Hopepunk, optimism, purity, and futures of hard work
beforewegoblog.com
beforewegoblog.com
The consolation of fairy stories, the joy of the happy ending, or more correctly of the good catastrophe, the sudden joyous "turn" (for there is no true end to any fairy tale); this joy, which is one of the things which fairy stories can produce supremely well, is not essentially "escapist," nor "fugitive." In its fairy tale--or otherworld--setting, it is a sudden and miraculous grace, never to be counted on to recur. It does not deny the existence of dyscatastrophe, of sorrow and failure. The possibility of these is necessary to the joy of deliverance; it denies (in the face of such evidence, if you will) universal final defeat and in so far is evangelism, giving a fleeting glimpse of joy; joy beyond the walls of the world, poignant as grief.
Tolkien, "On Fairy-Stories", 1939
“It's like in the great stories, Mr. Frodo. The ones that really mattered. Full of darkness and danger they were. And sometimes you didn't want to know the end. Because how could the end be happy? How could the world go back to the way it was when so much bad had happened? But in the end, it’s only a passing thing, this shadow. Even darkness must pass. A new day will come. And when the sun shines it will shine out the clearer. Those were the stories that stayed with you. That meant something, even if you were too small to understand why. But I think, Mr. Frodo, I do understand. I know now. Folk in those stories had lots of chances of turning back, only they didn’t. They kept going, because they were holding on to something. That there is some good in this world, and it's worth fighting for.”
The Two Towers
(1) Optimism. The world has been getting better and all present evils can eventually be cured by developing the specific know-how (think Apollo programme)
(2) Eucatastrophe. The world has been getting steadily worse yet looming evil may be defeated by an unexpected turn of events among a few good people (think small fellowship of hobbits)
The first says that if we apply creativity and work energetically at solving problems in a scientific manner then we can solve them. No guarantees but also nothing in the laws of physics to prevent it. It sounds reasonable but in practice the argument seems to persuade very few, least of all in Hollywood where science fiction has all but given up on spaceships and the future. As Douglas Adams pointed out the stories are mostly set in LA about 5 years from now and it's raining.
The second is almost the opposite. It says that if a few unimportant but good people get involved, things may unpredictably and dramatically improve, perhaps by the intervention of grace or Providence. It sounds supernatural. Hope was indeed one of St Paul's big three ('Faith, Hope, and Love'). Yet consider how many scientific discoveries and inventions occurred purely by accident. How evolution succeeded in making ears out of jaw bones. Etc.
Historically I've sided with (1) and I've always wanted it to be true however however many times it is pointed out by the likes of Steven Pinker with graphs and statistics that conditions have improved through most of history, the pessimists still prevail in public news and debates. They get more headlines and seem more serious than their naive opponents.
Why do pessimists carry the day and with such preternatural authority? The very fact that they do hints that they're unwittingly cashing in on the fact that (2) may be correct or at least the predominating factor.
That is, most good things happen by accident, but they do require a few good people to show up.
The reasons for dominance of pessimism culturally are also cynical - negative campaigning tends to work well and it is easier to find something disliked by many diverse subfactions than something unclaimed and liked by many. Plus it is easy to tear down compared to building something.
Hollywood's lack of science optimism has another obvious reason aside from anger at being disrupted by competition from newer technology. It requires far more creativity to come up with something plausible, optimistic, and having a problem that you can hang a plot and spectacle upon than making some shallow nonsensical dystopia which makes as much sense as using nuclear fusion reactor powered robots with energy weaponry are used as overseers for coal miners with pickaxes. Which leads into my next point. What has generally been a death knell for darker aesthetics and genres is inability to be taken seriously anymore; whether by overexposure with a lack of variety and/or a biting parody. It probably affects them worse because there are far more ways to make a "neutral" genre like say Western, than a darker one say a slasher film - the emotional ranges are inherently more limited by definition.
In any case the fact that pessimists prevail in the headlines may not have anything to do with how the world actually is, but more with what sells newspapers. It is well-known that (after sex) human misery sells much more copy than happy stories. "If it bleeds it leads" and all that.
However this doesn't explain the preponderance of pessimism in sci-fi. People generally turn to fiction for inspiration or at least comfort. Responsible parents would consider it wrong to read stories with bad endings to their children. Yet we have been pumping demoralising and potentially self-fulfilling nonsense to wider society for a while now.
Also if (2) is correct then fundamental progress, arising from periodic breakthroughs, depends more upon who we are than what we do. Doing stuff would then lead to incremental improvements which are still important but which depend themselves on previous breakthroughs.
While I didn't think Walkaway was a particularly well-written book, the setting was fascinating and pretty unique as far as I could see: it told the story of civilizations transitioning from essentially our world to post-scarcity. We need more stories that talk about that transition.
I kind of agree with that assessment, but I still found some interesting ideas in it.
Personally, while I don't really think we 'need' hopepunk, I understand the inherent need for it in others. I may have stated this explicitly on this forum before, but I believe we already live in an dystopian future amalgam envisioned in some of the novels I read as a child. In such an environment, it is not a surprise those stories can thrive. Compare it post-WW 2 era, which allowed unprecedented peace across the western world that allowed people to explore darker sides of humanity in media ( grim dark, fascination with serial killers, various future dystopias to name a few interesting currents ).
The solace one may get from hopepunk is a false hope.
I don't think hopepunk or its variants, solarpunk, etc, provide solace, but moreso act as reference points to help people say, "Our society could be more like that. What can we do to make that happen?"
As you alluded to in your comment, fiction can be a powerful way for people to explore and shape the future.
