- cross-posted to:
- collapse@sopuli.xyz
- climatecrisis@lemmy.ml
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I’m more interested in how we can make the new thing that comes after it better. Best place to start for resistance ideas anyway.
I’ve heard people say this, and it kind of sounds right. But just thinking of examples, stuff like:
- magna carta (start of democracy)
- sufferage (women’s vote)
- civil rights (racial legal equality)
- Feminism
- Gay rights
- Trans rights (where they exist)
Are all big wins that happened from improving on flawed systems.
Meanwhile, places that have had revolutions overthrowing the government (Egypt, Lybia, Russia, China) all seem to have gained very little in terms of resistance ideas, and mainly just wound up with a new authoritarian in charge.
Maybe I’m subconsciously picking select examples though? If definitely seems like this to all the ones I can think of.
Anarchists during the Spanish Civil War implemented one of the few positive revolutionary societies, but it was quashed after about a year due to the Soviets betraying them and Franco eventually destroying what was left.
That revolutionary attempt seemed like it could’ve had long term success without the pitfalls of Marxist attempts had it survived, but it took about 80 years of slowly educating the populace on those ideas, creating alternative ferrier schools, and building up successful unions to prime them for that outcome, and the failure of the Russian revolution and it’s decent into authoritarian bureaucracy was relatively fresh on their minds.
I suspect in our current world, prefiguration is likely the best course of action, which attempts to slowly build up the society we want to live in within the skeleton of our existing one, and to then remain standing as the skeleton around it crumbles. Which would indicate that building up unions, worker owned coops, community mutual aid (ex, food not bombs, community gardens) is crucial to pushing society in the right direction.
[off topic?]
A while back I was introduced to the science fiction novels of John Brunner.
Brunner’s novel ‘Stand On Zanzibar’ won the 1969 Hugo award for best science fiction novel. It’s set in the early 21st Century. Some of the wild ideas he introduced were middle-class folks needing room mates to afford rent; mass shootings as a common occurrence; legalized pot; the list goes on and on. Basically, he did a great job of predicting the future.
His book “The Sheep Look Up” predicts a climate/pollution collapse.
Eerily accurate guy
Another great book by him is The Shockwaver Rider, which predicted:
- The self-replicating computer virus, and was the first use the term ‘computer worm’ to describe it
- DARPA’s Policy Analysis Market (essentially betting on the probability of assassinations or political disruptions in the middle east)
- Normal citizens having no access to data privacy, which is only reserved for corporations and powerful individuals
I’ll see your computer worm and raise you a waldo.
https://cyberneticzoo.com/teleoperators/1942-waldo-and-waldoes/
Thank you for the reminder, time to read his books again.
In a way, I feel like I never stopped reading it…
While it’s important to recognise the problem, it’s also important to recognise concrete steps that can be taken to address it, and this article doesn’t really go into that. For example, to stop the Amazon deforestation and burning, it is necessary to both stop the “global appetite for burgers” and shift to reforestation and sustainable decentralised food production. This is one example of people trying to do that, but such projects need to scale up massively in order to have an impact on such large problems as climate change.
