[HN Gopher] Reading more Ursula Le Guin (2019)
___________________________________________________________________
Reading more Ursula Le Guin (2019)
Author : Munksgaard
Score : 133 points
Date : 2024-04-04 16:13 UTC (6 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (theoutline.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (theoutline.com)
| bryanrasmussen wrote:
| >Questioning the spear's phallic, murderous logic,
|
| How many more years before the ideas of Freud are so removed from
| common usage that we no longer have to deal with their detritus.
|
| I figure another 20-30.
|
| on edit: maybe irritating me more than normal as I recently
| listened to a podcast where it was all about how, despite nobody
| believing Freud anymore, he was just so important and central
| that all ideas related to his incorrect ideas.
| renewiltord wrote:
| It's quite interesting how much weight humans give to old
| ideas. Probably a Lindy heuristic. But, man, imagine if I was
| early to that field and made it so that we had to conceive of
| all doors as being vaginal (constant testaments to women's
| obsession with their genitals). Do women like putting things in
| the trash bin because they have penis envy and want to
| experience putting a sword in a sheath, so to speak? Why do
| wives like tidying up? Is it because they like putting things
| in cubbies, simulating the sex experience?
|
| Wholesale trash thought. Man, even a mildly intelligent
| teenager has surpassed this level of free-association. But the
| age of the concept and its Barnum effect explanatory behaviour
| makes it the home of every mediocre mind. The only risk, I
| suppose, is that if we end this obvious sign, we remove a clear
| signal of sophomoric thought.
| lfmunoz4 wrote:
| You can't prove it either way, people are complex and who is
| to say what sort of associations people have or used to have
| inside their head. The simple fact is that when Freud was
| coming out with his ideas they were new they were original.
| Most of anything we read is recycled. Having a single
| original idea is incredible and he had many that maybe wrong
| but eventually did lead to some right ideas.
| renewiltord wrote:
| Oh, indeed, I am a big fan of people being wrong in novel
| ways that open up new ways of thought. Much of the old
| philosophers is really their exploration of the space.
| Searching means looking in the wrong place most of the
| time. My problem is with those who came after and keep
| looking in some old place where there is nothing left to
| find.
| nonrandomstring wrote:
| There are layers upon layers in culture when it comes to Freud.
|
| Freud was fashionable beyond the reality of his importance,
| they said.
|
| Then the "Freud as misinderstood" revisionists ruled, for a
| while.
|
| Then it was fashionable to discredit and mock Freud. He became
| the epitome of all that's "unscientific".
|
| Then the neo-Freudians came along and was fashionable to
| denounce the rigid, autistic positivists who so loudly mocked
| Freud.
|
| And so it goes.
|
| Meanwhile his nephew Edward Bernays totally transformed Western
| culture into what we see today... a fantasy driven garden of
| individual Utopian projects.
|
| And if you bracket the crazy penis-envy unconscious analysis
| stuff aside, then "Civilisation and Its Discontents" remains
| one of the most prescient discourses on our current condition
| ever written [0].
|
| There's one great test that a thinker is not irrelevant... that
| people are still talking about them 100 years later.
|
| [0]
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civilization_and_Its_Disconten...
| mitthrowaway2 wrote:
| I agree it's annoying, but isn't Shakespeare full of that sort
| of thing too?
| 082349872349872 wrote:
| I'd thought Shakespeare was full of country matters:
| agricultural stuff like Caesar plowing and Cleopatra
| cropping.
| mcguire wrote:
| Freud may be silly, but the standing (ahem) of the phallus in
| human culture is pretty high.
|
| https://www.livescience.com/archaeology/11000-year-old-statu...
| timvdalen wrote:
| I recently read A Wizard of Earthsea, and it took me a really
| long time to get through. Here's what I noted down after reading
| it:
|
| I can see why (and how) this book is important and good, but it
| just took me so much active effort to keep reading it.
| asyx wrote:
| Earthsea reads like the boring retelling of a great story.
| jpm_sd wrote:
| That's funny, my favorite thing about her writing is the
| calm, quiet narrative style. Kind of the opposite of the
| Brando Sando approach.
| spaced-out wrote:
| I feel exactly the same way. The Dispossessed was both one of
| the best and one of the most boring books I've ever read. There
| are a lot of things I appreciate about it and I'm glad I read
| it, but damn was it a slog to get through.
| jandrese wrote:
| The most interesting part of the book is how at the start you
| think "this is going to be a book about how Capitalism sucks
| and is bad for people", but it turns out that the Communists
| also sucked although their suck was spread out more evenly
| among the people.
| 082349872349872 wrote:
| > _And so the children of the revolution were faced with
| the age-old problem: it wasn 't that you had the wrong kind
| of government, which was obvious, but that you had the
| wrong kind of people_ --TDJP
| abdullahkhalids wrote:
| I would say the first few chapters (or rather the first few
| chronological chapters dealing with his childhood) were a
| uphill climb. But after that its quite fascinating, and I
| felt the story was pulling me along forward.
| rexpop wrote:
| I can't understand this perspective! Even now, just flipping
| through random pages looking for a quote, I keep getting
| sucked back in!
|
| > He thanked her, with the simplicity of one who does not
| look behind the offer for the offer's motive. She studied him
| for a moment, her eyes shrewd, direct, and quiet. "I heard
| your speech," she said.
|
| > He looked at her as from a distance. "Speech?"
|
| > "When you spoke at the great demonstration in Capitol
| Square. A week ago today. We always listen to the clandestine
| radio, the Socialist Workers' and the Libertarians'
| broadcasts. Of course, they were reporting the demonstration.
| I heard you speak. I was very moved. Then there was a noise,
| a strange noise, and one could hear the crowd beginning to
| shout. They did not explain. There was screaming. Then it
| died off the air suddenly. It was terrible, terrible to
| listen to. And you were there. How did you escape from that?
