Speaker 1: Garrison. Is that good? Isn't the show? No? Let's keep
Speaker 1: going though, Okay, well it could happen. Here is the
Speaker 1: show that A tonal noise is my introduction this week
Speaker 1: because I'm a hack in a fraud. Who isn't a
Speaker 1: hack in a fraud? Is is our guest this week?
Speaker 1: St Andrew. St Andrew, you are a solar punk anarchist
Speaker 1: from Trinidad. Um. You have a YouTube channel, UM where
Speaker 1: you talk about solar punk. Um, you talk about stuff
Speaker 1: like seed bombing. Yeah. I'm just very excited to have
Speaker 1: you on the show because I'm a big fan of
Speaker 1: your YouTube channel. Thank you, glad to be here, big
Speaker 1: fan of your work as well. Andrew, I kind of
Speaker 1: wanted to start with why this white solar punk is important, because, UM,
Speaker 1: I think it's easy for folks who just kind of
Speaker 1: skim it to see it. It's just like, oh, it's
Speaker 1: an aesthetic. It's maybe an art style or a fiction style. UM.
Speaker 1: Maybe something that's neat, but not something that has like
Speaker 1: a lot of inherent value to people trying to change
Speaker 1: the world. And obviously you disagree with that. I disagree
Speaker 1: with it to um A quote I keep coming back
Speaker 1: to again and again is one from Werner Herzog in
Speaker 1: the nineteen seventies and it was something along the lines
Speaker 1: of I think that without better myths, were destined to
Speaker 1: go the way of the dinosaurs. Um. Actually of I
Speaker 1: forget his name right now, But there's this excellent, excellent
Speaker 1: book called The Truth About Stories, and I think what
Speaker 1: it really emphasizes throughout the book is the importance of
Speaker 1: stories on how stories impact how we navigate the woot,
Speaker 1: which is why I sort of embraced Sula punk, you know,
Speaker 1: as a story that we can work with going forward. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think, Um, I think it's incredibly important to have
Speaker 1: better stories, better myths because for one thing, I think
Speaker 1: where the Left falls down a lot is not having
Speaker 1: is accurately diagnosing the problems without providing a better look
Speaker 1: at at this at the future, you know, um. And
Speaker 1: when the problems are when the people who do kind
Speaker 1: of propose solutions, it's often um not in a way
Speaker 1: people can feel. One of the benefits that that that
Speaker 1: the right has, that fascism has, is that they they're
Speaker 1: very good at providing people with myths and providing people
Speaker 1: with kind of a fictional look at at their idealized world.
Speaker 1: That draws people in. You know, you can laugh at
Speaker 1: the right you know, the people that work on like
Speaker 1: meta narratives, and that's very, very core to their ideology. Um, So,
Speaker 1: I guess where I'd like to start with you, Andrew,
Speaker 1: because this is kind of the first time I think
Speaker 1: we've really talked about solar punk on on this show,
Speaker 1: even though from the beginning before any of these episodes dropped,
Speaker 1: this was always a central part of our discussion about
Speaker 1: what the show was was going to be. Um, would
Speaker 1: you kind of provide an introduction to to what solar
Speaker 1: punk is for our listeners? Sure? Sure, So I would
Speaker 1: say that solar punk is the vision of the future
Speaker 1: that place this emphasis on the existing world and how
Speaker 1: we get to that future from where we are now.
Speaker 1: So it emphasizes the need for environmental sustainability, for self governance,
Speaker 1: and for autonomy and social justice. It emphasizes the need
Speaker 1: for you know, human and ecocentric ends to really be
Speaker 1: in sync, and it aims to really heal the current
Speaker 1: rift between humanity and nature. It also recognizes, of course,
Speaker 1: that there isn't this binary between climate change happens and
Speaker 1: climate change doesn't happen. Rather, it understands that how we
Speaker 1: navigate it will have a variety of consequences and some
Speaker 1: of the positive, some of the negative, but it's up
Speaker 1: to us to really shape that. Yeah, and it's um.
Speaker 1: I want to drill into a couple of facets of that.
Speaker 1: But I want to quickly plug one of your YouTube
Speaker 1: videos for folks who kind of want a more involved
Speaker 1: um explanation and background. You have a video called what
Speaker 1: is solar Punk on your channel st Andrewism like Andrew
Speaker 1: I s m um that I think is a fantastic
Speaker 1: introduction not just to like the aesthetics of solar punk,
Speaker 1: but some of the practical some of the practical kind
Speaker 1: of expressions of it. And and two of the ones
Speaker 1: you list is like examples of here's here's what this
Speaker 1: is is like actual practis you know, and not just
Speaker 1: an aesthetic is seed bombing um. And then you talk
Speaker 1: about this this very interesting kind of like terra Cotta
Speaker 1: air conditioning, which I think is I think it's neat
Speaker 1: because it's it's one of the problems that I think
Speaker 1: with kind of some versions of of particularly kind of
Speaker 1: on the more liberal end of of of solar punk
Speaker 1: imag engining is just sort of like ways of replacing um,
Speaker 1: ways of gaining the same kind of consumptive benefits that exist.
