Why You Should Know About Solarpunk

Today we talk with Saint Andrew, an artist, writer and YouTuber, about the revolutionary potential of earnest utopian thinking.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:08):
Garrison. Is that good? Isn't the show? No? Let's keep
going though, Okay, well it could happen. Here is the
show that A tonal noise is my introduction this week
because I'm a hack in a fraud. Who isn't a
hack in a fraud? Is is our guest this week?
St Andrew. St Andrew, you are a solar punk anarchist

(00:31):
from Trinidad. Um. You have a YouTube channel, UM where
you talk about solar punk. Um, you talk about stuff
like seed bombing. Yeah. I'm just very excited to have
you on the show because I'm a big fan of
your YouTube channel. Thank you, glad to be here, big
fan of your work as well. Andrew, I kind of
wanted to start with why this white solar punk is important, because, UM,

(00:55):
I think it's easy for folks who just kind of
skim it to see it. It's just like, oh, it's
an aesthetic. It's maybe an art style or a fiction style. UM.
Maybe something that's neat, but not something that has like
a lot of inherent value to people trying to change
the world. And obviously you disagree with that. I disagree
with it to um A quote I keep coming back
to again and again is one from Werner Herzog in

(01:16):
the nineteen seventies and it was something along the lines
of I think that without better myths, were destined to
go the way of the dinosaurs. Um. Actually of I
forget his name right now, But there's this excellent, excellent
book called The Truth About Stories, and I think what
it really emphasizes throughout the book is the importance of

(01:38):
stories on how stories impact how we navigate the woot,
which is why I sort of embraced Sula punk, you know,
as a story that we can work with going forward. Yeah,
I think, Um, I think it's incredibly important to have
better stories, better myths because for one thing, I think
where the Left falls down a lot is not having

(02:01):
is accurately diagnosing the problems without providing a better look
at at this at the future, you know, um. And
when the problems are when the people who do kind
of propose solutions, it's often um not in a way
people can feel. One of the benefits that that that
the right has, that fascism has, is that they they're

(02:24):
very good at providing people with myths and providing people
with kind of a fictional look at at their idealized world.
That draws people in. You know, you can laugh at
the right you know, the people that work on like
meta narratives, and that's very, very core to their ideology. Um, So,
I guess where I'd like to start with you, Andrew,

(02:46):
because this is kind of the first time I think
we've really talked about solar punk on on this show,
even though from the beginning before any of these episodes dropped,
this was always a central part of our discussion about
what the show was was going to be. Um, would
you kind of provide an introduction to to what solar
punk is for our listeners? Sure? Sure, So I would

(03:09):
say that solar punk is the vision of the future
that place this emphasis on the existing world and how
we get to that future from where we are now.
So it emphasizes the need for environmental sustainability, for self governance,
and for autonomy and social justice. It emphasizes the need

(03:29):
for you know, human and ecocentric ends to really be
in sync, and it aims to really heal the current
rift between humanity and nature. It also recognizes, of course,
that there isn't this binary between climate change happens and

(03:49):
climate change doesn't happen. Rather, it understands that how we
navigate it will have a variety of consequences and some
of the positive, some of the negative, but it's up
to us to really shape that. Yeah, and it's um.
I want to drill into a couple of facets of that.

(04:10):
But I want to quickly plug one of your YouTube
videos for folks who kind of want a more involved
um explanation and background. You have a video called what
is solar Punk on your channel st Andrewism like Andrew
I s m um that I think is a fantastic
introduction not just to like the aesthetics of solar punk,
but some of the practical some of the practical kind

(04:31):
of expressions of it. And and two of the ones
you list is like examples of here's here's what this
is is like actual practis you know, and not just
an aesthetic is seed bombing um. And then you talk
about this this very interesting kind of like terra Cotta
air conditioning, which I think is I think it's neat
because it's it's one of the problems that I think

