Skip Navigation
23 comments

  • To answer my own question, I'm working on restoring/modifying two mountain bikes I recently got for free from a coworker. I'm hoping to turn one into a sweet daily commuter for me!

    I'm also a Buddhist and host weekly zazen at my house every Sunday morning. I feel like Zen/Buddhism and solarpunk go hand-in-hand - seeing the reality of interdepence, we can't keep killing the earth!

    Finally, I'm also trying to get started composting again. I did really well last winter then got out of the habit when it got warmer (I have a thing about smells). I am hoping to get back into it now that it's cooler and maybe I can pay less attention to the smells for a bit.

  • Fixing ewaste computers and giving them away. Finding furniture on trash day, fixing it up (sanding, staining, urethaning) and giving it away. Helping my neighbor clean out his house and putting the stuff on our local Buy Nothing -type group so it doesn't go to waste. He also was interested in turning his lawn into a garden and our landlord won't let us change ours, so we teamed up with our neighbor - this year we built a (I think) nice-looking raised bed full of perennials for the bees, and planted a fruit tree. Next year we're going to do the back yard and possibly add a water feature hopefully driven by a used solar panel. We'll see.

    Edit: I don't know if making art counts as praxis but I've also been making solarpunk art: https://jacobcoffinwrites.wordpress.com/postcards-from-a-solarpunk-future/

  • I am active in a socialist organisation in the UK called "socialist appeal". We are not so large as of now but that is to be expected as society still needs time to come to conclusions in large numbers. However, we have almost doubled in the last year which is great to see! Why am I doing this? A solarpunk future is impossible under capitalism so it is important to be actively partake in overthrowing it :)

    • You might be interested in this; I want to write a satrical piece titled "Roads, Utilities, and Libraries are Socialist and have no place in America!"

      But actually the satire is against every ideology. Even the most socialist countries usually have the idea of "my bed", "my house", etc. There's still some form of ownership, and market driven prices.

      The real point of the satire is; saying "oh that's a socialist idea" or "that is a capitalist idea" is stupid. Don't call right to repair socialist, just (truethfully) say it has bi-partisan support. Making a big deal about ideology is not helping the adoption rate. Ideas should be accepted when they're good ideas, not because they have a label. So don't label them.

      • Even the most socialist countries usually have the idea of “my bed”, “my house”, etc. There’s still some form of ownership, and market driven prices>

        You are mistaking "private property" and "personal property". Socialism has nothing to do with personal property, such as your personal posessions that you actually use like your house, toothbrush, car whatever. Socialism wants to abolish private property, aka private ownership of the means of productions, like factories, schools, public transport and etc. As a CEO of a bus company might not necessarily even use it, it is used by the commons therefore it should be owned by the commons; your toothbrush is not used by the commons.

        I don't think any socialist is making a big deal about socialism just "because it's socialism", nor any ideology to be honest. People first look at what that ideology entails, and then make judgements about it. A lot of people nowadays are seeing the contradictions of capitalism and see no future under it and crave some kind of alternative, however no current neoliberal, nor social democrat movement is giving an answer to the contradictions people see. Socialism however directly answers and explains the contradictions through marxist class dynamics.

        And I dont get your point about labels. Labels are useful abstractions to summarise schools of thought. It is easier to say "I am a socialist" than to say "I believe in....:" and then just repeat the entire volume of das kapital.

23 comments