Speaker 1: I guess not even not even like greenwashing, right washing, greenwashing,
Speaker 1: Like here, let's get the same consumptive benefits we get scrapers, yes, skyscrapers,
Speaker 1: the same level of consumerism, same level of you know,
Speaker 1: destructive extractive practices. But we have some flowers and some trees.
Speaker 1: So yeah, and that's not enough. But at the same time,
Speaker 1: there are things that aren't. Like air conditioning is contributes
Speaker 1: massively to climate change. It's also not a luxury. Like
Speaker 1: if you live in a place where it's a hundred
Speaker 1: and twenty degrees a lot of the summer, that's not
Speaker 1: a luxury. Yeah, this is going from someone in a
Speaker 1: tropical country. Yeah, um, definitely a necessity. Yeah, So I
Speaker 1: wonder if you could talk about kind of those two
Speaker 1: I mean, or if you have different ones you'd like
Speaker 1: to pick, but just kind of what you see is
Speaker 1: sort of the practice expressions of solar punk, sort of
Speaker 1: beyond the aesthetic, although we're going to drill nder the
Speaker 1: esthetics some too, because I also think that's important. Right, So,
Speaker 1: I think some of my favorite manifestations of suli punk.
Speaker 1: In a practical context, things like um gorilla gardening. Grilla
Speaker 1: gardening is probably the biggest one because it's one that
Speaker 1: someone could literally pick up and do today or tomorrow,
Speaker 1: you know, as soon as they hear about it, doing
Speaker 1: about it. Just get some clay, get some seeds, you know,
Speaker 1: and put those things together, and as you're walking home
Speaker 1: or walking to the store, just toss them wherever there's
Speaker 1: some free dud UM. So that's a fun one. There's also,
Speaker 1: of course, things like a little bit one involved, like
Speaker 1: community gardening and particularly forest gardening, because that will provide
Speaker 1: a level of food autonomy and agency for people who
Speaker 1: have been eling it for a long time from the
Speaker 1: process of food production. UM. They're also practices like compassing
Speaker 1: or corpaching, and it's like a way to produce lumber
Speaker 1: without chopping down a whole side of trees, so you
Speaker 1: are able to get the wood from the trees, but
Speaker 1: the tree remains alive. UM. There's also things like, of
Speaker 1: course solar powered technology, whether it be algae based UM
Speaker 1: windows that you know, extract energy from the sun, or
Speaker 1: solar sales or solar ovens uh or like the terra cotta,
Speaker 1: the air conditioning, which, by the way I learned recently
Speaker 1: can't really work in a human environment. But yeah, there
Speaker 1: are a lot of different opportunities. They also there are
Speaker 1: things like you know, tool shares and maker spaces and
Speaker 1: seed libraries, all different ways to sort of bring it
Speaker 1: into fruition. So that is yeah, and I uh, I
Speaker 1: think a lot of that's really valuable. UM. I'm interested
Speaker 1: in in parts sort of your your attitude on UM
Speaker 1: what uh let me think about how to phrase this, UM,
Speaker 1: what do you think are kind of the things as
Speaker 1: we talk about sort of the things that can be
Speaker 1: at least potentially replaced UM with with less extract of
Speaker 1: less consumptive methods. Is sort of an example of solar
Speaker 1: punk practice is replacing those things. There's also things that
Speaker 1: we're not going to be able to have if we
Speaker 1: actually want to live in a more sustainable UM future
Speaker 1: that that doesn't contribute to some of the nightmares that
Speaker 1: we're all going to be increasingly facing. UM. You're you know,
Speaker 1: and again I think it's it's telling that so much
Speaker 1: of kind of the future fantasies of that are written
Speaker 1: by people who come from you know, my part of
Speaker 1: the world. United States focus on like kind of post
Speaker 1: scarcity methods of of guaranteeing the continuation of consumption just
Speaker 1: through in some cases like fantastic methods um, you know,
Speaker 1: magical three D printers and the like. Um. You come
Speaker 1: from a very different part of the world, very different perspective.
Speaker 1: What do you see is the things that like we're
Speaker 1: going to have to give up. Coming from a country
Speaker 1: that is actually reliant on oil and natural gas production,
Speaker 1: we have to get rid of cause We definitely absolutely
Speaker 1: have to get rid of cause um free to ships
Speaker 1: as well, and really the whole way that you know,
Speaker 1: global supply chains are structured right now, not to say
Speaker 1: that they won't be any sort of global um sharing
Speaker 1: of resources in the future, but the way that it's
Speaker 1: happening right now, it can't continue to go on. We
Speaker 1: can't continue to structure cities in our lives around cause
Speaker 1: and other methods of gascars in transportation because we're literally
Speaker 1: going to run out. And we've known this for a
Speaker 1: long time, but it's nearing that the day is nearing
Speaker 1: CLUISA and CLUISO and yeah, we have to find a
Speaker 1: way to do without it. Yeah, and it's it's I
Speaker 1: think tell like there's a couple of things that are important.
Speaker 1: One of them is you can't just say we have
Speaker 1: to stop global trade because in global travel, because the
Speaker 1: people have have sought and done that for as long
Speaker 1: as there have been people in one form or another.
