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Root solarpunk to help it grow (solarpunkstories.substack.com)

Why less fantastical shades of our genre have greater power to inspire

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[-] hazeebabee@slrpnk.net 5 points 1 year ago

More realistic visions are super important, especially for people who arent as invested in far future concepts.

I think for the average person the super futuristic visions just feel like fantasy and dont really change how that person views their own life. More 'reasonable' visions actually feel achievable and motivate people to take action and feel like they can actually move towards a better future.

Thanks for sharing, it made me think more deeply about how how to bring more people into the community :)

[-] tacoface@slrpnk.net 4 points 1 year ago

I think it’s also important to have a diversity of aesthetics and cultural representations to gain a more universal appeal - and also that diversity needs to be understood very broadly. Movements like this seem to typecast themselves relatively quickly, as there are few role models available and people adopt an aesthetic, or mannerisms, or jargon as a sort of identifier that they belong to the group, which ends up being just as exclusionary as it is a marker of inclusion.

There will always be people who see the extreme version as wildly inspiring, and those who see it as ugly or frightening or wildly unrealistic. Ex: earthships - personally I think it’s awesome to have a self-sufficient space with indoor gardens, but they are huge and ugly af. But people renovating and retrofitting their century old houses with natural materials and respect for the original architecture? Yes please.

I guess I’m trying to say that the fantastic needs to have a place under the umbrella alongside the pragmatic, and the vegans alongside the people with turkeys in their backyard, and the DIY permies alongside people who would never ever use an old bathtub as a planter but are willing to xeriscape their front lawn with native perennials, and the people who make their own sandals out of bicycle tubes alongside the people who buy really expensive shoes for life etc etc.

[-] Charliebeans@slrpnk.net 4 points 1 year ago

If it's worth doing, it's worth doing it badly. I really agree that tangible visions are easier to convert to action. But I think we need both visions - tangible and idealistic, since they feed each other in my eyes.

[-] Marsupial@quokk.au 2 points 1 year ago

The idealistic is the end location, the tangible is the directions to it.

We can’t arrive there if we don’t know how, and knowing how won’t get us there if we don’t have the location.

[-] keepthepace@slrpnk.net 4 points 1 year ago

Yup. I am not interested in packing if the destination is just the trailer park down the road. I prepared for utopia, I won't settle for less! Your solar cooked organic food is really nice but it is just a rest in our trip to the fully automated space luxury communism we all deserve.

[-] Charliebeans@slrpnk.net -1 points 1 year ago
[-] blazera@kbin.social 0 points 1 year ago

This all sounds like roleplaying trying to use fantasy sounding words.

[-] SteveKLord@slrpnk.net 0 points 1 year ago

How so? Please elaborate. What could be worded differently?

this post was submitted on 10 Jul 2023
7 points (100.0% liked)

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