Solarpunk conference

[sabotabby]

I attended the 2024 Solarpunk Conference—virtual, bless their hearts—and it was quite good, actually? A lot of the folks involved in solarpunk are wicked cool and smart and I love the art, and it's unfortunate that I don't tend to vibe with a lot of the literature. But it turned out to be much better than expected.

The highlight was the keynote speech from Starhawk. I have mixed feelings about Starhawk, and I had mixed feelings about the talk, because it involved visualization (several bits of the conference involved visualization) and visualization exercises tend to be very bad for me. But besides that it was really fascinating, even where I disagreed with her.

The biggest thing though, was that I read The Fifth Sacred Thing when I was a teenager, and it had a massive influence on my writing, both positive and negative. There's a degree to which much of what I write is in reaction to it. In particular, the thing that has always bothered me was after lengthy discussions about the pragmatic and moral benefits of pacifism as a strategy, the hippie anarchist City triumphs over the fascist Southlands...by essentially convincing their soldiers to merc their officers. Violently. And it always bothered me because the book is so self-righteous about nonviolence and even in a setting where magic is real, it shows the inherent contradiction at the heart of pacifism, which is that there's no such thing as nonviolence in political conflict, only the ability to choose who that violence in enacted upon and who enacts it.

Anyway, during her talk, she mentioned three things:
1) She writes non-fiction when she has the answers, and fiction when she has questions
2) The question at the heart of that book was "can a society based in egalitarianism and nonviolence survive an invasion by a society that is militaristic and hierarchical?"
3) She didn't actually know the answer.

So I asked, well, what if the answer had turned out to be no.

She replied that at many points, it did seem to be, and she was as relieved as anyone else that it ended the way it did. But also, did people notice that they weren't able to win and maintain their nonviolent ideals?

Holy fuck that was on purpose. It was meant to be contradictory. 30-year-old annoyance, solved. I was so happy that I got a good grade in Asking Questions At Conferences.

Other people of interest there: The guy who invented Glaze and the guy who projected "Space Karen" on the Tesla headquarters when Elon Musk bought Twitter. I am never fannish about normal people.

At any rate, the conversation was overall very interesting and inspiring. I left early (only so much virtual con I can tolerate) and sadly missed the "Fistfights In Utopia" panel, but also I apparently missed a bit where everyone there hates Kim Stanley Robinson, who I really like, so maybe it's just as well.

Comments

[greylock]

So, you rocked it?

Fair.

[sabotabby]

Hah, I am being silly. But I think I contributed one (1) interesting thing.

[greylock]

So, you for Prez?

[sabotabby]

Definitely.

[selki]

I like both some Solarpunk and KSR. I don't think of them as in opposition, though the tone can be different, sure.

[sabotabby]

I tend to find solarpunk writing too saccharine—I struggle to think of any that I've enjoyed as literature. I do like the art and I'm particularly interested in the technology. But my taste in books runs too much into the pessimistic for me to actually enjoy the fiction.

That said, another one of Starhawk's Very Good Points had to do with backgrounding the ideas and technology and worldbuilding to focus on human conflict and drama. She gave an example of a story she wrote, "The Brave Dress," about a trans mother really wants her daughter to wear a fancy dress that she had to fight to wear, but in a future that's moved beyond gender essentialism and transphobia, the daughter wants to express herself in the style of the current youth culture. Which I think sounds rad because it requires the ideological structure but grounds it in something much more human and interesting.

[selki]

Some of it is too saccharine, yes. Like you, I prefer the ones where it's more background to interesting social interactions. I like some of Carrie Vaughn's Bannerless stories (though some might argue whether those are solarpunk or post-collapse).

[viggorlijah]

ahhh the nostalgia of Starhawk! We would have like half a shelf of science fiction/fantasy at the bookstore when I was a kid and I would just buy whatever I could get (thank you Samuel Delaney's editor for making the back blurbs sound waaaaay more tame than the actual books) and I still remember going oh wow this is politics! you can do politics in sff books?! and being entranced.

