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MrMakabar15 Comments
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DippyHaving not watched the video, I dont have the time at the moment. I do not care if it is unserious to envision a solarpunk future. It is worthwhile to be hopeful and aspire to something cleaner and harmonious with nature. You can pry solarpunk from my cold dead hands
I was only able to get a few minutes in.
The complaint started off with âThey like the aesthetic but donât know how to get there or have the engineering to do it!â.
Actually, correcting myself, it started with an in-video ad for a computer desk.
After I skipped that nonsense, it got to the complaint, which amounted to âpeople like the aesthetic of these videos! But there are engineering issues with some of these works of art that arenât actual engineering but instead just movies and videos people like the aesthetics of!â
and thatâd be when I stopped watching.
He goes on to have, what I believe, is a valid complaint: Leftists have ideals which block progression towards our goals.
One example: Instead of building a wind farm, we are arguing about economic impact, and then still stay on coal while we that argument occurs.
I think overall the video misses the point. The complaints are that bureaucracy/red tape/seeking perfection (in states such as CA) prevent society from doing things with impact such as building high speed rail, creating 15 minute communities (Shout out to !15minutecity@slrpnk.net), and providing shelter for all.
This is completely valid, but it has nothing to do with solarpunk.
ValOne example: Instead of building a wind farm, we are arguing about economic impact, and then still stay on coal while we that argument occurs.
I agree, we should shut down the coal plants and start rationing energy instead. That way you can be sure that the green energy plants will get built efficiently. Nothing like a little discomfort to get people moving.
(This is only a half-serious point. There is a part of me that thinks this will actually work but overall I think it causes more problems than the gradual change.)
News at 10: guy watched yoghurt commercial on Youtube and is now expert on Solarpunk đ€Š
Itâs like he looked at a picture and invented a whole damn political movement and ideology behind it
âDegrow is bad"
You lost me there
That not the only weird thing in the video. Basically he is proposing Soviet style government led infrastructure development, yet implies California is somehow communist and bad because of that.
It really doesnât make any sense, unless your have a very specific uniquely US american brainworm.
Right? It was so confusing what random assortment of contradictory believes the author had.
If I recall correctly he also used the terms leftist, progressive, and liberal as if they were all interchangeable. Truly a horribly researched video with nothing of substance. The critique of some visual depictions had merit, but god forbid he pick up a book as a part of a reviewing a literary genre.
If you enjoyed the straw-men in this video you may also enjoy:
Slight contention: the video title is âThe flawed aesthetics of solarpunkâ now. Not sure if they changed it following criticism or what.
The content of the video was outstandingly disappointing.
Iâm subscribed to this guy and donât watch him much because heâs generally overly negative, somehow even when talking about things that deserve negative feedback.
Iâm glad it seems like we are all on the same page, to the point that I donât feel the need to list out any of the problems.
I would love a critical look a solarpunk, especially the gap between the execution and theory, but Iâm unable to find a single argument in this video thats worth discussing.
Also @MrMakabar, even if this post doesnt get (or arguably deserve) many upvotes, I do appreciate you posting this to the sublemmy so that we can comment on it.
The hard part about arguing against renewables is the argument is a very complex, economic one. People love to have a single reason as the explanation for something but reality is far more complex. This makes it very difficult to present in an elevator pitch style.
The most coherent segment of this video was the advertisement
I left my comment on the repost. Here it is:
Not letting your ideals block your goals is called fascism. Letting go of truth and decency and just doing the thing youâre planning on doing, proclaiming whatever ideals are most convenient for pursuing that goal. Unable to check that goal against ideals like viability or realism and always finding reality coming short. Burning through every resource you have violently pursuing an impossible dream until youâre finally weak enough to be put down.
What can happen is that you have poorly thought out ideals that block good goals, or on the flipside that you have poorly thought out goals that are blocked by good ideals. But making this kind of mistake is part of life, and itâs made by everyone who has any ideals at all.
When conservatives block renovations to a shopping district to make it a walkable neighborhood because they need it to be accessible by car, preventing the shopping district from becoming a massively profitable neighborhood that would have made every rich person in town considerably richer, isnât that ideals blocking progression towards conservative goals?
When conservatives refuse to fund preventative care for poor people because they donât want them to get a free ride, preventing a massive reduction in government healthcare expenses, isnât that ideals blocking progression towards conservative goals?
Or on the flipside: When liberals let billionaires fund and prescribe school curriculums to close the budget, isnât that goals transgressing where they should be held back by ideals?
When liberals increase police funding because gosh we need to do something about increasing crime rates, isnât that goals transgressing where they should be held back by ideals?
Liberals tend to present themselves as heroes of their ideals and practical about their goals, but thatâs just language. I donât think they make the mistake of sticking to ill-considered ideals more than they make the mistake of focusing on ill-considered goals.
As for leftists, so many movements fall apart because they focus on goals so much that they lose their raison dâĂȘtre, itâs not even funny. So many protest movements focus on numbers that they become funny festivals, so many activist slogans get watered down for public acceptability that they become meaningless virtue signals, so many community spaces turn commercial to help more people until theyâre just small businesses.
So I really donât think the left has a problem with sticking to ideals too much either, relative to their willingness to abandon ideals. Leftists are very cautious, but that comes naturally with acting on their beliefs usually being a crime in liberal capitalism. Making the translation from leftist ideology to actions that wonât get you arrested but that still help is difficult.
Liberals are often cautious too, but they should be - theyâre on the wrong side of history. If only they were more cautious, stepping back far enough to realize that liberal capitalism is always going to be immoral. And conservatives, jesus, just stop making mistakes and learn already.
Look, you donât have to convince me that capitalism is ultimately problematic and we should live in more anarchistic communities. You have some fine points here but the thing he specifically mentioned was as follows:
We need to build wind farms in order to shut down coal plants, but then environmental reviews (and NIMBYism) are blocking projects. You might argue the solution is to consume less power, but I think that weâll find that an unconvincing argument until the big collapse arrives.
Another example could be CAâs high speed rail which has been continuously derailed (heh).
My main point is not in support of fascism but instead we often let perfection be the enemy of good enough.
As a final comment, I believe liberalism is morally bankrupt and that is specifically why I used the term leftist instead.
p.s. I donât think conservatism is making mistakes. they are fulfilling their agenda but they have different (and IMO problematic) goals. Iâve heard two things that can help put their arguments in perspective: (a) they believe the world is zero-sum; (b) hierarchy is something to be embraced instead of challenged