>> since about 2017, i've been loosely in the orbit of solarpunk. <<
It's an interesting topic.
>> for the unaware, solarpunk is variously an aesthetic (perhaps thought of as the antithesis of cyberpunk), a genre (primarily of speculative fiction) and a movement (in a broad sense seeking to make real the aesthetic and bring into being what is prescribed by the genre). <<
Those three things work fine as separate parts.
An aesthetic can be whatever you think is pretty, if you're just making or hanging art. If you're doing it as fashion, more practicalities come into play.
A genre can likewise be whatever you find entertaining to write, film, read, view, etc. The amount of logic required will vary depending on where you choose to place it on the hard-soft spectrum of science fiction. I have seen very concrete solarpunk and blithe fantasy solarpunk. Both are fine as entertainment. Science fiction has always been a lot about imagining futures, good bad and ugly, thinking about implications of technology, and hopefully helping humanity avoid some of the worst foreseeable disasters.
*sigh* Well, we tried anyway. It might've worked better if more people had read the books.
A movement, however, requires a great deal more facts, logic, common sense, and science than things which live in the imagination. Once you set your goal as manifesting things from there to here, you are into a whole new level of worldwalking that is very challenging to do. I know, I do it all the time. You have to know a ton of different fields at least in passing to be able to A) find a dimension with the desired parameters, B) identify the key things making the target society work, C) figure out which of those can be replicated with extant resources in your dimension, and then D) describe that well enough for people to replicate or tinker around building it yourself. It can be done, people have done it, but it is difficult and complicated to get right. Also if you fuck it up, you might make matters worse instead of better. Technology is risky stuff.
Throw together an aesthetic, a genre, and a movement without understanding and accounting for the differences -- that's just begging for trouble.
>> taken at its most charitable, you might say for instance that "Solarpunk is a movement in speculative fiction, art, fashion, and activism that seeks to answer and embody the question “what does a sustainable civilization look like, and how can we get there?”" <<
That's a good summary of the core ideal. It's a riff on something science fiction has long done, and when done well, it can accomplish great good.
Look at Gene Roddenberry's Star Trek. "What would it look like if humanity survived the Nuclear Age without blowing ourselves up? If we actually learned to get along with each other?" It was a shining beacon of hope that people desperately needed at that time, and it had tremendous influence, not just on the culture in general but in motivating specific people to do things from joining NASA to joining the Civil Rights Movement.
I've been an activist for decades. I've tried all kinds of techniques for driving change. And the one that has the highest throughput, the most people saying, "I did the thing," is plain old storytelling. Show people what a solved puzzle looks like, make them yearn for it, and include within it concrete things that people can do to move in that direction. It works. But you have to know what you're doing. That means knowing the problems you want to solve, being able to imagine or otherwise find a solution, describe it in tempting terms, and slip into the story or footnotes or somewhere enough actionable bits for your audience to try out if they wish.
>> i think that's pretty interesting; i think it's also very important. we're in a climate crisis and an ecological disaster of our own making—our future will be sustainability or catastrophe.<<
Sooth.
>> a "solarpunk" future might be what we need, especially if you subscribe to a vision of the future that involves degrowth and a reduction or redistribution of technological availability. <<
It's an outgrowth of one of four projected scenarios, the "Green Technology" future that uses high tech to maintain as much of the current lifestyle as possible, while replacing the worst excesses with more sustainable options.
However, high tech isn't the only option. Quite a lot of solar applications are low tech. Just ask any tree. Low-Tech Magazine focuses a lot on solar energy. These ,a href="https://www.instructables.com/Solar-1/">projects on Instructables range from high-tech panels to low-tech solar dryers. Built It Solar has a similar range. You need a factory to build a solar panel, but not to build a suntrap garden. I keep an eye on high tech, but it's not all that reliable for me personally. I am keenly interested in things I can actually deploy myself. Getting the government to budge is an exercise in frustration. But I can budge a brick easily, and a boulder if I fetch a lever.