Speaker 1: It's it's a fundamentally human thing. But there are aspects
Speaker 1: of it, like you know, expecting that every kind of
Speaker 1: fruit and vegetable will be available year round, which is
Speaker 1: certainly thing that we in the United States expect. Um.
Speaker 1: That doesn't that that's not part of a realistic future.
Speaker 1: Um And if it's part of the future, then it's
Speaker 1: only going to be part of the future for an
Speaker 1: ever shrinking chunk of of the country. And you can
Speaker 1: see that and sort of um or of the of
Speaker 1: the West, and you can see that in kind of
Speaker 1: um the like what we're dealing with right now with
Speaker 1: like the supply line shortages and failures, and like one
Speaker 1: of the I think the symbols of how far we
Speaker 1: have to go in my country is the degree to
Speaker 1: which people are freaking out by the fact that Christmas
Speaker 1: presents might be late. Um. Let alone being like yeah,
Speaker 1: you might not be able to buy coffee, um um ever,
Speaker 1: or all the time, you know, you might not be
Speaker 1: able to get tomatoes in December, which reminds me UM.
Speaker 1: I think one benefits to gorilla gardening, and that's what
Speaker 1: sort of mindset is. As you learn to so you
Speaker 1: also learn to reap. Right, So a lot of people
Speaker 1: who get into grilla gardening altos end up getting into foraging,
Speaker 1: and they are absent stuff you could download that allow
Speaker 1: you to, you know, learn how to identify plants in
Speaker 1: your area, and we surprise a number of plants in
Speaker 1: your area that are you know, useful for tease or
Speaker 1: for salads or for whatever poop is is that can
Speaker 1: be used as replacements. I'm not sure they could replace coffee,
Speaker 1: but they could be beneficial. UM in recognizing how we
Speaker 1: have to live with our local ecosystems. Basically, yeah, and
Speaker 1: a big you know, when you talk about living learning
Speaker 1: how to live with our ecosystem stuff like planting um
Speaker 1: forest gardens and the like um or food forests, I
Speaker 1: think is the term UM. I think something that has
Speaker 1: to be discussed is the matter of indigenous sovereignty, especially
Speaker 1: when we're talking about you know, it's not just you know,
Speaker 1: North America. A lot of chunks of the globe. Indigenous
Speaker 1: people had spent you know, in some cases thousands of
Speaker 1: generations setting forests up in order to sustainably produce food. Um.
Speaker 1: And when when colonialism arrived, that was often just seen
Speaker 1: as like, oh, this is this is these are wild
Speaker 1: places for us too, for us to extract or tear
Speaker 1: down and replace with mono cultures, you know, single crops. Um.
Speaker 1: And so a big part of actually building back that capacity,
Speaker 1: the capacity of us to to survive off of the
Speaker 1: food that can sustainably grow where we live is looking
Speaker 1: back to those indigenous methods and and also um, you know,
Speaker 1: giving back land in a lot of cases um And yeah,
Speaker 1: that's something you talk about in your videos that I
Speaker 1: think is really important to um to to to to
Speaker 1: explain to people. Yeah, I mean there's there's really is
Speaker 1: no way to separate the violence and oppressive institution of
Speaker 1: clunealism with the equosido Nietzsche of modern steeds. You know,
Speaker 1: those two are deeply intertwined, deeply married together. And so
Speaker 1: you can't fight climate change without addressing the issue of sverenity,
Speaker 1: of indigenous serenity on land back. Yeah, it's m it's
Speaker 1: really interesting. I've been I've been up hunting on Mountain
Speaker 1: Hood with a friend who is who went to school
Speaker 1: for like forestry management, and as we were driving, we
Speaker 1: had to drive through a chunk of the reservation in
Speaker 1: order to get to the blm land where we're able
Speaker 1: to hunt, and he pointed it out, and once he did,
Speaker 1: it was immediately obvious just how different the land under
Speaker 1: indigenous control looked from the land, you know, just feed
Speaker 1: away that was being managed by the federal government in
Speaker 1: terms of like how much better the forest management was,
Speaker 1: how much how much smarter it was it was managed
Speaker 1: in order to um reduce the chances of like a
Speaker 1: ladder fire that that actually kills you know, the trees
Speaker 1: and whatnot. There's this whole thing blowing up on Twitter
Speaker 1: right now where you've got a chunk of Marxists who
Speaker 1: are are trying to frame land back as uh just
Speaker 1: like shifting ownership of resources, which I think is really missing.
Speaker 1: The point I find interesting about Twitter is the exact
Speaker 1: same discourses are repeated over and over and over again.
