#postcapitalism — Public Fediverse posts

Leaving you all with an excerpt from an essay from 2022, before I re-boost posts from yesterday and boost quoted posts. TY to @MaQuest , @jblue , @rooftopjaxx and everyone who shared and/or chimed in! #ABetterWorldIsPossible !

Can Solarpunk Save the World?

The choice, then, is clear: solarpunk, or barbarism.

by Stacey Balkan, November 15, 2022

Excerpt: "Offering an imperfect but clear-eyed hope, rather than so many apocalyptic nightmares, is a key goal of solarpunk fiction. While many critics argue that radical change will only come about following the total collapse of Earth systems—in other words, the apocalypse imagined by popular climate fiction and much recent zombie fare—it has become increasingly evident that such alarmism possesses no political utility.

"Furthermore, in a discussion about climate and energy justice, we must acknowledge that, for many #Indigenous communities, the 'apocalypse' happened long ago: during the long 16th-century, when an expanding plantation system expedited the removal and enslavement of millions of #BIPOC persons in order to accommodate the #hyperconsumption of imperial centers like London.

"Apocalypse, as a geohistorical event or literary trope, is thus not central to solarpunk. That is, solarpunk doesn’t require an environmental apocalypse, because most solarpunk practitioners understand the material legacies of #SettlerColonialism as on ongoing apocalypse.

"Consequently, solarpunk worlds are not necessarily postapocalyptic (nor set in the future), but they are #postextractivist. Responding to the ethos of #extractive #capitalism — whereby the colonized exist as 'fuel … for the sake of someone else’s good life' — solarpunk imaginaries demand a thorough dismantling of fossil-fueled modernity and the material infrastructures (and attendant cultural expressions) that occasioned our comprehensive dependence on prehistoric carbon. Quite logically then, solarpunk also rejects the techno-utopian project of saving industrial modernity via increasingly hubristic geoengineering schemes."

Full essay:
https://www.publicbooks.org/can-solarpunk-save-the-world/

#SolarPunkSunday #PostCapitalism #SharingEconomy #Earth4All #SettlerColonialism #ExtractiveIndustries #TechBros

In an unsustainable, oppressive society, it is quixotic to imagine that we could manage our survival in a sustainable, egalitarian way.

Mutual aid must not be a symptomatic treatment to address the systemic ills of capitalism, but a step towards revolutionary change.

https://crimethinc.com/RevolutionaryMutualAid #mutualAid #anarchism #anarchist #sustainability #egalitarianism #anticapitalist #anticspitalism #capitalism #postcapitalism #solarpunk @CrimethInc

The Story That Should Not Have Been:

This was not how the human story was meant to end..
Not with melting glaciers and rising walls.
Not with billionaires escaping upward while the oceans crept in.
Not with the silence of forests drowned out by the hum of devices..

We began with bare feet and open hands,
curious, uncertain, staring into the dark with fire in our eyes..
We learned to grow, gather, and grieve.
We built homes, songs, and systems.
We touched the moon.

And then....we touched nothing.
Nothing real.
Just numbers on screens and dopamine loops,
algorithms tighter than the bonds between neighbours.

We called it progress.
We made gods of GDP and efficiency.
We grew the economy like it was a crop,
and burned the soil beneath it.

We built machines that outpaced our wisdom.
Tools without elders.
Profit without pause.
Comfort without community.

The Earth groaned,
and we handed out loyalty cards.
The sky cracked,
and we installed air-conditioning.
We did not adapt... we monetised the crisis.

Democracy?
We sold that, too.
Votes drowned in money.
Truth fragmented by code.
Fear rebranded as policy.
The strongmen did not seize power.
We gave it to them...for stability, for screens, for noise.

Inequality?
Designed, not accidental.
A system where five men own more than half the world.
While billions hustle for rent,
they own the future, the data, the air.

Let us not pretend everyone chose this.
Some resisted.
Some warned.
Many were silenced,
while the architects of collapse called it freedom
and moved their assets offshore.

And now...
the insects are gone.
The water is plastic.
The children are anxious,
and the gods are corporations.

So we ask..
Is this how it ends?
The great arc of human becoming..
from toolmakers to terraformers to a footnote in a geology textbook?

It did not have to be this way.
The warnings were clear.
The crossroads came again and again,
and still, we pressed the accelerator.

But even now..
if there is a fragment of clarity left,
if there is one ember unextinguished....
let it burn for this:

Not a return to what was,
but a return to what matters.
Not endless expansion,
but rooted kinship.
Not empire,
but ecosystem.
Not more,
but enough.

Let it be said that we stood at the edge...
saw clearly,
named the failure,
and turned.
Not to be saved..
but to begin again.

#CollapseAware
#ClimateCrisis
#SystemChange
#DeepAdaptation
#ClimateJustice
#Anthropocene
#EcoGrief
#PostCapitalism