[HN Gopher] Alexander von Humboldt: the first Solarpunk
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Alexander von Humboldt: the first Solarpunk
Author : artpi
Score : 76 points
Date : 2021-09-28 15:08 UTC (1 days ago)
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| hosh wrote:
| So ... what about the numerous indigenous people who saw the
| world in interconnection and lived in an ecologically balanced
| way?
| artpi wrote:
| Humboldt was very impressed by them. His one beef with
| Jefferson was over slavery. He considered colonialism the
| biggest stain on humanity's record.
| hosh wrote:
| He sound like he was ahead of his time for someone from the
| colonial culture.
| eschulz wrote:
| Certainly, but I think it's important to consider that the
| Prussian landed gentry did not utilize slaves as did the
| land owners of Jefferson's fellow Virginians. Jefferson's
| writing often show someone ahead of his time, but his
| actions contradicted them in many ways since he was clearly
| addicted to the financial security of slavery (he also owed
| a lot of money throughout his life). Von Humboldt had no
| such ties to slavery in his affairs or those of his family
| or Prussian neighbors.
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| Name three.
|
| I can't think of a single society in the history of the planet
| that "saw the world in interconnection and lived in an
| ecologically balanced way". It would be hard, given that it's
| only for about a 100 years that we actually have any clue about
| ecological balance, and have both biological knowledge and
| theoretical tools[0] to think about the environment as a whole.
|
| Known groups were usually expanding as much as they could and
| strip-mining their immediate environment, and their main limits
| were manpower and wars with other groups.
|
| --
|
| [0] - Such as feedback loops, courtesy of cybernetics, and
| calculus underlying it.
| hosh wrote:
| The Hopi and the Mohawks off the top of my head. There is a
| documentary about the regenerative and restorative practices
| from the Native American tribes. Permaculture is a synthesis
| of modern ecological science and drawing deep from indigenous
| practices.
|
| And yes, I would say a history of civilization is a history
| of value extraction, exploitation, and fighting over
| resources.
|
| You don't actually need the science to live in a way to see
| things in wholes, but the science can help.
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| Thank you for two specific mentions. I can't find any
| "dirt" on them off the bat, so I'll try to find where I've
| read about pre-European contact Native American tribes
| being not as sustainable as it's commonly held.
|
| Incidentally, I've just found a 2020 paper claiming they
| did _not_ have a noticeable impact on ecology before
| European arrived[0].
|
| I currently have two competing hypothesis if it turns out I
| was wrong, and the various tribes did in fact lived
| sustainably. The first one is, they understood nature
| enough to live in a balanced way on purpose. The second one
| is, they just weren't large enough as a group to
| meaningfully upset the ecosystem around them.
|
| I find the second slightly more likely given the
| information I have. But even if the first hypothesis is
| correct, there's still the question: would we like living
| like they lived? Are the lessons we could apply to lead
| sustainable lifestyles without abandoning the progress of
| science, and all the health improvements it brought?
|
| > _You don't actually need the science to live in a way to
| see things in wholes, but the science can help._
|
| I kind of disagree. Without the science, any kind of
| "seeing things in wholes" is limited to very small, local
| wholes, and/or lucky guesses.
|
| --
|
| [0] - https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2020/01/2001221
| 23700.h...
| ahevia wrote:
| > Are the lessons we could apply to lead sustainable
| lifestyles without abandoning the progress of science,
| and all the health improvements it brought?
|
| I have met very few people who try to live sustainable
| lifestyles but actively deny science. I agree that
| science can help inform and enhance how we live
| sustainably, but the way this question is posed makes it
| seem that those who live sustainably also deny reality.
| (I dont doubt they exist, I know a few, but they are the
| minority of folks who live this way).