(04:51):
with kind of some versions of of particularly kind of
on the more liberal end of of of solar punk
imag engining is just sort of like ways of replacing um,
ways of gaining the same kind of consumptive benefits that exist.
I guess not even not even like greenwashing, right washing, greenwashing,
Like here, let's get the same consumptive benefits we get scrapers, yes, skyscrapers,

(05:18):
the same level of consumerism, same level of you know,
destructive extractive practices. But we have some flowers and some trees.
So yeah, and that's not enough. But at the same time,
there are things that aren't. Like air conditioning is contributes
massively to climate change. It's also not a luxury. Like
if you live in a place where it's a hundred
and twenty degrees a lot of the summer, that's not

(05:39):
a luxury. Yeah, this is going from someone in a
tropical country. Yeah, um, definitely a necessity. Yeah, So I
wonder if you could talk about kind of those two
I mean, or if you have different ones you'd like
to pick, but just kind of what you see is
sort of the practice expressions of solar punk, sort of
beyond the aesthetic, although we're going to drill nder the

(06:00):
esthetics some too, because I also think that's important. Right, So,
I think some of my favorite manifestations of suli punk.
In a practical context, things like um gorilla gardening. Grilla
gardening is probably the biggest one because it's one that
someone could literally pick up and do today or tomorrow,
you know, as soon as they hear about it, doing

(06:20):
about it. Just get some clay, get some seeds, you know,
and put those things together, and as you're walking home
or walking to the store, just toss them wherever there's
some free dud UM. So that's a fun one. There's also,
of course, things like a little bit one involved, like
community gardening and particularly forest gardening, because that will provide

(06:44):
a level of food autonomy and agency for people who
have been eling it for a long time from the
process of food production. UM. They're also practices like compassing
or corpaching, and it's like a way to produce lumber
without chopping down a whole side of trees, so you

(07:07):
are able to get the wood from the trees, but
the tree remains alive. UM. There's also things like, of
course solar powered technology, whether it be algae based UM
windows that you know, extract energy from the sun, or

(07:29):
solar sales or solar ovens uh or like the terra cotta,
the air conditioning, which, by the way I learned recently
can't really work in a human environment. But yeah, there
are a lot of different opportunities. They also there are
things like you know, tool shares and maker spaces and

(07:51):
seed libraries, all different ways to sort of bring it
into fruition. So that is yeah, and I uh, I
think a lot of that's really valuable. UM. I'm interested
in in parts sort of your your attitude on UM

(08:14):
what uh let me think about how to phrase this, UM,
what do you think are kind of the things as
we talk about sort of the things that can be
at least potentially replaced UM with with less extract of
less consumptive methods. Is sort of an example of solar
punk practice is replacing those things. There's also things that

(08:36):
we're not going to be able to have if we
actually want to live in a more sustainable UM future
that that doesn't contribute to some of the nightmares that
we're all going to be increasingly facing. UM. You're you know,
and again I think it's it's telling that so much
of kind of the future fantasies of that are written

(08:57):
by people who come from you know, my part of
the world. United States focus on like kind of post
scarcity methods of of guaranteeing the continuation of consumption just
through in some cases like fantastic methods um, you know,
magical three D printers and the like. Um. You come
from a very different part of the world, very different perspective.

(09:17):
What do you see is the things that like we're
going to have to give up. Coming from a country
that is actually reliant on oil and natural gas production,
we have to get rid of cause We definitely absolutely
have to get rid of cause um free to ships
as well, and really the whole way that you know,

(09:41):
global supply chains are structured right now, not to say
that they won't be any sort of global um sharing
of resources in the future, but the way that it's
happening right now, it can't continue to go on. We
can't continue to structure cities in our lives around cause
and other methods of gascars in transportation because we're literally

(10:07):
going to run out. And we've known this for a
long time, but it's nearing that the day is nearing
CLUISA and CLUISO and yeah, we have to find a
way to do without it. Yeah, and it's it's I
think tell like there's a couple of things that are important.
One of them is you can't just say we have
to stop global trade because in global travel, because the

(10:31):
people have have sought and done that for as long
as there have been people in one form or another.
It's it's a fundamentally human thing. But there are aspects
of it, like you know, expecting that every kind of
fruit and vegetable will be available year round, which is
certainly thing that we in the United States expect. Um.
That doesn't that that's not part of a realistic future.

