Solarpunk (and Collapse) Links
I think for a lot of people, the hardest part is just overcoming the mental hurdles to getting started. It's easy to wind up at despair or desperation or paranoia, to be angry you were promised a future that's not coming, to settle on ignoring it or becoming a survivalist. Mindset is the most important thing, because if you're not able to find a balance between grief and fear, and the joys that still exist, then what's the point of living anyway?
I've found it helpful to remember that the world is always ending, whether it's the personal apocalypse of your life falling apart, a war that destroys your city, the end of the empire that maintained the roads or the extinction of your species. But in every one of those apocalypses, there are those who survived, or who were outside watching, and still had to wake up and take care of their loved ones and work to make sure they have food and water and shelter for another day.
The world doesn't stop when a loved one dies, even if it feels like it should. The same is true when it comes to ecoanxiety and collapse. It might be harder, it might feel impossible, and we can do our best to make it better, but ignoring it doesn't work. That's why I prefer solarpunk to other collapse narratives.
- It's a little overwhelming to realize that a lot of my go-to links were written pre-Covid...
- For the Indigenous Haida community, ecoanxiety is nothing new "It is taken for granted by Governor Brown, by the climate scientists studied by Robbins and Moore, and the many people now reporting symptoms of ecoanxiety, that this new abnormal we call the Anthropocene is a new problem. But, guided by the insights of Leanne Betasamosake Simpson, let’s jump back in time for a moment. In the second half of the 19th century an apocalypse happened on a series of islands just off the west coast of what we now call Canada."
- How Indigenous Peoples Are Fighting the Apocalypse "I’m thinking through the convergence of these apocalypses: the genocide of colonization and the ecocide of climate change. I’m trying to understand how Indigenous Peoples have persisted in the face of existential threats, because I believe that our survival ought to matter to more people than just ourselves. That it ought to matter to you."
- How To Go To Work When Collapse is Near "I replied saying "Well, then, welcome to the doomosphere. I have some books and authors to help you research, if serious." Interestingly enough, he took me up on it. My first thought was to do it as a "tweet-storm," but then I realized that it was going to go a bit long for that. Collapse has been my main intellectual interest for over a year now. I want to do justice to those who write about it."
- Let's Talk Collapse "Collapse is a complex and controversial subject. I found a lack of organized guides for newcomers to the topic and have set out to build my own by cataloging the most relevant individuals, concepts, and resources on the subject into the most effective overview possible."
- I Lived Through Collapse. America is Already There. "This is how it happens. Precisely what you’re feeling now. The numbing litany of bad news. The ever rising outrages. People suffering, dying, and protesting all around you, while you think about dinner. If you’re trying to carry on while people around you die, your society is not collapsing. It’s already fallen down."
- Facing the Climate Emergency: Grieving The Future You Thought You Had "After you acknowledge the apocalyptic scale and speed of the climate emergency, you must allow yourself time to grieve. There are so many losses: the people and species already lost, your sense of safety and normalcy... Above all, in order to live in truth, we have to grieve for our own futures—the futures we had planned, hoped for, and thought we were building. Grief is appropriate—while, on one hand, this is the loss of an abstraction, not a living creature. On the other, it’s a huge loss—the loss of our most cherished plans, goals, fand fantasies."
- Wallowing and Worshiping: Living with Ecological Grief, Part 1 "It hurts to love the land. And the more we love them, the more we engage with their spirits, the more it hurts. It’s a daily struggle to connect with these spirits, with this sacred world, and not be torn apart by how much it hurts to watch it be destroyed piece by piece. How do we face reality without being swallowed by despair and fear? How do we hold onto the love when it is so fraught with grief? I’ve struggled with this for a long time, and I still don’t have a perfect solution. But in meditation, reading, praying, doing ceremony, and consulting tarot and oracles, I’ve been given a few ideas that I think might help us."
Degrowth
Degrowth (or "downshifting" or "lifestyle deflation") is about leaning to live a lifestyle with a smaller footprint now, because every little bit helps and because it's easier to learn while there's a safety net. (At some point there may not be a safety net anymore.) For some people, this means buying land where they can be self-sufficient, garden, and so on. For others, it can mean figuring out what you can do in the city, what you can learn, or who you can depend on. John Michael Greer called it "collapse now and avoid the rush" -- changes you make now can soften the blow when things change in the future.