| How did you get out of the city? Old Town is still cordoned
| off; there are three regiments of the army in Nio; they round
| up strikers and suspects by the dozen and hundred every day.
| How did you get here?"
|
| > He smiled faintly. "In a taxi."
|
| ----
|
| > "I was not to be near the powder mill. I was to be kept
| from the populace, to live among scholars and the rich. Not
| to see the poor. Not to see anything ugly. I was to be
| wrapped up in cotton in a box in a wrapping in a carton in a
| plastic film, like everything here. There I was to be happy
| and do my work, the work I could not do on Anarres. And when
| it was done I was to give it to them, so they could threaten
| you with it."
|
| > "Threaten us? Terra, you mean, and Hain, and the other
| interspatial powers? Threaten us with what?"
|
| > "With the annihilation of space."
|
| ---
|
| How can you not want to read more!? I remember this, such a
| moving scene, from reading it many years ago. The entire
| story is rife with tension, in my view. How will the
| destinies of all these many billions of people unfold from
| the actions taken in these few moments by these few people?
| nervousvarun wrote:
| Now read the Left Hand of Darkness!
|
| I think you'll find the pacing much improved.
| humanlion87 wrote:
| This is the first and only book of Le Guin that I have read.
| And I just couldn't grasp what was all the hype about this
| book. It could be because I was expecting a "typical"
| science-fiction book. Or maybe I was not mature enough when I
| read it. Maybe I should give it another shot now that I am
| older :).
| giraffe_lady wrote:
| Yeah I've always found this one out of place when listed
| among other big classic sci fi books. It's tonally very
| different, slowly paced, focused on different concerns than
| is typical for the books it is usually grouped with. It's a
| great book in its own right but not a great introduction to
| her for people coming from or looking for sci fi.
| lemmsjid wrote:
| Interesting. I've made it a point to try to make my way
| through the canonical sci fi greats over the years, and
| I'd put Left Hand of Darkness near the top. It's kind of
| because of that tonal difference: there's something about
| the way it's written (sort of anthropological /
| travelogue style) that makes me feel truly immersed in
| the culture and world being described, in a trance-like
| way, even though the book itself doesn't have
| particularly exciting events in it.
|
| It may be that it hit me at a particular time in my life:
| I read it in my early teens and the way gender was
| expressed in the novel, the sort of tidal shift between
| masculine and feminine based on circumstance, really
| spoke to me at a time I was figuring all that out in my
| own psyche. I wonder if a lot of the gender exploration
| in the book may seem more trite and typical now.
| giraffe_lady wrote:
| I mean I think it's an incredible book, in exactly the
| ways most "great" sci fi is weak. But I've come across
| enough people bouncing off of it to put some thought into
| why and this is my most charitable take on why so many
| sci fi fans don't love it.
| vector_spaces wrote:
| I had a similar experience -- I did enjoy it, and some parts
| genuinely moved me, but the last quarter or so was a bit of a
| slog.
|
| I will say that I enjoyed her short stories a lot more! They
| are fairly deep but entertaining, with great twists and
| surprises
|
| The Wind's Twelve Quarters is a good anthology -- in that one,
| I liked The Rule of Names, Semley's Necklace and The Word of
| Unbinding. In another anthology (I think), Direction of the
| Road -- phenomenal. Most of these can be found standalone
| online
|
| The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas I enjoyed less, but it's a
| short read and fairly important culturally. NK Jemisin, who
| wrote the Broken Earth trilogy (highly recommend it), wrote a
| sort of tongue-in-cheek short-story in response to it called
| The Ones Who Stay and Fight -- also worth reading.
| franek wrote:
| I fully support the recommendation of Le Guin's short
| stories! Too bad they are easily forgotten over her novels.
| (I guess a novel, as a product, is easier to review and to
| advertise?)
|
| My favourite collection is "The Birthday of the World",
| especially the stories "Solitude" and "Paradises Lost".
| (Maybe skip "Old Music and the Slave Women". It builds on
| other books and is incomprehensible without them; or at least
| it was to me.)
| timvdalen wrote:
| The whole reason I started the novel was because I listened
| to The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas on Levar Burton Reads.
| I'll give the other short fiction a shot, thanks for the
| suggestions!
| ycombinete wrote:
| I had an opposite experience. I read it in my 30s and loved it
| so much. My only sadness was that I didn't get the chance to
| read it when I was a young adult.
| zem wrote:
| exactly the opposite for me - i love pretty much everything she
| has written, but the earthsea cycle is by far my favourite. it
| captivated me from book 1, and just kept going from strength to
| strength (the second trilogy is somewhat different in feel from
| the first one, but just as good in its own way)
| wwweston wrote:
| Huh. Every few years when I pick it up, the writing just pulls
| me straight through.
|
| Not saying there's anything wrong with your experience
| (certainly it's taken me active effort to read some highly
| recommended books, and sometimes I've quit), just that this is
| likely a YMMV thing.
| goostavos wrote:
| How timely. I just finished reading The Word for World is Forest
| last night.
|
| Nobody likes a poo-pooer, but, holy moly, I thought it was
| unbelievable trash. Are her other books better? This one was
| "noble savages: the book". The Creechies can't even _conceive_ of
| inter-species murder until Big Bad Comic Book Evil Guy (who just
| _loves_ being evil) introduces it. The creechies don 't know
| evil. They settle their disputes as all superior noble people
| would: through _art_.
|
| I probably just got in my own way while reading. There was a lot
| of "wait.. they're sending _wood_ through interstellar space?".
| They have an ecology that can support a supply chain that
| produces food in excess to perform 40+ year round trips through
| space, but... they can't grow a tree? A tomato plant? Sure. A
| tree? Nah.
|
| It might be a good kids book, if not for all the... raping.
