Since I wrote a few essays trying to respond to this question, let me answer it in a series of toots:
Okay, but where is the -punk- in all that? It was supposed to be SolarPUNK, not a sunny everyone-get-along-now! Where’s throwing molotov cocktails at hypercorps, where are the mohawks and being the underdogs? What’s punk in starting a garden?
What if I tell you that Solarpunk is a bigger punk than everything above, more than all those runners and street samurai of cyberpunk, because it rejects not only the corporate world, but also the tired mode of rebellion propagated by our popular culture?
All the visions of the dark future from the last forty, fifty years got us used to a dichotomy: bad corporations, their wage-slaves faithfully serving their rich masters hoping for a payday versus hackers-rebels, living outside of the system, eternally at war with the corps and their servants. It’s a hopeless war. If it’s ever winnable, it will be a pyrrhic, temporary win, because a lone cowboy can’t shoot the whole system.
It’s even worse, because often to achieve such a “win”, they must become a part of it, replicating the same toxic structures, hurting others.
It’s worth noting that in cyberpunk stories – even Mr Robot – the victims of the rebels are not only the rich and powerful, but often innocent bystanders. We are supposed to internalize that the fight is immoral in itself, the anarchists are dangerous and about to hurt us. All they do is fight, sabotage and destroy after all.
Even if they do, it’s always desperate, a temporary haven, just a tool for their war against The System, the corps, the fascist state. They cannot build, or propose anything outside of it, outside of the dichotomy, the model of a rebellion which was already co-opted by the corrupted world.
The same way we are unable to imagine just walking away and building something outside of it. Were absolutely blind to the real world, when we see others doing exactly that.
Many people will argue that we need to imagine the fights ahead, that change will not be painless – and I agree. The problem doesn’t lie here.
The way I see it, cyberpunk romanticizes oppression, fight and struggle. It doesn’t want to show us the world worth fighting for, it wants us to revel in being crushed and rebelling, because virtue doesn’t lie in finding a way out, it lies in participating in this fight.
What’s a win state for cyberpunk characters? Who are the ones others tell stories about? It’s the martyrs. Cyberpunk glorifies the rebellion to the point of expecting some kind of cyber-valhalla (it’s so cool), blinding us with awesome neons, shiny chrome, making us forget we can do something else.
For me the best indicator of whether a narrative is Solarpunk is a simple question: can it portray Wikipedia, as a project? Not a means to fight The System, not a tool for manipulation of the masses by the corps and the government, but as a Great Civilizational Project.
Because for me, Wikipedia, despite being flawed and imperfect – is a Great Project. It’s something that generations of science fiction writers dreamed about: THE Great Encyclopedia, containing (almost) the totality of human knowledge, available to everyone, for free, at any moment. Built by every one of us, as an Editor, Researcher, Scientist, where it’s our communities editing and improving it, arguing and building consensus.
It’s a success for the whole civilization, a Wonder of the World, impossible to imagine if it didn’t exist in the first place.
It’s so unimaginable that even today, we cannot tell stories about it, because we lack the hieroglyphs! We cannot see the librarians as heroes! Teaching, sharing knowledge, archiving the history of your language and region before it’s too late cannot be dramatic!
@alxd
I have thought of Wikipedia as a modern world wonder too, in many ways a bigger accomplishment than the Pyramids. It's an amazing civilizational accomplishment, up there with space flight.
@faassen I've been researching "how to talk about FLOSS and hackers" for over a decade and I think this is something which should be foundational for Solarpunk writing: being able to write not only about heroes like today's narratives, not only about tech and infrastructure (like Cory Doctorow and many other writers), but about the social structures we create, new ways to interact with each other which are not market- or hierarchy- based.
In my opinion, that’s where the #Punk lies in #Solarpunk: in building alternatives instead of taking part in a hopeless struggle. In not allowing to be written into someone else’s narrative, to become a safe – predictable – rebel. It’s accepting the grassroot movements, collaboration with all its conflicts, imperfections, as something beautiful and worth telling stories about.
Move quietly and plant things. A quiet work of thousands, millions of people working towards a better tomorrow, towards alternatives, planting small seeds of hope and improving the world bit by bit, to grow a forest which will sprout with the power of millions of trees. Scientists and engineers working on free software, activists trying to convince the unconvinced, educators sharing knowledge: people believing in new narratives, punk- towards punks who got stuck in their old battles.
@alxd Whoever is asking that question is not in touch with modern #punk strategies guided by diy philosophy and basic tenets of anarchism such as solidarity, cooperation, inclusion and mutual aid. Just add green for #solarpunk.
@alxd Sounds like SolarHipsterdom. 😅 A bit funny to see the mental gymnastics people go through to map the haphazardly chosen term #Solarpunk, which is just taken from #Cyberpunk, where the -punk part fits much better, onto the eco-utopian vision most people interested in Solarpunk actually long for. I'm very okay with giving it a different name if somebody finds a good one but I'm skeptical of the value of rebranding "punk" to make it fit.
@at4rax@alxd But the “no future” narrative is being pushed by oil companies and the System themselves (along with greenwashing), so was it ever “punk” to begin with? Solarpunk seeks to empower everyone, instead of ridiculing or romanticising their frustration with the status quo.
@GlowingLantern@alxd
As far as I understand it, this no-future attitude came out of powerlessness in the face of the nuclear threat during the Cold War. In this respect, it also fits in with climate change, against which the individual is powerless.
@at4rax@alxd The individual might be powerless, but the masses definitely aren’t. You need a utopian dream to inspire people. That’s why modern (Russian) propaganda focuses on breeding fatalism. Every successful revolution and social movement, even if it was corrupted in the end, got its power from hope.
I think that's what punk is all about. The romanticization of the decline and the rebellion against it with all means. But I don't want to judge whether Solar Punk is punk in the classical sense. It's all just words after all.
Their meaning is to some extent subjective and you can develop them as you like.
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