I think to that point, if we want to figure out how you get from solarpunk to fascism, you need to consider what it implies by its analysis (or lack thereof) of the actual material reality that's necessary to make the solarpunk vision come true and how that analysis/blind spots coincide with ecofascism.

What's going on that made dilapidated buildings get overrun by plantlife? Is it massive depopulation? Are we idealizing that?

What's the whole idea about self sufficient communities using technology to live in some kind of frontier? Is this class-conscious, or is it just repackaging settler mythology about frontiersmen and Lebensraum?

And maybe the problem with it "just" being an aesthetic is that it leaves the audience to fill in the blanks for those questions, and I think the default answers aren't great.

[–] Le_Wokisme@hexbear.net 15 points 15 hours ago (2 children)

What's going on that made dilapidated buildings get overrun by plantlife? Is it massive depopulation? Are we idealizing that?

those were the factories where the now retired subjects of the art built all their green energy tech and they don't need it any more. A highly automated communist society wouldn't have the same pressures driving population growth as modern capitalism with all it's racist crying about demographics, maybe the birth rate goes down over time, maybe it stabilizes over several generations. I don't think a deliberate program of reducing human population is reasonable (especially with any current government) but I also don't think we should be attached to "8 billion and growing" either.

or maybe the farmers are weirdos and everybody else is living in cool cities with trains and bodegas. Division of labor isn't fascism.

[–] FunkyStuff@hexbear.net 7 points 14 hours ago (1 children)

100% agree and I like to think that way about the art too, but I guess where I still take issue with it is that it makes people ask the wrong questions. In some ways, you provided the right answers to those questions, but I don't know that people are generally gonna arrive at those same conclusions, more likely they're gonna get stuck in the reactionary sort of framing. We only arrived at the right answers because we already have the ideology.

If anything, I feel like I prefer cyberpunk as an aesthetic, because the questions it makes people ask are questions that naturally lead them to better conclusions even if they aren't equipped with ideology yet. Where solarpunk makes people wonder about how they're gonna live like they're running back Manifest Destiny in the future, cyberpunk makes them wonder how they're gonna resist surveillance technology.

[–] Le_Wokisme@hexbear.net 7 points 14 hours ago

but I guess where I still take issue with it is that it makes people ask the wrong questions. In some ways, you provided the right answers to those questions, but I don't know that people are generally gonna arrive at those same conclusions, more likely they're gonna get stuck in the reactionary sort of framing. We only arrived at the right answers because we already have the ideology.

that's a fundamental problem with communicating ideas with art and the reading tea leaves approach common to western art education.

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