| throw1234651234 wrote:
| Is this book in the same vein as "N. K. Jemisin is a real
| author"? Good to be forewarned.
| lemmsjid wrote:
| Jemisin is one of the more visceral and imaginative writers
| I've encountered in recent years, and she did indeed produce
| and publish written works, so I do believe she is a real
| author, yes. I'd certainly be interested in reading and maybe
| discussing an actual critique, this being a forum where
| substantive posts are required in the guidelines.
| muffinman26 wrote:
| I read The Fifth Season and hated it, but she's definitely
| a real author. I'd be interested if she has any other books
| that I might like better.
|
| My main problems with the story were: - The setting was
| almost unspeakably brutal, but there seemed to be almost no
| one interested in fighting those brutal systems. I could
| understand 1-2 characters being brainwashed to go along
| with the brutality, or even most, but no one seems to even
| attempt to go against the system. This made the setting
| feel unbelievable to me.
|
| - There are two big twists at the end of the book. I won't
| spoil them, but they didn't feel like well-foreshadowed
| twists. The timelines for the different chapters weren't
| clear, which made it hard to guess the first, and the
| 'clues' felt like bad writing mistakes. For the second, the
| only clue is what words people _don 't_ say.
|
| The plot also hinges on a misunderstanding of how tsunamis
| work, but that's forgivable to me.
| TinkersW wrote:
| Le Guin is better, nothing amazing, but solid. Skip Jemisin,
| very mediocre.
| kjellsbells wrote:
| I loved the Left Hand of Darkness, and hated TWfWiF for the
| same reasons you cite.
|
| Frankly, hero worshipping an author isnt great. Everyone has
| highs and lows in their creative output. And the cultural
| milieu that the author is working in plays a part too (how many
| books about trees being cool, man, got published between 1967
| and 1972?)
|
| Dont let TWfWiF put you off LeGuin. She had a lot to say that
| is worthwhile to read.
| throwanem wrote:
| The story is 50 years old, and was written less than a decade
| after the first moon landing. That makes it easy to produce a
| presentist reading, but not more likely such a reading will be
| useful.
|
| It's also not at all hard sf. That doesn't impugn its value,
| but does mean that you're not going to get anything out of it
| if you try to read it like you would _The Martian_.
| digging wrote:
| Yeah... I've read all of her so-called "Hainish Cycle" (it's
| mostly short stories, and they aren't all intentionally
| connected btw) and consider myself a big fan - I agree TWFWIF
| is kind of awful. (Although I still felt it had some
| interesting ideas, like the Creechies' concept of gods as new
| ways of thinking.) It is an extremely unfortunate first choice
| of Le Guin to read.
| WillAdams wrote:
| It's a bit more interesting in its historical context of the
| U.S. involvement in Vietnam.
|
| https://www.reddit.com/r/books/comments/1bpxs0c/the_word_for...
| elevaet wrote:
| I think this book was the basis for the Avatar movie.
|
| I read it as a teen and really liked it, but you do a great job
| of poo-pooing it haha.
| ajmurmann wrote:
| I thought Avatar was Pocahontas almost scene by scene.
| ninetyninenine wrote:
| I think it's good for it's time. You have to realize it was the
| very very first of this genre.
|
| It ended up getting copied by fern gully and then james
| camerons avatar. But this was the very very first of the trope.
|
| But I agree when I read it, it wasn't good at all.
|
| I recommend "Worlds of exile and illusion" It's really good.
| The book is one epic story told through the lens of three
| smaller stories.
| troupo wrote:
| I think The Dispossessed is the best book in the Hainish cycle.
| And possibly the best book out of all LeGuin's books people
| usually recommend.
| mulderc wrote:
| It might be my favorite book. I read it during the pandemic
| and started sending copies to friends as I loved it that
| much.
| johngossman wrote:
| I've read most of her books and Forest is definitely the worst.
| When she wrote it she was mad about Vietnam and about the
| environment and it is definitely a rant with paper thin
| characters. Absolutely not representative. I was shocked how
| bad after just reading Left Hand of Darkness and Dispossessed.
| datadrivenangel wrote:
| Le Guin is a fantastic writer. The Lathe of Heaven, The Left Hand
| of Darkness, and the Eye of the Heron are all excellent and
| thought provoking novels among Le Guin's other works.
| gertlex wrote:
| Curious: do you include Earthsea novels in that tier?
|
| Maybe it was just me not trying hard enough at the time (a
| decade+ ago); I wanted to read LHoD but couldn't get my hands
| on it. I know it's now available as an ebook more easily, but I
| remain a bit peeved about how it was the one thing I couldn't
| buy legitimately at the time.
|
| That combined with not enjoying Earthsea (I read two or three
| books?), makes me biased to keep reading any online
| recommendations but Le Guin.
| drivers99 wrote:
| > I wanted to read LHoD but couldn't get my hands on it.
| [...] it was the one thing I couldn't buy legitimately at the
| time
|
| It's currently available in paperback.
| ska wrote:
| Earthsea was written targeted for children/youth; it's the
| same author but in a different register so you may find you
| enjoy her other stuff more?
| apignotti wrote:
| I consider 'Left Hand Of Darkness' to be the single book that
| resonated the most with me, with 'The Dispossessed' being my
| previous favorite.
|
| On the other hand I was very disappointed from 'A Wizard Of
| Heartsea'.
| johngossman wrote:
| Earthsea put me off LeGuin for a while too. It was targeted
| at Young Adults and though it has its moments it lacks the
| richness and philosophical insights of her best.
| datadrivenangel wrote:
| I don't actually care for most of Earthsea. Some of the
| shorts are quite good, but it's definitely more old-school
| young adult focused.
| MrJohz wrote:
| Someone recommended that I skip straight to Tehanu, the last
| Earthsea book, and that was let me get Earthsea. I didn't
| actually follow that advice, I read all of the books in
| order, but knowing that I had Tehanu coming made it easier to
| get through the others.
