There Is No Perfect System

There’s no dipping one’s toe into the solarpunk stream without noticing that although not all solarpunks are anarchists, there is a strong sense in solarpunk that we won’t be living happily, freely, and sustainably until we dismantle both capitalism and the state.

Ah, but if only it was only capitalism that is capable of social and environmental savagery. And, hey, hang on a second. It’s not as if even democracies can only be stifling and oppressive.

I will admit that for decades I too have dreamed of living in a society where we didn’t need the police, prisons, or laws because we all just voluntarily treat each other decently and all personally make sure to commit no crimes against the environment. But the older me has become skeptical that such a systemless system could ever work. Are we going to ship all the people who can’t play well with others to Mars? Look at how much trouble we’re having already, especially now that so many people (and politicians) have figured out that they can pretty much get away with murder by ignoring the social norms that keep society functioning by filling in the gaps in between the laws.

I’m 100% with you when you say that capitalism has been terrible for people and the planet. The less carefully regulated capitalism is, the more it is a race to the bottom where 15 people on Earth have all the money, the natural world has given way to soy bean fields, palm oil plantations, and toxic garbage dumps, and the rest of us are living in misery and vastly reduced life expectancy in hovels or in prison.

But—honest question—is there a better alternative?

Communism, as it was practiced in the 20th century, was also terrible for the environment. Often egregiously so. My better half grew up in East Germany and it’s tons less polluted now than it was under communist authoritarianism when, honestly, nobody cared one bit about the damage they were doing to people or nature even when they weren’t under pressure to make profit. Today, under capitalism in a still at least somewhat social democracy, there are rules and investment directed at preventing, among other things, factories and powerplants from dumping their waste or sending it unfiltered out through their chimneys.

As much as it’s easy and not far off the mark to rail against the evils of capitalism, it actually isn’t capitalism—or communism or any other -ism—that treats the environment as nothing more than a repository of resources for human use. It’s the people operating within the framework of capitalism (etc)—or at least a pretty good chunk of them. And if that is the case, why should we expect that anarchism and its lack of a state will magically delivery us from the human selfishness, laziness, shortsightedness, and greed that lies at the root of the cruelest, most unjust, most environmentally damaging, and most unsustainable aspects of capitalism?

No matter what, we will never escape ourselves. Wherever we go, there we still will be at the heart of any system we use to order ourselves and our economies.

It is as my friend Don, the now retired librarian that I talked to in Season 2, Episode 2 of the podcast, was telling me the other day. It’s comforting to think that we just need to set up the perfect system and then everything will be utopian. But there is no perfect system because systems are created and administered by people and every single one of us is flawed. We are all to some degree—although some of us to more degrees than others—clever but stupid, short–sighted but wise, fair but unfair, greedy but generous, hard working but lazy, clear thinking but delusional, and honest but mendacious.

So why are we dreaming of the day that we finally have a perfect system when instead we should be working on ourselves and how we work together to get things done?

This isn’t to say that some systems aren’t worse than others. I mean, who wants anything as lacking in counterbalancing measures as monarchies, repressive authoritarian regimes, or dictatorships?

In the name of the sensible aspects of solarpunk, let’s work with what we have on hand: the the democracies that, at least as of the time of this writing, we still have. Let’s put our dreams of anarchistic perfection on the back burner and get down to the very real, very urgently needed work of shoring up our democracies against the corrosive attacks undermining them.

I don’t know about you, but given the upcoming elections and all the hatred people seem to have for each other, for the first time in my entire life, I’m worried about what the near future will be like. And I feel like that by the time we all take to the streets to rail against the rise in authoritarianism, it may already be too late.