Speaker 1: So I remember this exact conversation happening around this time
Speaker 1: last year, around April last year, um earlier this year
Speaker 1: as well. It's just the same discourses get recycled over
Speaker 1: and over again, and it's reached a point for me,
Speaker 1: who I realized that these people don't want to learn
Speaker 1: about land back what it really means, because they are
Speaker 1: invested in the structure as it exists and they don't
Speaker 1: want to have to interrogate that. So, Yeah, that's fellow
Speaker 1: to be an interesting thing, I've note. Yeah, and it's um,
Speaker 1: it's it's it's frustrating. UM. I guess that that acts
Speaker 1: as like a general uh description of Twitter discourse, but
Speaker 1: certainly doesn't. Yeah, I think it's I think it's telling
Speaker 1: the degree to which people, even on the left tree
Speaker 1: eat it as a fantasy as opposed to dogged lye
Speaker 1: pragmatic um and and proven so like proven by like
Speaker 1: like you know, like you can read you in reports
Speaker 1: that will that will essentially say land back in the
Speaker 1: space of a five page, you know, study on how
Speaker 1: indigenous land management functions a great deal better than UM
Speaker 1: than a lot of the stuff that's like centralized by
Speaker 1: the federal government, where we're like, our federal government is
Speaker 1: terrible at land management. UM, And it's part of the
Speaker 1: it's part of the problem. I think one of the
Speaker 1: things that that excites me about solar punk as an
Speaker 1: aesthetic and idea is getting back to this relationship with
Speaker 1: the land as opposed to talking about just preserving it
Speaker 1: um as talking about managing it. Because because none of
Speaker 1: our none of the land that people live on is
Speaker 1: like wild in the sense they mean it as it's
Speaker 1: been cultivated. That's the thing, right. The whole philosophy of
Speaker 1: you know, um land preservation as was taken up by
Speaker 1: the US government with the whole um you know, you
Speaker 1: can stop forest fires kind of thing, ended up leading
Speaker 1: to more forest fires online because they we have a
Speaker 1: rule in the ecosystem, not just they had to stand
Speaker 1: back from a file to subserve it. So we doin't
Speaker 1: do our part to manage the underbrush and whatnots and
Speaker 1: clear to we and exercise you know, controlled fires, but
Speaker 1: we end up in the situation we're in today. You know,
Speaker 1: cultivation not just sterile preservation. Now one of the things
Speaker 1: that you talk about well because because one of the
Speaker 1: more frustrating discourses this is not just a Twitter thing,
Speaker 1: this has been going on for years, is the discourse
Speaker 1: around GMO crops. And usually I would say like the
Speaker 1: two most commonly heard sides, are GMOs are bad because
Speaker 1: you know mon santo cancer whatever, or GMOs are good
Speaker 1: um in in thought, um, And the thing that you
Speaker 1: point out, which is I think the accurate take is GMOs.
Speaker 1: The preponderance of evidence says that, like, there's nothing inherently
Speaker 1: dangerous about genetically modified crops, but the way in which
Speaker 1: they're often used in order to create these massive mono
Speaker 1: cultures is really toxic. So there's a lot of promise
Speaker 1: um for GMOs in terms of keeping our our existence
Speaker 1: on this planet sustainable. But what's not sustainable is the
Speaker 1: kind of industrialized agriculture where you have ten thousand acres
Speaker 1: of one thing which just doesn't happen in nature exactly exactly.
Speaker 1: And if you look at how genetic modification took place
Speaker 1: prior to you know, all advanced funds in genetic modification technology. UM,
Speaker 1: I'm not how many people are familiar with the dozens
Speaker 1: of one dozens, if not hundreds of varieties of just
Speaker 1: corn they were present in the Americas prior to Coltonization.
Speaker 1: A lot of those varieties were wiped out or was
Speaker 1: suppressed in fear of these monocultures. But if we able
Speaker 1: to culture to divusity of these crops and really bring
Speaker 1: some of them back through Jessic modification. That would really
Speaker 1: help us with you know, food resilience in a world
Speaker 1: with an increasingly unpredictable climate. Yeah, yeah, I think that.
Speaker 1: I mean, I think you said it perfectly. I want
Speaker 1: to move back to kind of what I introduced the
Speaker 1: episode with, which is talking about the value of of
Speaker 1: fiction and myth making in a in a very pragmatic sense.
Speaker 1: I guess I'll start by saying, I think one of
Speaker 1: the clearest signs of the danger that we're in and
Speaker 1: how toxic our society has gotten. Um And I am
Speaker 1: speaking from a primarily US centric standpoint here, but I
Speaker 1: don't think it's unique to the United States. Is the
Speaker 1: extent to which trust me um as as the saying goes,
Speaker 1: when the U s sneel. So anytime there's some phenomenon
Speaker 1: happened in the US, there are the coffee cuts. And
Speaker 1: I do think this is pretty global. I mean, you
Speaker 1: see it in like South Korean films and and know
Speaker 1: what you're gonna say, Yeah, the obsession with apocalypse and
Speaker 1: when we when we go to the future, it's always
Speaker 1: a dystopia. Um, there's a degree to which we've almost
Speaker 1: forgotten how to imagine utopia or even not just utopia,
Speaker 1: just a way of living that is an improvement in
Speaker 1: a lot of ways of future that's better. We've forgotten
Speaker 1: to do both utopian fiction and any just kind of
Speaker 1: like positive fiction in a lot of ways. Because, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's understandable because the world is kind of terrible right
Speaker 1: now in a lot of in a lot of ways.