[sabotabby]

thank you Samuel Delaney's editor for making the back blurbs sound waaaaay more tame than the actual books

AHAHAH omg.

I still remember going oh wow this is politics! you can do politics in sff books?! and being entranced.

Same. I loved SFF as a kid, and when I hit my teens I started to pull away from that in favour of Serious Literature, and this was one of several books that brought me back.

early morning concept meander

[radiantfracture]

That sounds awesome. I'd be too nervous to ask Starhawk a question.

I read The Fifth Sacred Thing when I was a teenager, and it had a massive influence on my writing, both positive and negative.

I think we've talked about 5ST before (hi I just made up that awful acronym -- how about 5★T?)

It still troubles my brain, too -- good sign I guess.

It was meant to be contradictory.

Yeah, so maybe -- and this is one of my favorite ideas so of course I'd dig it up here -- is the conclusion that community means more than absolute principle? Not to toss away principle, but also to recognize that, say, we can hold equally valid principles that become irreconcilable in some context (the community should survive / the community should not use violence)

I guess that's something I'm getting out of reading books like Hospicing Modernity, too -- mostly the thing to do in the face of collapse seems to be to tend to community.

(My worst skill!)

(-- & so of course the acceptance of a "traitor" back without judgement still cracks me open a little. )

It must have been you who talked about how the sequel went full guerilla warfare, because of what she'd seen in the meantime?

I didn't have as cogent a response, I don't think -- my objection was mostly to the bees, at the time.

And the beautiful young assassins, IIRC. I think we talked about the assassins.

Actually, I didn't really object to them at the time, but I do wonder now -- what happens to these murderous children afterwards. Does Starhawk say? My memory's very vague at this point. The image stayed with me.

As for the attack bees, I do think I understand what they are meant to represent. I accept that the connection to nature and the magical event are the point, but I am still like, "Okay, but on the ground, it would be a bad idea to count on the bees showing up."

I understand what a metaphor is and everything, honest. Or "guiding image" might be better here. I just like it when there's a backup plan. I wanted something actualizable.

Which again -- there are no absolute principles for resistance. But at the time I wanted some.

Re: early morning concept meander

[sabotabby]

Yeah, so maybe -- and this is one of my favorite ideas so of course I'd dig it up here -- is the conclusion that community means more than absolute principle? Not to toss away principle, but also to recognize that, say, we can hold equally valid principles that become irreconcilable in some context (the community should survive / the community should not use violence)

Yeah and I like this.

Robert Evans (of course) was talking about war crimes and something he saw in Rojava that, by the letter of the law, was absolutely a war crime. IIRC it had to do with a Kurdish fighter lobbing a smoke grenade at a sniper to root them out, and then shooting them. Which objectively is a war crime, versus killing a bunch of civilians in a targeted strike against a combatant, which isn't. He brought it out not just to talk about the limits of these kinds of definitions and lines but also our problematic relationship with violence. Obviously, we root for the Kurdish fighter to do whatever he needs to do not only to survive, but to win and assure the survival of his people. And doing so requires a violation of our own ethical principles.

Which is a thing that we need to contend with not just if we're writing about politics and revolutions, which of course I am, but if we're not, because we also need to grapple with the status quo as violence. Which is why I'm not a pacifist, fundamentally, any more than a person who glorifies revolution in and of itself.

It must have been you who talked about how the sequel went full guerilla warfare, because of what she'd seen in the meantime?

Probably? I never read it, just the GoodReads reviews. Which were fascinating.

And the beautiful young assassins, IIRC. I think we talked about the assassins.

Oh I forgot that. I was so grossed out. One of the murderous children dies tragically. I forget what happens to the others.

As for the attack bees, I do think I understand what they are meant to represent. I accept that the connection to nature and the magical event are the point, but I am still like, "Okay, but on the ground, it would be a bad idea to count on the bees showing up."

Also a problem I'm wrestling with.

I think the bees didn't work for me was because of how much the story was grounded in reality, such that the magical elements seemed last-minute and grafted on. Bees ex machina, etc. But that's maybe because I was reading all of the rituals as spiritual/metaphorical rather than literal magic. To be fair to her, this is a fundamental disconnect between my religious beliefs and Starhawk's. To be fair to me, she was writing for an audience that wasn't just Wiccans.

