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.
I guess after breaking up both this system and its terminology we have to redefine who we would declare a danger to our society, but without having to be cast into either a crime or madness framework. I guess we also would see a lot of bad behaviour disappear. For example, bot ‘autistics’ and ‘schizophrenics’ don’t tend to be violent people if others don’t freak out around them and if there’s freedom to change environments and fulfill sensory needs (vs. being locked in a classroom, hospital room, prison cell, office for x hours at a time). Society will get more peaceful when people can relearn and get better at raising children with love (which also gets easier as we fulfill the needs of all, not just the rich).
The fact that now there’s so many people imprisoned doesn’t mean we’ll see the same numbers or even close to that in a solarpunk society. Now, we have people imprisoned because it makes some people rich, we have people imprisoned because we believe only people who can keep up with awful working conditions are worthy of a dignified life, we have them imprisoned because we created a society that traumatised them to shit, we have people imprisoned because they like the wrong substance. Or we medicate them or put them in the psychiatric ward if they are weird and don’t play along.
In solarpunk we share what we have, we don’t hoard, so what is there to fight about, what is there to steal? We don’t work long hours, there’s time to take care of yourself - so mental problems will stay low. I think this could lead to where we would find if and how the cases look that remain - the rare cases of people we don’t want to have around. I’m not really sure how that would even look - I feel too locked into current society and its ‘bad’ and ‘mentally ill’ people. Maybe the thought path leads to that having to admit that as long as we are ruled by psychopath bullies, an un-psychopathic society could never exist.
You hold strongly to the ideals of Solarpunk in your discussion, it is apparent in the tone your text conveys. Also I had never seen that website before, I may have to look at it in the future.
I have seen the damages the mental health system does, compared to just leaving people alone and do their thing. It’s a people-destroying atrocious system of uncare. I watched it and tried to believe in it for 20 years and I’m just done. No more. The first thing one can simply give up is self-pathologizing - why declare myself ill, if first of all the setup of society is ill, and my mental unwellness is a reaction to my powerlessness to change anything about it?
Narcissist here. My NPD is a mental health issue. My parents abused me, and I never learned to love myself unconditionally as a result. The ego I do have is a fragile facade. Threats to my ego can feel subjectively like threats to my life, because when I don’t have my false ego, I don’t think I’m worthy of life. Some narcisstists perceive threats to their egos as violence, and they respond with violence. I don’t act that way, but I do perceive attacks on my disability as violence, and I don’t believe anyone should have to hear that.
Material conditions are never going to solve my NPD, because I’m too old to learn to love myself unconditionally. The brain loses plasticity as it ages, and what we’re talking about is early childhood stuff. What I can benefit from is a more caring and understanding environment, and one that doesn’t attack narcisstists for being abuse victims. One that understands my special needs and provides them, even when they are social needs as opposed to physical needs.
This is something I have thought a lot about, if you look at my username you could guess why, lol.
A restorative model is a fundamental component of a solarpunk society I would feel, where the work is done to attempt to assist people in helping themselves to work through their mental health disorders as a whole. It would be recognizing where the individual is, recognizing their level of ambivalence towards treatment and then working with them over time. Perhaps a secluded land that is self-sustaining, where they can get therapy and support as they find a space for themselves away from triggers? That is one thought I’ve seen people discuss before. I feel it would depend on the individual there though, as a solarpunk society I imagine would not do a 5150 or other forms of Involuntary Commitment.
The issue is stigma, as has been for so long. It is so easy for people to be given the label of a schizophrenic, a psychopath, a narcissist, so forth, without there being actual understanding that the person is still an individual who is struggling.
In the 20th century, one of the big boost in general health was a better understanding of hygiene and its importance.
I do form the hope that in the 21st century we will make a similar progress towards mental hygiene and make sure to not create too toxic environments, give kids the kind of nurturing they need, and treat infections before they become deadly.
Some groups have managed to “teach empathy” to juvenile delinquents who are diagnosed with psychopathy. Finding a treatment is the first step. Then we need to grow as a society and realize that giving healthcare including mental one to everyone is not giving away “free lunch” but actually improving the overall society.
While I support every word you said, I am still not convinced, that the issue can be solved completely through prevention. Even though, during the last 200 years we’ve made huge progress in hygiene standards and medicine, there are still people dying, even from easily preventable or treatable illnesses. In the same manner, I believe it’s impossible to prevent all kind of psychopatic violence or malicious behaviour. Hence, the question that comes up would rather be: how to deal with the violence that’s still occuring? Are prisons or some other kind of correction facilities a part of a solarpunk utopia?
Imho Scandinavian prisons are a good example. I saw a documentary about an island where the prisoners can roam more or less freely, work and are reintroduced into society.
Utopia? No. An utopia would have solved that issue. But solarpunk proposes to solve a lot of other issues, while we deal with these remaining one as bad, or slightly better, than we do today. IMO prisons should slowly morph into mental health facilities. May not solve all the problem but would solve a lot.
There is the big risk in having, and assuming, a society where some particular evil doesn’t exist. Namely, that when evil does actually appear, the society will be completely defenceless. Whether it’s disease or crime or some other problem.
I think that in general there needs to be both preventative hygiene/education/culture and some form of cure/resistance/response available to counter problems. And even then, there will be no absolute protection.
First requirement for either would be research and understanding of the threat and development of methods and mitigations. Then taking them into widespread use. With mental health, these are all somewhat under way, but probably lagging behind the more “low level” biology.
