Communicating Resilience
You most likely have a pretty good idea about the need to establish and/or continue to practice deepening our own version of resilience, whatever that means for each individual’s depth of understanding, the magnitude of input about climate topics, and grasp of our own self-awareness.
A hillside in the dark with stars above, a group of lit up colorful tents.
what's your camp?
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what's your camp? 〰️
Do you fall into any of these categories?
Youth or young adults
People that are activists or volunteer work, or paid work (climate justice included)
Environmental studies students
Parents/grandparents
Those that have been standing up asking for climate action since the very first Earth Day in the 1970’s
New to grasp how big this problem is actually reaching (like an octopus).
Then, my next question is, how would you like to learn and/or practice building and/or deepening resilience skills?
Experts suggest that the top two ways to get through climate emotions is to be in community and to do some kind of action(s). A regular practice of one of both of those can help, but be careful not to over-do your actions (believe me, my busy schedule of actions ended me right back to having feelings of defeat and sadness like, ‘why bother?’).
Climate Resilience Circles occur monthly in Portland.
Will you give it a try?
Dive further into learning about “community-level” resilience because before we can do community resilience, we need to acknowledge our personal emotions about the immense weight of what it means to live in a changed climate, to build strength, stamina to what we can handle, resilience. And that is where climate communication through the arts comes in. To reach people to embrace their emotions.
Resilience Resources
How can we move people from fear and avoidance (that poses a barrier to action and causes health problems if not addressed)-- how can people embrace their emotions so that we can become “unstuck” and then move forward? One answer is: Through artistic expressions.
You’ve probably heard of steampunk, cyberpunk, and then there’s solarpunk, the latter is an optimistic, future thinking form of expression. Where cyberpunk is dark, within a pro-capitalist and extractive future, solarpunk takes on that modern-anarchist point-of-view. It “opposes our existing world” (Andrew Sage, 2020) and imagines-through prose, fashion, art, media, and fiction, a world that has adopted the modus operandi “Man with Nature,” instead of versus nature (Medium.com).
As explained in Andrew Sage’s great explainer video, “Solarpunks can help create the future they want in various ways, from basic DIY living to maker workshops to creating and expanding eco living and local autonomy in our towns and cities” Sage, 2020). What is Solarpunk?
“The Conversation” has a great article, here: Explainer: ‘solarpunk’, or how to be an optimistic radical (theconversation.com)
On the political aspect, “Andrew Dana Hudson says that the subculture “posits a world of solar-energy abundance and then argues that we will still have need of punks. No magical tech fixes for us. We’ll have to do it the hard way: with politics.” To be solarpunk, then, is to mount a resistance to the mainstream present by imagining an alternative future” (Jennifer Hamilton, The Conversation, 2017).
Grist’s annual Imagine 2200 writing competition just opened. Imagine 2200 climate fiction contest 2024: Submit your story | Grist
Further links
SOLARPUNK : A REFERENCE GUIDE. The below was compiled by… | by Jay Springett | Solarpunks | Medium
Solarpunk - Appropedia, the sustainability wiki
The definitive climate fiction reading list – 20 books to explore cli-fi | Fix (grist.org)
Also, for visual media, don’t forget to check out the animated Studio Ghibli films such as Castle in the Sky and Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind.
“Castle in the Sky” Studio Ghibli, 1986
