What is Hopepunk?

It’s not simply blind optimism, or naivety. It’s choice. It’s taking the human race by the hand and saying, “I will love you, because I am you”. It’s facing a world dripping with cynicism and fashionable hopelessness and saying, “no, I will not give in”. It’s putting kindness out into the world, knowing you might not get it back, knowing you may be scorned for it, knowing it might not change anything, but with a certainty that kindness is what the world needs the most.

It is choosing hope

Hey, if you're ever feeling awful because you're super overwhelmed by the news, too overwhelmed to do anything, but you feel like you can't stop without being a horrible person who's just sticking their head in the sand...

Try thinking of it this way:

Maybe the moral thing to do actually IS to never look at the news...

so that you have the energy and will and lack of huge, petrifying fear needed to help

We've seen over and over again, especially in the climate movement, how often it's small, local efforts at making a difference that really start to change things

There's no moral value to being burned out and depressed.

Yes, knowing what's going on in your state/country/the world is good if it's something you can actually sustain

But if you have to choose between following the news/doomscrolling/etc. and actually having the energy to help?

I think that in the vast majority of situations, morally, you SHOULD choose to do something to help

Showing up to your city council meetings, or cleaning up trash in your neighborhood, or volunteering at a food pantry, or registering people to vote, or joining the underground abortion pill network, or doing a fundraiser for bipoc-led nonprofits, or mailing books to people in prison, or seedbombing native grasses, or phone-banking for a nonprofit you care about, or building benches and leaving them at bus stops, or knitting hats and giving them to unhoused people to stay warm, or starting a community garden, or sponsoring refugees for immigration, or taking a stand at school board meetings, or, or, or

all do infinitely more to help other people than doomscrolling and sharing depressing news posts ever will

I’m asexual and aromantic, and it was really tough for me to accept that. Elsa is such an inspiration to me because she stays single and seems to have no attraction to people in any way other than platonic. Regardless of her “label,” it’s wonderful to see a princess in her 20s not want romance; it’s refreshing and empowering and reminds me that the other types of love in my life are important too.

when sartre said "hell is other people" he failed to mention that heaven is also other people

Sartre said in 1971, “But that’s only that side of the coin. The other side, which no one seems to mention, is also ‘Heaven is each other.’ … Hell is separateness, uncommunicability, self-centeredness, lust for power, for riches, for fame. Heaven, on the other hand, is very simple—and very hard: caring about your fellow beings.”

Cynicism is like a starvation diet. It works, but just barely. It numbs the pain and makes the bitter pill slide past your tongue. You survive, but you trudge through life dull-eyed and empty.

And that’s no way to live. No one deserves that. Bitterness is a tempting path to take because it’s easier, and hope can be so unbearably hard sometimes. But I promise it’s worth the effort. When you finally see the small joys, when you finally feel full again, you’ll never regret the fight it took to get there

friendly reminder that you didn’t waste your year. any moments of happiness or comfort, any small accomplishments, they all matter. this has been a really hard year, and simply surviving is something to be proud of. 

Wishing a happy pride month to all aspec folks 💜💚

Dismiss the idea that you are cursed to suffer for eternity and start bringing little joys into your life NOW. It will build up in time...

I’ve gotten dozens of new followers in the last 24 hours, so welcome! Reminder for some folks that I am genderqueer and that radfem/gender critical ideology is fundamentally incompatible with hopepunk. I don’t play into the paradox of tolerance on this blog

Sharks support Asexuals and Aromantics, sorry I don’t make the rules. 

No reposting

the poets leave hell and again behold the stars  inferno. canto XXXIV.

IT IS ACE WEEK!

So let's talk about asexuality! This is an introduction trying to cover as much as possible in a little format, so its mostly surface level stuff. You're gonna have to dig on your own :P

For more information, I recommend checking out aceweek.org or acesandaros.org ! You can also read up on ace history through the Asexual Manifesto by Lisa Orlando !

Actual links and Image description coming in a reblog ;)

Food is meant to be enjoyed. It is not solely about nutrition. It’s also an joyful, social, cultural experience. You deserve to eat for the sake of enjoyment.

(id: an image of a flooded street with a blue church, fences, and two brown sheds that are submerged and flooded by several feet of water. Captioned: "Alaska has declared a state of disaster. flooding from a typhoon has destroyed remote villages. Many Natives are stranded with no groceries, no power. Tribal Chief Edgar Tall reported houses being moved off of their foundations. The Alaska Community Foundation has started a Qestern Alaska Disaster Recovery Fund to help with the damages. You can read more at https:// alaskacf .org @courtyellowwolf" end id)

life is so good when you enjoy rain and snow and sunshine and starlight and wind and mornings and twilights and spring and autumn. to pay attention to weather and natural phenomena is to hack the days of the year into bringing you many gifts, predictable, perhaps, yet no less delightful

This is exactly what I mean when I say think about who benefits from giving up. Think about who benefits from the perception that nobody cares and nothing will ever be done about this.

So many people care.

Complete denial of human-caused climate change occurs at a much, much lower level than most people imagine—and even then the majority of folks in that boat have been intentionally, maliciously misled to act against their own best interest. Most people who seem ambivalent about climate change are concerned about climate change but are afraid of the social impacts of speaking out, fear how the necessary changes to combat climate change will negatively impact them and their community, or feel that their actions wouldn’t make a difference anyway. Those are the barriers we need to break down.

Literally just telling other people that you are worried about climate change or publicly taking actions to make your household or community more sustainable can make a massive difference here because it tells other people “you are not alone in your fear, you can do something about it, and there are other people in your community who want to do something about it”.

Many thanks to @magpiesarefluffy for sending this in!

Crux & Carina at Nambung, Western Australia

Nikon d810a - 50mm - ISO 6400 - f/2.8 - Foreground: 4 x 30 seconds - Sky: 16 x 30 seconds - IOptron SkyTracker - Hoya Red Intensifier filter