#change the system

[miiju86]

let that sink in....

[saintfijiwater]

Change The System

[dipperdesperado]

I'm writing a plan for a solarpunk social revolution

I think at this point we all have an understanding that things in the world aren't good. That's useful information, but that's also only step one.

Next, is broadly to figure out, "what the heck do we do?"

I've been doing a lot of listening and reading about that, and I'm trying to formulate my thoughts, to create a guide of sorts. I'm gonna sketch out my framing for it, with the areas of focus and basic tenants. This is going to be an iterative process, so let me know what you think about this! If u have the stuff to add or change, I'm cool with that!

Basic Needs (Pillars for Life)

These are the things that people deserve to be provided in order to live a comfortable life. The brave new world should be able to provide these things.

Shelter: A safe and secure place to live is essential for a comfortable life. This could be a house, apartment, or another type of dwelling.

Food and water: Adequate nutrition and hydration are essential for maintaining good health and well-being.

Clothing and personal items: Clothing and personal items such as toiletries help people feel clean and presentable, and can also provide protection from the elements.

Health care: Access to quality health care is important for maintaining physical and mental well-being

Transportation: Having access to reliable transportation can make it easier to get to work, run errands, and participate in activities.

Communication: Being able to communicate with others, whether through phone, email, or other means, can help people stay connected and feel less isolated.

Education: Access to education can help people gain knowledge, skills, and opportunities for personal and professional growth.

Technology, electricity, and internet access: Access to technology and the internet can facilitate communication, education, and access to information and resources.

Art, Media, Entertainment, and Play: People often need activities or hobbies that provide enjoyment and help them relax and de-stress.

Social connections: Strong social connections and a sense of community can provide support, companionship, and a sense of belonging.

Financial stability: Having access to sufficient financial resources can help people meet their basic needs and feel more secure.

Personal safety and Defense: Feeling safe and secure in one's environment is essential for a comfortable life.

Levels/Spheres of Liberation

These are the levels at which liberation needs to occur. There's an interplay between each level: for example, you have to a reach certain standard of self-love before you can make meaningful connections with others. The more connected with yourself you are, the more connected with others you can be.

Internalized Liberation: Internalized Liberation is a state of radical self-love.

Interpersonal Liberation: Interpersonal Liberation is a state in which love is fully and freely given to all others. 

Institutional Liberation: Institutional Liberation is a state of radical inclusion, where all organizations see equity as their responsibility and use an equitable process framework in perpetuity.

Systemic Liberation: Systemic Liberation is a state in which we have reconfigured societal relationships to resources to allow for ingenuity and social protections to coexist, creating the interconnected circumstances under which all people have the resources, access, and opportunity to thrive.

Environmental Liberation: Environmental Liberation is a state of harmony with the environment. Reconnecting with nature and understanding our place in it.

Ideological Liberation: Ideological Liberation is a state in which we have fully transcended and have no need for social constructs such as race; a reality where we are unbound by identity defined in contrast to others; individuals are unconflicted and feel a full and authentic sense of belonging in all spaces.

Guiding Principles

These guiding principles are the values which underpin the revolution; these are the unarguable, foundational ideas that make up the basic requirements for the movement.

Grassroots/Direct democracy: people should manage their own affairs. If something only affects you, then you do what you want. Things that affect others should involve them in the process. The goal is to find the balance between individual and collective autonomy, where the combination of each is greater than the sum of its parts.

Social Ecology: Our foundational understanding of nature is based on hegemonic values that separate us from it. This thinking coincided with the domination of people by other people around the beginning of civilization. By trying to reconnect with nature and see ourselves as part of it, while also upholding the values of liberty, solidarity, and equality, we can work towards mending our environmental and social relations.

Decentralization: civilization is an extremely complex system, and the most successful complex systems balance order and chaos thru decentralized forms. Highly centralized systems like the prevailing ones simplify things and standardize things to make them easier to manage. Having unique communities that federate based on need and shared projects leads to more resilient, creative, and emergent societies.

Anti-hierarchy, domination, and coercion: revolutions have to be led by the people, for the people. Forcing a mode of operation onto others is a non-starter. Freedom with subjugation is no freedom at all.

Liberty: people should be free to live how they want, so long as those desires don’t harm others. Matters should be decided with a maximal preference for that balance.

