Garrison. Is that good? Isn't the show? No? Let's keep going though, Okay, well it could happen. Here is the show that A tonal noise is my introduction this week because I'm a hack in a fraud. Who isn't a hack in a fraud? Is is our guest this week? St Andrew. St Andrew, you are a solar punk anarchist from Trinidad. Um. You have a YouTube channel, UM where you talk about solar punk. Um, you talk about stuff like seed bombing. Yeah. I'm just very excited to have you on the show because I'm a big fan of your YouTube channel. Thank you, glad to be here, big fan of your work as well. Andrew, I kind of wanted to start with why this white solar punk is important, because, UM, I think it's easy for folks who just kind of skim it to see it. It's just like, oh, it's an aesthetic. It's maybe an art style or a fiction style. UM. Maybe something that's neat, but not something that has like a lot of inherent value to people trying to change the world. And obviously you disagree with that. I disagree with it to um A quote I keep coming back to again and again is one from Werner Herzog in the nineteen seventies and it was something along the lines of I think that without better myths, were destined to go the way of the dinosaurs. Um. Actually of I forget his name right now, But there's this excellent, excellent book called The Truth About Stories, and I think what it really emphasizes throughout the book is the importance of stories on how stories impact how we navigate the woot, which is why I sort of embraced Sula punk, you know, as a story that we can work with going forward. Yeah, I think, Um, I think it's incredibly important to have better stories, better myths because for one thing, I think where the Left falls down a lot is not having is accurately diagnosing the problems without providing a better look at at this at the future, you know, um. And when the problems are when the people who do kind of propose solutions, it's often um not in a way people can feel. One of the benefits that that that the right has, that fascism has, is that they they're very good at providing people with myths and providing people with kind of a fictional look at at their idealized world. That draws people in. You know, you can laugh at the right you know, the people that work on like meta narratives, and that's very, very core to their ideology. Um, So, I guess where I'd like to start with you, Andrew, because this is kind of the first time I think we've really talked about solar punk on on this show, even though from the beginning before any of these episodes dropped, this was always a central part of our discussion about what the show was was going to be. Um, would you kind of provide an introduction to to what solar punk is for our listeners? Sure? Sure, So I would say that solar punk is the vision of the future that place this emphasis on the existing world and how we get to that future from where we are now. So it emphasizes the need for environmental sustainability, for self governance, and for autonomy and social justice. It emphasizes the need for you know, human and ecocentric ends to really be in sync, and it aims to really heal the current rift between humanity and nature. It also recognizes, of course, that there isn't this binary between climate change happens and climate change doesn't happen. Rather, it understands that how we navigate it will have a variety of consequences and some of the positive, some of the negative, but it's up to us to really shape that. Yeah, and it's um. I want to drill into a couple of facets of that. But I want to quickly plug one of your YouTube videos for folks who kind of want a more involved um explanation and background. You have a video called what is solar Punk on your channel st Andrewism like Andrew I s m um that I think is a fantastic introduction not just to like the aesthetics of solar punk, but some of the practical some of the practical kind of expressions of it. And and two of the ones you list is like examples of here's here's what this is is like actual practis you know, and not just an aesthetic is seed bombing um. And then you talk about this this very interesting kind of like terra Cotta air conditioning, which I think is I think it's neat because it's it's one of the problems that I think with kind of some versions of of particularly kind of on the more liberal end of of of solar punk imag engining is just sort of like ways of replacing um, ways of gaining the same kind of consumptive benefits that exist. I guess not even not even like greenwashing, right washing, greenwashing, Like here, let's get the same consumptive benefits we get scrapers, yes, skyscrapers, the same level of consumerism, same level of you know, destructive extractive practices. But we have some flowers and some trees. So yeah, and that's not enough. But at the same time, there are things that aren't. Like air conditioning is contributes massively to climate change. It's also not a luxury. Like if you live in a place where it's a hundred and twenty degrees a lot of the summer, that's not a luxury. Yeah, this is going from someone in a tropical country. Yeah, um, definitely a necessity. Yeah, So I wonder if you could talk about kind of those two I mean, or if you have different ones you'd like to pick, but just kind of what you see is sort of the practice expressions of solar punk, sort of beyond the aesthetic, although we're going to drill nder the esthetics some too, because I also think that's important. Right, So, I think some of my favorite manifestations of suli punk. In a practical context, things like um gorilla gardening. Grilla gardening is probably the biggest one because it's one that someone could literally pick up and do today or tomorrow, you know, as soon as they hear about it, doing about it. Just get some clay, get some seeds, you know, and put those things together, and as you're walking home or walking to the store, just toss them wherever there's some free dud UM. So that's a fun one. There's also, of course, things like a little bit one involved, like community gardening and particularly forest gardening, because that will provide a level of food autonomy and agency for people who have been eling it for a long time from the process of food production. UM. They're also practices like compassing or corpaching, and it's like a way to produce lumber without chopping down a whole side of trees, so you are able to get the wood from the trees, but the tree remains alive. UM. There's also things like, of course solar powered technology, whether it be algae based UM windows that you know, extract energy from the sun, or solar sales or solar ovens uh or like the terra cotta, the air conditioning, which, by the way I learned recently can't really work in a human environment. But yeah, there are a lot of different opportunities. They also there are things like you know, tool shares and maker spaces and seed libraries, all different ways to sort of bring it into fruition. So that is yeah, and I uh, I think a lot of that's really valuable. UM. I'm interested in in parts sort of your your attitude on UM what uh let me think about how to phrase this, UM, what do you think are kind of the things as we talk about sort of the things that can be at least potentially replaced UM with with less extract of less consumptive methods. Is sort of an example of solar punk practice is replacing those things. There's also things that we're not going to be able to have if we actually want to live in a more sustainable UM future that that doesn't contribute to some of the nightmares that we're all going to be increasingly facing. UM. You're you know, and again I think it's it's telling that so much of kind of the future fantasies of that are written by people who come from you know, my part of the world. United States focus on like kind of post scarcity methods of of guaranteeing the continuation of consumption just through in some cases like fantastic methods um, you know, magical three D printers and the like. Um. You come from a very different part of the world, very different perspective. What do you see is the things that like we're going to have to give up. Coming from a country that is actually reliant on oil and natural gas production, we have to get rid of cause We definitely absolutely have to get rid of cause um free to ships as well, and really the whole way that you know, global supply chains are structured right now, not to say that they won't be any sort of global um sharing of resources in the future, but the way that it's happening right now, it can't continue to go on. We can't continue to structure cities in our lives around cause and other methods of gascars in transportation because we're literally going to run out. And we've known this for a long time, but it's nearing that the day is nearing CLUISA and CLUISO and yeah, we have to find a way to do without it. Yeah, and it's it's I think tell like there's a couple of things that are important. One of them is you can't just say we have to stop global trade because in global travel, because the people have have sought and done that for as long as there have been people in one form or another. It's it's a fundamentally human thing. But there are aspects of it, like you know, expecting that every kind