As much as I understand this discussion while discussing e.g. anarchism, I don’t see how psychopathy being cured or not in a solarpunk society changes much. Yeah, at worse there may be prisons and cops in a solarpunk society. Hopefully more humane than today. And in the meantime we try to understand psychology as much as possible to have the preventive care we need.
I (also) want to say; I’m glad to see this question.
Its easy to skim over difficult aspects, focus on the positive, and pretend a movement/idea is a silver-bullet. So I really enjoy when challenges are brought up to be addressed head-on.
Even if the question wasn’t sincere (e.g. “checkmate atheists” kinda vibe) I would’ve answered it the same. But it was really nice to look at your other posts and see that, yeah, it probably was a legit question
Seconding this. I’ve had a lot of questions about how a solarpunk society would handle genuinely dangerous people (I know not everyone listed in the question is dangerous exactly, but focussing on the ‘malicious people’ part). But haven’t made it very far in the fundamental philosophy stuff regarding prison abolition, anarchism, etc yet.
In the small bit of solarpunk fiction I’ve read and discussions I’ve seen, I’ve felt a bit like the genre/community sort of sidesteped questions around the use and preventions of violence and how to handle individuals and groups who want to cause harm (with the exception of Walkaway, and Terraformers for opposing organizations). I know the underlying philosophies and movements like anarchism have been around for a long time and have answers, but I’ve been struggling with the texts I’ve tried so far.
I suppose I’m pessimistic enough to see bad times ahead - scarcity of airable land, water, and society-derived stuff like medicines - and to expect that any more solarpunk societies would only build themselves up in space made mostly after our current systems break enough not to oppose them. With that kind of postapocalyptic bent in mind, it’s tempting to picture something like the old west or early colonial societies’ answers to these questions. I think solarpunk offers an excellent opportunity to showcase better answers.
Thank you. I appreciate your comment. I’m very invested in solarpunk, and would give anything to see a solarpunk world come to fruition. Without addressing the challenges and finding solutions, our movement will not be as effective. I’m happy that this discussion got a lot of engagement (by lemmy standards) and got people thinking.
There are jobs where psychopaths and sociopaths can be productive helpful members of society. There’s a neuroscientist (James Fallon) who was studying brain scans of psychopaths, only to realize that HE was a psychopath (both his brain scan and his behavior; low empathy, motivated by power, isn’t bothered by manipulating others, etc). Jobs can be positions like green Berets, Navy Seals, surgeons (some times you need to inflict pain to get the job done). We need a strong support system around them, but that can be said of most positions (think government checks and balances or police body cams).
For the intentionally malicious (which can be an entirely separate group of people) I imagine two steps:
A system of early identification. Probably starting with mental health discussions being common place, like brain scans being as common as getting the chicken pox vaccine. E.g. find the serial killer when they’re 17 years old and killing cats for fun, provide help and monitor instead of doing nothing and waiting till they’re 56 and have been a recluse for 10 years.
Creating systems of least-restriction and gradually-increasing restriction; Serial killers and phedophiles can still garden, write, paint, build, etc. And its better for everyone if they contribute to society in some way instead of rotting in a cell. E.g. restrict phedophiles from ever being around children, restrict serial killers to remote work. Its a matter of ensuring they have no opportunity to do harm. This isn’t just a system for serial killers, but ideally would be a culture-encouraged movement of limiting the damage of people’s flaws; we keep the junk food out of sight when a friend who is trying to loose weight comes over. We help people identify if they have sesonal depression, and recommend places to live that have the shortest (or non-existant) winter season, have workplaces that keep emails, phone calls, and other interruptions at a minimum for those who have ADHD, etc. It just happens that those who demonstrate malicious intentions get forced accomodations instead of optional ones.
Hard to say… I think first of all one needs to differentiate between the “successful” ones and those that end up more visible as criminals and the like.
I think the successful ones are the ones that do more harm to society and a Solarpunk society is much more resistant against such people than our current one that often rewards sociopathic behaviour in leadership roles.
As for the less successful ones: there is probably no easy answer to this, but it might be possible to treat with some psychopharmic substances?
As someone who thinks psychopaths can be helpful in the right job postions, I agree the mild cases of psychopaths probably do the most harm in policical positons, even more than serial killers. And I also agree its caused by a governance problem that would ideally already be solved.
Absolute not just the mild cases. I think our main problem is that we are ruled by absolute psychopaths. Or are they like us, just with too much power? Sometimes I’m not sure. How much chocolate do I eat that I don’t care about who picked it, just like a billionaire doesn’t give a shit about how he earns the money for his dick rockets?
It starts feeling more like a moral problem of giving arseholes too much power. So a ‘Have to solve now problem’ because we don’t even get to a solarpunk society without withdrawing our attention, time, money, energy from the powerful. Maybe that’s also a treatment for a lot of psycho drama - ignore it. How would we treat people like Trump or Musk if they were toddlers? When my kid was little I would just ignore it and not give it attention, because I read about it in some long lost book about how some Amazonian tribe raises their kids. It worked quite beautifully. Not sure if this shit has a cure as long as guys like these have money and people’s attention and respect.
But what authority decides for or against treatment? I’d think a group would ultimately give a person some alternatives - leave, get locked up, or get treatment, but you couldn’t just force one of these thing unto a person.
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