(10:53):
Um And if it's part of the future, then it's
only going to be part of the future for an
ever shrinking chunk of of the country. And you can
see that and sort of um or of the of
the West, and you can see that in kind of
um the like what we're dealing with right now with
like the supply line shortages and failures, and like one
of the I think the symbols of how far we
have to go in my country is the degree to

(11:15):
which people are freaking out by the fact that Christmas
presents might be late. Um. Let alone being like yeah,
you might not be able to buy coffee, um um ever,
or all the time, you know, you might not be
able to get tomatoes in December, which reminds me UM.
I think one benefits to gorilla gardening, and that's what

(11:35):
sort of mindset is. As you learn to so you
also learn to reap. Right, So a lot of people
who get into grilla gardening altos end up getting into foraging,
and they are absent stuff you could download that allow
you to, you know, learn how to identify plants in
your area, and we surprise a number of plants in
your area that are you know, useful for tease or

(11:57):
for salads or for whatever poop is is that can
be used as replacements. I'm not sure they could replace coffee,
but they could be beneficial. UM in recognizing how we
have to live with our local ecosystems. Basically, yeah, and

(12:19):
a big you know, when you talk about living learning
how to live with our ecosystem stuff like planting um
forest gardens and the like um or food forests, I
think is the term UM. I think something that has
to be discussed is the matter of indigenous sovereignty, especially
when we're talking about you know, it's not just you know,
North America. A lot of chunks of the globe. Indigenous

(12:41):
people had spent you know, in some cases thousands of
generations setting forests up in order to sustainably produce food. Um.
And when when colonialism arrived, that was often just seen
as like, oh, this is this is these are wild
places for us too, for us to extract or tear

(13:02):
down and replace with mono cultures, you know, single crops. Um.
And so a big part of actually building back that capacity,
the capacity of us to to survive off of the
food that can sustainably grow where we live is looking
back to those indigenous methods and and also um, you know,

(13:22):
giving back land in a lot of cases um And yeah,
that's something you talk about in your videos that I
think is really important to um to to to to
explain to people. Yeah, I mean there's there's really is
no way to separate the violence and oppressive institution of
clunealism with the equosido Nietzsche of modern steeds. You know,

(13:48):
those two are deeply intertwined, deeply married together. And so
you can't fight climate change without addressing the issue of sverenity,
of indigenous serenity on land back. Yeah, it's m it's
really interesting. I've been I've been up hunting on Mountain
Hood with a friend who is who went to school

(14:09):
for like forestry management, and as we were driving, we
had to drive through a chunk of the reservation in
order to get to the blm land where we're able
to hunt, and he pointed it out, and once he did,
it was immediately obvious just how different the land under
indigenous control looked from the land, you know, just feed
away that was being managed by the federal government in

(14:31):
terms of like how much better the forest management was,
how much how much smarter it was it was managed
in order to um reduce the chances of like a
ladder fire that that actually kills you know, the trees
and whatnot. There's this whole thing blowing up on Twitter
right now where you've got a chunk of Marxists who
are are trying to frame land back as uh just

(14:54):
like shifting ownership of resources, which I think is really missing.
The point I find interesting about Twitter is the exact
same discourses are repeated over and over and over again.
So I remember this exact conversation happening around this time
last year, around April last year, um earlier this year

(15:15):
as well. It's just the same discourses get recycled over
and over again, and it's reached a point for me,
who I realized that these people don't want to learn
about land back what it really means, because they are
invested in the structure as it exists and they don't
want to have to interrogate that. So, Yeah, that's fellow