of fruit and vegetable will be available year round, which is certainly thing that we in the United States expect. Um. That doesn't that that's not part of a realistic future. Um And if it's part of the future, then it's only going to be part of the future for an ever shrinking chunk of of the country. And you can see that and sort of um or of the of the West, and you can see that in kind of um the like what we're dealing with right now with like the supply line shortages and failures, and like one of the I think the symbols of how far we have to go in my country is the degree to which people are freaking out by the fact that Christmas presents might be late. Um. Let alone being like yeah, you might not be able to buy coffee, um um ever, or all the time, you know, you might not be able to get tomatoes in December, which reminds me UM. I think one benefits to gorilla gardening, and that's what sort of mindset is. As you learn to so you also learn to reap. Right, So a lot of people who get into grilla gardening altos end up getting into foraging, and they are absent stuff you could download that allow you to, you know, learn how to identify plants in your area, and we surprise a number of plants in your area that are you know, useful for tease or for salads or for whatever poop is is that can be used as replacements. I'm not sure they could replace coffee, but they could be beneficial. UM in recognizing how we have to live with our local ecosystems. Basically, yeah, and a big you know, when you talk about living learning how to live with our ecosystem stuff like planting um forest gardens and the like um or food forests, I think is the term UM. I think something that has to be discussed is the matter of indigenous sovereignty, especially when we're talking about you know, it's not just you know, North America. A lot of chunks of the globe. Indigenous people had spent you know, in some cases thousands of generations setting forests up in order to sustainably produce food. Um. And when when colonialism arrived, that was often just seen as like, oh, this is this is these are wild places for us too, for us to extract or tear down and replace with mono cultures, you know, single crops. Um. And so a big part of actually building back that capacity, the capacity of us to to survive off of the food that can sustainably grow where we live is looking back to those indigenous methods and and also um, you know, giving back land in a lot of cases um And yeah, that's something you talk about in your videos that I think is really important to um to to to to explain to people. Yeah, I mean there's there's really is no way to separate the violence and oppressive institution of clunealism with the equosido Nietzsche of modern steeds. You know, those two are deeply intertwined, deeply married together. And so you can't fight climate change without addressing the issue of sverenity, of indigenous serenity on land back. Yeah, it's m it's really interesting. I've been I've been up hunting on Mountain Hood with a friend who is who went to school for like forestry management, and as we were driving, we had to drive through a chunk of the reservation in order to get to the blm land where we're able to hunt, and he pointed it out, and once he did, it was immediately obvious just how different the land under indigenous control looked from the land, you know, just feed away that was being managed by the federal government in terms of like how much better the forest management was, how much how much smarter it was it was managed in order to um reduce the chances of like a ladder fire that that actually kills you know, the trees and whatnot. There's this whole thing blowing up on Twitter right now where you've got a chunk of Marxists who are are trying to frame land back as uh just like shifting ownership of resources, which I think is really missing. The point I find interesting about Twitter is the exact same discourses are repeated over and over and over again. So I remember this exact conversation happening around this time last year, around April last year, um earlier this year as well. It's just the same discourses get recycled over and over again, and it's reached a point for me, who I realized that these people don't want to learn about land back what it really means, because they are invested in the structure as it exists and they don't want to have to interrogate that. So, Yeah, that's fellow to be an interesting thing, I've note. Yeah, and it's um, it's it's it's frustrating. UM. I guess that that acts as like a general uh description of Twitter discourse, but certainly doesn't. Yeah, I think it's I think it's telling the degree to which people, even on the left tree eat it as a fantasy as opposed to dogged lye pragmatic um and and proven so like proven by like like you know, like you can read you in reports that will that will essentially say land back in the space of a five page, you know, study on how indigenous land management functions a great deal better than UM than a lot of the stuff that's like centralized by the federal government, where we're like, our federal government is terrible at land management. UM, And it's part of the it's part of the problem. I think one of the things that that excites me about solar punk as an aesthetic and idea is getting back to this relationship with the land as opposed to talking about just preserving it um as talking about managing it. Because because none of our none of the land that people live on is like wild in the sense they mean it as it's been cultivated. That's the thing, right. The whole philosophy of you know, um land preservation as was taken up by the US government with the whole um you know, you can stop forest fires kind of thing, ended up leading to more forest fires online because they we have a rule in the ecosystem, not just they had to stand back from a file to subserve it. So we doin't do our part to manage the underbrush and whatnots and clear to we and exercise you know, controlled fires, but we end up in the situation we're in today. You know, cultivation not just sterile preservation. Now one of the things that you talk about well because because one of the more frustrating discourses this is not just a Twitter thing, this has been going on for years, is the discourse around GMO crops. And usually I would say like the two most commonly heard sides, are GMOs are bad because you know mon santo cancer whatever, or GMOs are good um in in thought, um, And the thing that you point out, which is I think the accurate take is GMOs. The preponderance of evidence says that, like, there's nothing inherently dangerous about genetically modified crops, but the way in which they're often used in order to create these massive mono cultures is really toxic. So there's a lot of promise um for GMOs in terms of keeping our our existence on this planet sustainable. But what's not sustainable is the kind of industrialized agriculture where you have ten thousand acres of one thing which just doesn't happen in nature exactly exactly. And if you look at how genetic modification took place prior to you know, all advanced funds in genetic modification technology. UM, I'm not how many people are familiar with the dozens of one dozens, if not hundreds of varieties of just corn they were present in the Americas prior to Coltonization. A lot of those varieties were wiped out or was suppressed in fear of these monocultures. But if we able to culture to divusity of these crops and really bring some of them back through Jessic modification. That would really help us with you know, food resilience in a world with an increasingly unpredictable climate. Yeah, yeah, I think that. I mean, I think you said it perfectly. I want to move back to kind of what I introduced the episode with, which is talking about the value of of fiction and myth making in a in a very pragmatic sense. I guess I'll start by saying, I think one of the clearest signs of the danger that we're in and how toxic our society has gotten. Um And I am speaking from a primarily US centric standpoint here, but I don't think it's unique to the United States. Is the extent to which trust me um as as the saying goes, when the U s sneel. So anytime there's some phenomenon happened in the US, there are the coffee cuts. And I do think this is pretty global. I mean, you see it in like South Korean films and and know what you're gonna say, Yeah, the obsession with apocalypse and when we when we go to the future, it's always a dystopia. Um, there's a degree to which we've almost forgotten how to imagine utopia or even not just utopia, just a way of living that is an improvement in a lot of ways of future that's better. We've forgotten to do both utopian fiction and any just kind of like positive fiction in a lot of ways. Because, yeah, it's understandable because the world is kind of terrible right now in a lot of in a lot of ways. But there's also there's been utopian fiction inside other terrible worlds as well. I think just the modern interconnected media sphere has really rewarded this type of like dystopian and collapse based apocalypse fiction. Yeah, and I'm sure that's that's worth interrogating. Why. But it is a problem that needs to be solved. Yeah, and it is, And and you're I think it's