Notices by alxd ✏️ solarpunk prompts (alxd@writing.exchange), page 2

@AlexanderKingsbury @matti_len @clacke

I find it interesting that you read my post as "better do nothing than just go with a shovel". I'm very intentionally saying "remember to call people and ask what they need", which has been confirmed by many others in this thread who are experienced in flood relief, like @sendai in https://eigenmagic.net/@sendai/113164606665322645

@AlexanderKingsbury @sabik

I have not helped clean up from a flood. I have put in a lot of physical labor into other relief efforts and I stand by my point:

A well-informed, well-coordinated effort does more than just another pair of hands does.

If I can get the people shoveling clean water, food, or to organize what and where to shovel, it counts at least as much, if not more. Networkers matter.

I don't want to keep "helping" as just aestheticized notion. Let's help smart.

@AlexanderKingsbury a lot of what we in the North (of the word, not Poland ;) ) consider help can be actively harmful, as it's badly misaligned with the needs.

We keep sending medical devices with no spare parts, only to be discarded as soon as the first maintenance is due. A lot of our relief processes are set up as industries instead of actual help.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CGRtyxEpoGg is a good documentary on the tech aspects of the process.

@AlexanderKingsbury @sabik as for me, yeah, I'm comparing them, as they're both:

going blindly with the aesthetics of "I want to help" and absolutely no knowledge with what is needed, no local context or points of contacts.

@sabik @AlexanderKingsbury it's interesting, because this is actually the topic of the upcoming Solarpunk Prompt about relief efforts corps, trained specifically for a particular kind of help.

@AlexanderKingsbury @matti_len I can confirm they did not ask what is needed.

@AlexanderKingsbury not criticizing, trying to connect them with actual people on the ground who know what kind of help is needed. Same as I do with Global Innovation Gathering with people who want to help the Global South.

My point is that we need to stop seeing help as an aesthetic and start asking what kind of help is needed most.

@AlexanderKingsbury @sabik I would say that coordinating communications between different relief teams / fixing firefighter's antennas counts as more useful work than removing mud from a single household.

Some friends decided to buy shovels and go to the southern #Poland to help with the #flood cleanup.

I'm asking them to first call the local crisis centers and NGOs and ask what do they need. Bringing some electronic components for failing water pumps, power banks, setting up provisional infrastructure might help much more than being just another person with a shovel.

I consider it #solarpunk to bring smart, organized help, instead of just #voluntourism .

#floods #climatechange

@ZoDoneRightNow I don't think I have equally utopian recommendations, but I really enjoyed:

(probably the closest)
- Ruthanna Emrys' "A Half Built Garden"

then:

- LX Beckett's "Gamechanger"
- Cory Doctorow's "Walkaway" and "The Lost Cause"

There's also the podcast I'm co-writing, @SolarpunkPrompts (you can find it on every podcasting site)

@ZoDoneRightNow @SolarpunkPrompts there are also a lot of books by @sarenaulibarri , @BrightFlame and @susankayequinn .

If you tell us which themes you enjoy most, we'll be able to recommend more ;)

Can we all just agree that the TRUE #solarpunk needs to come from the Sôlàrpùnk region of France, otherwise it's just sparkling optimistic #climateFiction ?

@elmyra let me say we have a whole #podcast doing exactly this - @SolarpunkPrompts , https://podcast.tomasino.org/ or "Solarpunk Prompts" on any podcast platform!

#imagineBetter

There's a reason why paper ballots are considered safer than electronic elections: they can be audited, counted by people without extremely specialized skills. You can train someone to count votes in a few days instead of a few years of intense P2P cybersecurity courses, software and hardware expertise.

What Blockchain and DAOs offer you is offloading the responsibility for your processes to a third party, making you forget that you're giving them enough power to become absolute rulers.

And for every. single. argument. for Blockchains, DAOs, Web3, there is another open source tool that does the same thing, but better, less energy-intensely, with more fine-tuning for your own needs.

You can dive into IPFS, DAT, Scuttlebutt, Git and GitTorrent, dozens and dozens protocols which can solve your problems.

But none of them come in a sleek, well-marketed package of "solving all of your problems" only a scammer can offer you.

In the recently resurfaced debate about #solarpunk (or lunarpunk) aspects of #web3 and #blockchain I'm intrigued by one aspect:

Why do we accept being given a solution without outlining the problem in the first place?

Why don't we listen to #DAO pitches instead of asking ourselves how we want to run our communities, how do we want to make decisions, vote, discuss things?

Just stating the problem first would make it very clear that there are multiple technical solutions, not just the Web3.

Every time I encountered someone pitching a DAO or a Blockchain to an organization, they specifically bundled several things together to make them indistinguishable - the culture with the technology, the way a community is organized with the tools they use. With that, there fewer footholds for any kind of question, insight into what is really happening.

This is what I mean by saying that the technology is transparent and it's not always a good thing, because it makes us unable to discuss it.

In my definition of #technology in #solarpunk I do call it the "crystallized community", as a sum of all the decisions, tradition, culture, because the tools arise from the needs and the conscious choice, not the other way around.

Blockchain and DAOs are an anti-thesis of Solarpunk not just because of their carbon footprint, but because they bundle everything together and make choices for you, pretending there was never a choice in how your community could operate.

Moreover, Blockchains, with their tokens, enforce _financialization_ of your communities, where the way ledger is implemented does not correspond with any kind of gift economy, with communalism, but with the harshest capitalist market traditions. Whoever has the [money/tokens/votes], rules.

We spent thousands of years working on different law systems, putting transparency, equality before the law at their core, and Blockchain wants to replace them with a web3 engineer being a priest/judge.

@rysiek @ward capitalism corrupts language like this.

To the point of some languages (not only Polish) missing "sustainability", only having "a balanced growth". Because you cannot not grow.