(15:37):
to be an interesting thing, I've note. Yeah, and it's um,
it's it's it's frustrating. UM. I guess that that acts
as like a general uh description of Twitter discourse, but
certainly doesn't. Yeah, I think it's I think it's telling
the degree to which people, even on the left tree

(16:00):
eat it as a fantasy as opposed to dogged lye
pragmatic um and and proven so like proven by like
like you know, like you can read you in reports
that will that will essentially say land back in the
space of a five page, you know, study on how
indigenous land management functions a great deal better than UM

(16:22):
than a lot of the stuff that's like centralized by
the federal government, where we're like, our federal government is
terrible at land management. UM, And it's part of the
it's part of the problem. I think one of the
things that that excites me about solar punk as an
aesthetic and idea is getting back to this relationship with
the land as opposed to talking about just preserving it
um as talking about managing it. Because because none of

(16:46):
our none of the land that people live on is
like wild in the sense they mean it as it's
been cultivated. That's the thing, right. The whole philosophy of
you know, um land preservation as was taken up by
the US government with the whole um you know, you

(17:06):
can stop forest fires kind of thing, ended up leading
to more forest fires online because they we have a
rule in the ecosystem, not just they had to stand
back from a file to subserve it. So we doin't
do our part to manage the underbrush and whatnots and
clear to we and exercise you know, controlled fires, but
we end up in the situation we're in today. You know,

(17:29):
cultivation not just sterile preservation. Now one of the things
that you talk about well because because one of the
more frustrating discourses this is not just a Twitter thing,
this has been going on for years, is the discourse
around GMO crops. And usually I would say like the
two most commonly heard sides, are GMOs are bad because

(17:51):
you know mon santo cancer whatever, or GMOs are good
um in in thought, um, And the thing that you
point out, which is I think the accurate take is GMOs.
The preponderance of evidence says that, like, there's nothing inherently
dangerous about genetically modified crops, but the way in which
they're often used in order to create these massive mono

(18:14):
cultures is really toxic. So there's a lot of promise
um for GMOs in terms of keeping our our existence
on this planet sustainable. But what's not sustainable is the
kind of industrialized agriculture where you have ten thousand acres
of one thing which just doesn't happen in nature exactly exactly.
And if you look at how genetic modification took place

(18:36):
prior to you know, all advanced funds in genetic modification technology. UM,
I'm not how many people are familiar with the dozens
of one dozens, if not hundreds of varieties of just
corn they were present in the Americas prior to Coltonization.
A lot of those varieties were wiped out or was
suppressed in fear of these monocultures. But if we able

(18:59):
to culture to divusity of these crops and really bring
some of them back through Jessic modification. That would really
help us with you know, food resilience in a world
with an increasingly unpredictable climate. Yeah, yeah, I think that.
I mean, I think you said it perfectly. I want

(19:27):
to move back to kind of what I introduced the
episode with, which is talking about the value of of
fiction and myth making in a in a very pragmatic sense.
I guess I'll start by saying, I think one of
the clearest signs of the danger that we're in and
how toxic our society has gotten. Um And I am
speaking from a primarily US centric standpoint here, but I

(19:49):
don't think it's unique to the United States. Is the
extent to which trust me um as as the saying goes,
when the U s sneel. So anytime there's some phenomenon
happened in the US, there are the coffee cuts. And
I do think this is pretty global. I mean, you
see it in like South Korean films and and know

(20:12):
what you're gonna say, Yeah, the obsession with apocalypse and
when we when we go to the future, it's always
a dystopia. Um, there's a degree to which we've almost
forgotten how to imagine utopia or even not just utopia,
just a way of living that is an improvement in
a lot of ways of future that's better. We've forgotten
to do both utopian fiction and any just kind of

(20:34):
like positive fiction in a lot of ways. Because, yeah,
it's understandable because the world is kind of terrible right
now in a lot of in a lot of ways.
But there's also there's been utopian fiction inside other terrible
worlds as well. I think just the modern interconnected media
sphere has really rewarded this type of like dystopian and

