From Cyberpunk to a Post-Scarcity Solarpunk
Visionary Arts are Re-imagining (and creating) a Radically Awesome Future for Humanity
You may have heard about the different shades of the environmental movement — light green, bright green, deep green, dark green — which all take different tones and tactics in addressing our global challenges, particularly climate change. But they all are still operating within the assumption that our scarcity-based economic system, not just capitalism but monetary exchange itself, is a given. There’s still the general perception that we need economic growth (albeit green) and more jobs (even if they’re “bullshit jobs”). However, there’s an emerging new creative arts movement that is expressing a whole new ethos within our culture, one based on optimism and abundance and a transcendence of our entire outdated monetary and labor-for-income systems altogether.
Dystopian sci-fi films and stories that falsely project into the future a flawed understanding of human nature (that we are inherently bad, competitive, violent, and selfish) are being replaced with visions of a bright and hopeful future based upon a more accurate understanding of our true humanity (that we are inherently good, altruistic, cooperative and caring).
This movement is both envisioning and creating a new world that works for everyone, a world everyone will want to live in…a post-scarcity world beyond jobs, ownership of stuff, poverty, war, environmental destruction and terrorism. Sound utopian? It most certainly is, but in the new meaning of the word (which I’m declaring now): Utopia means a beautifully imperfect world that is much better than the one we currently have (and by far better the one they would have us envision in dystopian stories). It’s time for new utopian visions, to break us free of the debilitating grip of fear that our media, news, Hollywood films, and cyberpunk fiction all tell us…that we suck, that we are inherently aggressive, and therefore we are destined for a bleak future.
New artistic expressions, which are perhaps part of our new renaissance, are based on a firm grasp of our current reality, yet transcend the bleakness; they are ushering in a new vision empowered with hope and love. In particular, the new solarpunk genre of sci-fi (a.k.a. speculative fiction, visionary fiction, social sci-fi) is about shifting away from focusing on blame, on anger, on conspiracies, on fear of technology, and the dystopian future we don’t want, and are instead envisioning a world full of justice, of beauty, of empathy, of equality, of abundance, and the better world we all want.
This new renaissance genre is markedly different than the steampunk and cyberpunk trends that came before it. Perhaps arising out of what David Graeber calls “Despair Fatigue” and what my film-maker son Evan Wiley calls “Critique Solution Fallacy” in our dystopian Hollywood movies, this new solarpunk trend seems to be radically optimistic about creating a better civilization in which humans and our high technology are totally in alignment with nature. It’s a world not based on fighting (nature, each other, evil corporations, the elites, robots) but instead on symbiosis, freedom, cooperation and what might be called post-scarcity anarchism (think love instead of pitchforks).
I’ve posted below some snippets of articles and thoughts from five visionaries and artists who are helping create a new world based on new and fresh projections of our current reality. The ideas I’ve quoted flow from a discussion of the current dark and gloomy steampunk and cyberpunk ethos, to the considerably bright, radically hopeful vision of what’s being called solarpunk anarchy.
(Perhaps I’m too old to be considered a punk, but I think the book I’m working on now aligns nicely with the solarpunk ethos.)
Despair Fatigue — How hopelessness grew Boring
David Graeber is a London-based anthropologist and anarchist activist famous for busting the myth of barter in his book Debt: the First 5,000 Years, and his article about “bullshit jobs”
From his article in The Baffler:
“Then there was Steampunk, surely the most peculiar of countercultural trends, a kind of ungainly Victorian futurism full of steam-powered computers and airships, top-hatted cyborgs, floating cities powered by Tesla coils, and an endless variety of technologies that had never actually emerged. I remember attending some academic conference on the subject and asking myself, “Okay, I get the steam part, that’s obvious, but . . . what exactly does this have to do with punk?” And then it dawned on me. No Future! The Victorian era was the last time when most people in this country genuinely believed in a technologically-driven future that was going to lead to a world not only more prosperous and equal, but actually more fun and exciting than their own. Then, of course, came the Great War, and we discovered what the twentieth century was really going to be like, with its monotonous alternation of terror and boredom in the trenches. Was not Steampunk a way of saying, can’t we just go back, write off the entire last century as a bad dream, and start over?
