alxd of the Story Seed LibraryAug 25, 2023

I find https://www.okdoomer.io/youre-not-going-to-make-it/ to be a nice little essay for all those people who think they can just leave the society during a #climateApocalypse and live #offGrid nicely.

It states again and again: you're not going to make it on your own.

We either build resilience together, as a #solarpunk society and communities, or we won't make it.

Let's not romanticize off-grid, homesteading and bunkers.

One more good line:

"The best kind of prepping is emotional."

You're Not Going to Make It

I read about this one family... They were tired of society. They thought civilization was unraveling. They wanted to live off the grid. Authorities found their mummified remains a few months later. The family died from exposure and malnutrition. They didn't make it. A while back, a prepper tried to

OK Doomer
Show threadalxd of the Story Seed LibraryAug 25, 2023

The end message might be too grim, as it doesn't see a chance for communities, but I think it makes a point -

We can hope and strive for a better future, but we all need to admit that it will be traumatic in the meantime.

We need to be ready for that trauma, we need to acknowledge that each year we don't address the climate change more people will suffer, and we should incorporate this into our narratives.

Will it be really bad? Yes.

Can we make it better?

That's the point of #solarpunk

Show threadalxd of the Story Seed Library

That's why all the stories of @SolarpunkPrompts suggest incorporating this trauma instead of avoiding it.

Taking a realistic situation we could encounter in the oncoming decades and instead of playing it with old postapocalyptic and hopeless tropes, seeing how we can imagine getting out of it, surviving it together.

A world with no meat, traumatizing multiple cultures?

Millions people losing their jobs, confused and lost?

Whole communities losing their homes to disasters?

#solarpunkPrompts

Aug 25, 2023 at 10:30amWeb
Show threadalxd of the Story Seed LibraryAug 25, 2023

That is the fatigue I've been talking about a few days ago, trying to convince #writers that tackling a traumatic story and seeing hope in there is worth it.

The language is so alien.

We don't want MadMaxian barbarians trading women for water.

We want communities working together, and I mean really together: internally and with other communities around the world, to find new ways to get water in their regions.

Maybe a solution from Iraq or Colombia could work in Greece?

Show threadalxd of the Story Seed LibraryAug 25, 2023

To really write #solarpunk dealing with traumas and processing them we should make a lot of symbols and tropes which could allow us to describe the real world around us.

We need to be able to write about communities and virtues of #wikipedia and the #floss movement.

We need to imagine non-violent conflict resolution and incorporating it within a story.

We need new, revolutionary perspectives on today, to unlock #writing about a better tomorrow.

Show threadalxd of the Story Seed LibraryAug 25, 2023

With that, we could do more with #solarpunkReporting , showing things like the Sierra Leone's emergency infrastructure created by grassroots, gynepunks from Calafou not as "outliers", not as "fleeting" or "whimsical", but as very real things that keep happening around the world DESPITE us refusing to give them place in our popular culture.

These things happen despite being unimaginable for most of us.

What is more #solarpunk than people creating a better world where others see no possibility?

Show threadMaggie MaybeAug 25, 2023

@alxd but @jessicawildfire isn’t trying to write stories of Hopium meant to calm peoples anxieties, she is living in reality trying to bust through the delusions so we can stop or slow the social murder that is ripping through the country/world.

At least that’s how I interpret her writing, but I don’t know her so I definitely am not speaking for her. Personally, I don’t want pretty lies I like to deal in reality.

Show threadalxd of the Story Seed LibraryAug 25, 2023

@maggiemaybe @jessicawildfire ha, I didn't know she's on Mastodon!

Hello and thank you for your essay.

I'll need to read more of Jessica's work to say anything beyond that, but I think that this piece is pretty compatible with how I see Solarpunk: as a way to acknowledge and process the trauma while believing and working towards a future beyond collapse.

Show threadAntoine MartinAug 26, 2023
@alxd I like that you mentioned Colombia. I'm currently in the Arauca department visiting campesino communities who live almost entirely off the land. Many communities were born from retaking land from the petrol industry. Thus, at the core of these communities is a strong desire for autonomy and a capacity to defend their land from the interests of multinationals.