Speaker 1: But there's also there's been utopian fiction inside other terrible
Speaker 1: worlds as well. I think just the modern interconnected media
Speaker 1: sphere has really rewarded this type of like dystopian and
Speaker 1: collapse based apocalypse fiction. Yeah, and I'm sure that's that's
Speaker 1: worth interrogating. Why. But it is a problem that needs
Speaker 1: to be solved. Yeah, and it is, And and you're
Speaker 1: I think it's important. It's not entirely based in how
Speaker 1: fucked up things are, because like when the first Star
Speaker 1: Trek came out, we were at like the height of
Speaker 1: the Cold War. Things were terrible. There was a lot
Speaker 1: of utopian fiction during World War Two. During World War two, UM,
Speaker 1: I will always be impressed by the fact that Gene
Speaker 1: Roddenberry saw it as incredibly important both to be like, Okay, well,
Speaker 1: in the future, like in the middle of the Civil
Speaker 1: rights movement, in the future, we will have overcome like racism,
Speaker 1: but not just that, but like I'm gonna I'm gonna
Speaker 1: stick a Russian on the bridge too, because nations are
Speaker 1: going to end as a concept and like this stuff
Speaker 1: won't matter. Um, and that just that kind of utopian fiction,
Speaker 1: at least at this at the scale of popularity that
Speaker 1: you know, Star Trek wasn't its time just isn't present anymore.
Speaker 1: And I that's tremendously worrying to me. And I see
Speaker 1: a lot of hope in in Solar Punk for that. Um,
Speaker 1: I guess for star As I'm interested in in your
Speaker 1: thoughts on this, and you're interested in Andrew, what you
Speaker 1: think is like the pragmatic value of of of positive
Speaker 1: a fiction that that that imagines a better world. Yes,
Speaker 1: so I've done probably I think I've done like two
Speaker 1: videos on Sola Punk so far. M two major videos
Speaker 1: on Soil the Punk, as well as a smaller video
Speaker 1: two other smaller videos. Um. And what I've seen in
Speaker 1: the comments and in the general social media reaction again
Speaker 1: and again is sol the Punk saved my life, you know,
Speaker 1: sola punk has given me hoop. You know, I was
Speaker 1: slipping into the spair, but this video really gave me
Speaker 1: a jump start to try something new and to start
Speaker 1: to fresh and to pursue action as opposed to suggest
Speaker 1: laying down and taking whatever comes next and that that
Speaker 1: is it for me. You know, I think the fact
Speaker 1: that sulla punk offers like an energizing vision. It's not
Speaker 1: just a vision, it's an energizing vision because in every
Speaker 1: step with the way it shows what you can do.
Speaker 1: You know, when you show when you look at sula
Speaker 1: punk art or um, you look at the small but
Speaker 1: growing genre of sula punk literary media, or you know,
Speaker 1: you look at but there's don't have many slipunk video
Speaker 1: games right now, but hopefully there will be in the future.
Speaker 1: When you look at the various forms of sila punk
Speaker 1: media that are coming out and people's responses to them,
Speaker 1: you see that it's not like as all mentioning like
Speaker 1: star Trek, where it's all this far out technology that
Speaker 1: we can only aspire to for now. You know, suli
Speaker 1: punk is something that you can literally put in your
Speaker 1: backyard or your bad canny, or your home, or your
Speaker 1: school or your community. You know, you could put these
Speaker 1: things in place like from now, you know, and you
Speaker 1: can incorporate it into your politics as you know, as
Speaker 1: they are, and they could also help to push your
Speaker 1: politics forward, you know, because through solo punk, we could
Speaker 1: open up discussions about, Okay, so how do we ensure
Speaker 1: that people live comfortably within the parameters of you know,
Speaker 1: the Earth's carrying capacity? You know, you open up a
Speaker 1: discussions about indigenous soevereignty, you discussions about, um, the relationship
Speaker 1: between the Google North and the global South, and responsibility
Speaker 1: with regard to our response to climate change. Well, you
Speaker 1: open up a lot of different discussions through the realm
Speaker 1: of soulo punk. It energizes people, as I said, and yeah,
Speaker 1: I think that is its paramatic purpose. It doesn't stand alone,
Speaker 1: of course, but it is a driving force. Yeah. Would
Speaker 1: you kind of give out a list of if people
Speaker 1: are you know, if this is someone's first introduction to
Speaker 1: the concept of solar punk, what is some reading you
Speaker 1: want to draw people towards. What are some fiction like
Speaker 1: I know you mentioned The Dispossessed by Laguin right, um,
Speaker 1: which often gets cited. Um, yeah, I'm interested in kind
Speaker 1: of other other recommendations you might have for our listeners,
Speaker 1: are that right? So UM. I'm still getting into the
Speaker 1: genre myself, so I don't have too many UM recommendations.
