The woman of my world has found a new focus for her contemplations. She’s thinking in the realms where ideas do battle for control of the human imagination, and her focus is a group of folks who propose to challenge one of the oldest and most established of thought monsters to ever migrate from literature into the common psyche… the dystopian vision of the future.
They call themselves “solarPunk," and they're dedicated to an idea I tend to support: the idea that you must be able to dream something before you will be able to translate that something from dream into reality. Kind of a no brainer, really. It’s pretty obvious if you can't wrap your head around an idea while it's still a fantasy, a fiction, you'll have trouble dealing on it as a matter of reality. On that point they and I are very much on a parallel course.
There are other points though where they are, apparently quite unwittingly, making themselves terribly vulnerable to the very things that have been allowing the dystopian vision to shape the modern world. These are elements of the modern culture that are so subtly contradictory as to have become weapons of the covert cultural warfare currently raging for control of freedom where freedom actually begins... which is between the ears of the electorate.
On these points I must stand aloof from their endeavor, to embrace the main thesis of solarPunk without addressing these issues first is to guarantee the ultimate failure of the hope.
Gentle reader, allow me to elaborate a bit and hopefully fully illuminate my concerns. As I said, these are subtle things that can become a bit… chewy…on a first encounter; these are subtle things where those doing battle for control of belief, of perception and imagination, have for several generations worked with deep dedication to set taboo the lines of approach needed to understand and defeat these weapons imbedded within the common culture that gives shape to the common psyche. Fair warning: this will be very politically incorrect.
The first point where I must issue a warning concerns the utterly indefensible lie that a collective, a group, is by reason of its numbers of an inherently higher moral and ethical status and stature than an individual. To build on the fallacy that a group can be of a higher moral fiber than the most ethical individual setting an example within that group is to assure your dream will die a horrible death crucified on the alter of dispersed responsibility.
Right is right, wrong is wrong, and because all of them agreed they were right when in point of fact they were wrong does not make them right anywhere beyond the reach of their own circular justifications! Doubt this? Read, or reread the history that led to the trials at Nuremberg. That would be the European Theater of World War Two of course, the massively destructive conflict needed to put down the Nazi mindset that infected the German people.
No, the lie that the collective is always right and the individual must always set his or her own ethical judgement second to the social collective is how societies, and the governments they spawn, become monsters. This can be demonstrated, perhaps even proven, by approaching the issue causal logic in hand to examine the point where it transitions from abstraction to concrete as idea becomes action, where intent becomes deed written to the immutable scroll of history.
An individual contemplates a deed. This action has not come to pass, it is only an idea at this point, defined, but not yet history. Is this proposed deed an ethical thing, a righteous thing, or is it the opposite? For the sake of this exploration let it stand that a, any deed will fall into one of two very broad categories: it is a righteous deed or it a wicked deed.
If the deed is righteous it does not matter when, or if, the deed becomes history, it remains righteous. On the other hand if the thought would become a wicked deed time does enter the picture, for while it is simply an idea it can only impact the mind that carries it. There is one and only one force that can intercept the wicked idea and prevent it from becoming a wicked deed that impacts many and cannot be removed from history. Only the individual ethic is in position to protect history from the wicked, in position to act proactively rather than simply react. Society, the collective, can avenge the wicked idea become a wicked deed, but society is utterly helpless to protect history… only the individual empowered can intercept and negate the potential before it becomes fact.
In the modern this is perhaps the most taboo idea of them all, that the collective is not because it cannot be the higher form of humanity. But then again, go figure. Tyranny is always the few exploiting the many, to organize your host base into collectives is just common sense when you make your living with lies and deceptions as the primary tool of your trade.
Spinning off that foundation level lie is a series of interlinking tactical falsehoods, each targeting some specific point of desired social control… the transference of moral certification of social acceptability from religion to psychology just the most active of many. As I've read the solarPunk outreach seeking authors to carry an optimistic vision of the future to the world I see case after case of these tactical falsehoods imbedded within the structures of the hope sought. These falsehoods behave a great deal like a computer virus, a triggered trojan virus…they will wait, benign and invisible, until the target they were designed for comes within range. The solarPunk community must, if it is to have half a hope of achieving it's goals, set filters and lenses on and over it's own output to detect, defuse and delete those imbedded falsehoods… or suffer not only failure but assimilation into the mechanisms of despair as well.
I support their objctives… and I hope they wise up quickly as to how the enemy will use them and their naivette against them. Good luck guys, I'll be watching.
Yours Truly,
Sgt. Cyranos DeMet, 3rd Expeditionary SoulMarine
Grand Master, Paranoid Conspiracy Theorists, Int.
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