November 2, 2024

Am I into anarchism?

I think so. Thank Urusula Le Guin and her novel The Dispossessed. Here are passages that capture the two planets of comparison:

Odo wrote: “A child free from the guilt of ownership and the burden of economic competition will grow up with the will to do what needs doing and the capacity for joy in doing it. It is useless work that darkens the heart."

[...] There was an undercurrent of joy, in that sense, in Abbenay that summer. There was a lightheartedness at work however hard the work, a readiness to drop all care as soon as what could be done had been done. The old tag of “solidarity” had come alive again. There is exhilaration in finding that the bond is stronger, after all, than all that tries the bond. (247)

vs.

Everyone was very polite and talked a great deal, but not about anything interesting; and they smiled so much they looked anxious. But their clothes were gorgeous, indeed they seemed to put all the lightheartedness their manner lacked into their clothes, and their food, and all the different things they drank, and the lavish furnishings and ornaments of the rooms in the palaces where the receptions were held. (83)