I prefer the term created by Alvin and Heidi Toffler, "practopia" "A practopia offers a positive, even a revolutionary (vision of the future) between utopia and dystopia, within the range of the realistically attainable.”
The Third Wave, Alvin & Heidi Toffler. 1980
It implies a future that requires us to stretch to our furthest abilities and results that can be measurable.
Practopia sounds really interesting and definitely more aligned with our more rooted shade of solarpunk. Thanks for sharing the book you found it in. Do you have any online articles you could refer about it?
I'm not aware of any that talk directly about Practopia. For some reason the term never caught on, but I still think it deserves being spread. Yuo can check out our website www.practopiaproject.com as one example of how I believe it can be used.
Another great Toffler term is imaginative centers- the idea that we should create public gathering spaces for people to come and imagine possible futures using the tools of foresight as their guide. That alos feels very solarpunk to me.
Utopia gets a bad rap. It’s so unfortunate that these words get co-opted and corrupted. Of course, this is largely the result of Engels and Marx’s demolition of utopian socialism, after which critics from every corner piled on. Today, the use of utopia is abortive, as the article notes, however I disagree that as a concept it fails to have merit. A world without strife is the essence of utopia, which remains a valid end state to pursue.
In regards to Kevin Kelly’s “protopia” and aligning solarpunk with it, I’m not in favor. Why not go back to the Greeks and use the linguistically appropriate eutopia, or “good life”, instead? Doesn’t that more accurately capture what it is we are striving for?
Thanks for the thoughtful comment Cobey. Funnily enough Handi Freinacht looks at eutopia in the article we reference.
I agree utopia isn’t worthless just, to paraphrase Wittengstein, ‘words are defined by their use and their use is defined by their context’. For us Utopianism has become so associated with being a ‘nowhere place’ or nightmare society that the battle to reclaim / redefine the word isn’t worth the effort when others seem to fit what we’re going for better.
Would definitely be interested in your take on Freinacht’s interpretation of eutopia
The journey Freinacht takes us on is interesting and probably well represents the historical evolution of humanity’s relationship with the concept, but in the end his analysis amounts to nothing, akin to dropping us off at a bus stop in a foreign city without a map.
Regarding his interpretation of eutopia, it really doesn’t differ from the rest of his argument - which is quite dystopian in nature - that utopia, no matter what you label it, is a constantly striving, fleetingly successful, but unattainable goal. Protopia, in his telling, is a nihilistic acceptance appropriate to Kelly’s longstanding overture that what we have been engaged in can somehow be labeled “progress”. If there is a better argument for the retrenchment of the term “utopia” than Freinacht’s essay, I couldn’t make it.
I prefer the term created by Alvin and Heidi Toffler, "practopia" "A practopia offers a positive, even a revolutionary (vision of the future) between utopia and dystopia, within the range of the realistically attainable.”
The Third Wave, Alvin & Heidi Toffler. 1980
It implies a future that requires us to stretch to our furthest abilities and results that can be measurable.
Practopia sounds really interesting and definitely more aligned with our more rooted shade of solarpunk. Thanks for sharing the book you found it in. Do you have any online articles you could refer about it?
I'm not aware of any that talk directly about Practopia. For some reason the term never caught on, but I still think it deserves being spread. Yuo can check out our website www.practopiaproject.com as one example of how I believe it can be used.
Another great Toffler term is imaginative centers- the idea that we should create public gathering spaces for people to come and imagine possible futures using the tools of foresight as their guide. That alos feels very solarpunk to me.
SolarPunk is definitely utopian, hyper collectivist and communist. Beautiful style but that’s he reason why I’m not supporting it.
Utopia gets a bad rap. It’s so unfortunate that these words get co-opted and corrupted. Of course, this is largely the result of Engels and Marx’s demolition of utopian socialism, after which critics from every corner piled on. Today, the use of utopia is abortive, as the article notes, however I disagree that as a concept it fails to have merit. A world without strife is the essence of utopia, which remains a valid end state to pursue.
In regards to Kevin Kelly’s “protopia” and aligning solarpunk with it, I’m not in favor. Why not go back to the Greeks and use the linguistically appropriate eutopia, or “good life”, instead? Doesn’t that more accurately capture what it is we are striving for?
Thanks for the thoughtful comment Cobey. Funnily enough Handi Freinacht looks at eutopia in the article we reference.
I agree utopia isn’t worthless just, to paraphrase Wittengstein, ‘words are defined by their use and their use is defined by their context’. For us Utopianism has become so associated with being a ‘nowhere place’ or nightmare society that the battle to reclaim / redefine the word isn’t worth the effort when others seem to fit what we’re going for better.
Would definitely be interested in your take on Freinacht’s interpretation of eutopia
The journey Freinacht takes us on is interesting and probably well represents the historical evolution of humanity’s relationship with the concept, but in the end his analysis amounts to nothing, akin to dropping us off at a bus stop in a foreign city without a map.
Regarding his interpretation of eutopia, it really doesn’t differ from the rest of his argument - which is quite dystopian in nature - that utopia, no matter what you label it, is a constantly striving, fleetingly successful, but unattainable goal. Protopia, in his telling, is a nihilistic acceptance appropriate to Kelly’s longstanding overture that what we have been engaged in can somehow be labeled “progress”. If there is a better argument for the retrenchment of the term “utopia” than Freinacht’s essay, I couldn’t make it.