Reject notions of a lost golden age

For most of recorded history time is the enemy.

Some believed history swung between good and bad. Time was cyclical. Civilizations rose and fell. If things were good now they would inevitably get worse.

Even more pessimistic is the idea of a lost paradise. The past contained either a blissful Eden or an idyllic utopia. Every moment since then is part of a slow decline bookended by a horrific Ragnarok.

These ideas are alive and well today, not just in religious dogma but in a seemingly innocuous form: nostalgia. Many yearn for a golden age only visible through rose-colored glasses. Some even lobby to return to a past that never was.

There's no way to turn back the clock. We must find a way to ensure time is a friend, not an enemy.

The hope of progress

The idea of human progress was recorded in ancient Greek philosophy. Epicureans believed that civilization arose as humans applied their intelligence, transforming them from mere animals to something greater.

Belief in the possibility of human progress really took hold thousands of years later during the Age of Enlightenment. Western philosophers began writing in earnest about how the human condition could be improved if only we strove for it.

Were they right?

Ask yourself this: would your life be better if you lived 100 years in the past?

Chances are you answered "Fuck no!" and rightly so. Every metric for quality of life is improving with successive generations.

What if it's a trap?

What if all this progress is actually a trap?

Let's figure out how to avoid that trap.

Fatalistic fiction

For every Bill & Ted it feels as if there are a dozen Blade Runners. We have an appetite for stories full of the sort conflict that is easy to find in dark futures.

The Matrix, The Hunger Games, 1984, Ready Player One, Soylent Green, notable works portraying humanity falling into the progress trap go on and on.

But let's look a bit more closely at two of these works.

1984

Orwell's famous novel was first published in 1949. It predicts a future where the government writes and rewrites history however it sees fit to perpetuate endless war with its neighbors.

Willard Libby invented radiocarbon dating that same year. The technique can measure the age of any organic matter, from rocks to fossils to artifacts.

Radiocarbon dating objectively determines facts about our history.

Reject dreams of dystopia

At worst these works are totally nihilistic, and at best they suggest things have to get much worse before they can get better. Do we really have to wait around for an apocalypse or an uprising against an authoritarian government before making the world a better place?

At some point dire warnings only inspire pessimism that the future can be anything other than bleak.

There's no reason to work for the greater good when all good things will be lost. There's no reason to fight for the future if the only futures we can conjure are nightmares.

These dystopian imaginings tell us what to be scared of but not what to hope for.

Nobody bats 1,000

Some predictions in these works foretold the problems of today. Some predictions were flat out wrong. It is impossible to predict how progress will change the course of history.

But just because we can't foretell the future doesn't mean we don't influence it. We can steer the course of progress towards a future we actually want if only we believe that it is possible.

If only we dream about it.

Push for positive prophecy

So let's dream of a future more compelling than collapse. We can only strive for a better world once we imagine it.

Let's be as confident saying we want to live 100 years in the future as we are saying we don't want to live 100 years in the past.

Let's finally talk about what that future looks like.

What solarpunk is and isn't

Solarpunk is optimistic. It does not assume that technology, nature, quality of life, beauty, and social progress exist in opposition to each other. Rather it embraces an all-of-the-above attitude.

Solarpunk does not dogmatically demand a silver bullet solution. It's a dialogue between everyone who believes in making a sustainable future.

Solarpunk recognizes that we are part of a community. None of us has the power to change it single-handedly, nor should we. Solarpunk seeks to spread collective power.

Solarpunk doesn't pretend that the problems we face will solve themselves. Some problems may never be fully resolved. But we can always work to minimize their harm.

Solarpunk acknowledges that creating a better future requires people willing to disrupt the status quo. There is no solarpunk without solarpunks.

Being a solarpunk

Being a solarpunk is a sort of prefigurative politics. You can be a solarpunk in a million small ways.

• Patching your friends' old clothing
• Advocating for more public transit
• Using a fan instead of an air conditioner
• Finding and funding people creating sustainable ways of living
• Reading a book by someone who has had different social experiences than you
• Avoiding supporting companies that lobby against our long term interests
• Seeding native pollinators in an empty lot
• Calling for fascists to be deplatformed
• Volunteering for a non-profit that seeks structural change
• Making art depicting the future you want to live in and sharing it with others

central park, core of the most densely populated city in the United States