[cgrealy]

I can’t remember the source, but there’s a quote that goes “it’s easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism”.

I’ve yet to read any kind of optimistic sci-fi that operates in a capitalist society. The two most obvious (Star Trek and the Culture) both envision a post-scarcity society enabled by technology so advanced it might as well be magic.

[harimau777]

It's from Capitalist Realism by Mark Fisher.

At the time when he killed himself Fisher was developing the idea of "Psychedelic Socialism" as a potential counter to Capitalist Realism. I enjoyed this discussion of the idea:

https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/psychedelic-socialism/

As I understand it, the idea is that "consciousness raising" is a necessary component of catalyzing and maintaining the sense of empowerment, hope, and motivation necessary for a social movement to succeed. Although the consciousness raising in psychedelic socialism could literally be psychedelic drugs, Fisher is mostly using that are a metaphor. Consciousness raising could also take the forms like music & art, yoga, religion, ritual, reading circles, etc.

This suggests that things like the New Age beliefs of the Hippy movement, the Pan-African/Afrofuturist symbolism of the civil rights movement, or the rock and roll of the anti-Vietnam protests were not just trivialities. Rather they were essential to the movement's ability to impact the world.

[harimau777]

Note: If you search for discussions of "Psychedelic Socialism" or related terms like "Acid Communism", a lot of the discussion that you will find is (not surprisingly) among proponents of drug/psychedelic exploration.

Personally, although I found some of the specifics of their viewpoints a little wacky (and in particular some of them are disturbingly anti-psychology), I found the overall ideas that they raised useful. That is to say: for your average person I think the best course of action is to just "absorb what is useful and discard the rest" when reading their discussions.

[its_ethan]

> technology so advanced it might as well be magic

All "optimistic" sci-fi is reliant on a utopian fantasy in some form, I wouldn't be looking to sci-fi authors to actually have a workable recipe for how to achieve any given desired societal outcome..

[Nasrudith]

Really that quote is just asinine stupidity because literally anything undefined is harder to imagine than the end of the world with a side of throwing in of the usual socialist sophistry "everything I don't like is capitalism's fault!". It literally is "It is totally capitalism's fault that I am unable to come up with a better alternative to capitalism!" Never mind that they are the idiots who have spent lifetimes trying to solve economic problems using philosophical divorce-from-reality-is-an-intrinsic-virtue models and economic models that are so bad that they would have been laughed at as a joke by even bronze age merchants.

Divorce-from-reality-as-virtue was stupid back when Aristotle was using triangular models of falling objects and it even is stupider now. I don't get how so many supposedly smart, educated people fall for things which are so obviously complete and utter bullshit.

[cgrealy]

Peoples inability to come up with a better alternative doesn’t mean there aren’t issues with capitalism.

Fossil fuels are the easiest and most effective way of powering transport at the moment (and pretty much the only game in town for air travel). Doesn’t mean they aren’t a massive problem.