“And is this not a necessary moment of reset before trying to imagine what a genuinely revolutionary twenty-first century might actually be like?
“How, in a world of potentially skyrocketing productivity and decreasing demand for labor, will it be possible to maintain equitable distribution without at the same time destroying the earth?”
Normalizing the Desired in our Movies
Evan Wiley is an innovative writer and film director from Denver Colorado, currently at Portland State University
From his article on Medium:
“Something I call the Critique Solution Fallacy is the assumption that pointing out issues and attributing blame changes an issue for the better. Movies are good at this. They are akin to literature in that they portray thematic messages and put us in worlds we aren’t used to. However, with the increasing prominence of movies, few of these films containing any sort of social commentary go further than merely defining the issues we face as a species. This is a major loss of potential for a medium that is both introspective and popular not only in the United States but throughout the world.
“Movies that focus exclusively on the issue with no alternatives often make audiences concerned but with nothing to do about it. Thus, audiences finish watching movies and are left hopeless and scared.
“1984 by George Orwell…depicts a negative prophecy for the political future of the world, but as I argue, it does a better job at inspiring fear in people than inspiring a desire for change. Isn’t it easier to work towards what we want than to bring attention to the endless amount of what we don’t want?
“Movies like The Hunger Games, Elysium, Oblivion, Snowpiercer, Divergent, and Maze Runner are based in future dystopian worlds or the lack of any world at all, presuming a future of continued destruction, totalitarianism, war and/or environmental catastrophe. All of these are listed as science-fiction films. Movies like Interstellar get a lot closer as they are predicated on ideas of curiosity, love, exploration and a destiny of interplanetary human existence. While Interstellar has a significantly lighter depiction of our future, it falls short in its reasoning — that “we aren’t meant to save the world, we’re meant to leave it.
“Films that are diverse end up depicting minorities in situations that over-emphasize their stereotypical role as minorities. Stories with a black or Africa-American leads are often stories of growing up in poverty, facing racism, falling into gang-violence or all of the above. Similar situations occur for movies with LGBTQ leads or female leads. Therefore, the most progressive films are the ones written for roles that counteract such stereotypes by taking place in normalized circumstances. In other words, a movie with female lead doesn’t have to be about feminism; a movie with a homosexual lead doesn’t have to be about sexuality; a film with a black or African-American lead doesn’t have to be about race and so forth.
“If we regain the emphasis on the human experience in science fiction films and refrain from negative depictions of our future, we will subconsciously remember that we are not, in fact, doomed. And by adopting that mindset, we will contribute to a self-fulfilling prophecy of a positive future instead of a dystopian or apocalyptic one.”
Speculative Sci-fi is Imagining (and creating) a Better World
Walidah Imarisha, American writer, activist, educator and spoken word artist is known for coining the term “visionary fiction”.
From a Truth Out article:
“Again, this is why we need science fiction. We often can’t imagine that things could be different because we can’t imagine alternative systems. Ursula LeGuin just gave an incredible speech at the National Book Awards, where she talked about this and said people can’t imagine a world without capitalism. Well, there was a time when people couldn’t imagine a world without the divine right of kings.
But the writers, the visionaries, those folks who are able to imagine freedom are absolutely necessary to opening up enough space for folks to imagine that there’s a possibility to exist outside of the current system.”
The following statements are from a video interview of Walidah:
“Visionary fiction…helps us envision and begin the process of building those new worlds today. I created the term to separate it from mainstream science fiction which most often reinforces dominant paradigms of exploitation…right, it’s the one white dude who’s saving the entire world and the rest of us are just waiting around. That’s not helpful for us to build a new world together…that’s actually just replicating the world we have now.