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| I meant something else: I meant, could we take the
| sustainability lessons of the Native Tribes in such a way
| that we both live sustainably _and_ keep furthering
| science? I.e. it 's not about denying reality - it's
| about continuing to learn more about it, and to apply it.
|
| In the past centuries, most important of scientific
| discoveries required having an industrial civilization.
| So implied in my question is, can we keep the progress of
| technology going (at least the non-abusive parts of it),
| because it's a flip side of scientific progress - they
| feed on themselves, and you can't have one without the
| other.
| ncmncm wrote:
| North American tribes kept the forests burned off to
| provide forage for game animals, particularly the bison,
| which ranged all the way to Louisiana. When Hernan de Soto
| released pigs during his exploration, initiating a
| continent-wide smallpox epidemic, the practice was perforce
| abandoned, triggering a little ice age as the new forests
| absorbed a huge slug of CO2. A century later, forest
| stretched from the Mississippi River all the way to the
| east coast.
|
| This is not to assert that they lived out of harmony with
| nature, whatever that might mean, but it does mean they had
| a different relationship with it than is commonly assumed.
| andrewflnr wrote:
| That doesn't itself imply anything about the Hopi or
| Mohawk people. There were a lot of native cultures in
| North America with radically different practices.
| carapace wrote:
| Have you seen the movie "The Gods Must be Crazy"? I don't
| know if they're a good example but the !Kung seemed to live
| an idyllic life of ecological and social harmony.
| ncmncm wrote:
| That was not about any actual !Kung, although it had some
| in the cast. It was just a fable.
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| I haven't, I'll check it out. From what little I read about
| them, they were at times committing infanticide, so their
| life probably wasn't as idyllic as it would seem.
| duckkg5 wrote:
| The Invention of Nature by Andrea Wulf is a fantastic, highly
| recommended read. It covers Humboldt's life as an adventuring
| proto-scientist as well as the impact he's had on the world's
| great scientific and artistic minds (Darwin, Goethe, many more).
| Despite his huge impact, the world has mostly forgotten about
| him, sadly.
| lvs wrote:
| How is this "movement" more than a rebranding of the tech
| optimists of the past? It reads as a pathetic response to the
| meagerest of efforts to go back to the tech optimists and
| technofuturists, or whatever these industrialists and capitalists
| pretentiously called themselves, to show them how wrong they
| were. Now you're all just trying to turn that frown upside down
| with greenwashing masquerading as philosophy. Anything to keep
| the capital flowing through the door and down the drain.
| dougmwne wrote:
| I'm fresh off a visit to the Technisches Museum in Vienna which
| has an absolutely superb collection of steam-age technology from
| the first and second industrial revolutions. It is a steampunk's
| playground. The collection also does an awesome job of putting
| the past 300 years of technical progress into a kind of
| perspective. I am an environmentalist, but the objections to
| heavy industry seem a bit quaint when faced with the weight and
| capability of all modern society.
|
| Maybe I'm a bit humbled right now. It seems increasingly
| ridiculous that we could solve our pollution problems with solar
| panels and trees and equally ridiculous that we could put any of
| our magic back in Pandora's box. I'm not sure what the solution
| is. Maybe there isn't one but to deal with the consequences as
| best we can.
| mym1990 wrote:
| I think you meant to say "Maybe I'm a bit Humboldt right now"
| ;) couldn't pass up the chance.
| hosh wrote:
| I have been disappointed with Solarpunk as a movement,
| aestheric, and literary genre.
|
| Have you looked into the groups like permaculture, regenerative
| agriculture, Stamet's work with mycology, Dr John Todd's work
| on ecovats ? The earthship designs? What about the practices
| Cuba had to adopt when they were under embargo, and could no
| longer import oil or synthetic fertilizer?
|
| There are a lot of things we can do. There are already
| solutions that work. People are doing them. They require a
| shift in how you view the world. By comparison, solar panels
| and wind turbines are simplistic solutions that do not
| adequately address these problems.
|
| I am coming to the conclusion that more technology will not
| solve these problems because the world view and paradigm that
| spawned these technologies are what lead us here. That rather
| than viewing the world as if it were mechanisms that can be
| reduced to isolated, cause-and-effects, and solutions that come
| from acting upon things in the system through the application
| of some kind of force, one can see the world as a living
| system, that is capable of growth of regeneration. This not
| only includes ecologies and our individual bodies, but also
| organizations, businesses, communities, and technologies.
| FredPret wrote:
| Moving from more abstract to more concrete, it starts with
| philosophy and arts (what is desirable), then engineering and
| business (how to get to the desirable situation).
