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The Cruel Fantasies of Well-Fed People
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this post was submitted on 28 Oct 2023
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Solarpunk Farming
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First and foremost, I emphatically disagree in the strongest possible terms with your work-oriented concept of communities.
Second, and this is also a really, really important point, and this is actually something that often frustrates rural people about city people, but your life in a city requires a lot of material support from rural communities that city people tend to forget about.
In fact, virtually every single physical good in your life make has raw materials that come from a rural place. What is your house made of? Wood? That comes from rural loggers and sawmills. Brick? Gotta dig the clay from the soil. Concrete? That requires sand. Want to put in plumbing? The copper needs to get mined, along with any other metal, or things like coal. Glass? Silica is in the dirt. The gravel surrounding your foundation comes from blasting the sides of hills in rural communities. In most big cities, even the tap water comes from a relatively faraway rural community, oftentimes at great expense to rural communiites, and people need to live there to maintain it.
Sorry, I guess that came across the wrong way. I am also very much against defining a person's "value" through the work they do as some people seem to do. But that doesn't mean that the work they do shouldn't be relevant to the community they live in and that it doesn't make sense to combine workplace and habitat as far as possible.
As for the topic of resources needed to support cities... Obviously there is no denying that and I also don't think I have done that anywhere in this thread. The entire argument rests on this need and that you can't do without.
One of the points the author of the OP is trying to make is that the billions of city inhabitants can't all move into rural areas because of how relatively inefficient rural life is compared to city life when it comes to resource use.
So absolutely is there a need for some people to live in rural areas and produce these goods and their highly important efforts are undervalued in our society (like so many vital jobs...).
But people claiming that all would be well if we would all just move into rural areas and do small scale farming are sadly very misinformed or don't particularly care about other human beings.
How is this not denying it.
None of the things I listed are food or nature conservation.
But also, that world, in which only people directly involved with food live in rural places, fucking sucks for those people. Rural people deserve communities too, and they have them, because rural communities are actually full communities with depth and complexity (and real hospitals!). We don't only exist solely to serve the urban core with food and/or resources. Farmers are people, and all people deserve community.
I'm sorry if I sound annoyed, but I kinda am. You keep downplaying rural communities, like saying that the hospital without which I couldn't have typed this isn't a real hospital, or that most of the people who make my life worthwhile shouldn't live here. Like when I pointed out that to be able to farm necessitates the support of tradespeople and grocery stores and so on, you said they could just live in the city and commute here, and that maybe it's more inconvenient for the villagers, but it's more efficient -- those are my friends and family you're talking about. I want to see them not at our jobs, too. It's actually pretty patronizing to tell people that their communities should be dismantled to make them more efficient in how they serve the urban core, just like it's patronizing to assume we can't have real hospitals. We have real lawyers, too, and bars and bowling alleys and there's even a Chinese takeout place in my tiny ass town (though I admit that it sucks).
I simplified a bit with the only food production, but otherwise please take my comments in the context of the OP article.
I am not saying that existing rural communities should be dismantled!
But like the author of the OP article I am frustrated with people claiming that their rural lifestyle is sustainable and "if just all people would do like us" there would be no problem, which is just very naive.
You are though. I really don't think you're doing it on purpose, but if you read what you're saying, you are.
On this, I wholeheartedly ~disagree~ agree.
EDIT: omfg, I'm so sorry, I am on mobile and somehow fat-fingered "disagree" instead of "agree"
Ok let's assume it would be feasible for a second and the 50 thousand or so people from the nearby city would all move into your rural area. Not only would that totally destroy your rural community that you are so protective off, but it would also require a lot more resources that what they currently use, and that is already unsustainable. So what exactly is your proposal then? Just let these 50 thousand people starve to death?
(I'm going to answer both comments here)
I don't know why on earth you think I'm arguing for everyone to move to rural areas.
I propose the abolition of capitalism, along with the abolition of markets, to be replaced with democratic planning, not, like we have now, an economy premised on one dollar one vote, in which the wealthy decide what we do. I want a society that looks something like "from each according to their ability, and to each according to their needs," a classless, stateless society, in which people can live in rural places or urban areas, and we work together to make both sustainable, healthy, and pleasant.
It's a big dream. I don't expect to see it in my lifetime, but I also know that in my lifetime, the climate crisis is coming, and things are going to change whether we want it to or not. I think it's worth dreaming the dream, and telling other people about it. I hope that the dream can influence the decisions we make when change is forced upon us.
But it's also not just a dream. I am a member of research collectives and academic groups that are actively working on democratic planning. I founded a worker cooperative. I farm cooperatively with other people, too. I try to make the dream real in small ways, and I hope other people do too, because if we all do it, then it becomes real in big ways, and maybe things won't be as bad as they look like they're going to be.
That's what attracts me to solarpunk, and why I'm here.. I love the dream it embodies, with its unabashed utopian aesthetic.
Also omg I’m so sorry, I am on mobile and somehow fat-fingered “disagree” instead of “agree” lmfao.
Lol, ok never mind then 🤭