|
| It's not perfect, but I think where the other books are
| interesting but simple stories for children, Tehanu feels
| like it was written for those children as they've grown up -
| it's basically (without spoiling too much) the retirement and
| twilight years of characters from the rest of the series. And
| as a result, it feels like a more applicable or relevant
| story.
| kej wrote:
| You may already know this, but just in case, _Tehanu_ is no
| longer the last Earthsea book. It is followed by the
| collection _Tales From Earthsea_ and then _The Other Wind_.
| pkkim wrote:
| I want to plug one of her lesser known books, Always Coming Home.
| It's set among a tribe of people living in the Bay Area way, way
| after some apocalypse has erased the memory of our civilization.
| Much of the book is reports from an anthropologist studying the
| people.
|
| I think a lot of her books are about how many different ways of
| life and types of society and culture are possible, and this book
| is one of her best at bringing you in to another culture.
| giraffe_lady wrote:
| I love that book too, maybe my favorite by her, but have found
| it to be a polarizing recommendation. It's a very unusual
| format (the novel is interspersed with creation myths, plays,
| songs, recipes, etc of the people of the setting) and some
| people just immediately dislike it.
|
| I also think in some important ways it is not as narratively
| strong as her best works, a necessary tradeoff for what it does
| accomplish. It's very interesting to consider her being raised
| by an anthropologist, and her exceptional childhood exposure to
| Ishi, whom her father had known and her mother and brother
| separately wrote books about.
|
| A thread running through all of her books is a deep human
| interest in the ways of peoples, and how their stories about
| themselves shape who they are and their relationship to a
| changing world. Always Coming Home is the book of her that is
| most, almost exclusively, focused on these concerns.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ishi
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ishi_in_Two_Worlds
| creer wrote:
| It's very atypical for her - and I think she recognized that.
| Yes, an ambitious work of anthropology through fiction,
| illustrating how "tribal" works?
| sunshowers wrote:
| I love Always Coming Home so much. It's so rich and creative.
|
| For a shorter story (~50 pages), I'd highly recommend Paradises
| Lost by her. Many people have written stories about generation
| ships, but this one is absolutely stunning and truly marvelous.
| m3talsmith wrote:
| I have a hard copy of this one. Definitely a favorite!
| abdullahkhalids wrote:
| One of the great tragedies of our time is that collectively
| humans have stopped imagining alternate socio-economic-political
| systems. In the few hundred years before 1990, there was a lot of
| imagination of what could be, and many of those systems were
| attempted. But since then, it seems everywhere we are stuck.
|
| Reading Ursula Le Guin's work is essential because she boldly
| tries to re-imagine. Not to say any of her fictional worlds
| should be made reality, but that we need to do serious
| intellectual work going forward. Surely, humans have explored a
| few tiny dots in the space of all possible socio-economic-
| political systems.
| Eddy_Viscosity2 wrote:
| 'It's easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of
| capitalism'
| abdullahkhalids wrote:
| > We live in capitalism, its power seems inescapable - but
| then, so did the divine right of kings. Ursula K Le Guin [1]
|
| [1] https://www.theguardian.com/books/2014/nov/20/ursula-k-
| le-gu...
| 7thaccount wrote:
| I was literally just thinking of this quote 15 minutes ago.
| Weird to see it at the top of HN.
|
| Capitalism seems to work better than the systems we've
| tried in the recent past (communism and feudalism are
| obviously worse in my eyes due to reduced freedom and the
| huge amounts of life lost in both Russia and China under
| these systems) , but it's obviously far from perfect. I'm
| not sure what could be done better, but Le Guin reminds me
| it's possible to think of alternatives.
|
| Speaking of alternative ideas..Chesterton was critical of
| both communism and capitalism. He proposed something that
| was intriguing and involved focusing on smaller local
| communities. I'm not sure how it could work towards
| technological advancement though which in my eyes is
| important. It seems to have had some popularity with
| certain Christian movements in the past century. The
| concept that ownership of the economy shouldn't be
| concentrated into a small group of people or corporations
| makes sense to me, but I don't see a way to make that work
| economically in modern times.
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Distributism
|
| Regardless, I'm really interested in these kinds of niche
| ideas if anyone has others to share.
| 082349872349872 wrote:
| If you're into christian anarchists, consider Tolstoy.
| 7thaccount wrote:
| I'm not religious myself anymore, but try to keep an open
| mind to alternative ideas. My assumption is we still
| haven't figured out an optimal system...and may never
| escape bouncing from one idea to the other.
| krapp wrote:
| "Christian anarchist" seems like a contradiction in
| terms. "God" is the ultimate coercive authority and the
| Church the ultimate hierarchy, and most of the evils of
| government have been done in the name of both.
| 082349872349872 wrote:
| It's been a while since I read him, but I believe
| Tolstoy, like Jesus (or for that matter, Brian), was
| pretty anti-Church. I mentioned him specifically because
| his justification for anarchism was all the love & peace
| & everything in common (or at least eye of the needle?)
| hippy biblical stuff.
|
| The Buddha was also anti-Church, I believe. (and St.
| Francis was fonder of animals than his fellow clerics?)
|
| There's an excellent conceit in _Clans of the Alphane
| Moon_ (1964) in which the diagnosable mental disorders
| have their corresponding roles in society: the paranoid
| form the military, the narcissists the political class,
| etc. Hebephrenics provide their religious prophets.
| sickofparadox wrote:
| Jesus was not anti-church, he founded the early Christian
| church and established Peter as its leader. Catholics are
| often heard saying to Protestants that God did not give
| his people a book, but he did give them a church.