Re: early morning concept meander

[smhwpf]

Off topic somewhat, but unless the sniper was operating in an area with a concentration of civilians, I'm not sure how what the Kurdish fighter did would be a war crime, or even a violation of IHL? Even if it's a nasty smoke agent like white phosphorous, use against purely military targets is not forbidden. There may be an issue of using it directly against personnel if it causes "unnecessary suffering", but if the goal is simply to force the enemy soldier into the open to avoid the WP smoke, then that is not the case.

It would only be a war crime to shoot the sniper if the effect of the smoke grenade were to somehow render the sniper hors de combat, i.e. incapacitated, which sounds unlikely.

Basically, you're allowed to do most things against active fighters. Not chemical weapons, but smoke grenades, including white phosphorous, are not that. Using weapons directly against military personnel is getting close to the line, but white phosphorous is not officially classified as such, as its 'primary purpose' is to create a smoke screen. So at worst, lobbing a smoke grenade directly at a sniper is a grey area, hard to class it as a definite war crime.

Anyway, glad it was interesting!

Re: early morning concept meander

[sabotabby]

I'm not sure what the context was—it might have been that the sniper was incapacitated. It was being contrasted with the Highway of Death, which was definitely not a war crime legally, evil though it was.

[radiantfracture]

several bits of the conference involved visualization

Very big on visualization, Reclaiming is. I hadn't thought about it feeling bad for some people -- that's a good note for thinking about using meditations in class, etc.

[sabotabby]

I only half-ass do visualizations when I have to now, because if I whole-ass it, I can't be held responsible for what gets dredged up. It's why I don't do meditation.

[radiantfracture]

Yeah, that makes perfect sense. If you just go diving into the image-making part of the brain you get the images that are in there.

I used to get a lot more involuntary images, actually. I don't know when that shifted.

[ioplokon]

Mindfulness meditation and visualization is viscerally unpleasant for me to the point of making me want to self harm. I got to discover this fact about myself by freaking out in front of coworkers at a professional conference. :)

[sabotabby]

Oh fuck, I'm sorry. It's not that extreme for me, but I do have a strong negative reaction to it.

[ioplokon]

Tbf I already knew it was unpleasant, but everyone told me that meant I had to keep doing it because I was not Good Enough at dealing with the unpleasant sensations/thoughts (that came from doing it...). And so things kind of got worse each time until then & since that point, I realized that actually, I can just not do these things.

Honestly, even though I am annoyed by how prevalent these exercises are, what I mostly want is for there to be less pressure to do them if it's unpleasant (especially like, at school and work) & for people leading them to be aware that it's not fun for everyone & not blame people for Doing it Wrong.

[sabotabby]

Me too. A positive reaction seems more common, judging by the number of people who get something out of it and want to do it, but it's the fact that people don't believe you when you say you have a negative reaction to it.

[vass]

Which is odd, when you think about it, because if something's effective enough to be helpful, of course it can also have a harmful effect?

[sabotabby]

You would think! But apparently I'm just doing imagination wrong or something.

[radiantfracture]

I'm sorry you had that awful experience. Thanks for telling me about it, though -- it does help inform how I might approach offering mindfulness in class. (Right now I sometimes sort of half-assedly do, without really feeling like I've found the right way.)

[minoanmiss]

*reads in delight*

[sabotabby]

:D

[ioplokon]

Yeah, when I think of solar punk, I think more about technology than literature...

[sabotabby]

For good reason.

[dissectionist]

“Space Karen” will literally never stop being funny.

[sabotabby]

I started laughing even when they introduced him.

[grimjim]

It sounds like Solarpunk got an infusion of New Age sentiment early on. What's the hate for KSR? Too pragmatic and revolutionary enough?

[sabotabby]

I wasn't there for the actual conversation, but too negative, too technology/modern focused, cultural appropriation, and ecofascist.

(I disagree.)

