this post was submitted on 09 Oct 2023
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Here's an anecdote from real life - because theory is always light to throw around: a guy moves in with a girl, is excellent for a few months, then starts doing psychedelics, lots of psychedelics, and over the period of a few weeks starts imagining being the lord of his imaginary empire and starts being violent, first towards her pets, then her. She calls her friends for help.
In current dystopia: Friends talk to him, no change. She calls the police next. The response is painfully slow, as in several weeks slow, she goes into hiding, he destroys her things, goes on a rampage through the nearby communities, threatening people and destroying more stuff. Ends up in psychiatry eventually. Says he doesn't remember being violent, wants to move back in with her. Psychiatry says they can't do anything because he's all nice and normal and release him again. Some more rounds of the same. Eventually she has to move away.
You might have heard similar stuff, it seems unfortunately to be not all that uncommon that a partner goes on a substance rampage and turns monstrous.
What would happen in a solarpunk society? What would I have wanted to do? In the heat of the situation when the impotence of all 'authorities' became apparent and I was triggered by current situation and past memories: get a group of people together, tar and feather him with chewing gum and glitter and put him on a train to far away.
In hindsight: After friends talk to him part 1, add a friends talk to him part 2: making him know her decision and make clear the community stands behind her. Tell him to leave.
After that, if he still refuses? Maybe back to the glitter and chewing gum solution? Probably. In the current world, in almost all situations of domestic violence the victim ends up moving away, and frankly, that fact alone makes me shiver. Which is why 'send them away' is a favourite solution of mine - and this does give the perpetrator a chance to try again in a new community and do better next time. Which I'm sure they want to do as well.
I also have no better answers. I know that in current dystopia, part of people chickening out in a community conflict like this is the idea that authorities are there to help, so we expect them to. And also, we don't want to get involved in something that could escalate in violence - because none of us is violent, because it could get us into trouble, because we could get hurt. That's the unfortunate truth for me and quite a few people I know.
In a solarpunk future, I would want to know the power of decision about such cases is brought before and decided by all the community, but with something like a veto right for victims. Victims should never be forced to share a community with their offenders, or leave their home while their offender gets to stay. That's just not right.
This illustrates the importance of neighbourhood communities. In today's dystopia those have been replaced by pseudo social online communities and shallow entertainment. The latter also makes us being used to constant dopamine rushes so serious stuff is avoided.
Hence, a functioning society requires closer and caring neighbourhoods. If course introverts need to be respected and everyone has a different comfortable distance but usually problem households like the one you mentioned try to go isolated because of shame or secrecy.
I'm sometimes not sure if current neighbourhood communities are all that better. People are mean in real life as well, and you can't just block real people, so the internet is a welcome escape for many misfits of today's dystopia. Plus, we are having this very valuable discussion here, on the internet, and I couldn't really find anyone outside to have it with instead - not even in the next town.
But you are right, most people have bad internet habits and are quite zombified as a result, and far from even noticing anything emotional going on in their surroundings, I was fully immersed in this shit myself not too long ago.
Shame is something I still find hard to understand, even in me. It's very deep trauma stuff where you just cannot hold your own center and commit to where you really stand. It makes the abuse possible, and not constantly falling back into those patterns requires constant work. It's like a reflex of wanting to ease back into pleasing everyone and being nothing but nice and likeable - a constant erasing of oneself.
I think trauma is something we have to work on to reach a better society - work on it in ourselves and on a community level, especially intergenerational - and that doesn't mean you should be forced to interact with your family by all means. Just that we should be very purposefully mix up people of all ages again.
For example, children are not raised by a village or community anymore, but by a pair of frightened parents (frightened, because of the pressure of everybody's expecations around the child) and then by school. School is an industrial construct and resembles prison in a lot of unfortunate and intelligence-hindering ways. First to have to go in a solarpunk society would be school as we know it, and it would be one step towards a better neighbourhood community.