| thefaux wrote:
| I think we should be careful about the word Christian. It
| has different meanings to different people. Christian
| anarchism seems quite consistent with the words and
| actions of Jesus as written in the gospels. But if looked
| at from the perspective of American evangelical
| christianity or traditional Catholicism, yes it seems
| absurd.
|
| There are also other conceptions of God beyond the
| coercive demiurge. Again I think we should be careful
| when throwing around words like God as though we all
| agree on the meaning.
| UncleOxidant wrote:
| Yes, I was just thinking of Distributism in this context.
| Communism says the means of production is owned by the
| state, Capitalism says the means of production is owned
| by those with capital (so in practice that means in a few
| hands). Distributism says let's distribute the means of
| production as widely as possible. I recall an article in
| Make magazine about 15 years ago on distributism - they
| made the case that things like 3D printers could be the
| technological enabler to allow distributism to work.
| fao_ wrote:
| > Distributism views laissez-faire capitalism and state
| socialism as equally flawed and exploitative
|
| This is also termed "anarcho-communism" within the
| academic literature and grassroots movements, just FYI (A
| common misconception of anarchism is that it is a 'lack
| of law and order' -- it is merely the lack of
| centralization). The Bolshevik implementation of
| Communism was called State-Capitalism for a long time by
| Lenin himself, and many Communist thinkers (I'm thinking
| of Tony Cliff, who was exceptionally progressive for his
| time) disagree with the Bolshevik implementation of
| Communism.
| 7thaccount wrote:
| I'm not knowledgeable enough to debate on Communism. I
| was somewhat aware that many of the proponents have
| pointed out that the major failings were partially
| because they were implemented incorrectly. The common
| counterargument is that despite the very real and good
| intentions that they would all end up the same as an
| elite group perverts the goals and makes the entire
| system self serving. Is that too simplistic though? I'd
| love to hear your thoughts.
| 082349872349872 wrote:
| > _all end up the same_
|
| for which, see Goldstein, _The Theory and Practice of
| Oligarchical Collectivism_ (appearing in [Orwell49])
|
| > " _The creatures outside looked from pig to man, and
| from man to pig, and from pig to man again; but already
| it was impossible to say which was which._ " --EAB
| keybored wrote:
| A state of affairs totally unlike the ones we have in the
| West, to be sure.
| notarobot123 wrote:
| > ....an elite group perverts the goals and makes the
| entire system self serving
|
| That sounds about right. Any system that concentrates
| power seems to go the same way in a generation or two.
| worik wrote:
| > A common misconception of anarchism is that it is a
| 'lack of law and order' -- it is merely the lack of
| centralization
|
| Thank you
|
| Anarchism is not chaos
|
| But neither is it a recipe
|
| These days, with anarchist ideas deeply ingrained in many
| places, anarchism is a way of thinking
| keybored wrote:
| > communism [is] obviously worse in my eyes due to
|
| Death squads, Banana Republics, indefinite US embargo and
| coup attempts, Pinochet & the Chicago Boys, risking the
| US military invading you in order to avoid the Domino
| Effect.
|
| > Speaking of alternative ideas..Chesterton was critical
| of both communism and capitalism.
|
| Distributism as described in that article is socialism
| modeled on the ideal of the small-time craftsman or
| whatever of that time. That would probably be called
| naive by normal socialists (certainly by communists like
| Leninists) but it has some similarities with socialism.
| On the other hand it seems to outright reject anything
| like the modern capitalism that we are dealing with in
| the present.
|
| > Regardless, I'm really interested in these kinds of
| niche ideas if anyone has others to share.
|
| Riffs on socialism, an idea which is over two-hundred
| years old and has adherents all over the globe.
|
| Fought against and repressed is not the same as niche.
| 082349872349872 wrote:
| One of the advantages of reading older authors is the
| sensation of cognitive dissonance inspired by their taking
| it for granted that monarchies are superior to oligarchies.
|
| You'll find a lot of this pre-1914, but also pre-1: https:/
| /en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_cycle_theory#:~:text=Ac....
| rexpop wrote:
| > Dialogue cannot be carried on in a climate of
| hopelessness. If the dialoguers expect nothing to come of
| their efforts, their encounter will be empty and sterile,
| bureaucratic and tedious. Paulo Freire [0]
|
| 0. Pedagogy of the Oppressed -
| https://envs.ucsc.edu/internships/internship-
| readings/freire...
| StefanBatory wrote:
| Perhaps because it's the best system.
|
| We've had communism in my country, never again.
| logicprog wrote:
| Fortunately the options aren't merely some form of marxist
| communism or capitalism! There are whole branches of
| (anarchist/federalist) socialism that actually _predicted_
| what would happen in the Soviet Union while Marx was still
| alive and writing and had very different plans themselves
| (Bakunin and Proudhon), and there were also distinct forms
| of socialism that predated Marxism, and forms that came
| after it, so even if we were to restrict ourselves to
| socialist schools of thought that have existed for round
| about 200 years (a very narrow slice of economic systems),
| there are a lot more options to try than "bureaucratic
| oligarchy, with a top down centrally planned economy and a
| fundamentally authoritarian ideology" and "a system
| designed to give some power over others via absentee
| property ownership, and facilitate the concentration of
| that power through the concentration of property due to the
| right of increase and profit."
| adrian_b wrote:
| Capitalism appears to have worked optimally around the 1960
| to 1990 time interval.
|
| After 1990 a consolidation process became more and more
| obvious and it has accelerated greatly after 2000. The long
| sequence of mergers and acquisitions has resulted in the
| fact that most markets have become dominated by quasi-
| monopolies, which some times resemble more the monopolies
| that existed in the industries of the countries dominated
| by communists than the multitude of competing companies
| that existed in USA or in Western Europe a half of century
| ago.
| 082349872349872 wrote:
| Before 1990* there was competition; capitalism without
| competition doesn't seem to slice the pie as well as it
| did with?
|
| * Danke, Gorbi!