important. It's not entirely based in how fucked up things are, because like when the first Star Trek came out, we were at like the height of the Cold War. Things were terrible. There was a lot of utopian fiction during World War Two. During World War two, UM, I will always be impressed by the fact that Gene Roddenberry saw it as incredibly important both to be like, Okay, well, in the future, like in the middle of the Civil rights movement, in the future, we will have overcome like racism, but not just that, but like I'm gonna I'm gonna stick a Russian on the bridge too, because nations are going to end as a concept and like this stuff won't matter. Um, and that just that kind of utopian fiction, at least at this at the scale of popularity that you know, Star Trek wasn't its time just isn't present anymore. And I that's tremendously worrying to me. And I see a lot of hope in in Solar Punk for that. Um, I guess for star As I'm interested in in your thoughts on this, and you're interested in Andrew, what you think is like the pragmatic value of of of positive a fiction that that that imagines a better world. Yes, so I've done probably I think I've done like two videos on Sola Punk so far. M two major videos on Soil the Punk, as well as a smaller video two other smaller videos. Um. And what I've seen in the comments and in the general social media reaction again and again is sol the Punk saved my life, you know, sola punk has given me hoop. You know, I was slipping into the spair, but this video really gave me a jump start to try something new and to start to fresh and to pursue action as opposed to suggest laying down and taking whatever comes next and that that is it for me. You know, I think the fact that sulla punk offers like an energizing vision. It's not just a vision, it's an energizing vision because in every step with the way it shows what you can do. You know, when you show when you look at sula punk art or um, you look at the small but growing genre of sula punk literary media, or you know, you look at but there's don't have many slipunk video games right now, but hopefully there will be in the future. When you look at the various forms of sila punk media that are coming out and people's responses to them, you see that it's not like as all mentioning like star Trek, where it's all this far out technology that we can only aspire to for now. You know, suli punk is something that you can literally put in your backyard or your bad canny, or your home, or your school or your community. You know, you could put these things in place like from now, you know, and you can incorporate it into your politics as you know, as they are, and they could also help to push your politics forward, you know, because through solo punk, we could open up discussions about, Okay, so how do we ensure that people live comfortably within the parameters of you know, the Earth's carrying capacity? You know, you open up a discussions about indigenous soevereignty, you discussions about, um, the relationship between the Google North and the global South, and responsibility with regard to our response to climate change. Well, you open up a lot of different discussions through the realm of soulo punk. It energizes people, as I said, and yeah, I think that is its paramatic purpose. It doesn't stand alone, of course, but it is a driving force. Yeah. Would you kind of give out a list of if people are you know, if this is someone's first introduction to the concept of solar punk, what is some reading you want to draw people towards. What are some fiction like I know you mentioned The Dispossessed by Laguin right, um, which often gets cited. Um, yeah, I'm interested in kind of other other recommendations you might have for our listeners, are that right? So UM. I'm still getting into the genre myself, so I don't have too many UM recommendations. There are some UM decent short story collections UM like sun Vaults by a couple of different authors. There's also multi species Cities, so the punk urban futures UM. And the one I read most recently was Ecotopia, which is quite is much older than all the others. It's actually really a book that was published in UM and not all aspects of its politics things I agree with, but I think for a first UM it was one of the really the first of its kind in that sort of equal utopian genre that really laid out what the society would look like. UM. The book is structured in a series of novel entries and notebook reports by a journalist from the United States who has gone to this country called eco Topia, which is sort of where the Pacific Northwest States are, and he's basically breaking down He's going to different parts of the country and breaking down how they have lived and how they have decided structure their lives. UM. And even though not every aspect of it is one that I would want to see implemented, I still think that it really sparks the imagination, really gets you thinking, well, maybe I wouldn't do it this week, but how else could this be done? And I think the capacity for spunk stories suggest generate that thought and generate one's imagination is very useful in a world where we don't really get to use our imagination as much, not really since childhood, you know. And um, yeah, I uh. I think it's often understated the degree to which using your imagination is a vitally necessary part of actual radical politics. Um. And I think there's a lot of people who consider themselves radicals, you know, some of these some of these not to you know, slam every Marxist Leninist on the planet, but certainly some of the ones who were coming up with these bad faith critics systems of land back. It's like, you're not a radical, You're a conservative who wants to go back to a different kind of problematic thing. Um. It is more the fact that the Soviet Union poisoned like the largest body of water in Europe. You know, all the different things that the Soviet Union did that were horrible for the environment and extractive, and it's interesting that you know, they are these people who call themselves radicals, but at the very first um encounter with a radical idea, their first instinct is to shut down. Their first instinct is to just pushed back against it, whereas not to toot my own horn or anything. But you know, when I see an idea that I haven't encountered before that may seem strange to me, that challenges my precontinutions, my first reaction is not to shout about how this school is against everything then, and said, you know, my first reaction is to investigate it and to open space for it in my mind, to really, you know, tune it around and imagine what it might look like and how it might fit with what I have learned about before. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely, I mean I think that's that's that's great advice for radical politics. It's also just good life advice. Yeah, especially for engaging with ideas that you are less keen on at the moment, or or or just unaware of. H I mean, my whole thing is if I have like a strong gut reaction to something, it might be because it may be hitting a part of me that might be benefiting from that system, you know. I mean, I don't benefit from the system in a lot of respects, you know, as a black guy from the Caribbean, but as a man, as in as a sis sis hetman. You know, I do have privileges that I must be aware of and I can't just like be so quick to shut down, you know, something that ain't give me a bit uncomfortable. You know. Yeah, I think that's such a valuable thing to keep in mind, especially as a a more or less sis white guy like a you know, a significant number of people listening are if you're uncomfortable by a new idea. Is it Is it because the idea is bad? Or is because it strikes at an area in which you may not even have like thought about being privileged, like I'm I'm uncomfortable I have even though there's no I have no intellectual argument against it with the idea of of ending our use of cars as they exist, because I love I love to drive. But that's also heavily rooted in in in tremendous privilege on my behalf um American culture, and so yeah, and um, you know, we we we did talk about that a bit in the opening episodes of season two. The idea that like a more you know, when we we kind of had our little utopian ending, the idea that like, well maybe you'd have a car that's communally owned and used for certain tasks. But you know, the idea of of of car culture as the center of a city is um is death. It's just death. When we talked about getting past cars, is not to say that like people will never use vehicles that move again, Like obviously we will. They're necessary for something and all. Going back to horse drawn buggies, pink. One of the last things on like solar punk kind of tying into the whole kind of nature of the shows. I really like to enter your point on like how solar punk is like an energizing force and I feel like we have very few of those on the left and especially on the anarchist left. Um, like i've i've, i've, i've I've had my decent stint of like anarcho nihilism. And the problem, like the problem with that is like it's very easy, Like anarch nihilism is one of the easiest ideologies to grasp onto because it vlidifies all of your bad feelings. Um, But it also it's most