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
timeasmymeasure
Thoughts
Date: 2024-10-15 07:25 am (UTC)It's an interesting topic.
>> for the unaware, solarpunk is variously an aesthetic (perhaps thought of as the antithesis of cyberpunk), a genre (primarily of speculative fiction) and a movement (in a broad sense seeking to make real the aesthetic and bring into being what is prescribed by the genre). <<
Those three things work fine as separate parts.
An aesthetic can be whatever you think is pretty, if you're just making or hanging art. If you're doing it as fashion, more practicalities come into play.
A genre can likewise be whatever you find entertaining to write, film, read, view, etc. The amount of logic required will vary depending on where you choose to place it on the hard-soft spectrum of science fiction. I have seen very concrete solarpunk and blithe fantasy solarpunk. Both are fine as entertainment. Science fiction has always been a lot about imagining futures, good bad and ugly, thinking about implications of technology, and hopefully helping humanity avoid some of the worst foreseeable disasters.
*sigh* Well, we tried anyway. It might've worked better if more people had read the books.
A movement, however, requires a great deal more facts, logic, common sense, and science than things which live in the imagination. Once you set your goal as manifesting things from there to here, you are into a whole new level of worldwalking that is very challenging to do. I know, I do it all the time. You have to know a ton of different fields at least in passing to be able to A) find a dimension with the desired parameters, B) identify the key things making the target society work, C) figure out which of those can be replicated with extant resources in your dimension, and then D) describe that well enough for people to replicate or tinker around building it yourself. It can be done, people have done it, but it is difficult and complicated to get right. Also if you fuck it up, you might make matters worse instead of better. Technology is risky stuff.
Throw together an aesthetic, a genre, and a movement without understanding and accounting for the differences -- that's just begging for trouble.
>> taken at its most charitable, you might say for instance that "Solarpunk is a movement in speculative fiction, art, fashion, and activism that seeks to answer and embody the question “what does a sustainable civilization look like, and how can we get there?”" <<
That's a good summary of the core ideal. It's a riff on something science fiction has long done, and when done well, it can accomplish great good.
Look at Gene Roddenberry's Star Trek. "What would it look like if humanity survived the Nuclear Age without blowing ourselves up? If we actually learned to get along with each other?" It was a shining beacon of hope that people desperately needed at that time, and it had tremendous influence, not just on the culture in general but in motivating specific people to do things from joining NASA to joining the Civil Rights Movement.
I've been an activist for decades. I've tried all kinds of techniques for driving change. And the one that has the highest throughput, the most people saying, "I did the thing," is plain old storytelling. Show people what a solved puzzle looks like, make them yearn for it, and include within it concrete things that people can do to move in that direction. It works. But you have to know what you're doing. That means knowing the problems you want to solve, being able to imagine or otherwise find a solution, describe it in tempting terms, and slip into the story or footnotes or somewhere enough actionable bits for your audience to try out if they wish.
>> i think that's pretty interesting; i think it's also very important. we're in a climate crisis and an ecological disaster of our own making—our future will be sustainability or catastrophe.<<
Sooth.
>> a "solarpunk" future might be what we need, especially if you subscribe to a vision of the future that involves degrowth and a reduction or redistribution of technological availability. <<
It's an outgrowth of one of four projected scenarios, the "Green Technology" future that uses high tech to maintain as much of the current lifestyle as possible, while replacing the worst excesses with more sustainable options.
However, high tech isn't the only option. Quite a lot of solar applications are low tech. Just ask any tree. Low-Tech Magazine focuses a lot on solar energy. These ,a href="https://www.instructables.com/Solar-1/">projects on Instructables range from high-tech panels to low-tech solar dryers. Built It Solar has a similar range. You need a factory to build a solar panel, but not to build a suntrap garden. I keep an eye on high tech, but it's not all that reliable for me personally. I am keenly interested in things I can actually deploy myself. Getting the government to budge is an exercise in frustration. But I can budge a brick easily, and a boulder if I fetch a lever.