That, by definition, is called the apocalypse. The apocalypse by no means indicates the end of all things, but a paradigm shift towards a new understanding of reality and our individual and collective roles within it. To create this “new heaven” the old world must die in our hearts and in our minds. There is no end, there is only change.
Image description: a tweet by Ursula Wolfe-Roccq which reads “It can be overwhelming to witness/experience/take in all the injustices of the moment; the good news is that *they’re all connected.* So if your little corner of work involves pulling at one of the threads, you’re helping to unravel the whole damn cloth.” End ID.
“Survival” isn’t always about defiance, fighting, kicking and screaming. Sometimes it looks like keeping your head down, taking it one step at a time, and just doing your best to get through. That does not make you a coward. Listen to me: that does not make you weak. Any type of survival demands courage. If you’ve survived, rest assured you’ve done so bravely
So the essence of grimdark is that everyone’s inherently sort of a bad person and does bad things, and that’s awful and disheartening and cynical. It’s looking at human nature and going, “The glass is half empty.”
Hopepunk says, “No, I don’t accept that. Go fuck yourself: The glass is half-full.” YEAH, we’re all a messy mix of good and bad, flaws and virtues. We’ve all been mean and petty and cruel, but (and here’s the important part) we’ve also been soft and forgiving and KIND. Hopepunk says that kindness and softness doesn’t equal weakness, and that in this world of brutal cynicism and nihilism, being kind is a political act. An act of rebellion.
Hopepunk says that genuinely and sincerely caring about something, anything, requires bravery and strength. Hopepunk isn’t ever about submission or acceptance: It’s about standing up and fighting for what you believe in. It’s about standing up for other people. It’s about DEMANDING a better, kinder world, and truly believing that we can get there if we care about each other as hard as we possibly can, with every drop of power in our little hearts.
Going to political protests is hopepunk. Calling your senators is hopepunk. But crying is also hopepunk, because crying means you still have feelings, and feelings are how you know you’re alive. The 1% doesn’t want you to have feelings, they just want you to feel resigned. Feeling resigned is not hopepunk.
Examples! THE HANDMAID’S TALE is arguably hopepunk. It’s scary and dark, and at first glance it looks like grimdark because it’s a dystopia… but goddammit she keeps fighting. That’s the key, right there. She fights every single day, because she won’t let them take away meaning from her life. She survives stubbornly in the hope that one day she can live again. “Don’t let the bastards grind you down,” is one of the core tenets of hopepunk, along with, “The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice.”
Jesus and Gandhi and Martin Luther King and Robin Hood and John Lennon were hopepunk. (Remember: Hopepunk isn’t about moral perfection. It’s not about being as pure and innocent as the new-fallen snow. You get grubby when you fight. You make mistakes. You’re sometimes a little bit of an asshole. Maybe you’re as much as 50% an asshole. But the glass is half full, not half empty. You get up, and you keep fighting, and caring, and trying to make the world a little better for the people around you. You get to make mistakes. It’s a process. You get to ask for and earn forgiveness. And you love, and love, and love.)
I can sum this whole reading up in the words of the 20th Century #HopePunk prophetess Octavia Butler:⠀ ⠀ God is Change,⠀ And in the end, ⠀ God prevails.⠀ But meanwhile… ⠀ Kindness eases Change. ⠀ Love quiets fear. ⠀ And a sweet and powerful ⠀ Positive obsession ⠀ Blunts pain, ⠀ Diverts rage, ⠀ And engages each of us ⠀ In the greatest, ⠀ The most intense ⠀ Of our chosen struggles. ⠀ ⠀ ოᕱᎩ Ϯ♅ᎥᏕ ᎠᏒꂅᕱო ცꂅ ᕱ gԾԾᎠ ᎠᏒꂅᕱო. ᗰᗩƳ 丅ᕼᎥᔕ ᗪᖇᗴᗩᗰ ᗷᗴ ᗩ Ǥᗝᗝᗪ ᗪᖇᗴᗩᗰ. ოᕱᎩ Ϯ♅ᎥᏕ ᎠᏒꂅᕱო ცꂅ ᕱ gԾԾᎠ ᎠᏒꂅᕱო. ⠀ ⠀ Find the full unpacking of this reading at patreon.com/devotaj_arts (or see IG profile link)⠀ .⠀ .⠀ .⠀ .⠀ .⠀ .⠀ .⠀ .⠀ .⠀ .⠀ .⠀ .⠀ .⠀ .⠀ .⠀ .⠀ .⠀ #netivotoracle #happynewyear #2019 #wisdomoracle #oraclecards #oraclereading #tarotreading #kohenettribe #tarotreader #tarotspread #tarottribe #jewitch #tarotreadersofinstagram #tarotcommunity #tarotlove #divinationchallenge #dailydivination #dailytarot #tarotreading #tarotcards #esoteric #cartomancy #witchesofinstagram #magick #spiritualgrowth #affirmation #loveandlight #souljourney #lightworker⠀ ⠀ (at Washington, District of Columbia) https://www.instagram.com/p/BsGDkb7H1Hx/?utm_source=ig_tumblr_share&igshid=5v1bgnwn3jyi
Thinking about how the world is colored by our connections to other people. Small details in life that would mean nothing to us otherwise. For me, it’s things like how car haulers will always remind me of my grandfather, how papayas will always remind me of my high school best friend. I can’t help but think of my sister when I hear certain songs. Tulips are my favorite flower because they’re the reason for one of my first memories with my grandmother.
