We all know how those turn out.

buggythebug 5y ago
What system are you a fan of if you're not a fan of capitalism? I often get these economic/political systems and ideologies all confused and mixed up. What I will say is no matter what you have, if there are evil people at the helm it won't work out and so the way I see what system is the least worse when there are bad players up top?
- Miner49er 5y ago
  I'm not OP, but sounds like you're looking for anarchism? It's all about decentralizing power, to avoid evil people being in control, as you say.
- 0xbadcafebee 5y ago
  Oh, they all suck. Strictly speaking, I believe every human-led system will end in tyranny. But it should be technically possible to modify most any system to optimize towards better outcomes. The problem is when people fight changes on principle, rather than compromise for greater good. Evil people don't really exist in the sense most people mean. The whole concept of an evil person is that there's something uniquely broken about them that we could avoid if we just selected the right people. But the truth is that all humans have the capability for evil, and circumstances and flexible morality conspire to lead people towards evil. Evil is more of an eventuality of humanity than some kind of bug, and people at the helm are just inherently more susceptible, like bacteria in a petri dish. Therefore, we can't just hope to remove evil people from the helm. We have to design the helm to work in spite of evil at it. For example, we've been incredibly lucky in the USA that our leaders have been ineffective at wielding their power for truly evil means, a la Hitler. But the system today completely supports evil actions. The only check on evil in the system today is its wildly differing political/cultural makeup. We could probably also add anti-evil properties to the system's design. The trouble is, the people at the helm are the least likely to apply those changes, because it reduces their capability for evil. It's a dilemma. And the final dilemma is, evil tends to dominate. If our system isn't capable of evil, we might not be able to fight off a more evil society. Evil might be a necessary component of a thriving political/economic ecosystem, like bacteria in nature.
5y ago

sambull 5y ago

Interesting topic, and timely with some key take-aways from the latest leaked IPCC report, pretty much stating we would need to end economic growth: "Mitigation and development goals cannot be met through incremental change". [0] "Transition pathways entail distributional consequences such as changes in employment and economic structure" [0] [0] - https://scientistrebellion.com/we-leaked-the-upcoming-ipcc-report/ https://scientistrebellion.com/we-leaked-the-upcoming-ipcc-r...

Tarsul 5y ago
if we so care about having larger GDP numbers (as we do), we should simply try growing those parts of GDP that do not necessitate devastating CO2 (equivalent). Simple as that. (however, me personally, I don't think growth is really necessary anymore. The real problem since at least the 80s/90s has been inequality, so the thing people should really look at is redistribution of wealth/income etc.) We have everything we need, we just don't have the political and economic systems to put it in good use.
- aero-glide2 5y ago
  > I don't think growth is really necessary anymore Maybe true for developed nations, but not for the rest of the world. There is still much poverty which economic growth can solve.
  - Tarsul 5y ago
    You're right. Developing nations need a different mindset than developed nations and have every right for it to be so.
marvin 5y ago
Ending economic growth is the last thing we need to do, and even if we did, we would fail. This should be obvious on a forum for entrepeneurs, who work to achieve only one thing - economic growth. What we need to do is to ruthlessly tax externalities that haven’t effectively been considered before, and use the proceeds to transition to an economy with net zero climate gas emissions. Then repay the damage with large-scale CO2 sequestering, multi-gigaton scale. If economic growth is considered everything we value getting cheaper and more abundant over time, anthropogenic climate gas emissions can be considered a horrendous debt that needs to be repaid. This is achievable! It’s expensive, but doesn’t require a 1950s lifestyle for everyone.

sillyquiet 5y ago

We can replace capitalism when we have a better system, that does as good a job as accounting for human nature, distributes the gains of the economic system in more egalitarian a manner, and doesn't concentrate the reigns of financial power in as few hands. Note I didn't say we can't reform capitalism, but all the ills and failings that will not doubt be enumerated ad nauseam in this thread almost all apply as well to EVERY OTHER economic system human beings have tried. The real solution is a post-scarcity economy, but we can't have that until we, you know, don't have scarcity.

