adorablesergal

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Continuing my ruminations on Frutiger Aero, I realized I felt a similar vibe seeing old Soviet propaganda art.

I love Soviet art. Not so much the country. That's the difficult part of navigating affections for aesthetics, because I can find myself in the company of not-so-great individuals, like finding out that a local history buff who for some strange reason only assembles models of German tanks might have some opinions we don't align on.

It raises the eyebrows, eh? And that's kind of how I feel with liking Soviet propaganda art while knowing that most Capital-C Communists would love to murder me in some glorious cultural revolution.

Anyway...

It all comes back to a future promised. There's a word that eludes me that is defined by a nostalgia for a place one has not been, and I think it gets more specific in that you can desperately miss a potential future, and I feel that Western society is definitely in that, "Oh gods, my heart has broken through Time's Ineffable Arrow, and I miss being in that future world of bubbles and bright blue skies and verdant fields."

Those who lived under "Communism" lived in the presence of a world that those in power claimed was for them. Those who currently live under Capitalism are living in the presence of a world that those in power claim is for them. The only thing we had and have to do was and is ignore human suffering and we could snack on the crumbs that would fall from the table. Look at our glorious space program! Look at our Playstation 5s! Be thankful for what you have...

To be clear, this isn't a Doomerism post. While I'm not so ignorant that I can't see the conveyor belt of suck that's lined up years and years of instant ramen spun from turds excreted by the rich and powerful, I'm emphatically saying I have a strange hope for what lies beyond that conveyor, when every oligarch, monarch, and tyrant is dead and cold in the ground, that we might have it all: glorious space programs and verdant forests and food aplenty. There's absolutely zero reason we can't have that 100% fully automated gay space communism that people like to joke about, except that some rich asshole or nation is in the way.

When that future finally does come to pass, it's not going to be because of some nation or president who finally found it in their hearts to Give A Hoot. It's going to be because we willed it into existence with the force and passion of a people at the edge of oblivion.

Give us our fucking techno-fish bubbles, our unions, and our diverse, healthy ecosystems, you sonsofbitches.


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in reply to @adorablesergal's post:

soviet art has a similar flavor of optimism as the technooptimism of 1980s NASA promo film reels like "We Deliver" and so forth, with the funky analog synth talking about our futture in space

I decided to watch it again and god, my heart breaks a little every time they speak Challenger's name

Technology as liberator has defined my existence since birth. We would build space station alpha and then colonize Mars and whatnot, and with computers tangibly getting better on Earth... All of it was so novel and coming so fast and it was so easy to believe that liberation was coming.

Any day now... Just had to believe harder in god and country and insert political ideology here

The optimism and vision both of them espouse was in service of something flawed at times, but they were such powerful doses of hope and belief even so. if that makes sense

it's a very infectious enthusiasm that makes you want to feel the hope that they felt

Oh I get it. It's the kind of love and hope that makes you blind. I feel this is something every fan of space and spaceflight has to grapple with, that their beloved subject was born out of war and propaganda, and we constantly discard and recontextualize everything to be as noble as it can be.

In the backs of our minds we are, of course, aware of the truth, but the idea of spaceflight itself, human spaceflight especially, is so undeniably pure and beautiful and self-evident to us in its goodness that we can't help but go along with it

And there is truth in that, which is what makes the propaganda so soothing. It's not trying to convince us of anything. It's just giving us permission to feel thrilled at the sight of a rocket going up. I still hope to see humans become a multiplanetary species before I die but at this point, I will be devastated if someone like Elon plants the flag.

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