| 082349872349872 wrote:
| compare "...And Then There Were None"
| https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/9555488
| pookha wrote:
| I'd love to take a 70 year old Chinese victim that lived
| through the great-leap-forward and culture revolution and to
| get their honest perspective on this. They managed to live
| through starvation and wide-spread Maoist violence to witness
| the end of capitalism only to see the same bozo's re-
| introduce capitalism forty years later in the form of crony-
| capitlism...And if they try to speak about any of what they'd
| learned to their grand kids they're likely to get hauled off
| to a gulag while their grand-kids bytedance and chow down on
| Kentucky Fried Chicken.
| bllguo wrote:
| an amusing fantasy. I'd love to see your western biases
| shatter when you do just that. do you think it's at all
| hard to find a 70yr old Chinese person?
| melagonster wrote:
| actually, this is the description of chairman Xi.
| jokethrowaway wrote:
| Because unregulated capitalism is just property and trading.
| Hard to imagine sentient beings without the concept of
| property and trading.
|
| You have to kill all humans to end capitalism.
|
| What everybody hates is crony capitalism where business
| leverage their government connections to screw everyone - but
| that's just socialism with extra steps.
| giraffe_lady wrote:
| It's a massive error to conflate capitalism and commerce
| like this. Capitalism describes a specific structure of
| organizing ownership of productive resources and allocating
| their surpluses.
|
| Capitalism is not the only thing that exists nor is it
| inevitable. It's not hard to imagine systems with property
| and trading that use another method of allocation. In fact
| such systems do exist both in history and currently.
| thefaux wrote:
| I don't think capitalism and the concepts of property and
| trade are synonyms. It is also not clear that historical
| understandings of property or trade or universal amongst
| human civilizations and I'd be wary of dismissing other
| civilizations as having been made up of unsentient beings.
| keybored wrote:
| What is water, the fish asked.
| UncleOxidant wrote:
| We're globally stuck in a local minimum.
| 082349872349872 wrote:
| > _...humans have explored a few tiny dots in the space of all
| possible socio-economic-political systems._
|
| Programming languages are often reduced to a blurb along the
| lines of "everything is a ${foo}"; what do socio-economic-
| political systems reduce to?
|
| my attempts:
|
| tribalism - everything works like an extended family
|
| feudalism - everything works like animals in a barnyard
|
| capitalism - everything works like marketplaces in a port
|
| communism - everything is haunted by the spectre of class
| warfare
|
| democracy - everything is the electorate's fault
|
| aristocracy - everything is the selectorate's fault
|
| monarchy - everything is the prime minister's party's fault
|
| anarchy - everything is voluntary
|
| warlordism - everything is either voluntary, or subject to
| _ultima ratio regum_
| tigerlily wrote:
| > _ultima ratio regum_
|
| Great game that:
|
| https://www.markrjohnsongames.com/games/ultima-ratio-regum/
| slothtrop wrote:
| > collectively humans have stopped imagining alternate socio-
| economic-political systems
|
| ...right that's why it never stops being salient on social
| media like an undead beaten horse and you're talking about it
| right now.
|
| Maybe one problem is that imagination qua alternatives tends to
| stop rather short, and idealists too often consider the details
| and consequences to be an afterthought (everything just gets
| sorted if only you're rid of Capitalism). Or disregard history
| in some cases.
|
| It's comforting that the suggested approach by those who aren't
| fond of State Socialism (e.g. ancoms) is some variation on "do
| anarchism/syndicalism until communism happens", which seems
| harmless. They can get the worker-owned coffee shop out of
| their system.
| creer wrote:
| And perhaps social media doesn't exactly encourage long
| thought. And cooperating on deeper thought political ideas.
| Debate and sports education push winning quick by crushing
| the opponent - not by building a gorgeous final conversation
| to be revered by the reader years later.
| slothtrop wrote:
| I consider the blogosphere to be social media and would
| argue it absolutely does encourage long thought.
| creer wrote:
| Yes! That used to be essays and it's never been easier to
| publish an essay or letter.
| Karrot_Kream wrote:
| This is such a deeply ingrained part of Anglosphere social
| media culture that the GP didn't even have to take capitalism
| in name, but all of us know exactly what fight is being
| started and what position the GP is taking. I don't think
| anyone has stopped imagining alternate socioeconomic systems.
| The problem is that the people that like to discuss this on
| the internet just want to argue large, abstract ideas instead
| of the actual details of life under an alternate system. Le
| Guin herself did a lot of the latter in The Dispossessed. Her
| book wasn't a flamewar on Capitalism/Communism Bad (TM).
| slothtrop wrote:
| I like Le Guin's novels but if they deserve accolades it's
| not for "details" of an alternate system. This one depicts
| central planning, syndicalism as the proxy for democracy,
| and a bureaucracy that "just works".
| Karrot_Kream wrote:
| It doesn't get into the details of the system, but I felt
| that The Dispossessed was a good look into what it was
| like to practically live under that sort of a system.
| Bureaucracy that was clunky, slow, and led to
| inefficiencies. Poor living standards even for highly
| educated people. Time spent doing manual labor despite
| skills that could be better applied to other things. Yet
| a sense of togetherness due to the relative lack of class
| differences and a general welcoming of the other rather
| than the atomization Shevek experienced off-world.
| 082349872349872 wrote:
| I'm not sure Dispo needed to go into details; we all can
| think of analogues to the nations of Urras, and Anarres
| itself mentions many things reminiscent of 1970s
| kibbutzim. (when I watched <<Kar'era Dimy Gorina>>* the
| work camps also reminded me of Shevek's experiences in
| the Anarres outback)
|
| * 1961. sometime I need to watch it with subtitles to
| check how it scores on the Bechdel Test. Cameo by
| Sputnik.
| slothtrop wrote:
| It doesn't, but that wasn't the point I was making.