Speaker 1: There are some UM decent short story collections UM like
Speaker 1: sun Vaults by a couple of different authors. There's also
Speaker 1: multi species Cities, so the punk urban futures UM. And
Speaker 1: the one I read most recently was Ecotopia, which is
Speaker 1: quite is much older than all the others. It's actually
Speaker 1: really a book that was published in UM and not
Speaker 1: all aspects of its politics things I agree with, but
Speaker 1: I think for a first UM it was one of
Speaker 1: the really the first of its kind in that sort
Speaker 1: of equal utopian genre that really laid out what the
Speaker 1: society would look like. UM. The book is structured in
Speaker 1: a series of novel entries and notebook reports by a
Speaker 1: journalist from the United States who has gone to this
Speaker 1: country called eco Topia, which is sort of where the
Speaker 1: Pacific Northwest States are, and he's basically breaking down He's
Speaker 1: going to different parts of the country and breaking down
Speaker 1: how they have lived and how they have decided structure
Speaker 1: their lives. UM. And even though not every aspect of
Speaker 1: it is one that I would want to see implemented,
Speaker 1: I still think that it really sparks the imagination, really
Speaker 1: gets you thinking, well, maybe I wouldn't do it this week,
Speaker 1: but how else could this be done? And I think
Speaker 1: the capacity for spunk stories suggest generate that thought and
Speaker 1: generate one's imagination is very useful in a world where
Speaker 1: we don't really get to use our imagination as much,
Speaker 1: not really since childhood, you know. And um, yeah, I uh.
Speaker 1: I think it's often understated the degree to which using
Speaker 1: your imagination is a vitally necessary part of actual radical politics. Um.
Speaker 1: And I think there's a lot of people who consider
Speaker 1: themselves radicals, you know, some of these some of these
Speaker 1: not to you know, slam every Marxist Leninist on the planet,
Speaker 1: but certainly some of the ones who were coming up
Speaker 1: with these bad faith critics systems of land back. It's like,
Speaker 1: you're not a radical, You're a conservative who wants to
Speaker 1: go back to a different kind of problematic thing. Um.
Speaker 1: It is more the fact that the Soviet Union poisoned
Speaker 1: like the largest body of water in Europe. You know,
Speaker 1: all the different things that the Soviet Union did that
Speaker 1: were horrible for the environment and extractive, and it's interesting
Speaker 1: that you know, they are these people who call themselves radicals,
Speaker 1: but at the very first um encounter with a radical idea,
Speaker 1: their first instinct is to shut down. Their first instinct
Speaker 1: is to just pushed back against it, whereas not to
Speaker 1: toot my own horn or anything. But you know, when
Speaker 1: I see an idea that I haven't encountered before that
Speaker 1: may seem strange to me, that challenges my precontinutions, my
Speaker 1: first reaction is not to shout about how this school
Speaker 1: is against everything then, and said, you know, my first
Speaker 1: reaction is to investigate it and to open space for
Speaker 1: it in my mind, to really, you know, tune it
Speaker 1: around and imagine what it might look like and how
Speaker 1: it might fit with what I have learned about before. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely,
Speaker 1: I mean I think that's that's that's great advice for
Speaker 1: radical politics. It's also just good life advice. Yeah, especially
Speaker 1: for engaging with ideas that you are less keen on
Speaker 1: at the moment, or or or just unaware of. H
Speaker 1: I mean, my whole thing is if I have like
Speaker 1: a strong gut reaction to something, it might be because
Speaker 1: it may be hitting a part of me that might
Speaker 1: be benefiting from that system, you know. I mean, I
Speaker 1: don't benefit from the system in a lot of respects,
Speaker 1: you know, as a black guy from the Caribbean, but
Speaker 1: as a man, as in as a sis sis hetman.
Speaker 1: You know, I do have privileges that I must be
Speaker 1: aware of and I can't just like be so quick
Speaker 1: to shut down, you know, something that ain't give me
Speaker 1: a bit uncomfortable. You know. Yeah, I think that's such
Speaker 1: a valuable thing to keep in mind, especially as a
Speaker 1: a more or less sis white guy like a you know,
Speaker 1: a significant number of people listening are if you're uncomfortable
Speaker 1: by a new idea. Is it Is it because the
Speaker 1: idea is bad? Or is because it strikes at an
Speaker 1: area in which you may not even have like thought
Speaker 1: about being privileged, like I'm I'm uncomfortable I have even
Speaker 1: though there's no I have no intellectual argument against it
Speaker 1: with the idea of of ending our use of cars
Speaker 1: as they exist, because I love I love to drive.
Speaker 1: But that's also heavily rooted in in in tremendous privilege
Speaker 1: on my behalf um American culture, and so yeah, and um,
Speaker 1: you know, we we we did talk about that a
Speaker 1: bit in the opening episodes of season two. The idea
Speaker 1: that like a more you know, when we we kind
Speaker 1: of had our little utopian ending, the idea that like,
Speaker 1: well maybe you'd have a car that's communally owned and
Speaker 1: used for certain tasks. But you know, the idea of
Speaker 1: of of car culture as the center of a city
Speaker 1: is um is death. It's just death. When we talked
Speaker 1: about getting past cars, is not to say that like
Speaker 1: people will never use vehicles that move again, Like obviously
Speaker 1: we will. They're necessary for something and all. Going back
Speaker 1: to horse drawn buggies, pink. One of the last things
Speaker 1: on like solar punk kind of tying into the whole
Speaker 1: kind of nature of the shows. I really like to
Speaker 1: enter your point on like how solar punk is like
Speaker 1: an energizing force and I feel like we have very
Speaker 1: few of those on the left and especially on the
Speaker 1: anarchist left. Um, like i've i've, i've, i've I've had
Speaker 1: my decent stint of like anarcho nihilism. And the problem,
Speaker 1: like the problem with that is like it's very easy,
Speaker 1: Like anarch nihilism is one of the easiest ideologies to
Speaker 1: grasp onto because it vlidifies all of your bad feelings. Um,
Speaker 1: But it also it's most of the people who I
Speaker 1: know who are like real into anarchro nihilism. They're generally
Speaker 1: not very happy people because it's kind of it's kind
Speaker 1: of miserable all the time. Um. And sure they like
Speaker 1: scoff at like solar punk is like some like greenwashed
Speaker 1: yogurt commercial, like you know, like utopian thing, but also
Speaker 1: like it's actually lots of solar punk that we've talked about.
