Without an aesthetic program, it is impossible to truly recreate today’s society in desired directions. We need more than just ideas of the things we wish to avoid (ecological disaster, pandemics, famine, wars, existential risks from technology…). We need more than a moral mission (e.g. “remedy suffering” or “save the animals” as discussed in one of my previous articles) or even the search for truth (“the mysteries of the universe, as revealed by science, in humanity’s greatest quest…”).
We also need an aesthetic longing that calls us: a sense of beauty, of good taste, of inspiration, of creativity.
The Nazis understood this very well. And so do the authoritarian regimes of today. Democratic nice guys, on the other hand, seem to struggle grasping this. As such, only authoritarian regimes have successfully managed to apply the aesthetics that speaks to the longings of 21st century humans: solarpunk.
I believe that the solarpunk movement and its aesthetics offer some of the most viable pathways for such an impulse—one that is capable of carrying forward transition (to sustainability) and transformation (of social reality). Solarpunk can be a vehicle of metamodernist visions, not as a set of abstract ideas and ideals, but as something that is viscerally experienced through the senses and thus easy to communicate and build momentum and movement around. Solarpunks (i.e. people committed to this design sensibility) can be purveyors of metamodern culture and thus ultimately of Protopian society, strengthening these attractor points.
So, to strengthen the attractor points of metamodern society, we basically need to stimulate solarpunk movements, municipalities, urban planners, artists, writers, companies, and ecovillages, right?
Not so fast. The only solarpunk projects thus far—in terms of awe-inspiring aesthetics—have been led by agents decidedly un-metamodern: by authoritarian and paternalistic regimes. Singapore is, of course, the clearest example. But Chinese and Vietnamese projects are joining the fray. Saudi Arabia is designing a whole city, The Line, entirely based around a post-car world. These projects may look like solarpunk, the green and clean future cities we long for, but they are anything but alive and organic in the sense that they build on grassroots, on commons, and so on.
Solar-punks are idealistic libertarians, mainly within the West (sometimes elsewhere), often connected to some version of “nerd” counterculture (visionary/utopian sci-fi, regenerative gardening, tech, nature mysticism, paganism, hackathons, digital arts, role playing, and so on)—represented to a lesser extent also in developing countries. It builds on cyberpunk, on punk simply, on DIY, on energy sovereignty, on a romantic calling back to earth, soil, and nature. It’s about the love of freedom, the feeling that each of us can build small but beautiful lives, but still make a difference that makes a difference.
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| medium.com |
A aesthetic race for the future has begun. At stake: freedom and democracy. That, and preventing the collapse of planetary civilization.
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