#“[Their] power seems inescapable. So did the divine right of kings.”

[hopeworth]

SUN COMING UP ON A DREAM COME AROUND ONE HUNDRED YEARS FROM THE EMPIRE NOW SUN COMING UP ON A WORLD THAT’S EASY NOW ONE HUNDRED YEARS FROM NOW ONE HUNDRED YEARS FROM NOW

[eleanor-arroway]

“The job is the unquestioned goal for all free citizens of the world – the ultimate public good. It is the clearly stated exit goal of all education and the only sanctioned reason for acquiring knowledge. But if we think about it for a moment, jobs are not what we want. We want shelter, food, strong relationships, a livable habitat, stimulating learning activity, and time to perform valued tasks in which we excel. I don’t know of many jobs that will allow access to more than two or three of those things at a time, unless you have a particularly benevolent owner or employer.

I am often told that I should be grateful for the progress that Western civilization has brought to these shores. I am not. This life of work-or-die is not an improvement on preinvasion living, which involved only a few hours of work a day for shelter and sustenance, performing tasks that people do now for leisure activities on their yearly vacations: fishing, collecting plants, hunting, camping, and so forth. The rest of the day was for fun, strengthening relationships, ritual and ceremony, cultural expression, intellectual pursuits, and the expert crafting of exceptional objects. I know this is true because I have lived like this, even in this era where the land is only a pale shadow of the abundance that once was. We have been lied to about the “harsh survival” lifestyles of the past. There was nothing harsh about it. If it was so harsh – such a brutish, menial struggle for existence – then we would not have evolved to become the delicate, intelligent creatures that we are.”

- Tyson Yunkaporta, Sand Talk: How Indigenous Thinking Can Save The World

[goatbeard-goatbeard]

Thinking about how Adam Young made War, Famine, and Pollution vulnerable by saying they’re not real, that they’re just like nightmares. Maybe that wasn’t true before he said it.

Thinking about how there’s a pattern of treating these things as powerful forces outside our control (gods, horsemen, unavoidable outcomes of natural laws). But then we figure out what we’re doing to make them happen, and that gives us the ability to modify them. Calling them human-made makes them so.

[clonerightsagenda]

You shall not outlast the beast. Even the great and ruined world may not see a future beyond its trembling footfalls. But it will die. Its writhing throes will be abominable, aggrieved, and monstrous. The worst of times may be yet to come. It will devour every servant - no matter how loyal - in its long centuries of final desperation. It will curse every witness - no matter how compliant - in its long years of final spite. But it will die, and its rot will sink into the soil, and if we are very fortunate in the future to come, a future we cannot see beyond the stomach of the beast’s final devourings, some tainted but brave new form may grow outside of its desolation- -and as it perishes, the thrusts of your spear will be one bold, dark scar amongst the innumerable wounds that killed it. Your life’s work will be one teeming page in the book of its final reckoning. It will die, our great and terrible beast. Because in the end it was only another animal. We know this, because it hungers. And so one day it must perish.

has the Cairn Maiden been reading Ursula K Le Guin quotes

[secondhandbagofholding]

"It has been brought to my attention that some Americans are actually cheering for the gunman who killed Grand Duke B. T. , and that they are saying this is a warning to all Grand Dukes. What these people fail to understand is that without Grand Dukes, the world would not be able to function, and as Grand Dukes, we are responsible for the delicate balancing act of generating wealth and power for Their Royal Highnesses while also ensuring that Their Royal Highnesses are able to maintain their personal wealth and power even in spite the typical low gentry laziness and greed of petty lordships and their serfs. America will be destitute without us."

Some things never change...

That is, at least, until we decide they need to.

[overthemushroomcave]

I just miss being 12 and having enough space in my pre internet knowing mind to create just for the sake of giving something life, without the notion of monetization or growing your socials. Idk if there's any coming back to that, maybe gotta wait til I'm 70 and for all this competitive facades to fall (hopefully)

[alpaca-clouds]

My dear American friends,

I know today is a day that might feel incredibly dark, given a fascist is once more crowned President of the United States. But I want you to remember that in the end fascism is always a sign of capitalism failing.

Back in the 1940s, when Nazi Germany fell, the mistake made - in which the US played a big role - was not only letting Capitalism stay in effect, but pushing for more capitalism.

Capitalism is a leftover to this day of the noble hierarchies, that started to be dismantled after the French Revolution. Certain nobles back in the day hedged the rather brilliant plan back in the day to push for capitalism and meritocracy, knowing fully well that they - with their ancient riches - could no fail in that system. They would still be nobles, just by another title. And those old nobles will cling to this power, until they are disposed off.

But please remember this wonderful quote by Ursula K. LeGuin.

We live in capitalism, its power seems inescapable — but then, so did the divine right of kings. Any human power can be resisted and changed by human beings.