Speaker 1: It's like actually about doing specific things, Like it's actually
Speaker 1: like actually going to do something rather than just being
Speaker 1: an insurrecto kid um or just just you know, talking
Speaker 1: about nihilist zignes and books on Twitter for all day.
Speaker 1: And I think one of one of your one of
Speaker 1: my favorite videos of yours is your video on this
Speaker 1: like pology of collapse, um, because I think that's one
Speaker 1: of my favorites as well. It's it's, it's, it's, it's
Speaker 1: it's really just like a masterpiece. And how deep you
Speaker 1: get into every different type of collapse thinking, because it's
Speaker 1: not just on the rights, not not not not to
Speaker 1: the left. It's not just whether you're you know more
Speaker 1: you know, anarchist more authoritarian. It's like you get into
Speaker 1: every specific type of thinking that plays into this idea
Speaker 1: around collapse. And I think if I recommend everyone check
Speaker 1: out your channel, especially watching your Solar Point videos, but
Speaker 1: specifically on the topic of collapse. You know, part of
Speaker 1: our show we were trying to kind of be a
Speaker 1: little bit like anti collapse UM. And I think your
Speaker 1: your video really shows the depth of that topic UM
Speaker 1: and how to approach this, because collapse is a feeling,
Speaker 1: like it's a feeling we all have, and it needs
Speaker 1: to be interrogated. And I think your video is just
Speaker 1: a magnificent job interrogating that feeling, right, thank you. I
Speaker 1: can't overemphasize how important that is, because I I one
Speaker 1: of the major failings. There were a number of victory
Speaker 1: for a kind of anarchist thought, particularly within the United
Speaker 1: States during the the insurrection last year. One of its
Speaker 1: tremendous defeats is that it has become characterized in a
Speaker 1: huge number of people's eyes as breaking windows and and
Speaker 1: starting fires um. And yeah, that's a lot of that
Speaker 1: is because the media is trash, um, and it's trash
Speaker 1: it reporting on on all of this stuff. But some
Speaker 1: of it is because a lot of people have let
Speaker 1: that be their primary praxis UM. And that again, I
Speaker 1: don't care about people breaking windows I don't care about
Speaker 1: people lighting dumpster fires, but if that's what you're presenting
Speaker 1: to the world as your practice, that doesn't appeal to people.
Speaker 1: And you have to um, because yeah, anarchism is not
Speaker 1: just destructive, it is also constructive. It's the constructive part.
Speaker 1: We need to be boosting more than that. And there
Speaker 1: were some, you know, from the con next to Portland's
Speaker 1: some really strong examples of that last year. The incredible
Speaker 1: amount of mutual aid that was was put together of time. Yeah,
Speaker 1: during the fire relief was was incredible. UM. And the
Speaker 1: Red House, the the eviction defense occupation was a really
Speaker 1: good repost to you know, the disaster that was the
Speaker 1: Chaz in Seattle. That this was like, this was an
Speaker 1: area that was temporarily autonomous from the police, that did
Speaker 1: not collapse into violence, that succeeded in its goal, and
Speaker 1: that cleaned up after itself and presented an option for
Speaker 1: people like this is how it can look when we
Speaker 1: try to evict people. You know, this is what can happen. UM.
Speaker 1: So I think they're I don't want to like be
Speaker 1: too negative, but I think that a lot of folks
Speaker 1: because of for a variety of reasons. You know, the
Speaker 1: there's been so much focus on kind of the insurrection,
Speaker 1: not even that, because I think that building can be insurrectionist.
Speaker 1: I think the seed bombing, guerrilla garden it can be
Speaker 1: profoundly insurrectionists. It's like, um, destruction has an am it
Speaker 1: result of making you feel better, right, it has an
Speaker 1: immediate of it endorphins and hormones. It makes you happy
Speaker 1: when you do it. It's it, it is. It is
Speaker 1: an exhilarating act, and you feel like you're accomplishing something.
Speaker 1: What's harder is to like have that same feeling by
Speaker 1: doing seed bombing, right by by actually like improving your
Speaker 1: community slowly through these types of like so the PC ideas,
Speaker 1: they don't have the same immediate emotional reactions. So a
Speaker 1: lot of people like when they, you know, think about
Speaker 1: what insurrection is, they can a default to this destructive tendency,
Speaker 1: which destruction has its time and place. Um, but if
Speaker 1: that's your only practice, we're not gonna improve the world
Speaker 1: at all, Like, right, that's that's not gonna do anything.