of the people who I know who are like real into anarchro nihilism. They're generally not very happy people because it's kind of it's kind of miserable all the time. Um. And sure they like scoff at like solar punk is like some like greenwashed yogurt commercial, like you know, like utopian thing, but also like it's actually lots of solar punk that we've talked about. It's like actually about doing specific things, Like it's actually like actually going to do something rather than just being an insurrecto kid um or just just you know, talking about nihilist zignes and books on Twitter for all day. And I think one of one of your one of my favorite videos of yours is your video on this like pology of collapse, um, because I think that's one of my favorites as well. It's it's, it's, it's, it's it's really just like a masterpiece. And how deep you get into every different type of collapse thinking, because it's not just on the rights, not not not not to the left. It's not just whether you're you know more you know, anarchist more authoritarian. It's like you get into every specific type of thinking that plays into this idea around collapse. And I think if I recommend everyone check out your channel, especially watching your Solar Point videos, but specifically on the topic of collapse. You know, part of our show we were trying to kind of be a little bit like anti collapse UM. And I think your your video really shows the depth of that topic UM and how to approach this, because collapse is a feeling, like it's a feeling we all have, and it needs to be interrogated. And I think your video is just a magnificent job interrogating that feeling, right, thank you. I can't overemphasize how important that is, because I I one of the major failings. There were a number of victory for a kind of anarchist thought, particularly within the United States during the the insurrection last year. One of its tremendous defeats is that it has become characterized in a huge number of people's eyes as breaking windows and and starting fires um. And yeah, that's a lot of that is because the media is trash, um, and it's trash it reporting on on all of this stuff. But some of it is because a lot of people have let that be their primary praxis UM. And that again, I don't care about people breaking windows I don't care about people lighting dumpster fires, but if that's what you're presenting to the world as your practice, that doesn't appeal to people. And you have to um, because yeah, anarchism is not just destructive, it is also constructive. It's the constructive part. We need to be boosting more than that. And there were some, you know, from the con next to Portland's some really strong examples of that last year. The incredible amount of mutual aid that was was put together of time. Yeah, during the fire relief was was incredible. UM. And the Red House, the the eviction defense occupation was a really good repost to you know, the disaster that was the Chaz in Seattle. That this was like, this was an area that was temporarily autonomous from the police, that did not collapse into violence, that succeeded in its goal, and that cleaned up after itself and presented an option for people like this is how it can look when we try to evict people. You know, this is what can happen. UM. So I think they're I don't want to like be too negative, but I think that a lot of folks because of for a variety of reasons. You know, the there's been so much focus on kind of the insurrection, not even that, because I think that building can be insurrectionist. I think the seed bombing, guerrilla garden it can be profoundly insurrectionists. It's like, um, destruction has an am it result of making you feel better, right, it has an immediate of it endorphins and hormones. It makes you happy when you do it. It's it, it is. It is an exhilarating act, and you feel like you're accomplishing something. What's harder is to like have that same feeling by doing seed bombing, right by by actually like improving your community slowly through these types of like so the PC ideas, they don't have the same immediate emotional reactions. So a lot of people like when they, you know, think about what insurrection is, they can a default to this destructive tendency, which destruction has its time and place. Um, but if that's your only practice, we're not gonna improve the world at all, Like, right, that's that's not gonna do anything. Helping through you know, giving out food, helping through giving out socks and clothes, helping through all of these solar punk ways. These are things that actually like are going to improve things on a tangible level. They and they're gonna make more people be like, oh, hey, what what are these anarchists doing? That's actually interesting versus oh, what are these anarchists doing? This is stupid? Ignore everything to say, yeah, people to remember as well that um, you know, there's seeds was sort of funk in Kirp Hootkins write things, you know, from the conquest of bread to mutual aid, and those are sort of things that should be just as emphasized as the destructive, exhigerating aspects of anarchism. Yeah, there's a line in a Frank Turner song, a couple of lines actually in a song called nineteen thirty three that I go back to a lot, But one of them is you can't fix the world of all you have is a hammer. And that's I guess what I see is, like, the primary practical benefit of solar punk, just as an aesthetic as a piece of fiction, is getting people to expand their toolbox. Yeah, get yourself a trowel, you know, some some screw drivas, you know. Yeah, keep the hammer, you need that sometimes too, but let's grab some other tools. Expand the toolbox. Thing is a really great metaphor for all of this type of thing. Yeah. Yeah, Um, I think that's most of what we're going to get into today. Um. There's a couple of pieces of things I would want to read. One of them Isn't. This Isn't directly I think it predates the solar punk, but it it a I think feeds into some of what I think it emotionally feeds into a lot of what we're talking about here. It's an essay from David Graber called The Shock of Victory UM, which I think is really useful to me. Yeah. Um. And I would also recommend um Corey doctor O's new fiction novel walk Away UM, which I think is really wonderful. Piece was a wonderful, wonderful book. I should have included my recommentions. It was really great. Yeah. I read it recently and it made me, Um. It made me feel the way like as a fiction writer that a grid piece of fiction should, which is like I felt bad. Uh. I felt bad about some of the things that I had written because there's there's there's such there's so much more or courage because I wrote a piece of fiction that has some solar punk elements, has some quasi utopian elements in the dystopia. But I didn't have the courage to kind of go as far as as Corey did and to imagine a kind of passivism that he he has the courage to kind of put into the into the hands of his his protagonists. Like I, I really respect that about the book. I mean, the book goes in some very interesting eye directions as well, but it's it's got some great ship um, and I always enjoy Corey's Corey's leve of burning man um of what it could be is kind of what the what what some of it's turned into? But yeah, um, Andrew, is there anything else you wanted to get into before we we close this out? I just want to remind people to check on your friendsh you know, Um, we're all going through various stages of claps, as I outlined in my video. You know, we shift between them from time to time, so try not to go through it alone. You know, there's no there's no eye in Sula punk. Yeah yeah, um check out st Andrew on YouTube at st andrews Um. Um, Andrew, is there any anything else you wanted to kind of plug from your own your own personal work? Yeah. So, um, other than the you know, the Sula punk videos and the collapse videos, I want to remind sorry, I rather I want to shout out my video on black anarchism. I think that is a pretty essential look into, uh, the history of black anarchism in the United States and in the world. I also want to recommend um my video on the psychology of authoritarianism. I know a lot of people have family members who are conservative or on the right to what may be leading fascist and I think not having to be helpful for you know, helping them to or rather helping you to understand the way they mindset side m hm. And also, you know, check out my video on puma Let's sing. I think that was a pretty fun one as well. It breaks down a lot of it break breaks down how you can go about implementing food forests or puma culture gardens wherever you find yourself. Awesome, Um, thank you very much for being on the show, Andrew, thank you all for listening. We'll be back tomorrow or if this comes out Friday, we'll be back, you know, another day. We'll be back at some point. You know, you know how this works, you understand podcasts. It could happen Here as a production of cool Zone Media. For more podcasts from cool Zone Media, visit our website cool zone media dot com, or check us out on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. You can find sources for It could happen here, updated monthly at cool zone Media dot com slash sources. Thanks for listening.

