My Ideology (so far)

It's been four years since I've started reading No Logo and explore the worlds of politics, economics and ideologies. Since then, many books, thinkers and friends have inspired me and helped me grow in awareness and figure out the path I want to follow in life. This is just a humble attempt at sketching out my current political vision. Who knows how it will change in time.

Ideals

I call myself a solarpunk, which I like to think as a blanket term just like “socialist” was 150 years ago. I believe in an equal and just world, where everyone is respected and allowed to pursue anything they deem worthy no matter their gender, ethnicity, religion, appearance, nationality, disabilities or education. I would include beliefs, values and status (economic or political), but I do think there are two example categories that can disrupt such a society: the fascists and the rich.

This is according to the Tolerance Social Contract: if someone does not abide by its terms, they are not covered by it. Fascists are *not tolerant of genders and ethnicities; they break the contract and therefore they are excluded by it. The wealthy (economically or politically) also break the contract, by exploiting the less wealthy and therefore undermining equality. They are also not covered by it. An initially equal society that includes either fascists or wealthy will, at some point, lose its equality. Without a mechanism to prevent them from breaking the contract, equality will degrade and lead to forms of authoritarianism and oppression.

Action

At the end of the 19th Century, Gaetano Salvemini realized that in order to involve southern Italians politically, they first had to achieve literacy. Without the ability of reading and writing, they wouldn't be able to understand how to defend their rights and how to read between the lines of political propaganda. Literacy was (and still is) key on the path to class consciousness, the prime skill to interact with ideas and culture.

Today, literacy has been widely achieved across Europe, with few and isolated exceptions. Yet the political literacy is at an all-time low, with citizens disconnected from party politics and worse, from their communities and environments. This is by design: car-centric urban planning and digital infrastructure in the last 50 years have been set up in a way to make most of the population functionally illiterate, unable to interact not only with ideas and culture (despite formal literacy) but with each other, the nature around us and the virtual world we spend most of our time in. Think about how hard is to make new friends after university, or after moving to a new place. Think about how uncomfortable it is to reach the closest national park. Most of us can't build their personal site or keep their online data safe.

The prime political action of any proper solarpunk is therefore to educate, in three directions mainly:

This can be done in many ways: journalism (reporting good practices, exposing malpractices), activism, mutual aid, cultural production (stories, videogames, music, art, etc), workplace organizing, for example.

End goals

“Do what you have to do, come what may”