|
| Now that the world has mostly established that the ecosystem
| is both important and interconnected, I think it's a matter
| of time before we come up with the technologies and business
| models to act accordingly
| causi wrote:
| _I have been disappointed with Solarpunk as a movement,
| aestheric, and literary genre._
|
| Indeed. Solarpunk enthusiasts are by and large insufferable,
| being people who get off on the aesthetic of sustainably
| solving problems but don't ever feel like doing the hard math
| of planning on how to maintain a technological society while
| doing it. It's as if steampunk cosplayers were a voting bloc.
| Hexayurt wrote:
| A lot of the problem is that when the lefties arrived, it
| went from _artistic and creative_ to a really shoddy,
| greyed out political shadow of itself.
|
| It was promising for a while.
| donkey-hotei wrote:
| This seems like a place to plug for the study of social
| ecology: https://social-ecology.org/
|
| Liberatory technologies, like the ones you mention, are just
| a piece of the puzzle. A tenant of social ecology is that
| "humans problems with nature come from humans social ills".
| dougmwne wrote:
| > By comparison, solar panels and wind turbines are
| simplistic solutions that do not adequately address these
| problems.
|
| Yes, that's exactly my perspective. The problems are
| enormously complex and will require a complete rethinking of
| every process lifecycle. Without that we will inevitably hit
| one carrying capacity limit or another. Today it's carbon,
| tomorrow it's water, the day after it's soil. Pasting solar
| panels all over everything is a gross oversimplification of
| the work before us as a species. We will find ways to reach
| for sustainability and settle for mitigation along the way,
| sometimes only when we are absolutely forced. The solutions
| will reach into thousands of seperate domains. If the first
| three centuries of industrial development were about building
| our capabilities, the next three will be discovering how not
| to lose them.
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| In other words, solar panels and wind turbines are where we
| _start_ the work. They still need to happen.
|
| We can't just get from here to sustainability in one jump.
| Even if we could figure out how a sustainable civilization
| looks - which we can't, because it's too complex a
| challenge - we still couldn't just make all the changes
| happen at once. It's not how human societies work at scale.
| timClicks wrote:
| > I have been disappointed with Solarpunk as a movement,
| aesthetic, and literary genre.
|
| It's nascent and formative. I mean, even the "Solarpunk
| Manifesto"[1] is a cluttered mess. The best is yet to come.
|
| [1] https://www.re-des.org/a-solarpunk-manifesto/
| sverona wrote:
| What exactly is your criticism? Saying "more technology will
| solve it!" is not really the point of solarpunk.
|
| Most of the solarpunks I know, including myself, are also
| broadly described as anarchists. "A shift in how you view the
| world" is something that happened to us long ago.
| hosh wrote:
| I was talking about a shift from a Machine Worldview to
| that of a Living Systems Worldview. You can be an anarchist
| with or without that kind of a shift.
|
| Perhaps you could share your views of solarpunk. Maybe I
| don't really understand it and I just see it as slapping a
| bunch of solar panels on houses.
| pkdpic wrote:
| I kind of dig the visual of solarpunk just being a bunch
| of millennials slapping solar panels on houses and Ive
| shared some version of the same concern I think.
|
| In any case sorry to tag along on the thread but Im a dev
| and visual artist trying to find some way to get more
| involved with part of the solarpunk community. Binge-
| reading Kim Stanley Robinson right now but totally
| isolated.
|
| Anybody have a discord or irc suggestion or anything?
| ahevia wrote:
| A decent video on the topic: https://youtu.be/u3aauiR9M88
|
| Just to add my +1. I have also never seen Solarpunk as a
| "just slap solar panels on houses" but rather using the
| minimum possible technology to enhance what nature has to
| offer and live alongside it. Kind of like mixing the
| practices indigenous peoples with minimalist tech. The
| Cuba example you used is nice. After my family fled Cuba
| they worked hard to ensure our household kept many of the
| same cultural practices. That partially informs my view
| of Solarpunk as well.
| sverona wrote:
| So there's a climate apocalypse coming. I spent a while
| being blackpilled on it until I tried to hurt myself
| because of the stress that put on me mentally.
|
| I view solarpunk as being the things that you mentioned
| (some of which I wasn't aware of, thanks!) plus a general
| attitude of "yes, things are very bad, and they're gonna
| get worse, but we'll work now so we can live later, we'll
| meet the challenge in some way, we'll fight capitalism
| and kyriarchy, we'll build community, we'll build
| resilient structures, we'll live."
