#Authority begets authority. Left to its own devices, authority will swallow up entire societies and everything in them.

Introduce "just a small amount" of authority, and it will create more authority to preserve its own existence, which will create more authority to create its own existence, which will create more...

An authority structure cannot be checked by anything from within the structure. Such a "check" would threaten the continued existence of the authority, while requiring the authority in order to function. They must be dismantled by the parts of the #society that they have not yet incorporated into themselves.

The hierarchies of our lives have hold of a great many aspects of our society, but not quite everything. They hide it well, often in plain sight, while attacking and threatening it with all their might. They meet #resistance every step of the way, and sometimes the resistance wins. We need to find these places and hold fast to them.

I don't believe that it's possible to totally and permanently eradicate #hierarchy. But I do believe that it's possible for anarchist #revolution to succeed, to reclaim society from hierarchy, to live free from its grasp and flourish as a society like never even imagined before while doing it. But hierarchy will always be a part of our #historical #memory, and its return in new forms will always be a threat to be vigilant of. Even a fully anarchist #world without a single #state or #capitalist #enterprise would still be an evolving, open, revolutionary world, in active defiance of hierarchy, if it is to remain free. This is the message of #TheDispossessed, by #UrsulaKLeGuin.

New literary earrings from Cavatica Boutique on @Etsy , Ursula Le Guin, a Left Hand of Darkness & The Dispossessed book cover. Arrived beautifully wrapped & with wee badge of Left Hand too, lovely touch.

#jewelry #books #livres #ScienceFiction #Etsy #UrsulaLeGuin #LeftHandOfDarkness #TheDispossessed #bookstodon

@nil

Some trivia. Late in life, Le Guin revealed the relationship between "Malafrena" and "The Dispossessed" as literary siblings —she was working on both novels about the same time, cross-pollinating one with the other.

#UrsulaKLeGuin #books #TheDispossessed

#Fantasy I love #UrsulaLeGuin's #TheDispossessed about an #anarchist planet and its moon, a #capitalist planet - not gone on her other books

#7Books - #novels - to know me:
#Ulysses - #JamesJoyce
#MansFate / #LaConditionHumaine - #AndréMalraux
#AnotherCountry - #JamesBaldwin
#MrsDalloway - #VirginiaWoolf
#TheMasterAndMargarita - #MikhailBulgakov
#GravitysRainbow - #ThomasPynchon
#TheDispossessed - #UrsulaKLeGuin
If you asked me tomorrow, this would change. #7bookstoknowme #novels #literature #LitStudies @litstudies

@TheSupercargo I can read any Le Guin and enjoy it. She's such a wordsmith, everything crafted and no superfluous words. But yes, #TheDispossessed and Left Hand of Darkness are masterpieces.

Renault, I have read all her works in the past, and return to one of her historical novels every five years or so, but find her language interactions irritating now. Though The King Must Die series avoids that. But I love being able to live into ancient Athens and philosophical debate, which is why I chose Last of the Wine.

On the #EzraKlein show entitled “Why Do We Work So Damn Much?”, Klein discusses the work of anthropologist #JamesSuzman, who argues that overcoming scarcity does not necessarily make us happy, because happiness is tied to wants, not needs.
This is a great example of how literature is often decades ahead of academia, because it is the central thesis of #UrsulaLeGuin ’s 1974 #ScienceFiction / #Utopian novel #TheDispossessed.

@derek Also that doing your share of #kleggich /‘drudgery’ is a way to show that you’re part of the community and pull your weight. In their courtship: “Shevek was glad he had done his share of kleggich, for Takver was contemptuous of people who evaded physical labor.” #LeGuin #TheDispossessed

Mirene Begiristainen artikulu oso interesgarria Berrian:
#ZientziaFikzioa​k planeta salbatu dezake
https://www.berria.eus/paperekoa/1881/005/002/2021-01-09/zientzia-fikzioak-planeta-salbatu-dezake.htm

Ursula Kroeber Le Guinen #TheDispossessed irakurrita daukat, baina aipatzen dituen gainerakoak ez: #ZirriborroakEtaGero utopien etorkizuna irudikatzen duten hainbat euskal idazleren ipuin laburren bilduma, Marge Piercyren #WomanOnTheEdgeOfTime, Layla Martinezen #UtopíaNoEsUnaIsla...

https://borradoresdelfuturo.net/fabulak/?lang=eu

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Woman_on_the_Edge_of_Time

http://episkaia.org/producto/utopia-no-es-una-isla/

I should read #TheDispossessed again

it's so good

There's a turn in #TheDispossessed where Shevek realises the society of his affluent and welcoming hosts on Urras are masking the harsher realities of the common people. There's a similar transition in The Left Hand of Darkness when Genly is kidnapped and imprisoned.

A fantastic novel, and a thoughtful exploration of what a stable, large-scale anarchocommunist society could look like, including some of the less pretty parts.

The prose itself is just fantastic, and LeGuin does a phenomenal job of conveying the confusion and culture shock of a lifelong anarchist being gently introduced into a capitalist/statist society (did it ever say what type of government A-Io actually had? I can't remember now…).

I was a bit disappointed by the abruptness and placement of the ending, but I think that's typical in books I really enjoy - I always want more.

#TheDispossessed #UrsulaLeGuin #SFFBookClub

There is nothing you can do that profit does not enter into, and fear of loss, and the wish for power. You cannot say good morning without knowing which of you is ‘superior’ to the other, or trying to prove it. You cannot act like a brother to other people, you must manipulate them, or command them, or obey them, or trick them. You cannot touch another person, yet they will not leave you alone. There is no freedom.

#TheDispossessed #UrsulaLeGuin #SFFBookClub

The enduring, the reliable, is a promise made by the human mind.

#TheDispossessed #UrsulaLeGuin #SFFBookClub

It was easy to share when there was enough, even barely enough, to go round. But when there was not enough? Then force entered in; might making right; power, and its tool, violence, and its most devoted ally, the averted eye.

#TheDispossessed #UrsulaLeGuin #SFFBookClub

You can go home again, the General Temporal Theory asserts, so long as you understand that home is a place where you have never been.

#TheDispossessed #UrsulaLeGuin #SFFBookClub​

I love that the toilet is a "shitstool"

#TheDispossessed #UrsulaLeGuin #SFFBookClub