The people we know, have known, will know breathe life into our existence. The way we see the world is underpinned by the people in it with us. We’re not meant to do this alone. We were never meant to be in this alone
“Turlock Irrigation District, in California’s San Joaquin Valley, will build the first solar canal prototype in partnership with project developer Solar Aquagrid, researchers and others and supported by the state Department of Water Resources.
The prototypes in this mile-long demonstration project, along with future pilots, will help operators, developers and regulators refine designs, assess co-benefits and evaluate how these systems perform. With more data, we can map out strategies for extending solar canals statewide, and potentially across the West.”
“For last year’s words belong to last year’s language, And next year’s words await another voice, And to make an end is to make a beginning.” T.S. Eliot - Four Quartets, 1936.
I am in love with the things humans create. Language. Cities. Stories. Little trinkets, grand mythologies, small gardens and radical engineering, close-knit book clubs and revolutionary movements. I am in love with it, with us. I want all of it
I always hire my guests to help me with ‘chores’ (if they’re willing!), the kind of task that’s fun at first but less fun when you have to keep going for hours (burning all the broom bushes in the pasture, picking many kg of berries to make syrup, carrying a mountain of logs into the wood shed and building stable log piles so they don’t come cascading down later…) And every time I’m amazed by the way humans can make the most tedious tasks genuinely fun through… group dynamics? just the way people start interacting and bonding with each other when everyone is focused on the same repetitive physical activity. It’s hard to find examples because it’s always so specific to each situation; but I mean things like
people spontaneously specialising and developing a feeling of expertise and pride in their subtrade, no matter how silly (putting away firewood involved one Log Selecter outside going back and forth delivering logs to two Pile Builders who piled them up in the shed, and each rapidly created their own well-oiled System and became convinced it would be hard to replace them now that they had mastered their craft)
new vocabulary being coined and immediately adopted (the Pile Builders came up with nicknames for logs of different lengths and shapes so they could ‘order’ them from the Log Selecter more efficiently—”I’ve got a One-Armed Bandit here, I need another one to fit next to it, but with an ‘arm’ on the other side” “Here” “The arm is on the same side!” “Just turn it around and the arm will be on the other side”)
songs emerging almost by themselves (a song about fishing mussels was repurposed into a song about picking plums; a whole new song was invented to encourage weirdly-shaped logs to fit in with the others as we tried to fill all the gaps)
stories being told. Weaving a trivial task into a complex imaginary plot and context to make it more entertaining and meaningful
the extremely human compulsion to write down our knowledge to share it with future generations (I was told to take note of the best & quickest knot to tie up foliage when making tree hay, for the benefit of whoever does it next summer)
beliefs as to the Right Way To Do Things quickly solidifying into myths or superstitions, as we forget what drove us to do things this way in the first place, but trust that we had good reasons so now it’s the Way It’s Done
I always tell people to help only if they feel like it and we can stop anytime and I’ll finish later by myself, but what usually happens instead is that they want to come back at the same time next year to do this exact chore again because of how they’ve made it theirs in just a few days (or in one afternoon!) Give a group of humans a banal task and while they’re at it they will come up with a whole new inside slang, a few work songs and a handful of founding texts and myths, until it feels special and important. I love seeing the way these miniature folklores just emanate from people doing things together.
Thinking about drastic change being so central to the human experience. We’re supposed to shift, we’re supposed to be fluid, we’re supposed to adapt and survive any situation we find ourselves in. To remain static or stable is unnatural in the long run. Everything around us swirls and changes, and while we think we’re the fixed point in all that commotion, we’re in just as much flux as everything else. The only consistency is no consistency.
Maybe that’s what keeps us going, at the end of it all. The urge to see what happens next