Art can also be a description of what humanity should work towards. In this way a well written book that is hopeful need not be a false hope, but a showing of what humanity should work towards. Without having that goal of a better future, it is inevitable that we would fall towards dystopia.
Too often this doesn't happen and it causes problems every time. It's critical in a communal environment where you don't know who will be using a space next, and many people may use it before you come back to it.
Ensuring that tools and equipment are kept in working order is the responsibility of the user, and should be part of any training.
And then, we see a change. An intervention. And we see a new future unfolding, based on the choices and changes we made.
If this sounds interesting to you, let me know! Would love to connect with others — whether storytellers, artists, creatives, or anybody who's interested in thinking about problems we're facing and what change could look like. Feel free to drop a comment or contact me at https://twitter.com/sambutlerUS or https://sambutler.us!
This seems like a cop-out. It's not the battle-flag wavers and the red hats who attack people for not being pure enough, it's us. We're our own worst problem and we sound as crazy as the false-flag-shooting claiming nutcases when we're continuously in denial about the way we treat each other when we see the slightest hint of moral failing, past or present.
It would be a cop-out to say it is ONLY the bad actors imposing this on an otherwise content populace. You're right that 'it's us' who provide the amplified response, especially when we're terminally online and plugged-in.
But it's not at all hard to observe this and weaponize it. This is well established by this point. I feel it's almost the new battleground for WWIII: attempts to really-truly demolish and cripple an enemy power by intelligently exploiting this in ALL possible directions. Not towards a unified response, but toward 'the Zone' and chaos and mistrust of everything.
Though I think we need solutions more than we need upbeat, feel good stories of some sort. I just don't know how one finds that thread to pull.
I find the modern punk scene is only becoming more and more political — and because we lack a functioning democracy, violent. I would expect to see more ecoterrorism (there’s been a bunch in the PNW recently that you never hear about because the media doesn’t want to report on anti-capitalist activity lest anyone get any ideas that there might be a movement) and violence protests as the “punks” (often called “anarchists” in the media) arm themselves to match the right-wing loonies. The guys Kyle Rittenhouse shot? Likely all anarchists / punks. The next Grosskreuz will pull the trigger, guaranteed.
I’m an aging punk myself and I’ve never seen a firearms culture in punk spaces until the last few years. These days every Gen Z punk I know has an AR-15 and a pistol. Gun culture is suddenly cool among the urban / suburban set in a way that it hasn’t been with millennials. In the face of all this, I think the author mistakes what she needs in her personal life with what praxis looks like from the perspective of a working class punk.
Why do you need those stories? Is it because you don't have your own narrative? Is it because you've prevented yourself from following your inconvenient thoughts to their conclusions?
Your cosmopolitanism is not far from globalism; would you have me believe that MNCs are not 'the man'?
I guess Vivienne is to blame for that fashion ploy[0].
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vivienne_Westwood
The morally most interesting moment is, when purity is lost.
Failing to do that would be like early punk musicians going 'it was easy it was cheap, you can do it! …but don't actually do that, stick to buying our records in the shops kthxbai'
It's like open-source/free software. If you get it, you WILL be acting on that belief, not at all hypothetically. Makes perfect sense to me.
"Good is the enemy of perfect"
"Done is better than perfect"
Iterative (agile) improvement
"2 steps forward and 1 step back" and then then one of the 2 next steps forward will fix the previous step back.
Bureaucrats got to space first.
* If your biggest problem is "feeling tired", you don't have a problem.
* People work less than ever before (https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/annual-working-hours-per-...)
* Nobody over 14 should be allowed to use the word "resistance".
* Nobody who isn't a coalminer should be allowed to use the word "exhausted".
* Purity isn't a great way to build a political movement? No shit. In other news, black lipstick and fishnets aren't a great foundation for a wardrobe.
* "The 25th century of my Terra Ignota has fixed some of today’s problems but is still working on others..." Congratulations and how modest of you!... Wait, this is fiction?
* "As I observed in my half-joking 2013 review of Iron Man 3..." Aaaaaaaaaagh.
* "For many people, especially in America, the ideological residue of Puritanism and providentialist Christianity means that pursuing personal purity can feel like a way of helping indirectly with crises like climate or authoritarianism when direct action is intimidating or exhausting." The ghost of Cotton Mather is here to spank your ass for taking his name in vain.
* Why are the paragraphs so long?
* Why are the books so bad?
* Who are these whining bores?
* Update. OMG. "ADA PALMER is a professor in the history department of the University of Chicago...." The tweens have taken over the asylum.
'Hopium' is the antithesis of fascism. There will not be the Great Leader to whom you can devote yourself in perfect faith. There's just us. And that's gonna be enough.
Or is this another situation where the original word is stolen from its vibe and repurposed solely for its meaning?
From the books I've read that I'd say fit into hopepunk, they're not like that at all. Good people die at the end sometimes.
Could you explain why wholesome stories are boring to you?
Good drama has badness and evil, and sometimes they come out ahead despite the protagonist's moral superiority. That and utopian life lacks drama by definition.
I think the biggest problem with wholesome stuff is that creators find it boring to create wholesome stuff, not that consumers don't like it.
Edit: Also, even Disney movies tend to have a lot of drama etc to take away from the wholesome stuff, so they aren't really wholesome. They have many wholesome parts, but they aren't fully wholesome, there is a lot of evil in Disney worlds that needs to be battled and won against, or people die or get diseases or get enslaved, that isn't wholesome at all. So even there creators need to create non-wholesome stuff leaks through. Might still be too wholesome for you, but it still isn't really wholesome.