(20:54):
collapse based apocalypse fiction. Yeah, and I'm sure that's that's
worth interrogating. Why. But it is a problem that needs
to be solved. Yeah, and it is, And and you're
I think it's important. It's not entirely based in how
fucked up things are, because like when the first Star
Trek came out, we were at like the height of
the Cold War. Things were terrible. There was a lot
of utopian fiction during World War Two. During World War two, UM,

(21:17):
I will always be impressed by the fact that Gene
Roddenberry saw it as incredibly important both to be like, Okay, well,
in the future, like in the middle of the Civil
rights movement, in the future, we will have overcome like racism,
but not just that, but like I'm gonna I'm gonna
stick a Russian on the bridge too, because nations are
going to end as a concept and like this stuff

(21:37):
won't matter. Um, and that just that kind of utopian fiction,
at least at this at the scale of popularity that
you know, Star Trek wasn't its time just isn't present anymore.
And I that's tremendously worrying to me. And I see
a lot of hope in in Solar Punk for that. Um,

(21:58):
I guess for star As I'm interested in in your
thoughts on this, and you're interested in Andrew, what you
think is like the pragmatic value of of of positive
a fiction that that that imagines a better world. Yes,
so I've done probably I think I've done like two

(22:22):
videos on Sola Punk so far. M two major videos
on Soil the Punk, as well as a smaller video
two other smaller videos. Um. And what I've seen in
the comments and in the general social media reaction again
and again is sol the Punk saved my life, you know,
sola punk has given me hoop. You know, I was

(22:42):
slipping into the spair, but this video really gave me
a jump start to try something new and to start
to fresh and to pursue action as opposed to suggest
laying down and taking whatever comes next and that that
is it for me. You know, I think the fact

(23:04):
that sulla punk offers like an energizing vision. It's not
just a vision, it's an energizing vision because in every
step with the way it shows what you can do.
You know, when you show when you look at sula
punk art or um, you look at the small but

(23:24):
growing genre of sula punk literary media, or you know,
you look at but there's don't have many slipunk video
games right now, but hopefully there will be in the future.
When you look at the various forms of sila punk
media that are coming out and people's responses to them,
you see that it's not like as all mentioning like

(23:47):
star Trek, where it's all this far out technology that
we can only aspire to for now. You know, suli
punk is something that you can literally put in your
backyard or your bad canny, or your home, or your
school or your community. You know, you could put these
things in place like from now, you know, and you
can incorporate it into your politics as you know, as

(24:11):
they are, and they could also help to push your
politics forward, you know, because through solo punk, we could
open up discussions about, Okay, so how do we ensure
that people live comfortably within the parameters of you know,
the Earth's carrying capacity? You know, you open up a
discussions about indigenous soevereignty, you discussions about, um, the relationship

(24:36):
between the Google North and the global South, and responsibility
with regard to our response to climate change. Well, you
open up a lot of different discussions through the realm
of soulo punk. It energizes people, as I said, and yeah,
I think that is its paramatic purpose. It doesn't stand alone,

(24:58):
of course, but it is a driving force. Yeah. Would
you kind of give out a list of if people
are you know, if this is someone's first introduction to
the concept of solar punk, what is some reading you
want to draw people towards. What are some fiction like
I know you mentioned The Dispossessed by Laguin right, um,

(25:21):
which often gets cited. Um, yeah, I'm interested in kind
of other other recommendations you might have for our listeners,
are that right? So UM. I'm still getting into the
genre myself, so I don't have too many UM recommendations.
There are some UM decent short story collections UM like
sun Vaults by a couple of different authors. There's also

(25:46):
multi species Cities, so the punk urban futures UM. And
the one I read most recently was Ecotopia, which is
quite is much older than all the others. It's actually
really a book that was published in UM and not
all aspects of its politics things I agree with, but

(26:11):
I think for a first UM it was one of
the really the first of its kind in that sort
of equal utopian genre that really laid out what the
society would look like. UM. The book is structured in
a series of novel entries and notebook reports by a
journalist from the United States who has gone to this