Free Association: all relations should be voluntary. No one should have the power to force a relationship, whether it’s for work, play, or community.

Solidarity Economies: programs, organizations, and projects that prioritize the well-being of the community over other concerns.

Diversity as Power: intersectional understanding of different identities people hold and how that informs their experiences being alive. Along with this, a recognition that the diversity of experiences heightens the chance for emergent solutions to problems.

Levels of Organization

Organizing at different scales.

Affinity Groups: a small group that’s tightly knit and focused on very specific alignment. Similar thoughts on issues, and similar interests in projects and actions.

Communes/Neighborhood Pods: connecting with people in your geographical vicinity, uniting on shared issues to be solved, moreso than shared ideology.

Organizations (platform orgs, ideological orgs, social orgs): Groups trying to change the world for the better. There would be platform orgs that contribute to ideological orgs and social orgs to provide cohesion between different projects and strengthen community resilience through federation within the community and its disparate projects.

Prisons: writing letters to prisoners and creating specific programs to abolish the modern-day slave complex that is the prison system.

Schools and Educational Bodies: creating revolutionary unions for students, staff, and faculty, and making efforts to gain direct democratic control of education.

Workplaces (Unions and Cooperatives): starting revolutionary syndicates for traditional workplaces, and starting directly democratic, horizontally run businesses.

Cities/Counties: tying all of the above things together through assemblies to have citizens directly decide on things that affect the whole city/county geographical area.

Regions: tying multiple cities/counties together, making decisions on projects that affect the region (big infrastructure and the like). This will still be directly democratic. The people who are affected by the decision will be the ones to come to the decision.

"Nations": tying multiple regions together to make very large decisions that affect the whole landmass.

Those're pretty much the areas that I'm thinking about. Am I missing anything?

[drowningferret-x]

“The violence ends when the power structure changes.”

- Mariska Hargitay

[optimisticfutures]

So long friends

I want to thank everyone who follows this blog for participating in an optimistic vision of a future we can all love and cherish together. 

This blog began as a Solarpunk themed blog, it was a movement I fell head over heels in love with. I’ve always believed in a future where systemic changes to our relationships with consumption and ecology allowed for a more integrative approach to solving climate change challenges. 

Unfortunately, Solarpunk appears to have been co-opted by extremists in the past year who silence dissenters using aggressive banning and reporting policies more reminiscent of a fascist hellscape than of a forward progressive movement that values scientifically informed decision making over the personal values of the leadership.

We stand at a critical crossroads as a species, a place where we can embrace the diversity of all peoples from race to religion to political ideology or we can go to a place where we can fall further into dogmatic ideological principles that thrive and grow on a warmongers appetite for combative otherness.

The self appointed leaders of the Solarpunk communities online have chosen the latter and lost the vision. Time and time again I watch as they abuse their power as community leaders to placate their own beliefs. I watch as they have turned their leadership and voices into shallow businesses, advertising their own works for money and disrespecting the very foundations and ideology of this movement. I’ve watched as they endlessly promote themselves and their own personal endeavors for fleeting moments of glory in the spotlight rather than put in the hard work to advocate for policy changes that create a tangible difference in the world.

Solarpunk under these leaders has become a campaign for their own self-grandeur where they expect unquestioned loyalty to their opinions and for the people to financially support their interests regardless of its relationship to the cause.

I cannot participate in this movement anymore. I will not condone, believe in, or appreciate a dogmatic system that devalues the opinions of the “other” simply by the merit of them opposing the leaderships beliefs. There is no justice in a system that dismisses the values of others without proof that the “other” is wrong. The phrase “I don’t agree.” followed by banning people is not a defense for a position, it is a dictatorship.

I have fought for too long against this. I am tired. The solarpunk that once was all those years ago is now dead, corrupted by greed and hubris. I will continue to look for alternatives and will let you know if I find any.

Good luck out there and remember that nothing you blog about here matters unless you’re doing something about it in the real world. Change starts with a direct dialogue between you and politicians.

[ask-the-squidbeak-boys]

That splatfest was rigged, it's not fair, we kept getting mirror matches. It's official, I hate splatfest now.

[wjbs-aus]

I'm rewatching the Game Dungeon episode on The Division (which is interesting in the opposite way to the other episodes, as most of it is Ross analysing the interesting - and unfortunate - implications of a decidedly mediocre game), and there's one part that I think is worth posting here.