- In Taos, a community of ‘voluntary anarchists’ is taking off-the-grid living to the next level "While the houses, with their rounded corners and colorful walls made of cans and bottles, may look more like spaceships than human dwellings, the opposite is true: The buildings are even called “earthships.” Located just outside of Taos, this community—known as the Greater World Earthship Community—provides full-time housing to at least 130 people."
- 5 Steps to Embrace Lifestyle Deflation Without Deprivation
- Figure out what enough really means to you
- Work slowly toward minimalism
- Big impacts come from the big three expenses: housing, transport, food
- Focus on what you can do, not what isn't
- Make sure you have goals to define what you really want
- Sloww has a lot of links and articles about slow living, but the really aggressive nags for their mailing list make it unpleasant to read.
- What Is the Slow Movement? "The Slow Movement advocates a cultural shift toward slowing down life’s pace. A cultural movement in favor of slowing down in a world obsessed with speed is a useful prequel to any debate about prosperity and macroeconomic policy. By considering the Slow Movement, we can contemplate one of the fundamental societal values that inform our current economic policy: how is time best used or spent."
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Degrowth isn't the same as a recession – it's an alternative to growing the economy forever
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How to Get Your Apartment Off the Grid
- How to Start a Small Garden in Your Apartment
- Prepper FI: Taking Control of your Future Beyond Just Money
- Ruggedize Your Life
- How the Amish Use Technology
- LOW←TECH MAGAZINE
- Minimal Computing
- degrowther
- Left To Our Own Devices
- Permacomputing | viznut
- Permacomputing Update 2021 | viznut
- What might degrowth computing look like?
- compudanzas — permacomputing
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What is degrowth?
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Deepening Resilience: Earth-based Responses to Climate Change
- LOW←TECH MAGAZINE
- Intentional Communities - Find, Join, & Learn about Intentional Community
- Extinction Rebellion
- GODS & RADICALS PRESS
- Lost Valley Education Center
- Resilience
- Local Resilience Project
- SOLARPUNKS
- Ashes Ashes
- SPROUT DISTRO - Anarchist Zines & Pamphlets
- Gesturing Towards Decolonial Futures "is an arts/research collective that uses this website as a workspace for collaborations around different kinds of artistic, pedagogical, cartographic, and relational experiments that aim to identify and de-activate colonial habits of being, and to gesture towards the possibility of decolonial futures."
- The Manifesto - Dark Mountain "What war correspondents and relief workers report is not only the fragility of the fabric, but the speed with which it can unravel. As we write this, no one can say with certainty where the unravelling of the financial and commercial fabric of our economies will end. Meanwhile, beyond the cities, unchecked industrial exploitation frays the material basis of life in many parts of the world, and pulls at the ecological systems which sustain it."
- Living Resilience "Our mission here at Living Resilience is to offer optimal support and resources to people who are brave enough to see the human-caused collapse of Earth and Human systems we are currently in, and the even larger collapse events to come."
- Pirate Care is a transnational research project and a network of activists, scholars and practitioners who stand against the criminalization of solidarity & for a common care infrastructure.
- Four Thieves Vinegar are the inventors of the epi-pencil (an inexpensive, DIY epi-pen alternative)
- Occupy Medical "believes that everyone, regardless of income or status, should have access to medical care without the fear of financial burden or being considered unimportant by their caregivers. We strive to listen to everyone who comes to our clinic, to build a positive culture in the community, and to give the best care possible at no cost to the city and the people."
Reasonable Prepping
These are all resources about prepping that you can browse without worrying about running into doomsday prepper bs and extreme right-wing politics. There is a certain about of milder right-of-center tone but not so much I'm unable to manage it, anyway.
Anarchism & Socialism
When you need to swing back to the left...
Permaculture & Gardening
Fiction
Nonfiction Books
- Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer
- Gardening When It Counts : Growing Food in Hard Times by Steve Solomon
- Making It by Kelly Coyne and Erik Knutzen
- Safe and Sound: A Renter-Friendly Guide to Home Repair by Mercury Stardust
- How To Keep House While Drowning by KC Davis
- Rebel Gardening by Alessandro Vitale
- Woodsqueer by Gretchen Legler
- Wild Witchcraft by Rebecca Beyer
Different Ways to Live and Work Together
metaphysical
