Post AP5MCMlAY2RWFmoFJQ by derek@sunbeam.city
(DIR) More posts by derek@sunbeam.city
(DIR) Post #AOrMDcjfCsAyE4zG0e by derek@sunbeam.city
2022-10-23T03:14:58Z
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"A Paradise Built in Hell" by Rebecca Solnit is about humans coming together after disasters. Some lines here are really quite poignant."You can read recent history as a history of privatization not just of the economy but also of society, as marketing and media shove imagination more and more toward private life and private satisfaction, as citizens are redefined as consumers, as public participation falters and with it any sense of collective or individual political power, as even the language for public emotions and satisfactions withers. There is no money in what is aptly called free association: we are instead encouraged by media and advertising to fear each other and regard public life as a danger and a nuisance, to live in secured spaces, communicate by electronic means, and acquire our information from media rather than each other."
(DIR) Post #AOrMDeJrJmit8cvg48 by derek@sunbeam.city
2022-10-23T03:15:39Z
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"But in disaster people come together, and though some fear this gathering as a mob, many cherish it as an experience of a civil society that is close enough to paradise. In contemporary terms, privatization is largely an economic term, for the consignment of jurisdictions, goods, services, and powers-railways, water rights, policing, education to the private sector and the vagaries of the marketplace. But this economic privatization is impossible without the privatization of desire and imagination that tells us we are not each other's keeper. Disasters, in returning their sufferers to public and collective life, undo some of this privatization, which is a slower, subtler disaster all its own. In a society in which participation, agency, purposefulness, and freedom are all adequately present, a disaster would be only a disaster."
(DIR) Post #AOrMDg6ofFTigkqI0u by derek@sunbeam.city
2022-10-23T03:18:07Z
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anyway I recommend it, based off what I've read so far and the recommendation of #solarpunk author #AndrewDanaHudson:https://bookwyrm.social/book/11347/s/a-paradise-built-in-hell
(DIR) Post #AP5MCLiePupn1gcikS by derek@sunbeam.city
2022-10-29T22:10:09Z
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"The Heberew word mizpah, says one encyclopedia, "is an emotional bond between those who are separated (either physically or by death)." Another says it was the Old Testament watchtower "where the people were accustomed to meet in great national emergencies." Another source describes it as "symbolizing a sanctuary and place of hopeful anticipation.""
(DIR) Post #AP5MCMGgNO3YjEXtnE by derek@sunbeam.city
2022-10-29T22:11:47Z
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"Imagine a society where money plays little or no role, where people rescue each other and then care for each other, where food is given away, where life is mostly out of doors in public, where the old divides between people seem to have fallen away, and the fate that faces them, no matter how grim, is far less so for being shared, where much once considered impossible, both good and bad, is now possible or present, and where the moment is so pressing that old complaints and worries fall away, where people feel important, purposeful, at the center of the world. It is by its very nature unsustainable and evanescent, but like a lightning flash it illuminates ordinary life, and like lightning it some times shatters the old forms. It is utopia itself for many people, though it is only a brief moment during terrible times. And at the time they man age to hold both irreconcilable experiences, the joy and the grief."#solarpunk
(DIR) Post #AP5MCMlAY2RWFmoFJQ by derek@sunbeam.city
2022-10-29T22:39:25Z
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"The widespread disdain for revolution and utopia takes as its object lesson the #Soviet-style attempts at coercive utopias, in which the original ideals of leveling and sharing go deeply awry, the achievement critiqued in #GeorgeOrwell's Animal Farm and #1984 and other #dystopian novels. Many fail to notice that it is not the ideals, the ends, but the coercive and authoritarian means that poison paradise. There are utopias whose ideals pointedly include freedom from coercion and dispersal of power to the many. Most utopian visions nowadays include many worlds, many versions, rather than a coercive one true way. The anthropologist David Graeber writes, 'Stalinists and their ilk did not kill because they dreamed great dreams-actually, Stalinists were famous for being rather short on imagination - but because they mistook their dreams for scientific certainties. This led them to feel they had a right to impose their visions through a machinery of violence.’"
(DIR) Post #AP5MCNIqWpNhwEZ8nw by wolf480pl@mstdn.io
2022-10-30T07:07:32Z
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@derek Yeah, it's not like we still have people who mistake their dreams for scientific certainties...*looks at today's left*
(DIR) Post #ARYOc7pRceYkRJyjvE by strypey@mastodon.nzoss.nz
2023-01-12T03:05:25Z
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@wolf480pl> people who mistake their dreams for scientific certainties...... can be found everywhere on whatever map of political space you want to use. But the biggest difference between the contemporary situation and Orwell's time is that the certainties people are willing to coercively impose aren't necessarily scientific, or even scientistic (mistaken for science). In many cases they're specifically anti-scientific certainties. @derek
(DIR) Post #ARYnxDAiJjVWqh7oa8 by wolf480pl@mstdn.io
2023-01-12T07:49:22Z
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@strypey @derek anti-scientific "certainties" (or rather, misconceptions taken as certain) are less dangerous to educated people - they're easy to spot and denounce. It's the scientistic ones that are most dangerous IMO - not only because thet can fool even educated and intelligent people, but also because they make people not believe in science.
(DIR) Post #ARYoCT69NxxCaUGWo4 by wolf480pl@mstdn.io
2023-01-12T07:52:05Z
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@strypey @derek Covid policies are a great example. From "science says masks don't work" to "science says masks are necessary", to silencing dissenting doctors. The governments abused the name of science to push their best-guess policy, which polarized people into those who mindlessly agree, and those who don't believe in science, leaving no room for rational skepticism.
(DIR) Post #ARZhqUTPBfmpulEvSK by strypey@mastodon.nzoss.nz
2023-01-12T18:15:36Z
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@wolf480plAll "certainties" are...> misconceptions taken as certainTrue science doesn't deal in certainties, but rather categorizing theories according to whether they're falsifiable, and whether they're consistent with all the available evidence. People making absolute claims as "scientific", like the ones you mention about masks, are either misunderstanding or misrepresenting how science works. Totally agree about the polarizing consequences of doing this. @derek
(DIR) Post #ARZlirFB2iVW2ICUpk by wolf480pl@mstdn.io
2023-01-12T18:58:57Z
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@strypeyGlad we agree on scientistic "certainties".As for anti-scientific certainties, I think they're a red herring. A minor side effect of the distrust fir science created by the much more dangerous scientistic "certainties".Now, back to the original point: since, in contrast to @derek's claims, there are still significant groups whose vision of utopia involves use of force based on scientistic "certainties", we must still be wary of utopias.
(DIR) Post #ARZm3xb2cRBfosUQVc by wolf480pl@mstdn.io
2023-01-12T19:02:44Z
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@strypey @derek whether those groups would be classified as "left" or "right" on some political metric is irrelevant, though most such metrics orient "right" towards "wants to preserve starus quo", which means groups classified as such would be unlikely to advocate for an utopia.However, we should be wary if all utopias, regardless of what they're classified as by some political metric we happen to use.
(DIR) Post #ARlUonxYnbxIGQjIAK by strypey@mastodon.nzoss.nz
2023-01-18T10:46:09Z
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@wolf480plI think it's worth pointing out that some conservatives envision maintaining and entrenching the status quo (or their spin on it) as the path to utopia. Religious movements that believe the kingdom of heaven is imminent, for example. Utopians come from all ideological backgrounds. @derek