| creer wrote:
| Seems to me sci-fi is still as full of political creativity as
| it always was? Perhaps it's now more diluted. Single books
| stood out for that. And perhaps it's harder for single SF books
| to stand out anymore? For sheer quantity?
|
| I mean, it's not like these books were ever taken very
| seriously as political works either...
| Karrot_Kream wrote:
| No the tragedy of our time is that people who use social media
| love to start flamewars on this topic resulting in very little
| light and mostly heat. I guess the poster gets to socially
| signal to the right crowd what side of the issue they're on
| though.
| keybored wrote:
| Your comment is a dim 40 degrees Celsius.
| 082349872349872 wrote:
| compare Lafferty, "The Primary Education of the Camiroi" (1966)
|
| (for that matter, it may be worth pursuing other entries in
| "Utopian Literature in English: An Annotated Bibliography From
| 1516 to the Present" https://openpublishing.psu.edu/utopia/ )
| aquir wrote:
| She is my favourite Sci-Fi writer! Her works like the
| Dispossessed and the Left Hand of Darkness are true masterpieces!
| She wouldn't like mw to call her Sci-Fi writer she called herself
| a speculative fiction writer. The fact that she was a woman gave
| a really new point of view to her writings.
| creer wrote:
| The article gives a reading of Ursula Le Guin that falls from one
| merely political way to see the world (conquest) into another
| (global warming and human hubris) - plus a heavy dose of
| corresponding judgementality.
|
| To me Ursula Le Guin's books are different still: I see them
| mostly as prompts for my emotion and as people living their life.
| One's life is only loosely tied to the political thought or
| environment around us. We are allowed to make our life one and
| the same in a political militant fashion but that is an option, a
| choice. We don't have to. In the books, we are presented worlds
| (often through the character growing up in it) and then we are
| presented the characters trajectories through them. Many sci-fi
| writers want to present political ideas through created worlds,
| of course. That is not Ursula Le Guin's dominion. And her worlds
| are certainly not reaching for "free from harm"! Where in the
| world does that one come from?!
|
| What I read them for:
|
| 1) I love that many of her characters are paying attention. They
| are not simply surviving passively in the sense of always
| reacting and living past the current hardship. They are also not
| just as mindlessly choosing militant action or conquest.
|
| 2) I love above all the writing style. Immensely calm. And the
| language: poetic, smooth and emotion-prompting. Ursula Le Guin
| stands out for me in that direction. Perfect tone is rare,
| instilling emotion in me to this degree is very rare.
|
| Just as The Magicians is written in a style that perfectly
| matches teen angst (as opposed to Harry Potter.)
|
| And I note that Ursula Le Guin's teens usually don't have much
| angst - unrealistically so - and I'm fine with that - the rest
| makes up for it.
|
| I highly recommend these books - but certainly not as the one
| major source of political creativity.
| worik wrote:
| > but certainly not as the one major source of political
| creativity.
|
| Yes. But certainly as one major source of political creativity.
|
| Sympathetic criticism of anarchist thinking (The Disposesd) was
| most welcome
| creer wrote:
| And that's just one book . That one book did find its
| audience, that's for sure! No contest there! That makes it
| tempting to judge her entire work through that lens. And that
| one book is as prominent as The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress: one
| title that comes up again and again to illustrate political
| thought / utopias / distopias. By contrast, the Earthsea
| cycle ended up with 6 books and a few short stories. And
| Always Coming Home was a massive project.
| worik wrote:
| The Lathe of Heaven is favorite science fiction book ever
| mcguire wrote:
| Congratulations, you've just made me want to do something that
| nothing else has in a long time: go read more of Ursula Le
| Guin.
| creer wrote:
| Woohoo! (just kidding. not a competition. thank you and good
| reading :-)
| hannofcart wrote:
| I read ULG's 'The Dispossessed' and while the writing is great,
| it more feels like social commentary with a mild flavour of sci-
| fi.
|
| I suppose am struggling to articulate this better.
|
| To give you a contrast, take Arthur C Clarke, a contemporary of
| hers. Consider his book 'A Fall of Moondust' (one of my
| favourites).
|
| In ACC's book, there is some core peculiarity of the fundamental
| nature of the world that the story is entirely based on. The
| possibilities stemming from that one oddity is interesting from a
| scientific perspective.
|
| Having said that, the characters in that book are nothing to
| write home about. They serve the necessary function for the plot
| but nothing too memorable.
|
| ULG's plot on the other hand has no distinctive scientifically
| interesting peculiarity that it seems to be built on. It might as
| well have occurred on Earth just as it does in 'Anarres' or
| 'Urras'.
|
| It feels like ULG's book is more about people/political
| theory/social commentary/human condition than any scientifically
| intriguing theory.
|
| It's still a good read I guess, but it didn't scratch my sci-fi
| itch.
| the_af wrote:
| > _It feels like ULG 's book is more about people/political
| theory/social commentary/human condition than any
| scientifically intriguing theory._
|
| Agreed that on the spectrum of politics/society to scientific
| theory/gizmo, Le Guin leans heavily towards politics/society.
|
| Whether that is one's cup of tea is a different matter. It
| sometimes is for me, and sometimes not; depends on the mood.
| For an author who was also into societal issues, I prefer James
| Tiptree Jr (Alice Sheldon), because she injected more of the
| alienness/weirdness I tend to seek when reading scifi.
|
| I do like Ursula, don't get me wrong! I'm just not always in
| the mood for reading her, while I'm _almost always_ in the mood
| to read more James Tiptree Jr!
|
| (On that note, I just realized back in 2019 they renamed the
| "James Tiptree Jr Award" to "Otherwise", for disappointing
| reasons. Oh, well)
| Jun8 wrote:
| Hi fellow JTJr fan! She was never mainstream after her death
| but it seems her readership is dwindling by the decade. She
| corresponded with Le Guin.