(26:34):
country called eco Topia, which is sort of where the
Pacific Northwest States are, and he's basically breaking down He's
going to different parts of the country and breaking down
how they have lived and how they have decided structure
their lives. UM. And even though not every aspect of

(26:57):
it is one that I would want to see implemented,
I still think that it really sparks the imagination, really
gets you thinking, well, maybe I wouldn't do it this week,
but how else could this be done? And I think
the capacity for spunk stories suggest generate that thought and

(27:19):
generate one's imagination is very useful in a world where
we don't really get to use our imagination as much,
not really since childhood, you know. And um, yeah, I uh.
I think it's often understated the degree to which using

(27:40):
your imagination is a vitally necessary part of actual radical politics. Um.
And I think there's a lot of people who consider
themselves radicals, you know, some of these some of these
not to you know, slam every Marxist Leninist on the planet,
but certainly some of the ones who were coming up
with these bad faith critics systems of land back. It's like,

(28:01):
you're not a radical, You're a conservative who wants to
go back to a different kind of problematic thing. Um.
It is more the fact that the Soviet Union poisoned
like the largest body of water in Europe. You know,
all the different things that the Soviet Union did that
were horrible for the environment and extractive, and it's interesting
that you know, they are these people who call themselves radicals,

(28:24):
but at the very first um encounter with a radical idea,
their first instinct is to shut down. Their first instinct
is to just pushed back against it, whereas not to
toot my own horn or anything. But you know, when
I see an idea that I haven't encountered before that

(28:48):
may seem strange to me, that challenges my precontinutions, my
first reaction is not to shout about how this school
is against everything then, and said, you know, my first
reaction is to investigate it and to open space for
it in my mind, to really, you know, tune it

(29:08):
around and imagine what it might look like and how
it might fit with what I have learned about before. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely,
I mean I think that's that's that's great advice for
radical politics. It's also just good life advice. Yeah, especially

(29:29):
for engaging with ideas that you are less keen on
at the moment, or or or just unaware of. H
I mean, my whole thing is if I have like
a strong gut reaction to something, it might be because
it may be hitting a part of me that might
be benefiting from that system, you know. I mean, I

(29:53):
don't benefit from the system in a lot of respects,
you know, as a black guy from the Caribbean, but
as a man, as in as a sis sis hetman.
You know, I do have privileges that I must be
aware of and I can't just like be so quick
to shut down, you know, something that ain't give me

(30:14):
a bit uncomfortable. You know. Yeah, I think that's such
a valuable thing to keep in mind, especially as a
a more or less sis white guy like a you know,
a significant number of people listening are if you're uncomfortable
by a new idea. Is it Is it because the
idea is bad? Or is because it strikes at an
area in which you may not even have like thought

(30:35):
about being privileged, like I'm I'm uncomfortable I have even
though there's no I have no intellectual argument against it
with the idea of of ending our use of cars
as they exist, because I love I love to drive.
But that's also heavily rooted in in in tremendous privilege
on my behalf um American culture, and so yeah, and um,

(30:59):
you know, we we we did talk about that a
bit in the opening episodes of season two. The idea
that like a more you know, when we we kind
of had our little utopian ending, the idea that like,
well maybe you'd have a car that's communally owned and
used for certain tasks. But you know, the idea of
of of car culture as the center of a city
is um is death. It's just death. When we talked

(31:22):
about getting past cars, is not to say that like
people will never use vehicles that move again, Like obviously
we will. They're necessary for something and all. Going back
to horse drawn buggies, pink. One of the last things

(31:43):
on like solar punk kind of tying into the whole
kind of nature of the shows. I really like to
enter your point on like how solar punk is like
an energizing force and I feel like we have very
few of those on the left and especially on the
anarchist left. Um, like i've i've, i've, i've I've had
my decent stint of like anarcho nihilism. And the problem,