Garrison. Is that good? Isn't the show? No? Let's keep going though, Okay, well it could happen. Here is the show that A tonal noise is my introduction this week because I'm a hack in a fraud. Who isn't a hack in a fraud? Is is our guest this week? St Andrew. St Andrew, you are a solar punk anarchist from Trinidad. Um. You have a YouTube channel, UM where you talk about solar punk. Um, you talk about stuff like seed bombing. Yeah. I'm just very excited to have you on the show because I'm a big fan of your YouTube channel. Thank you, glad to be here, big fan of your work as well. Andrew, I kind of wanted to start with why this white solar punk is important, because, UM, I think it's easy for folks who just kind of skim it to see it. It's just like, oh, it's an aesthetic. It's maybe an art style or a fiction style. UM. Maybe something that's neat, but not something that has like a lot of inherent value to people trying to change the world. And obviously you disagree with that. I disagree with it to um A quote I keep coming back to again and again is one from Werner Herzog in the nineteen seventies and it was something along the lines of I think that without better myths, were destined to go the way of the dinosaurs. Um. Actually of I forget his name right now, But there's this excellent, excellent book called The Truth About Stories, and I think what it really emphasizes throughout the book is the importance of stories on how stories impact how we navigate the woot, which is why I sort of embraced Sula punk, you know, as a story that we can work with going forward. Yeah, I think, Um, I think it's incredibly important to have better stories, better myths because for one thing, I think where the Left falls down a lot is not having is accurately diagnosing the problems without providing a better look at at this at the future, you know, um. And when the problems are when the people who do kind of propose solutions, it's often um not in a way people can feel. One of the benefits that that that the right has, that fascism has, is that they they're very good at providing people with myths and providing people with kind of a fictional look at at their idealized world. That draws people in. You know, you can laugh at the right you know, the people that work on like meta narratives, and that's very, very core to their ideology. Um, So, I guess where I'd like to start with you, Andrew, because this is kind of the first time I think we've really talked about solar punk on on this show, even though from the beginning before any of these episodes dropped, this was always a central part of our discussion about what the show was was going to be. Um, would you kind of provide an introduction to to what solar punk is for our listeners? Sure? Sure, So I would say that solar punk is the vision of the future that place this emphasis on the existing world and how we get to that future from where we are now. So it emphasizes the need for environmental sustainability, for self governance, and for autonomy and social justice. It emphasizes the need for you know, human and ecocentric ends to really be in sync, and it aims to really heal the current rift between humanity and nature. It also recognizes, of course, that there isn't this binary between climate change happens and climate change doesn't happen. Rather, it understands that how we navigate it will have a variety of consequences and some of the positive, some of the negative, but it's up to us to really shape that. Yeah, and it's um. I want to drill into a couple of facets of that. But I want to quickly plug one of your YouTube videos for folks who kind of want a more involved um explanation and background. You have a video called what is solar Punk on your channel st Andrewism like Andrew I s m um that I think is a fantastic introduction not just to like the aesthetics of solar punk, but some of the practical some of the practical kind of expressions of it. And and two of the ones you list is like examples of here's here's what this is is like actual practis you know, and not just an aesthetic is seed bombing um. And then you talk about this this very interesting kind of like terra Cotta air conditioning, which I think is I think it's neat because it's it's one of the problems that I think with kind of some versions of of particularly kind of on the more liberal end of of of solar punk imag engining is just sort of like ways of replacing um, ways of gaining the same kind of consumptive benefits that exist. I guess not even not even like greenwashing, right washing, greenwashing, Like here, let's get the same consumptive benefits we get scrapers, yes, skyscrapers, the same level of consumerism, same level of you know, destructive extractive practices. But we have some flowers and some trees. So yeah, and that's not enough. But at the same time, there are things that aren't. Like air conditioning is contributes massively to climate change. It's also not a luxury. Like if you live in a place where it's a hundred and twenty degrees a lot of the summer, that's not a luxury. Yeah, this is going from someone in a tropical country. Yeah, um, definitely a necessity. Yeah, So I wonder if you could talk about kind of those two I mean, or if you have different ones you'd like to pick, but just kind of what you see is sort of the practice expressions of solar punk, sort of beyond the aesthetic, although we're going to drill nder the esthetics some too, because I also think that's important. Right, So, I think some of my favorite manifestations of suli punk. In a practical context, things like um gorilla gardening. Grilla gardening is probably the biggest one because it's one that someone could literally pick up and do today or tomorrow, you know, as soon as they hear about it, doing about it. Just get some clay, get some seeds, you know, and put those things together, and as you're walking home or walking to the store, just toss them wherever there's some free dud UM. So that's a fun one. There's also, of course, things like a little bit one involved, like community gardening and particularly forest gardening, because that will provide a level of food autonomy and agency for people who have been eling it for a long time from the process of food production. UM. They're also practices like compassing or corpaching, and it's like a way to produce lumber without chopping down a whole side of trees, so you are able to get the wood from the trees, but the tree remains alive. UM. There's also things like, of course solar powered technology, whether it be algae based UM windows that you know, extract energy from the sun, or solar sales or solar ovens uh or like the terra cotta, the air conditioning, which, by the way I learned recently can't really work in a human environment. But yeah, there are a lot of different opportunities. They also there are things like you know, tool shares and maker spaces and seed libraries, all different ways to sort of bring it into fruition. So that is yeah, and I uh, I think a lot of that's really valuable. UM. I'm interested in in parts sort of your your attitude on UM what uh let me think about how to phrase this, UM, what do you think are kind of the things as we talk about sort of the things that can be at least potentially replaced UM with with less extract of less consumptive methods. Is sort of an example of solar punk practice is replacing those things. There's also things that we're not going to be able to have if we actually want to live in a more sustainable UM future that that doesn't contribute to some of the nightmares that we're all going to be increasingly facing. UM. You're you know, and again I think it's it's telling that so much of kind of the future fantasies of that are written by people who come from you know, my part of the world. United States focus on like kind of post scarcity methods of of guaranteeing the continuation of consumption just through in some cases like fantastic methods um, you know, magical three D printers and the like. Um. You come from a very different part of the world, very different perspective. What do you see is the things that like we're going to have to give up. Coming from a country that is actually reliant on oil and natural gas production, we have to get rid of cause We definitely absolutely have to get rid of cause um free to ships as well, and really the whole way that you know, global supply chains are structured right now, not to say that they won't be any sort of global um sharing of resources in the future, but the way that it's happening right now, it can't continue to go on. We can't continue to structure cities in our lives around cause and other methods of gascars in transportation because we're literally going to run out. And we've known this for a long time, but it's nearing that the day is nearing CLUISA and CLUISO and yeah, we have to find a way to do without it. Yeah, and it's it's I think tell like there's a couple of things that are important. One of them is you can't just say we have to stop global trade because in global travel, because the people have have sought and done that for as long as there have been people in one form or another. It's it's a fundamentally human thing. But there are aspects of it, like you know, expecting that every kind