From symptoms to sympoiesis

A teenager who never ate a fruit taken directly from a tree. An adult who never joined a protest or environmental action. An elder who's unable to explain the seasons to their grandchildren. We are living in a simulated luxury deviated from the factualities of soil...

Hypernature is our human hubris in a mask, attempts of being the master and insecurities of always looking for a slave. Brave be the world who can raise from this slumber, plumbing new ideas that break this detachment – making us realize our inescapable reality of interconnectedness. A broken mesh in urgent need of tending, seeing the intersectionality of our polycrisis, with urban youth succumbing to depression, voided of meaning and connection to place, blank face numbed by the algorithm, just one more day on the 9-t0-5 without thinking of the externalities. And the consequences of working within the system have in the ecosystem. An egosystem uncaring to climate collapse, a press in the button of an AC remote control too far away from a Nepalese glacier melting, the city always gobbling more energy without awareness of one more dam taming the river in the countryside, one more community displaced, one more riverbank down from the sand mining, one more package of vegetables bought – bigger, shinier, already pilled in a styrofoam box, how convenient! – another indigenous village replaced by monocultures, what vultures!

How can we combat this loss of purpose and authenticity, each experience felt in a fake environment, trees cut to replace with ticketed botanical gardens, dusting out plastic flowers instead of nurturing the soil? Soul in permanent passivity, how to break the manipulation brought by this consumption-driven society as a way to numb ourselves, cities intra-colonizing the countryside in this perpetual power dynamic? Tired of overwork, overstimulation, overdoomerism, how to convince ourselves to lean in, seeing us within place, within an entangled community of people, human and more-than-human, and start to take the small actions to engage, to care, to become-with.

Tending the mesh, towards tomorrow's flesh.

We cannot combat the injustices of capitalism and the unbalanced effects of the climate crisis without realizing the erosion of identity we are facing, the loss of sense of self and sense of place, instead of the performative identity we project to others. Staying with the troubles of the world, gently confronting head-on the ethical dilemmas and powerlessness in the face of planetary degradation and, equally important, maintaining the authenticity. The taste of the land. When is hard to distinguish between the real and the simulated, in a world of fake news and green washing strategies, we are becoming confused on the actions needed to be taken to move forward, preoccupied more with tribal rivalries instead of the plethora of ways to participate in any meaningful change.

Resistance starts by not accepting the futures imposed by others: how can we stop letting ourselves be lullabied by the current status-quo and reclaim our agency to co-create a tomorrow rooted locally, connected globally?

What kind of fresh fermented futures can we re-imagine together then? Hyper-localized and real, smelly, as in, not sterile, tamed, or stuck in time, but salty, messy, fully embracing authenticity and the plurality of what's possible. Healthy and regenerative, fermented as in tomorrows that are based on patience and trusting the process, with a foundation of kinship with more-than-human beings, collaborating with us on the micro level. Sustainable and punk with a do-it-yourself aesthetics and ethics, appropriate to place, as in fermentation as source of nutrition throughout the year in a safe manner, providing a lifeline during harsh winters or longer and hotter dry seasons. But also fresh, as new, coming from the soil and seasoned with the rawness of everyday life. Alive.

This is the premise of the Solarpunk movement, as the great Palestinian poet Refaat Alareer used to say (before being killed by the Israeli genocide) to justify teaching literature amidst the bombings: how can we work towards a better future if we can't even imagine it? And, crucially, in this world of AI take over, how can we maintain our cognitive resilience and not let go of our organic intelligence – intuitive, systemic, relational – in order to start organizing, work locally in the neighborhood, village-level and grassroots collectivism. The first step to break the simulation is rejecting the copies, embracing the real and staying with it. Not fantasizing about utopias but focus on nowtopias. And, in a world literally dying from our lack of imagination, composting the system to fertilize the new. Sympoiesis as making-with, radical interdependency for infinite cross-pollination.

"Look at what realists have done for us. They have led us to war and climate change, poverty on an unimaginable scale, and wholesale ecological destruction. Half of humanity goes to bed hungry because of all the realistic leaders in the world. I tell people who call me "unrealistic" to show me what their realism has done. Realism is an outdated, overplayed and wholly exaggerated concept."

(Satish Kumar, indian peace, ecological and spiritual activist)