(32:05):
like the problem with that is like it's very easy,
Like anarch nihilism is one of the easiest ideologies to
grasp onto because it vlidifies all of your bad feelings. Um,
But it also it's most of the people who I
know who are like real into anarchro nihilism. They're generally
not very happy people because it's kind of it's kind

(32:26):
of miserable all the time. Um. And sure they like
scoff at like solar punk is like some like greenwashed
yogurt commercial, like you know, like utopian thing, but also
like it's actually lots of solar punk that we've talked about.
It's like actually about doing specific things, Like it's actually
like actually going to do something rather than just being

(32:48):
an insurrecto kid um or just just you know, talking
about nihilist zignes and books on Twitter for all day.
And I think one of one of your one of
my favorite videos of yours is your video on this
like pology of collapse, um, because I think that's one
of my favorites as well. It's it's, it's, it's, it's
it's really just like a masterpiece. And how deep you

(33:09):
get into every different type of collapse thinking, because it's
not just on the rights, not not not not to
the left. It's not just whether you're you know more
you know, anarchist more authoritarian. It's like you get into
every specific type of thinking that plays into this idea
around collapse. And I think if I recommend everyone check
out your channel, especially watching your Solar Point videos, but

(33:30):
specifically on the topic of collapse. You know, part of
our show we were trying to kind of be a
little bit like anti collapse UM. And I think your
your video really shows the depth of that topic UM
and how to approach this, because collapse is a feeling,
like it's a feeling we all have, and it needs
to be interrogated. And I think your video is just
a magnificent job interrogating that feeling, right, thank you. I

(33:53):
can't overemphasize how important that is, because I I one
of the major failings. There were a number of victory
for a kind of anarchist thought, particularly within the United
States during the the insurrection last year. One of its
tremendous defeats is that it has become characterized in a
huge number of people's eyes as breaking windows and and

(34:16):
starting fires um. And yeah, that's a lot of that
is because the media is trash, um, and it's trash
it reporting on on all of this stuff. But some
of it is because a lot of people have let
that be their primary praxis UM. And that again, I
don't care about people breaking windows I don't care about

(34:37):
people lighting dumpster fires, but if that's what you're presenting
to the world as your practice, that doesn't appeal to people.
And you have to um, because yeah, anarchism is not
just destructive, it is also constructive. It's the constructive part.
We need to be boosting more than that. And there

(34:58):
were some, you know, from the con next to Portland's
some really strong examples of that last year. The incredible
amount of mutual aid that was was put together of time. Yeah,
during the fire relief was was incredible. UM. And the
Red House, the the eviction defense occupation was a really
good repost to you know, the disaster that was the
Chaz in Seattle. That this was like, this was an

(35:21):
area that was temporarily autonomous from the police, that did
not collapse into violence, that succeeded in its goal, and
that cleaned up after itself and presented an option for
people like this is how it can look when we
try to evict people. You know, this is what can happen. UM.
So I think they're I don't want to like be
too negative, but I think that a lot of folks

(35:41):
because of for a variety of reasons. You know, the
there's been so much focus on kind of the insurrection,
not even that, because I think that building can be insurrectionist.
I think the seed bombing, guerrilla garden it can be
profoundly insurrectionists. It's like, um, destruction has an am it
result of making you feel better, right, it has an

(36:02):
immediate of it endorphins and hormones. It makes you happy
when you do it. It's it, it is. It is
an exhilarating act, and you feel like you're accomplishing something.
What's harder is to like have that same feeling by
doing seed bombing, right by by actually like improving your
community slowly through these types of like so the PC ideas,
they don't have the same immediate emotional reactions. So a

(36:23):
lot of people like when they, you know, think about
what insurrection is, they can a default to this destructive tendency,
which destruction has its time and place. Um, but if
that's your only practice, we're not gonna improve the world
at all, Like, right, that's that's not gonna do anything.
Helping through you know, giving out food, helping through giving
out socks and clothes, helping through all of these solar

