my favorite episode of the twilight zone is the one with the prairie woman who has tiny fuck freaks running around her house but then the twist is the fuck freaks are actually humans in space suits and SHE’S the giant fuck freak
My favorite part was always how stupid our space suits were expected to get
How much longer until the utopic Solarpunk future where Capitalism is dead and we all live in ecologically sustainable high-tech forest cities? Asking for a friend.
Until we make those ecologically sustainable high-tech forest cities ourselves. It’s going to take a lot of us to do it though, so best to spread the word (and gather native tree seeds).
And, like, get started now. Then our “weirdo houses” will be the only thing functioning when everything falls apart!
The only reason why we don’t live in a solarpunk world right now is because no one has bothered to make it yet.
We’ll have to make it ourselves, and we’ll have to help each other make it. That’s why it is solarpunk.
Some resources to consider creating or joining or doing:
Repair cafes - create or join your local repair cafe! Repair stuff, learn how to repair stuff, teach others how to repair stuff.
Map of Makerspaces - make some things! learn how to make some things! teach others how to make some things!
Community Garden Map (note that this is US-only, and not a complete list) - join a local community garden
Learn some basics on passive solar design - clever use of the sun can create extremely energy efficient homes and buildings. You can use these principles to save on energy bills, even if you’re renting.
Free USDA Complete Guide to Home Canning, 2015 revision - cut down on personal food waste! Learn how to safely preserve food. Very useful if you suddenly harvest / purchase for crazy cheap in season / dumpster dive a ton of perishable food.
Donate to One Acre Fund, which provides training and capital to farmers (making them more productive and pulling them out of poverty) in various east African countries
Donate to Bridges to Prosperity, which provides technical expertise, money, and volunteers, to help local people build and maintain their own footbridges in extremely isolated rural areas
joining r/solarpunk, and sharing links/ideas/art/music with the community. Also, upvoting stuff for greater visibility. There’s over 900 members!
Make your own beer, cheese, soap, wine… really anything you can make rather than buy is a success!
And HELP YOUR NEIGHBORS! Don’t just build/grow/mod/repair your own stuff, help them do it too! Share it! Depend on each other! Work together and grow closer with your community!
“Revolt is impossible, no one will do it.” - Millions of people right now who are so alienated they want to die while still struggling through a job they hate to pay for things they never wanted.
There are many exciting and fun ways to undermine the system without waiting for other people to go marching in the streets. Few things encourage the creative mind more than figuring out how to break some rules and get away.
“But if I do a crime the fascists will arrest or kill me!” - No amount of licking boots will protect you from some random white nationalist who goes on a shooting spree, who may or may not happen to be a police officer. Also the FBI literally faked an entire field of forensic science just to put people they didn’t like behind bars to inflate the prison labour population.
There is no reward without risk, but the nature of climate catastrophe means we are losing more and more every day as the wealthy corporate enterprises literally steal your future health and livelihood from you through their absolute refusal to take responsibility for any “Externalities” they might cause.
This is a photo taken yesterday of Mogo, a town in Australia. This photo was not taken with some sort of special lens, this is what it actually looks like outside due to the fires raging across the entire Australian continent.
You don’t know it yet, but your life is already in danger. You are not safe simply by staying at your dead end job and paying your rent each month. My own grandmother lost her house last year during the freak flooding that went across the upper Midwest USA - something you have probably already forgotten about if you ever heard about it at all.
Reach out to your friends, build systems of power and support. Reject that which seeks to alienate you with endless unfulfilled promises that things will get better the next year, the next election cycle, the next whatever.
