Do You Know How To Take Care Of Your Sewing Machine?

What is Lunarpunk?

So far, I feel like solarpunk has been the thing that’s well defined in terms of what it means to people. It is not just an aesthetic, it is a vision for the future, and an activist methodology. Learning how to grow your own food in your backyard in a bucket in 2018 is just as solarpunk as delicate and elaborate solar jewelry that also functions as your phone.

This is the same with lunarpunk. There are things you can do now in your life that are anti-capitalist and punk and easily accessible, and there are beautiful aesthetics that capture the feeling we want our future society to have.

I believe that lunarpunk is the other side of the coin of a solarpunk society, and that a fully solarpunk society without its lunar counterpart wouldn’t be complete. That in every person there are two parts and those parts correspond with the day and the night.

Daytime is a time meant for experiencing this world. Science is a daytime thing, and so is getting your errands done and making phone calls. The sun illuminates our world in such brightness that it can’t and shouldn’t be ignored.

On the flipside, nighttime is for spirituality, and transcending this world. It is for experiencing art and stories and music and integrating them into our selves. Its for getting high. Its for watching the moon and the stars and contemplating your place in the universe, and it is for dreams.

Human beings need both sides of this coin. They need both science and spirituality in their lives. I think that right now (at least in the US) people focus too much on the daytime sides of themselves, and neglect their more personal and spiritual needs.

Now, solunarpunk definitely resembles this philosophy that I have. On solarpunk blogs you get lots of articles about the newest scientific breakthrough, and gardening tips. However it also delves into lunarpunk territory a bit, with the emphasis on beauty and happiness and art being Incorporated into almost every design that I see for the future. I think that this is great, and we can not completely separate the sides of the world. There has to be bleedthrough or else it just ends up with two different cultures. I think that the solarpunk community on tumblr is very well balanced.

However, lunarpunk is a little bit less understood, because in western society, individual spirituality isn’t a bit priority. This means that there are way less lunarpunk blogs than solarpunk blogs. Those that I have seen have been mostly posting about aesthetic, and stories about the distant future. Again, this is great! I love seeing all of that stuff! But I want to post more about the things we can today to become lunarpunk, the way that there are gardening tips on solarpunk blogs.

Well, this was a good talk. Now I have something to look back on if I get confused about what I’m supposed to be doing. Hopefully someone got something out of this.

After Planting a Tree Every Day for 40 Years, Man Has Created Blossoming Forest on Barren Wasteland

adults are always talking about how “kids will do anything to get out of school” and okay, first of all that’s not true, but I think we really need to ask why that idea holds so much sway.

children’s brains are hard-wired to take in new information and acquire new skills. consider, for a moment, just how thoroughly our society had to fuck up the concept of education for it to be a normal thing to assume kids are universally desperate to avoid learning.

Solarpunk winters

As we observe the winter solstice, my thoughts have turned to how solarpunks approach winter. As the days turn dark and cold, how does a society dependent on the sun continue to prosper? Finland If…

[Shameless self-promotion]

As we observe the winter solstice, my thoughts have turned to how solarpunks approach winter. As the days turn dark and cold, how does a society dependent on the sun continue to prosper?

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A lot of people are really scared and angry because of the results of the newest climate change reports — as they should be. But I’m already seeing a lot of posts and news reports like “HERE’S WHAT YOU CAN DO TO FIGHT GLOBAL WARMING” and bizarrely enough, the answers are never like “weed out climate change deniers from your government, impose strict new rules for the corporations that are  creating most of the emissions, pour government resources into alternate forms of fuel, etc.” It’s always like “carpool to work!”

Look. Of course you should be working to reduce waste in your own life. But let’s not fucking pretend that consumers are the ones who made this mess. You know what another recent study found? Just 100 companies are responsible for 71% of global emissions. If the rest of us stopped ALL WASTE and fucking ascended to a higher plane of existence that no longer requires consumption of any kind, the world would still be absolutely fucked if those 100 companies keep on as they do.

I hate this personal responsibility model when it comes to conservation. By ignoring the actual source of the problem and focusing on individuals instead, guess who gets targeted? The absolute most vulnerable individuals on the planet. When people advocate personal responsibility, somehow they’re never talking about billionaires and their private jets. They’re creating straw bans that will make life more dangerous for people with disabilities. They’re shaming women for using disposable menstrual products. They’re criticizing the poor and destitute for using “wasteful” products because they’re all they can afford. They’re making vaguely eugenic statements about getting people in “third world countries” to stop ~breeding~ so much. It’s monstrous.

Stop shaming consumers for the sins of corporations and their powerful investors. Stop placing the blame at the feet of the people who already have the hardest time getting through life. Do something, and by “do something” I mean buy a reusable coffee cup on the way to fucking vote. Go to a protest. Call a representative. Demand accountability from the people who got us into this mess.

I keep thinking about an article I read several years ago about how activists got a coal plant shut down when the corporation wanted it to have its license extended for another 20 years. No-one knew who should take credit for the win - the lawyers suing for health reasons, the lawyers suing for worker protections, the activists protesting politicians and corporate offices, the activists who chained themselves to the plant gates, the group who pressured banks to refuse loans for the plant, etc. A while later someone read the company’s annual report and it more or less said they’d cancelled the plant, not because of any single reason, but because all the difficulties across so many aspects of the project made it more trouble than it was worth. They could win on one or two problems, but not a dozen attacks at once, especially when they were all weary from fighting the last battle. I wish I could find the article again, it was much more interesting than I make it sound! But in the same way that people here keep reminding us all that this is a marathon and not a sprint, I think it’s important to attack Trump and the Republicans on all fronts rather than try to find the one perfect sniper shot to take them down. There should not be a single aspect of their working life where they can escape protests and delays and being overruled by courts and new lawsuits and bad publicity and stupid jokes about them and investigations into their affairs. Washington? Investigators and lawsuits. Home town on recess? Angry locals. Media? Questions about what they knew and when. Internet? Demands for healthcare and video compilations of them saying daft things. It’s not that one of those tactics is a silver bullet, it’s that this is a war of attrition and every little bit of hassle is worth it. Every individual Republican congressperson should be dreading the sound of a phone or notification because it will be yet another fire they have to put out. They shouldn’t have time to provide assistance to their colleagues or cover for Trump, or time out to refresh and regroup. There are more citizens than there are politicians - tag team until they break ranks.

This Metafilter comment is good and smart and makes me feel better about the work ahead of us.

Yacouba Sawadogo is an exceptional man – he single-handedly managed to solve a crisis that many scientists and development organizations could not. The simple old farmer’s re-forestation and soil conservation techniques are so effective they’ve helped turn the tide in the fight against the desertification of the harsh lands in northern Burkina Faso.

Over-farming, over-grazing and over population have, over the years, resulted in heavy soil erosion and drying in this landlocked West African nation. Although national and international researchers tried to fix the grave situation, it really didn’t really make much of a difference. Until Yacouba decided to take matters into his own hands in 1980.

Yacouba’s methods were so odd that his fellow farmers ridiculed him. But when his techniques successfully regenerated the forest, they were forced to sit up and take notice. Yacouba revived an ancient African farming practice called ‘zai’, which led to forest growth and increased soil quality.

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Why do my interests in canning, couponing, and homesteading overlap so often with blogs with titles like ‘The Obedient Housewife’? 

I turned a wasteland into a garden

With imagination and an army of helpers, a city wasteland was turned into a thriving garden for local people

Practical action + liaising with the local community = creating long term sustainable projects and ultimately a shift in culture.