[your-heart-is-a-treasure]

Normal is getting dressed in clothes that you buy for work, driving through traffic in a car that you are still paying for, in order to get to a job that you need so you can pay for the clothes, car and the house that you leave empty all day in order to afford to live in it.

[sugarhai]

we have the power

[somepeoplethinkimadyke]

God someone told me such a true thing about carbon footprint today, bc I mentioned how it makes me feel guilty when I do things that are not the most eco-friendly/sustainable

And they said just told me that we live in a system that means that we will produce a carbon footprint, and the only way to not have a carbon footprint is to not exist, and that you deserve to exist.

And I just thought I’d share that because honestly I feel so guilty sometimes, but we do deserve to exist.

You deserve to exist.

Don’t let the climate fuelled guilt tell you otherwise.

(Of course still do what you can to be more sustainable, but don’t feel guilt about things that you have done or could’ve done)

[whotookmytomato]

I'll carry your books, I'll carry a torch, I'll carry a tune, I'll carry on, carry over, carry forward, Cary Grant, cash-and-carry, carry me back to Old Virginie, I'll even 'hari-kari' if you show me how, but I will not carry a gun.- Hawkeye Peirce

This show was filmed in the 1970s for Christs sake and yet nothing has been done about the amount of gun violence. It's only been on the rise, guns are nothing but trouble and we'd all be better off without them.

[littlemizzlinguistics]

Studying linguistics is actually so wonderful because when you explain youth slang to older professors, instead of complaining about how "your generation can't speak right/ you're butchering the language" they light up and go “really? That’s so wonderful! What an innovative construction! Isn't language wonderful?"

[lesser-mook]

YouTube Burying Content They Find Offensive

[thebirthofv3nus]

As someone still confuses it, actvism, real activism, is not about violence or generating chaos. Activism wants to move your ideas, to make you take your own decisions by what you consider right or wrong considering you live in a world that deserves the best, not the worst.

[lovemesomeodinssleep]

ਅੰਗਰੇਜ਼

ਬੁੱਟਰਾ ਤੇਨੂੰ ਦੁਨੀਆ ਦੇਖੀ ਗਾਈਤੇਰੇ ਰੋਣੇ ਨੀ ਬੰਦ ਹੋਏ ਤੇਨੂੰ ਤੇਰਾ ਪਿਓ ਨਾਂ ਲੱਭੇਉਹਦੀ ਦੜਕਣ ਦਾ ਨਾਂ ਪਤਾ ਖੌਰੇ ਕੇੜੇ ਚੰਦਰੇ ਅੰਗਰੇਜ਼ ਨੂੰ ਆਪਣੇ ਏਸ ਸੰਬੇ ਹੋਏਕੋਹਿਨੂਰ ਦਿਲ ਤੇ ਡਾਕਾ ਜਿਹਾ ਪੌਣ ਦਿੱਤਾ ਇਕ ਪਲ ਲਈ ਸਹਿਮ ਗਿਆ ਲਗਦਾ ਸੀਅੱਖ ਲੱਗ ਗਈ ਤੇ ਅੱਸੀਂ ਹਾਰੇ ਉਹਨੇ ਮਾੜਾ ਦਿੱਲ ਦੀ ਅਵਾਜ਼ ਨੂੰ ਕੀ ਸੁਣਿਆਅਸੀਂ ਰੁੱਕ ਨਾਂ ਸਕੇ ਬੁੱਟਰਾ ਤੇਰਾ ਹਾਰਨਾ ਹੁੱਣ ਤੇਨੂੰ ਵਡਦਾਤੇਨੂੰ ਆਪਣਾ ਬਚਪਨ ਨਹੀਂ ਭੁੱਲ ਦਾ ਉਹ ਤੇਰੀ ਕਮਲੀ ਮਾਸੂਮੀਅਤ ਕਦੇ ਤੇਰੀ ਨਹੀਂ ਸੀਲੋਕਾਂ ਤਿੱਥੋਂ ਖੌ-ਖੌ…

[critterbitter]

Tis the season on Twist Mountain! Elesa, from Sinnoh, happily tromps around in the cold. Emmet remains undefeated champion of snowball fights. Ingo shivers his way across the clearing.

Look at em go!

Masterpost for more pokemon!