“With Hunger Games we were so hopeful it would present some kind of transformative vision, and then with Mockingjay…it just got terrible. At the end what happened was the same thing that always happens, we’re back to status quo. You know, rebellion doesn’t matter, because at the end of the day, it will just be the same thing it is, because thats’ what humans do, so why even bother. So you know what it does is allows us a rebellious outlet while reinforcing the hegemony of the system.
“We [oppressed groups] were created in a world where people couldn’t imagine us existing as we do today. They bent the world and reshaped it to make us…We think about enslaved black folks dreaming of freedom, and we think about enslaved black folks being told that it’s absolutely unrealistic and impossible and will never happen. We absolutely have a responsibility, a right, and a privilege…to dream the impossible and then to make it happen.”
Enough Doom and Gloom? Enter Solarpunk
From an article on the Solarpunk Anarchist site:
“Solarpunk is the first creative movement consciously and positively responding to the Anthropocene. When no place on Earth is free from humanity’s hedonism, Solarpunk proposes that humans can learn to live in harmony with the planet once again.
“Solarpunk is a literary movement, a hashtag, a flag, and a statement of intent about the future we hope to create. It is an imagining wherein all humans live in balance with our finite environment, where local communities thrive, diversity is embraced, and the world is a beautiful green utopia.
“The “solar” in Solarpunk is both a description and metaphor for the movement’s commitment to a utopia that is accessible to every human on earth, as well as to all of our planet’s lifeforms. No single business can capture and privatize sunlight to hoard it for itself or sell it at a cost. It’s one of the only universally accessible goods. Solarpunk futures envision a world of distributed clean energy, available and benefiting everyone.
“Solarpunk centers on outsider and marginalized groups because it must. Those with the least access to power in today’s paradigm will be those we must closely listen to if the Solarpunk dream is to be made a reality.
“So while Solarpunk at first glance centers around technologies that help create green utopias, the most important part of the movement is dealing with the real human challenges of living together on this planet.
“That is likely due to the Solarpunk belief that the technology we need for a utopia is already here; we just haven’t found the political will to enact one. As Solarpunk author, Claudie Arseneault tells Hopes&Fears, this is what makes Solarpunk so powerful, it “works from existing technologies, from things we already know are possible.” Arseneault believes that, “Solarpunk is a genre that says both here’s what our future needs to look like and here’s how we can get there. That’s fantastic.
“Solarpunk makes use of the best technologies available today. And, instead of imagining dystopian futures of networked crime and surveillance, Solarpunk taps into an extant community.
“Solarpunk is a genre whose time has come,” Solarpunk author, Sheryl Kaleo, tells Hopes&Fears, “it has the artistic and literary power to push beyond our cultural doomsday mindspeak and make us believe in the future again.
“Solarpunk narratives show to its readers that it’s possible and logical to conceive of a civilization without pollution, waste, and global warming.”
More quotes from the article: Solarpunk Anarchist Solutions to Global Problems: A Quick List
“In the very long term, the only thing that will suffice as a solution is total system change. A structural transformation of the capitalist state system to a completely different social, political, and economic mode of power.
- The automation, through the applied use of human-scale eco-technologies, of as much needless human toil as possible so as to eliminate jobs that fall under the “Three Ds”: Dull, Dirty, Dangerous. And the reduction of what anthropologist David Graeber calls “bullshit jobs” which have no reason to exist.
- An economy which has moved beyond scarcity to the point where markets and even money are no longer necessary, with people being able to take goods freely from stores.
- The free movement of all people due to the elimination of nation-state borders and the equalisation of economic abundance.
- The birth of a new ecological global culture reconciling humanity with the natural world.
So basically, Post-Scarcity Anarchism.”
“Artist Sougwen Chung built a robot arm that draws in harmony with her in order to gain a better understanding of how humans relate to robots. With the project, dubbed “Drawing Operations Unit” (or DOUG for short), she hopes to counter prevailing media representations of robots as adversarial to their human counterparts. Check out the video above to see Chung and DOUG in action.”