|
| Are these foolish hopes? They might be. But I'd rather
| hope foolishly than be a collapsenik who truly believes
| there is nothing left to live for.
| dougmwne wrote:
| I'm not sure where you see your personal role at, but I
| think if you spent any time being blackpilled then you
| really need to step back and reconnect to your own sphere
| of influence. These are huge issues and they are way
| beyond us individually. They are not yours to solve
| unless I am unknowingly talking to a head of state.
|
| I say this as someone who has spent most of my career
| working with environmental nonprofits and have been on
| the ground and in the room on these issues many a time
| and with many of the people who influence US policy.
| Finding a way to act is helpful, despair is not.
|
| I appreciate Solarpunk as a budding eco ideology, it just
| feels pretty early for it to have any real solutions or
| influence. But if its proponents keep sharpening it then
| I hope to see it enter the arena of serious ideas about
| how we get ourselves out of this mess.
| artpi wrote:
| ( OP here ). For me the core of Solarpunk is that we need to
| work with nature and we need to inspire people to do so. In
| my definition, your suggestions are very much in line!
|
| Contrary to some communities, I consider "overthrowing
| capitalism" NOT a consideration of Solarpunk, and a
| detractor.
| hosh wrote:
| Thank you for sharing. You are the second person I have met
| who espoused that view of solarpunk. So maybe I should give
| it another chance.
|
| I get the sentiment on "overthrowing capitalism". Since
| encountering Carol Sanford's work, I came to see that it
| isn't capitaism per se as much as value extraction; and
| even there, there is a personal growth and developmental
| stage where someone or communities grow beyond value
| extraction to something else.
|
| Sanford's work have been very useful for me to understand
| how to identify and articulate the world view and paradigm
| from which people are speaking from.
|
| As such, one of the things I think I see in art or
| discourse produced on solarpunk is clinging to a machine
| worldview while trying to work with nature.
|
| Instead, if everything were seen as living systems, one
| finds the appropriate place for technologies and machines
| (and businesses and commercial concerns), then it isn't
| even about working with nature as if nature were separate
| from our daily lives. Our role as humans are not about
| trying to save the planet, but rather, a _participant_ in
| the ecology as a steward. We're not above and separate, but
| already interconnected.
| artpi wrote:
| Hey, OP here. The problem won't solve itself and we have to be
| wary of greenwashing.
|
| But as John Carmack says, we need tales to inspire, not tales
| to condemn. If we set our goals as just mediating damage,
| that's what we'll do. Only by having more ambitious goals, we
| will find out what's possible.
|
| Yes, we have work to do.
| dougmwne wrote:
| Per aspera ad astra.
| Aaronstotle wrote:
| I am almost finished with a book about Humboldt (Invention of
| Nature by Andrea Wulf). It's been a fantastic read, and I was
| surprised/ashamed that I hadn't known anything about Humboldt
| until earlier this year.
| tagami wrote:
| +1 on Wulf's book. A good weekend read!
| NelsonMinar wrote:
| Humboldt is strangely forgotten these days. He was an enormous
| figure in his time and soon after, in the 19th century. An
| ideal heir to the Age of Enlightenment. There's places named
| for him all over the world. But now his name mostly gets a
| confused shrug.
| carapace wrote:
| IIRC this was addressed in that book: his repute was
| tarnished by the wave of anti-German sentiment stemming from
| WWI.
| artpi wrote:
| That's where all quotes in this article come from! Fantastic
| book.
| baybal2 wrote:
| What in the world is Solarpunk?
| mym1990 wrote:
| "Solarpunk is an art movement that envisions how the future
| might look if humanity succeeded in solving major contemporary
| challenges with an emphasis on sustainability problems such as
| climate change and pollution. Solarpunk describes a multitude
| of media such as literature, fine arts, architecture, fashion,
| music, tattoos, and video games in a similar manner to adjacent
| movements such as steampunk and cyberpunk as well as more
| established art movements like Baroque and Art Nouveau and
| Impressionism. The iconography of Solarpunk focuses on
| renewable energies such as solar and wind power."
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