Through much of human history, winter was a scary time: the sky grew darker, the nights grew colder, and resources needed to be scraped together and carefully rationed in order to make it through the cold. Winter represents the darkness, the unknown, the possibility of failure.
The winter solstice is the longest night of the year. It is an extremum – in a season of cold and dark, it is the coldest and the darkest – but by that same token, it is also an inflection point. The sun starts to return, bit by bit. Solstice reminds us to hope for the brightness of future summers.
The Bay Area Secular Solstice is an annual gathering where we come together to celebrate humanity and the things that matter to us, through speeches and songs.
Here’s the 34-page program PDF. It’s … quite the read.
There’s a description of some rationalist’s utopia that’s really something on page 26. I find this very explicit provision made for socially awkward people funny:
And then later down that same page:
There’s just so little imagination here. Like, as a leftist, I try to imagine a world where the structures that cause atomization are replaced by something else entirely, but here, all they can imagine is that the atomization continues, but with band-aids. Same for the disgusting power-fantasy where some guy drops cash and watches people scrambling for it. Your far-flung, scientifically calibrated utopia still has money? How pathetic, reactionary, and boring.