of fruit and vegetable will be available year round, which is certainly thing that we in the United States expect. Um. That doesn't that that's not part of a realistic future. Um And if it's part of the future, then it's only going to be part of the future for an ever shrinking chunk of of the country. And you can see that and sort of um or of the of the West, and you can see that in kind of um the like what we're dealing with right now with like the supply line shortages and failures, and like one of the I think the symbols of how far we have to go in my country is the degree to which people are freaking out by the fact that Christmas presents might be late. Um. Let alone being like yeah, you might not be able to buy coffee, um um ever, or all the time, you know, you might not be able to get tomatoes in December, which reminds me UM. I think one benefits to gorilla gardening, and that's what sort of mindset is. As you learn to so you also learn to reap. Right, So a lot of people who get into grilla gardening altos end up getting into foraging, and they are absent stuff you could download that allow you to, you know, learn how to identify plants in your area, and we surprise a number of plants in your area that are you know, useful for tease or for salads or for whatever poop is is that can be used as replacements. I'm not sure they could replace coffee, but they could be beneficial. UM in recognizing how we have to live with our local ecosystems. Basically, yeah, and a big you know, when you talk about living learning how to live with our ecosystem stuff like planting um forest gardens and the like um or food forests, I think is the term UM. I think something that has to be discussed is the matter of indigenous sovereignty, especially when we're talking about you know, it's not just you know, North America. A lot of chunks of the globe. Indigenous people had spent you know, in some cases thousands of generations setting forests up in order to sustainably produce food. Um. And when when colonialism arrived, that was often just seen as like, oh, this is this is these are wild places for us too, for us to extract or tear down and replace with mono cultures, you know, single crops. Um. And so a big part of actually building back that capacity, the capacity of us to to survive off of the food that can sustainably grow where we live is looking back to those indigenous methods and and also um, you know, giving back land in a lot of cases um And yeah, that's something you talk about in your videos that I think is really important to um to to to to explain to people. Yeah, I mean there's there's really is no way to separate the violence and oppressive institution of clunealism with the equosido Nietzsche of modern steeds. You know, those two are deeply intertwined, deeply married together. And so you can't fight climate change without addressing the issue of sverenity, of indigenous serenity on land back. Yeah, it's m it's really interesting. I've been I've been up hunting on Mountain Hood with a friend who is who went to school for like forestry management, and as we were driving, we had to drive through a chunk of the reservation in order to get to the blm land where we're able to hunt, and he pointed it out, and once he did, it was immediately obvious just how different the land under indigenous control looked from the land, you know, just feed away that was being managed by the federal government in terms of like how much better the forest management was, how much how much smarter it was it was managed in order to um reduce the chances of like a ladder fire that that actually kills you know, the trees and whatnot. There's this whole thing blowing up on Twitter right now where you've got a chunk of Marxists who are are trying to frame land back as uh just like shifting ownership of resources, which I think is really missing. The point I find interesting about Twitter is the exact same discourses are repeated over and over and over again. So I remember this exact conversation happening around this time last year, around April last year, um earlier this year as well. It's just the same discourses get recycled over and over again, and it's reached a point for me, who I realized that these people don't want to learn about land back what it really means, because they are invested in the structure as it exists and they don't want to have to interrogate that. So, Yeah, that's fellow to be an interesting thing, I've note. Yeah, and it's um, it's it's it's frustrating. UM. I guess that that acts as like a general uh description of Twitter discourse, but certainly doesn't. Yeah, I think it's I think it's telling the degree to which people, even on the left tree eat it as a fantasy as opposed to dogged lye pragmatic um and and proven so like proven by like like you know, like you can read you in reports that will that will essentially say land back in the space of a five page, you know, study on how indigenous land management functions a great deal better than UM than a lot of the stuff that's like centralized by the federal government, where we're like, our federal government is terrible at land management. UM, And it's part of the it's part of the problem. I think one of the things that that excites me about solar punk as an aesthetic and idea is getting back to this relationship with the land as opposed to talking about just preserving it um as talking about managing it. Because because none of our none of the land that people live on is like wild in the sense they mean it as it's been cultivated. That's the thing, right. The whole philosophy of you know, um land preservation as was taken up by the US government with the whole um you know, you can stop forest fires kind of thing, ended up leading to more forest fires online because they we have a rule in the ecosystem, not just they had to stand back from a file to subserve it. So we doin't do our part to manage the underbrush and whatnots and clear to we and exercise you know, controlled fires, but we end up in the situation we're in today. You know, cultivation not just sterile preservation. Now one of the things that you talk about well because because one of the more frustrating discourses this is not just a Twitter thing, this has been going on for years, is the discourse around GMO crops. And usually I would say like the two most commonly heard sides, are GMOs are bad because you know mon santo cancer whatever, or GMOs are good um in in thought, um, And the thing that you point out, which is I think the accurate take is GMOs. The preponderance of evidence says that, like, there's nothing inherently dangerous about genetically modified crops, but the way in which they're often used in order to create these massive mono cultures is really toxic. So there's a lot of promise um for GMOs in terms of keeping our our existence on this planet sustainable. But what's not sustainable is the kind of industrialized agriculture where you have ten thousand acres of one thing which just doesn't happen in nature exactly exactly. And if you look at how genetic modification took place prior to you know, all advanced funds in genetic modification technology. UM, I'm not how many people are familiar with the dozens of one dozens, if not hundreds of varieties of just corn they were present in the Americas prior to Coltonization. A lot of those varieties were wiped out or was suppressed in fear of these monocultures. But if we able to culture to divusity of these crops and really bring some of them back through Jessic modification. That would really help us with you know, food resilience in a world with an increasingly unpredictable climate. Yeah, yeah, I think that. I mean, I think you said it perfectly. I want to move back to kind of what I introduced the episode with, which is talking about the value of of fiction and myth making in a in a very pragmatic sense. I guess I'll start by saying, I think one of the clearest signs of the danger that we're in and how toxic our society has gotten. Um And I am speaking from a primarily US centric standpoint here, but I don't think it's unique to the United States. Is the extent to which trust me um as as the saying goes, when the U s sneel. So anytime there's some phenomenon happened in the US, there are the coffee cuts. And I do think this is pretty global. I mean, you see it in like South Korean films and and know what you're gonna say, Yeah, the obsession with apocalypse and when we when we go to the future, it's always a dystopia. Um, there's a degree to which we've almost forgotten how to imagine utopia or even not just utopia, just a way of living that is an improvement in a lot of ways of future that's better. We've forgotten to do both utopian fiction and any just kind of like positive fiction in a lot of ways. Because, yeah, it's understandable because the world is kind of terrible right now in a lot of in a lot of ways. But there's also there's been utopian fiction inside other terrible worlds as well. I think just the modern interconnected media sphere has really rewarded this type of like dystopian and collapse based apocalypse fiction. Yeah, and I'm sure that's that's worth interrogating. Why. But it is a problem that needs to be solved. Yeah, and it is, And and you're I think it's