Speaker 1: Helping through you know, giving out food, helping through giving
Speaker 1: out socks and clothes, helping through all of these solar
Speaker 1: punk ways. These are things that actually like are going
Speaker 1: to improve things on a tangible level. They and they're
Speaker 1: gonna make more people be like, oh, hey, what what
Speaker 1: are these anarchists doing? That's actually interesting versus oh, what
Speaker 1: are these anarchists doing? This is stupid? Ignore everything to say, yeah,
Speaker 1: people to remember as well that um, you know, there's
Speaker 1: seeds was sort of funk in Kirp Hootkins write things,
Speaker 1: you know, from the conquest of bread to mutual aid,
Speaker 1: and those are sort of things that should be just
Speaker 1: as emphasized as the destructive, exhigerating aspects of anarchism. Yeah,
Speaker 1: there's a line in a Frank Turner song, a couple
Speaker 1: of lines actually in a song called nineteen thirty three
Speaker 1: that I go back to a lot, But one of
Speaker 1: them is you can't fix the world of all you
Speaker 1: have is a hammer. And that's I guess what I
Speaker 1: see is, like, the primary practical benefit of solar punk,
Speaker 1: just as an aesthetic as a piece of fiction, is
Speaker 1: getting people to expand their toolbox. Yeah, get yourself a trowel,
Speaker 1: you know, some some screw drivas, you know. Yeah, keep
Speaker 1: the hammer, you need that sometimes too, but let's grab
Speaker 1: some other tools. Expand the toolbox. Thing is a really
Speaker 1: great metaphor for all of this type of thing. Yeah. Yeah, Um,
Speaker 1: I think that's most of what we're going to get
Speaker 1: into today. Um. There's a couple of pieces of things
Speaker 1: I would want to read. One of them Isn't. This
Speaker 1: Isn't directly I think it predates the solar punk, but
Speaker 1: it it a I think feeds into some of what
Speaker 1: I think it emotionally feeds into a lot of what
Speaker 1: we're talking about here. It's an essay from David Graber
Speaker 1: called The Shock of Victory UM, which I think is
Speaker 1: really useful to me. Yeah. Um. And I would also
Speaker 1: recommend um Corey doctor O's new fiction novel walk Away UM,
Speaker 1: which I think is really wonderful. Piece was a wonderful,
Speaker 1: wonderful book. I should have included my recommentions. It was
Speaker 1: really great. Yeah. I read it recently and it made me, Um.
Speaker 1: It made me feel the way like as a fiction
Speaker 1: writer that a grid piece of fiction should, which is
Speaker 1: like I felt bad. Uh. I felt bad about some
Speaker 1: of the things that I had written because there's there's
Speaker 1: there's such there's so much more or courage because I
Speaker 1: wrote a piece of fiction that has some solar punk elements,
Speaker 1: has some quasi utopian elements in the dystopia. But I
Speaker 1: didn't have the courage to kind of go as far
Speaker 1: as as Corey did and to imagine a kind of
Speaker 1: passivism that he he has the courage to kind of
Speaker 1: put into the into the hands of his his protagonists.
Speaker 1: Like I, I really respect that about the book. I mean,
Speaker 1: the book goes in some very interesting eye directions as well,
Speaker 1: but it's it's got some great ship um, and I
Speaker 1: always enjoy Corey's Corey's leve of burning man um of
Speaker 1: what it could be is kind of what the what
Speaker 1: what some of it's turned into? But yeah, um, Andrew,
Speaker 1: is there anything else you wanted to get into before
Speaker 1: we we close this out? I just want to remind
Speaker 1: people to check on your friendsh you know, Um, we're
Speaker 1: all going through various stages of claps, as I outlined
Speaker 1: in my video. You know, we shift between them from
Speaker 1: time to time, so try not to go through it alone.
Speaker 1: You know, there's no there's no eye in Sula punk.
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, um check out st Andrew on YouTube at
Speaker 1: st andrews Um. Um, Andrew, is there any anything else
Speaker 1: you wanted to kind of plug from your own your
Speaker 1: own personal work? Yeah. So, um, other than the you know,
Speaker 1: the Sula punk videos and the collapse videos, I want
Speaker 1: to remind sorry, I rather I want to shout out
Speaker 1: my video on black anarchism. I think that is a
Speaker 1: pretty essential look into, uh, the history of black anarchism
Speaker 1: in the United States and in the world. I also
Speaker 1: want to recommend um my video on the psychology of authoritarianism.
Speaker 1: I know a lot of people have family members who
Speaker 1: are conservative or on the right to what may be
Speaker 1: leading fascist and I think not having to be helpful
Speaker 1: for you know, helping them to or rather helping you
Speaker 1: to understand the way they mindset side m hm. And also,
Speaker 1: you know, check out my video on puma Let's sing.
Speaker 1: I think that was a pretty fun one as well.
Speaker 1: It breaks down a lot of it break breaks down
Speaker 1: how you can go about implementing food forests or puma
Speaker 1: culture gardens wherever you find yourself. Awesome, Um, thank you
Speaker 1: very much for being on the show, Andrew, thank you
Speaker 1: all for listening. We'll be back tomorrow or if this
Speaker 1: comes out Friday, we'll be back, you know, another day.
Speaker 1: We'll be back at some point. You know, you know
Speaker 1: how this works, you understand podcasts. It could happen Here
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Speaker 1: for listening.