(36:46):
punk ways. These are things that actually like are going
to improve things on a tangible level. They and they're
gonna make more people be like, oh, hey, what what
are these anarchists doing? That's actually interesting versus oh, what
are these anarchists doing? This is stupid? Ignore everything to say, yeah,
people to remember as well that um, you know, there's
seeds was sort of funk in Kirp Hootkins write things,

(37:06):
you know, from the conquest of bread to mutual aid,
and those are sort of things that should be just
as emphasized as the destructive, exhigerating aspects of anarchism. Yeah,
there's a line in a Frank Turner song, a couple
of lines actually in a song called nineteen thirty three
that I go back to a lot, But one of
them is you can't fix the world of all you

(37:28):
have is a hammer. And that's I guess what I
see is, like, the primary practical benefit of solar punk,
just as an aesthetic as a piece of fiction, is
getting people to expand their toolbox. Yeah, get yourself a trowel,
you know, some some screw drivas, you know. Yeah, keep

(37:50):
the hammer, you need that sometimes too, but let's grab
some other tools. Expand the toolbox. Thing is a really
great metaphor for all of this type of thing. Yeah. Yeah, Um,
I think that's most of what we're going to get
into today. Um. There's a couple of pieces of things
I would want to read. One of them Isn't. This
Isn't directly I think it predates the solar punk, but

(38:12):
it it a I think feeds into some of what
I think it emotionally feeds into a lot of what
we're talking about here. It's an essay from David Graber
called The Shock of Victory UM, which I think is
really useful to me. Yeah. Um. And I would also
recommend um Corey doctor O's new fiction novel walk Away UM,

(38:33):
which I think is really wonderful. Piece was a wonderful,
wonderful book. I should have included my recommentions. It was
really great. Yeah. I read it recently and it made me, Um.
It made me feel the way like as a fiction
writer that a grid piece of fiction should, which is
like I felt bad. Uh. I felt bad about some

(38:55):
of the things that I had written because there's there's
there's such there's so much more or courage because I
wrote a piece of fiction that has some solar punk elements,
has some quasi utopian elements in the dystopia. But I
didn't have the courage to kind of go as far
as as Corey did and to imagine a kind of
passivism that he he has the courage to kind of

(39:17):
put into the into the hands of his his protagonists.
Like I, I really respect that about the book. I mean,
the book goes in some very interesting eye directions as well,
but it's it's got some great ship um, and I
always enjoy Corey's Corey's leve of burning man um of
what it could be is kind of what the what

(39:38):
what some of it's turned into? But yeah, um, Andrew,
is there anything else you wanted to get into before
we we close this out? I just want to remind
people to check on your friendsh you know, Um, we're
all going through various stages of claps, as I outlined

(39:59):
in my video. You know, we shift between them from
time to time, so try not to go through it alone.
You know, there's no there's no eye in Sula punk.
Yeah yeah, um check out st Andrew on YouTube at
st andrews Um. Um, Andrew, is there any anything else

(40:20):
you wanted to kind of plug from your own your
own personal work? Yeah. So, um, other than the you know,
the Sula punk videos and the collapse videos, I want
to remind sorry, I rather I want to shout out
my video on black anarchism. I think that is a

(40:40):
pretty essential look into, uh, the history of black anarchism
in the United States and in the world. I also
want to recommend um my video on the psychology of authoritarianism.
I know a lot of people have family members who
are conservative or on the right to what may be
leading fascist and I think not having to be helpful

(41:04):
for you know, helping them to or rather helping you
to understand the way they mindset side m hm. And also,
you know, check out my video on puma Let's sing.
I think that was a pretty fun one as well.
It breaks down a lot of it break breaks down
how you can go about implementing food forests or puma

(41:27):
culture gardens wherever you find yourself. Awesome, Um, thank you
very much for being on the show, Andrew, thank you
all for listening. We'll be back tomorrow or if this
comes out Friday, we'll be back, you know, another day.
We'll be back at some point. You know, you know
how this works, you understand podcasts. It could happen Here

(41:49):
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You can find sources for It could happen here, updated
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