[grimjim]

Sounds confused, since actual ecofascists tend to be anti-tech. Any big government approach probably comes off as "fascist" to those influenced by the hyperindividualism often associated with homesteading and paranoid preppers. There's probably some toxic positivity bias in Solarpunk if it's true to the various strains of New Age thought infused. Sorry, I cna't help but want to deconstruct them when they go awry.

[maeve66]

I am curious about what's the hate for KSR, too, though since you missed it, you maybe don't know. I will admit that his characterizations are not great, but I really like his combination of Big Thoughts and microscopic details. His depiction of revolution on Mars (especially the marathon boring mass meetings) was so. fucking. real.

As for Starhawk, I have my own complicated history with her and her work -- some woman on a train between Jeff City and Chicago once buttonholed me for more than half an hour proselytizing about the book and it made me hate it without having read it, when I was in my 20s. Then, when I moved out to the epicenter of it all, the Bay Area (side note: she really did the East Bay dirty in The Fifth Sacred Thing) in my 30s, a good friend kept insisting I read it and I finally read it, and Walking to Mercury, and liked them both a very great deal. I mean, true, I was surrounded by Wiccan stuff at that point, too.

And then, the 2003 antiwar movement -- I decided to abandon a lifetime of my regular revolutionary marxist politics (well... not abandon... I decided to double dip, is more accurate) and joined a small affinity group, with the friend who'd been insisting on the book, in fact, and we went to Direct Action to Stop the War spokescouncils in San Francisco, and... Starhawk was extremely organized and practical and hella old left, in fact. I was impressed. (At the East Bay Coalition to Stop the War, the meetings began with the ringing of a bell, the passing of a bowl of sacred water, and an evocation of the ancestors with "Ashay" - be with us... and then devolved into jockeying positions of different ultra left groups screaming for time on the speakers' platform at whatever march was being planned).

My other graze of contact with Starhawk was that maybe a year earlier than the 2003 movement against the war, that same teacher friend, another teacher from our school, and I went to a progressive teachers' conference up in Arcata, where Marge Piercy was the keynote speaker, and Starhawk was there and led a Spiral Dance, which, yes, I took part in. No visualizations during the conference that I recall. The conference was REALLY good, though.

[sabotabby]

See above re: KSR, but I wasn't there for the discussion itself, just the Discord reactions. I actually really love the characters in the Mars Trilogy. Some of his others feel like ciphers for ideas, but I think in that they were complex and intriguing.

I have nothing but respect for Starhawk's real-life activism and religious beliefs, and everyone I've known who's interacted with her has only good things to say about her as a person and organizer. But the book is quite flawed even though it's good enough to have stuck with me for three decades, and some of her fans can be irksome.

[selki]

Yes, I was dumbfounded when I heard 2 guys on a podcast confuse the two Russian women from the Mars trilogy. They were both so real to me & so different from each other! And there were other complex characters too, as you said, with their own motivations and arcs.

[kore]

Aww nice!

"everyone there hates Kim Stanley Robinson"

//perks up

"who I really like"

//shuts up


Kind of amazing she's still around, to me! She was v v popular in Santa Fe when I was growing up. True to the times ppl then were kind of shocked about the ("FEMINISM"), tho.

[sabotabby]

THAT was what people are shocked at?

I like KSR but I'm not so emotionally invested that I'm uninterested in why you hate him.

[vass]

Holy fuck that was on purpose. It was meant to be contradictory.

!!!!!

Thank you for asking her, that's really cool to learn. (I read The Fifth Sacred Thing in my teens too, and later Walking to Mercury when I got hold of it.)

I remember that the anarchist city had a rule that only postmenopausal (cis) women can be on the defense council, because by age and gender they're inherently less violent... and that at the end of the book they decided to walk that one back because it wasn't stopping anyone who wanted to be violent from being violent, just cutting them out of the decision process and, therefore, other people out of their decision process.

[sabotabby]

I thought that was particularly cool. Like, you could see the rationale, but it was ultimately very gender essentialist. And how often do you see reasonable people being convinced of positions by other reasonable people?