drewcoo 5y ago
> We can replace capitalism when we have a better system That's not how those changes happen. Regular people everywhere constantly experiment with lots of changes. Some stick. Then we retcon a pretty story over it to make it seem like there was some monotonically "better" trend. It's certainly not as if humanity kept feudalism until a well-formed notion of capitalism was ready to replace it.
- sillyquiet 5y ago
  No, I agree completely. That's not what all the petty revolutionaries are espousing though. Their rhetoric is pretty clear that they are demanding a complete replacement with something better, usually some flavor of collectivism. I am arguing that's not possible. Improvement will be incremental and evolutionary, by necessity, and will most closely resemble capitalism for a long time
busterarm 5y ago
The post-modernists are too busy "deconstructing"/destroying society's foundations to waste their time on something as silly as offering solutions.
- loudtieblahblah 5y ago
  people are downvoting you but you are dead on. they're far more interested in tearing down existing systems, without any real plan that has any chance of being laid out and accomplished. What you have is a scattering of anarchist, socialist, and communist groups - all small in their own right, all with their own little ideas, and even vast deviations of those ideas within their little groups. Everyone has some alternate way to organize hierarchies, wealth/resource distribution... and they really don't get too hung up on the details of all those differences and hte problems each of those plans have. What they do have is a consensus that the "system" is so rotten to the core, so irredeemable that the whole thing must be torn down. In fact, in some ways, they court agreement with moderates, centrists and even some right-leaning anarchists and libertarians in some ways (at least as it might apply to government or corporate capture of government). So there's consensus in destruction. There's zero consensus in what to build in the wake of that destruction. Theres' little enclaves of DIYers, doomsday preppers, anarcho-houses, urban farmers, etc.. So what you will have, if said destruction ever gets anywhere is a power vacuum they're unable to fill. And instead what will fill it is foreign powers, capital forces worse than what you already have, criminal/mob groups, and a whole lot worse actors than we already have. Downvote me too. But 25 year old, often testosterone pumped up male, radicals normally can't see 5ft in front of their face. All they see is what they're mad at, at the moment, what is immediately unjust and they're willing to throw the baby out with the bath water like a Republican is to the entire taxation system.

zpeti 5y ago

So, why don't Solarpunk advocates just move to China? Seems like an ideal place with less and less capitalism over the last few years, 90% of the world's solar panel production, lots of futuristic skyscrapers. I mean seriously. Just do it. China. Great place. Leave the grubby capitalists to fight over Europe and the USA. It sucks here right anyway?

ben_w 5y ago
China may seem like another planet, but it’s actually part of Earth. When the question is “How do we fix this global environmental issue?” (which is part of solarpunk even if not all of it), you literally cannot just move county.
asoneth 5y ago
The "solarpunk" ideology seems to include things like decentralization, local governance, and anti-authoritarianism. In this respect, China seems like an ill fit.
- Koncopd 5y ago
  Decentralization and local governance aren't foreign things for China. It has a remarkable amount of authority on a local level (at least provincial). You can also google ratings based on share of subnational public expenditure in total public expenditure, China is the top.

jessaustin 5y ago

Jay Springett describes this as the “poisonous pill” one most swallow when engaging with Solarpunk: “It means that there's the decentralization of technology, the decentralization of power.” Frankly that sounds excellent to me. I don't really trust the royalties at the tops of the various old-fashioned hierarchies to which we are subject to have my family's and community's best interests in mind. We're entirely capable of planting gardens and operating life-supporting equipment by ourselves.

WJW 5y ago
Planting gardens is fine, but operating life-supporting equipment? I for one have no idea how to do dentistry for example, let alone complicated heart surgery or semiconductor manufacturing. (or solar panel manufacturing for that matter) I don't particularly trust entrenched interests either, but they still seem better than the alternative. Imagine if the hospital electrical and oxygen grids were made and operated by the electric equivalent of script kiddies who are proud it hasn't fallen over in over 3 days now! Not to mention citywide sewage installations and whatnot.
- danaris 5y ago
  This seems like it's misunderstanding the proposals. No one's suggesting that we democratize medical care by expecting everyone to do their own dentistry, or abandon the idea that the people who should do X are the people who are good at/well-trained at X. They're suggesting that we don't need to be beholden to centralized hierarchies for everything—like, for instance, electrical power.
  - jessaustin 5y ago
    Yes, that's right. Perhaps I could have chosen a more specific phrase, but I wanted to emphasize that we don't owe our lives to the CEOs.
- KozmoNau7 5y ago
  The point is to be against unjust hierarchies, such as royalty, nepotism and the like. Anarchists and solarpunks alike abhor unjust hierarchies, instead they trust in experts and those with knowledge, not those who "fail upwards".

clipradiowallet 5y ago

> Solarpunk is radical in that it imagines a society where people and the planet are prioritized over the individual and profit. tldr; no capitalism in the solarpunk future. Am I grokking that right?

mikl 5y ago

I guess we might as well just call it Socialistpunk then.