Poor Icarus!

For someone like Bill Gates— read technolord— the sun is not for everyone but rather a threat to the very fabric he made his house from. In the same way Icarus’ wax and feather wings were melted by flying too close to the Sun, the people who control our current energy market see the Sun as the enemy of technology. For the past three millennia, power was in the hands of those with land. The more land you owned, the more control you had over resources. Landlords have been the dominating class for all of modern history. Even as capitalism took the place of feudalism, thus transitioning power from land to capital, we still see an innate need for land and the resources that come from it. As we approach, as Yannis Varoufakis suggests, the tehcnofeudal era, there will still be strong value placed on land for energy. That is, if those in control have their way.

Currently, in our electrified reality, the world runs off dirty energy. Whether your car is gasoline or electric, the majority of that energy is sourced from finite wells. Only 13% of America’s electrical grid is powered by renewables such as wind and solar. That means the world we live in, the digital world we grew up conversing and sharing in, relies on the materials of landowners. Even something like nuclear energy depends on mining precious minerals and the systems set up by the rich. For those landowners, their greatest enemy isn’t China or Russia but the sun. The sun gives us infinite energy without a need for centralizing a grid. The Sun gave us life and food since the beginning. Harnessing it for our modern lives is possible, just unwanted.

To go back to Bill Gates, his institution has advocated for a solar shield for the past two decades. Bill Gates wants to “combat climate change” not by altering industry, but literally blocking the sun from outer space. Even in 2025, researchers take steps forward to make this a reality. For Bill Gates, controlling the Sun means controlling power, whether you measure that power in dollars or joules. Capitalists believe it would be better to completely alter the Earth’s reality than to change how we share resources.

Bill isn’t the only one afraid of the Sun and it’s egalitarian nature. The US’s current energy budget drastically slashes all renewable research except for geothermal (I doubt its a coincidence geothermal is the renewable most dependent on land ownership). The Sun is a symbol of the anarcho-futurist dream. The solarpunk movement is real. The sun is a comrade and the techno-lords fear it. If the lords of feudal England could have charged rent on access to the Sun, they would have. Now that they have the technology to, that’s just want the are going to do.

What do we do in a moment like this? Remember: anything goes.

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post script

Icarus has always been one of my favorite characters of Greek mythology. His gift of technology and its incompatibility with nature always struck me as a valuable lesson. The Greek word for sun, Helios, comes from the god birthed by Selene (moon) and Eos (dawn).

In Samoan mythology, Maui found himself frustrated how he always had to eat dinner in the dark. The others thought he was just delirious from working all day but he was determined to net the Sun and slow him down. Maui and his brothers sailed east to where the sun rises and hid behind a tree. They saw the sun sleeping and with so much fear they felt electricity run through them as if zapped by eels. Long story short, they slowed the sun down.

Our new neighbor happens to work at the Space Science Laboratory here at UC Berkeley and her project is around the Parker Solar Probe: a NASA launched research module funded by the public. It’s important to remember that when science is a democratic endeavor and publicly funded, we get to learn more about the universe. Whenever we, as a collective, learn more about the sun and moon we learn more about our own origins, our own histories, and have opportunity to connect across cultures. I’m curious what her opinion on solar control is and what the sun means to us as not just humans but creatures.

The solarpunk movement is one I’ve always been hesitant of. It’s been reconstructed into an aesthetic by so many where it’s no longer punk and just sun-oriented Sci-Fi. For myself, the ‘punk’ is just as vital an element as the ‘solar’. Anarchism and the sun go hand in hand for me. Similarly, the moon goes hand in hand with faith. Our religious calendars follow the moon; our hormonal cycles follow the moon; even our supernatural creatures are keyed in on the lunar phases. Dark light gives space for secrets. Secrets lead to the unknown. Nothing is scary than uncertainty. Religion, when done properly, is so beneficial in helping us navigate fear. Fear and Religion don’t mix. When they do, hate is usually the product.