important. It's not entirely based in how fucked up things are, because like when the first Star Trek came out, we were at like the height of the Cold War. Things were terrible. There was a lot of utopian fiction during World War Two. During World War two, UM, I will always be impressed by the fact that Gene Roddenberry saw it as incredibly important both to be like, Okay, well, in the future, like in the middle of the Civil rights movement, in the future, we will have overcome like racism, but not just that, but like I'm gonna I'm gonna stick a Russian on the bridge too, because nations are going to end as a concept and like this stuff won't matter. Um, and that just that kind of utopian fiction, at least at this at the scale of popularity that you know, Star Trek wasn't its time just isn't present anymore. And I that's tremendously worrying to me. And I see a lot of hope in in Solar Punk for that. Um, I guess for star As I'm interested in in your thoughts on this, and you're interested in Andrew, what you think is like the pragmatic value of of of positive a fiction that that that imagines a better world. Yes, so I've done probably I think I've done like two videos on Sola Punk so far. M two major videos on Soil the Punk, as well as a smaller video two other smaller videos. Um. And what I've seen in the comments and in the general social media reaction again and again is sol the Punk saved my life, you know, sola punk has given me hoop. You know, I was slipping into the spair, but this video really gave me a jump start to try something new and to start to fresh and to pursue action as opposed to suggest laying down and taking whatever comes next and that that is it for me. You know, I think the fact that sulla punk offers like an energizing vision. It's not just a vision, it's an energizing vision because in every step with the way it shows what you can do. You know, when you show when you look at sula punk art or um, you look at the small but growing genre of sula punk literary media, or you know, you look at but there's don't have many slipunk video games right now, but hopefully there will be in the future. When you look at the various forms of sila punk media that are coming out and people's responses to them, you see that it's not like as all mentioning like star Trek, where it's all this far out technology that we can only aspire to for now. You know, suli punk is something that you can literally put in your backyard or your bad canny, or your home, or your school or your community. You know, you could put these things in place like from now, you know, and you can incorporate it into your politics as you know, as they are, and they could also help to push your politics forward, you know, because through solo punk, we could open up discussions about, Okay, so how do we ensure that people live comfortably within the parameters of you know, the Earth's carrying capacity? You know, you open up a discussions about indigenous soevereignty, you discussions about, um, the relationship between the Google North and the global South, and responsibility with regard to our response to climate change. Well, you open up a lot of different discussions through the realm of soulo punk. It energizes people, as I said, and yeah, I think that is its paramatic purpose. It doesn't stand alone, of course, but it is a driving force. Yeah. Would you kind of give out a list of if people are you know, if this is someone's first introduction to the concept of solar punk, what is some reading you want to draw people towards. What are some fiction like I know you mentioned The Dispossessed by Laguin right, um, which often gets cited. Um, yeah, I'm interested in kind of other other recommendations you might have for our listeners, are that right? So UM. I'm still getting into the genre myself, so I don't have too many UM recommendations. There are some UM decent short story collections UM like sun Vaults by a couple of different authors. There's also multi species Cities, so the punk urban futures UM. And the one I read most recently was Ecotopia, which is quite is much older than all the others. It's actually really a book that was published in UM and not all aspects of its politics things I agree with, but I think for a first UM it was one of the really the first of its kind in that sort of equal utopian genre that really laid out what the society would look like. UM. The book is structured in a series of novel entries and notebook reports by a journalist from the United States who has gone to this country called eco Topia, which is sort of where the Pacific Northwest States are, and he's basically breaking down He's going to different parts of the country and breaking down how they have lived and how they have decided structure their lives. UM. And even though not every aspect of it is one that I would want to see implemented, I still think that it really sparks the imagination, really gets you thinking, well, maybe I wouldn't do it this week, but how else could this be done? And I think the capacity for spunk stories suggest generate that thought and generate one's imagination is very useful in a world where we don't really get to use our imagination as much, not really since childhood, you know. And um, yeah, I uh. I think it's often understated the degree to which using your imagination is a vitally necessary part of actual radical politics. Um. And I think there's a lot of people who consider themselves radicals, you know, some of these some of these not to you know, slam every Marxist Leninist on the planet, but certainly some of the ones who were coming up with these bad faith critics systems of land back. It's like, you're not a radical, You're a conservative who wants to go back to a different kind of problematic thing. Um. It is more the fact that the Soviet Union poisoned like the largest body of water in Europe. You know, all the different things that the Soviet Union did that were horrible for the environment and extractive, and it's interesting that you know, they are these people who call themselves radicals, but at the very first um encounter with a radical idea, their first instinct is to shut down. Their first instinct is to just pushed back against it, whereas not to toot my own horn or anything. But you know, when I see an idea that I haven't encountered before that may seem strange to me, that challenges my precontinutions, my first reaction is not to shout about how this school is against everything then, and said, you know, my first reaction is to investigate it and to open space for it in my mind, to really, you know, tune it around and imagine what it might look like and how it might fit with what I have learned about before. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely, I mean I think that's that's that's great advice for radical politics. It's also just good life advice. Yeah, especially for engaging with ideas that you are less keen on at the moment, or or or just unaware of. H I mean, my whole thing is if I have like a strong gut reaction to something, it might be because it may be hitting a part of me that might be benefiting from that system, you know. I mean, I don't benefit from the system in a lot of respects, you know, as a black guy from the Caribbean, but as a man, as in as a sis sis hetman. You know, I do have privileges that I must be aware of and I can't just like be so quick to shut down, you know, something that ain't give me a bit uncomfortable. You know. Yeah, I think that's such a valuable thing to keep in mind, especially as a a more or less sis white guy like a you know, a significant number of people listening are if you're uncomfortable by a new idea. Is it Is it because the idea is bad? Or is because it strikes at an area in which you may not even have like thought about being privileged, like I'm I'm uncomfortable I have even though there's no I have no intellectual argument against it with the idea of of ending our use of cars as they exist, because I love I love to drive. But that's also heavily rooted in in in tremendous privilege on my behalf um American culture, and so yeah, and um, you know, we we we did talk about that a bit in the opening episodes of season two. The idea that like a more you know, when we we kind of had our little utopian ending, the idea that like, well maybe you'd have a car that's communally owned and used for certain tasks. But you know, the idea of of of car culture as the center of a city is um is death. It's just death. When we talked about getting past cars, is not to say that like people will never use vehicles that move again, Like obviously we will. They're necessary for something and all. Going back to horse drawn buggies, pink. One of the last things on like solar punk kind of tying into the whole kind of nature of the shows. I really like to enter your point on like how solar punk is like an energizing force and I feel like we have very few of those on the left and especially on the anarchist left. Um, like i've i've, i've, i've I've had my decent stint of like anarcho nihilism. And the problem, like the problem with that is like it's very easy, Like anarch nihilism is one of the easiest ideologies to grasp onto because it vlidifies all of your bad feelings. Um, But it also it's most