|
| It's a pity about the award, that's how I first found out
| about her. And for the stupidest reason, too.
| kps wrote:
| Tiptree was one of the greats.
|
| Those commenting on LeGuin's heavy-handed _The Word for World
| is Forest_ might like _Brightness Falls From the Air_ , when
| they get to the end. (Tiptree herself did have at least one
| _Forest_ -grade cringy polemic short story, _Morality Meat_ ,
| paired against Phillip K Dick's _The Pre-Persons_. Maybe
| writers can 't help themselves, but editors should know
| better.)
| kaycebasques wrote:
| Was just talking to a colleague about The Dispossessed. That book
| never did it for me. Left Of Hand Of Darkness on the other, erm,
| hand... wow. Fascinating premise. UKLG also did an interpretation
| of the Tao Te Ching that is worth a slow, contemplative
| readthrough.
| rgovostes wrote:
| I had the inverse take. Read _Dispossessed_ and thought the
| commentary was insightful, so I followed it with LHOD, but I
| felt like the points it makes about gender roles are blunted by
| the passage of 55 years, more so than points about capitalism.
| I am pretty sure I missed most of the ways she tries to
| contrast the Gethenians against our own society.
| jokethrowaway wrote:
| I find Le Guin to write interesting explorations but this article
| is pure political propaganda.
|
| We should all be reading more Ayn Rand
| giraffe_lady wrote:
| Rand was a shitty writer though which makes a huge difference
| it turns out.
| Squeeeez wrote:
| How many great ideas have been published by horrible writers,
| and thus overlooked by the whole world?
| MeImCounting wrote:
| In my opinion, Le Guin, Butler and more recently authors like
| Chambers all live in the same sphere of speculative fiction or
| "sci fi" if you like that is in complete opposition to Clark,
| Weir and others which have dominated the genre for a long time
| now. These stories are less about some interesting imaginary
| application of physics or the unknown in a vast mechanistic
| universe and more about how society and individuals relate and
| imagining the infinite ways these two forces can interact. Often
| the backdrop is secondary to the exploration of the characters
| and the society they live in. I think this type of story is
| really fundamental to our progress as a society and we should all
| talk more about these authors and the stories they told/tell. It
| makes me happy to see Le Guin talked about, critiqued and praised
| on HN today.
|
| I think this is the talk where Le Guin talks about the continuity
| of this type of story telling and contrasts it with hard sci fi.
| Definitely worth a listen IMO.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5PI1xwT2-74
| FredPret wrote:
| On the topic of alternative systems - Daniel Suarez wrote the
| excellent two books Daemon and Freedom (TM).
|
| MINOR SPOILER
|
| It describes an AI / algorithmic form of government that
| probably would never work but is interesting to think about and
| makes for great fiction
| MeImCounting wrote:
| Well really I think that technology and societal/economic
| structures are deeply related in ways that dont necessarily
| get enough consideration in many discussions on the topic.
| For instance our current most successful form of capitalism
| is enabled primarily by the technologies created in the
| industrial revolution allowing shipping of goods and services
| long distances. We have seen it change rapidly and deeply as
| we developed telephony and computers and I suspect as new and
| better forms of communication and transportation evolve we
| will see further evolution of the basic system.
|
| Unknown technologies or applications of the future will
| likely cause further evolution and possibly revolution in how
| we structure our economic and social structures and I think
| its both fascinating and important to think and talk about
| these things!
|
| My pet favorite is the anarchic utopia of the Culture from
| Ian M Banks' Culture novels. Obviously impossible without the
| near infinite processing, energy and matter resources enabled
| by the Minds and the Ships they control but still fun to
| think about (and even aspire to value-wise in many cases IMO)
| muffinman26 wrote:
| Do you have any modern authors beyond Chambers that you would
| recommend? Chambers is one of my all-time favorites.
| hotdogscout wrote:
| The credentialism that permeates discussion in Bolshevik adjacent
| circles annoys me deeply.
|
| Famous political authors that sold a lot of books don't bring any
| more credentials to an idea than if I said something in a 4chan
| post. Argue with the ideas you got from the author, don't keep
| using them like a religious figure!
|
| So many comments here are just quoting things without pondering
| if it's bullshit. Sometimes it is!
|
| For irony and fun here's a quote from PhD dropout Natalie Wynn:
|
| There's also a certain amount of genuine leftist bullshit passing
| itself off as scholarship. I was once in a comparative literature
| seminar that I foolishly took in the hopes of getting to read
| something written with a decent prose style, or at least
| something by an emotionally competent human being. Boy was I
| disappointed when on the first day the professor made two
| allusions to "my good friend Derrida." Those are quotation marks
| around "my good friend" because he mentioned that Derrida was his
| friend every time it came up. Pass the cyanide, honey.
|
| Anyway, the low point of this guy's endless, beginningless,
| argument-free impromptu lectures came when he baldly asserted
| that the poetry of Milton had a direct influence on the workings
| of ISIS. Yes, this would be John Milton, the 17th century English
| poet, and ISIS, the contemporary Syrian terrorist organization.
| And what evidence did the professor adduce in support of this
| outrageous claim? None whatso-fucking-ever. And the other grad
| students in the room just sat there nodding knowingly, taking
| notes like a bunch of sycophants. No one raised their hand, no
| one said, "Excuse me professor, but what in Jesus' name are you
| fucking talking about?" I didn't even say anything. I had no
| spine!
|
| The only explanation I can think of for this was that the
| professor had this reflexive hatred of himself, of English
| literature, of basically all of Western culture, and so he had to
| hallucinate that Islamic terrorism is in some way the outcome of
| over-zealously reading Paradise Lost.
|
| I guess this is what being good friends with Derrida does to you.
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2024-04-04 23:01 UTC)