of the people who I know who are like real into anarchro nihilism. They're generally not very happy people because it's kind of it's kind of miserable all the time. Um. And sure they like scoff at like solar punk is like some like greenwashed yogurt commercial, like you know, like utopian thing, but also like it's actually lots of solar punk that we've talked about. It's like actually about doing specific things, Like it's actually like actually going to do something rather than just being an insurrecto kid um or just just you know, talking about nihilist zignes and books on Twitter for all day. And I think one of one of your one of my favorite videos of yours is your video on this like pology of collapse, um, because I think that's one of my favorites as well. It's it's, it's, it's, it's it's really just like a masterpiece. And how deep you get into every different type of collapse thinking, because it's not just on the rights, not not not not to the left. It's not just whether you're you know more you know, anarchist more authoritarian. It's like you get into every specific type of thinking that plays into this idea around collapse. And I think if I recommend everyone check out your channel, especially watching your Solar Point videos, but specifically on the topic of collapse. You know, part of our show we were trying to kind of be a little bit like anti collapse UM. And I think your your video really shows the depth of that topic UM and how to approach this, because collapse is a feeling, like it's a feeling we all have, and it needs to be interrogated. And I think your video is just a magnificent job interrogating that feeling, right, thank you. I can't overemphasize how important that is, because I I one of the major failings. There were a number of victory for a kind of anarchist thought, particularly within the United States during the the insurrection last year. One of its tremendous defeats is that it has become characterized in a huge number of people's eyes as breaking windows and and starting fires um. And yeah, that's a lot of that is because the media is trash, um, and it's trash it reporting on on all of this stuff. But some of it is because a lot of people have let that be their primary praxis UM. And that again, I don't care about people breaking windows I don't care about people lighting dumpster fires, but if that's what you're presenting to the world as your practice, that doesn't appeal to people. And you have to um, because yeah, anarchism is not just destructive, it is also constructive. It's the constructive part. We need to be boosting more than that. And there were some, you know, from the con next to Portland's some really strong examples of that last year. The incredible amount of mutual aid that was was put together of time. Yeah, during the fire relief was was incredible. UM. And the Red House, the the eviction defense occupation was a really good repost to you know, the disaster that was the Chaz in Seattle. That this was like, this was an area that was temporarily autonomous from the police, that did not collapse into violence, that succeeded in its goal, and that cleaned up after itself and presented an option for people like this is how it can look when we try to evict people. You know, this is what can happen. UM. So I think they're I don't want to like be too negative, but I think that a lot of folks because of for a variety of reasons. You know, the there's been so much focus on kind of the insurrection, not even that, because I think that building can be insurrectionist. I think the seed bombing, guerrilla garden it can be profoundly insurrectionists. It's like, um, destruction has an am it result of making you feel better, right, it has an immediate of it endorphins and hormones. It makes you happy when you do it. It's it, it is. It is an exhilarating act, and you feel like you're accomplishing something. What's harder is to like have that same feeling by doing seed bombing, right by by actually like improving your community slowly through these types of like so the PC ideas, they don't have the same immediate emotional reactions. So a lot of people like when they, you know, think about what insurrection is, they can a default to this destructive tendency, which destruction has its time and place. Um, but if that's your only practice, we're not gonna improve the world at all, Like, right, that's that's not gonna do anything. Helping through you know, giving out food, helping through giving out socks and clothes, helping through all of these solar punk ways. These are things that actually like are going to improve things on a tangible level. They and they're gonna make more people be like, oh, hey, what what are these anarchists doing? That's actually interesting versus oh, what are these anarchists doing? This is stupid? Ignore everything to say, yeah, people to remember as well that um, you know, there's seeds was sort of funk in Kirp Hootkins write things, you know, from the conquest of bread to mutual aid, and those are sort of things that should be just as emphasized as the destructive, exhigerating aspects of anarchism. Yeah, there's a line in a Frank Turner song, a couple of lines actually in a song called nineteen thirty three that I go back to a lot, But one of them is you can't fix the world of all you have is a hammer. And that's I guess what I see is, like, the primary practical benefit of solar punk, just as an aesthetic as a piece of fiction, is getting people to expand their toolbox. Yeah, get yourself a trowel, you know, some some screw drivas, you know. Yeah, keep the hammer, you need that sometimes too, but let's grab some other tools. Expand the toolbox. Thing is a really great metaphor for all of this type of thing. Yeah. Yeah, Um, I think that's most of what we're going to get into today. Um. There's a couple of pieces of things I would want to read. One of them Isn't. This Isn't directly I think it predates the solar punk, but it it a I think feeds into some of what I think it emotionally feeds into a lot of what we're talking about here. It's an essay from David Graber called The Shock of Victory UM, which I think is really useful to me. Yeah. Um. And I would also recommend um Corey doctor O's new fiction novel walk Away UM, which I think is really wonderful. Piece was a wonderful, wonderful book. I should have included my recommentions. It was really great. Yeah. I read it recently and it made me, Um. It made me feel the way like as a fiction writer that a grid piece of fiction should, which is like I felt bad. Uh. I felt bad about some of the things that I had written because there's there's there's such there's so much more or courage because I wrote a piece of fiction that has some solar punk elements, has some quasi utopian elements in the dystopia. But I didn't have the courage to kind of go as far as as Corey did and to imagine a kind of passivism that he he has the courage to kind of put into the into the hands of his his protagonists. Like I, I really respect that about the book. I mean, the book goes in some very interesting eye directions as well, but it's it's got some great ship um, and I always enjoy Corey's Corey's leve of burning man um of what it could be is kind of what the what what some of it's turned into? But yeah, um, Andrew, is there anything else you wanted to get into before we we close this out? I just want to remind people to check on your friendsh you know, Um, we're all going through various stages of claps, as I outlined in my video. You know, we shift between them from time to time, so try not to go through it alone. You know, there's no there's no eye in Sula punk. Yeah yeah, um check out st Andrew on YouTube at st andrews Um. Um, Andrew, is there any anything else you wanted to kind of plug from your own your own personal work? Yeah. So, um, other than the you know, the Sula punk videos and the collapse videos, I want to remind sorry, I rather I want to shout out my video on black anarchism. I think that is a pretty essential look into, uh, the history of black anarchism in the United States and in the world. I also want to recommend um my video on the psychology of authoritarianism. I know a lot of people have family members who are conservative or on the right to what may be leading fascist and I think not having to be helpful for you know, helping them to or rather helping you to understand the way they mindset side m hm. And also, you know, check out my video on puma Let's sing. I think that was a pretty fun one as well. It breaks down a lot of it break breaks down how you can go about implementing food forests or puma culture gardens wherever you find yourself. Awesome, Um, thank you very much for being on the show, Andrew, thank you all for listening. We'll be back tomorrow or if this comes out Friday, we'll be back, you know, another day. We'll be back at some point. You know, you know how this works, you understand podcasts. It could happen Here as a production of cool Zone Media. For more podcasts from cool Zone Media, visit our website cool zone media dot com, or check us out on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. You can find sources for It could happen here, updated monthly at cool zone Media dot com slash sources. Thanks for listening.