We already get rid of kings and the system of nobility. We can do it again.

And just on related news: Tomorrow, the 21st, is the 232nd Anniversary of the execution of the French King Louis XVI. Ending a system is possible.

[setfaderstostun]

"Books aren’t just commodities; the profit motive is often in conflict with the aims of art. We live in capitalism, its power seems inescapable — but then, so did the divine right of kings. Any human power can be resisted and changed by human beings. Resistance and change often begin in art. Very often in our art, the art of words." Ursula K LeGuin

[thebrainofmae]

thinking about how hadestown said No answer will be heard to the question no one asks, so I’m asking if it’s true [what they say], and how black sails said If no one remembers a time before there was an England, then no one can imagine a time after it and how Ursula Le Guin said We live in capitalism, its power seems inescapable — but then, so did the divine right of kings and how fat ham said We just gotta…uh…commit./Why though?/Cause this is a tragedy. We tragic./I’m not and how hadestown said the kingdom will fall for a song and how black sails said They paint the world full of shadows and then tell their children to stay close to the light. Their light. Their reasons, their judgments. Because in the darkness, there be dragons. But it isn't true. We can prove that it isn't true and most of all how Hadestown said It’s a tragedy. But we sing it anyway.

[radical-revolution]

We live in capitalism, its power seems inescapable – but then, so did the divine right of kings.

— Ursula K. Le Guin

[the-local-bohg-witch]

honestly all I can say on the election is that we just have to keep going. I know it feels impossible, but the fight against fascism always has. If we give up, they win. Take a breather now, if you in the us stock up on essentials and have a plan in place, but do not give up. I'm thinking a lot about history and what has happened in the past, and the thing is, marginalized people have always survived through so much horror. We can't fail that legacy with giving up now. Find your community, talk to you neighbours, get a library card, stand up in every way you can. Both to fight for the future and to have some hope. I think of the quote by Ursula K. Le Guin "We live in capitalism, its power seems inescapable — but then, so did the divine right of kings. Any human power can be resisted and changed by human beings. Resistance and change often begin in art." we have to have faith that we can fix things, other wise we never will I love you all <3 take care of yourself and the people around you

[astercontrol]

narrator of "Those who Walk Away from Omelas": people in Omelas are happy

narrator: not simple. still a complex society. not claiming they're perfect. don't know exactly what they're like, just that they're happier than us.

narrator: we have a bad habit of considering happiness as something rather stupid

narrator: (continues into one of the longest paragraphs I have ever seen, all about postulating possible ways the happy society of Omelas could be structured. Periodically breaks the fourth wall, to check in with the reader about whether they consider it plausible now)

narrator: (seems to realize that the reader still isn't buying it, because we're still hampered by our view of happiness as "something rather stupid." Realizes our minds are still going, "can't be real, it's too good")

narrator: (introduces the whole child-torture plot element)

narrator: (devotes rest of story to insisting that the child torture is absolutely necessary to the happiness of the people)

narrator: (never explains a single detail of how or why. Makes absolutely sure that this element of the story, practically speaking, is much more implausible than anything else suggested so far.)

readers: (come out of this story, inevitably, with our minds focused on the idea that a good, happy society necessarily requires some people's suffering… and perhaps on the question, "is this really true?")

Author of "Those who Walk Away from Omelas": (also said, "We live in capitalism, its power seems inescapable — but then, so did the divine right of kings. Any human power can be resisted and changed by human beings.")

readers: yeah… good life impossible; suffering inevitable. that's what the story's about. :-(

[eleanor-arroway]

He tried to read an elementary economics text; it bored him past endurance, it was like listening to somebody interminably recounting a long and stupid dream. He could not force himself to understand how banks functioned and so forth, because all the operations of capitalism were as meaningless to him as the rites of a primitive religion, as barbaric, as elaborate, and as unnecessary.

Ursula K. Le Guin, The Dispossessed

[librarycards]

Nobody would dare to boil down Ursula Le Guin’s marvelous writing—all that fantasy, all that science fiction, poetry, essays, translations—into one idea. But in a pinch I’d pick two sentences from her 2014 National Book Award speech: “Capitalism[’s] power seems inescapable. So did the divine right of kings.” Fantasy and science fiction never meant escapism for Ursula Le Guin. The dragons of Earthsea and the reimagined genders of The Left Hand of Darkness were always lenses, lenses she ground in order to sharpen her readers’ focus on everyday life. Indeed, for Le Guin, there was no difference between the stories she invented and everyday stories about the institutions governing our world. The dragons of Earthsea and capitalism are woven from similar material: it is imagination all the way down. James Baldwin said not everything that can be faced can be changed, but nothing can be changed without being faced. The word for facing things in Le Guin is recognition, or you might even say re-cognition. Her characters—and readers—find themselves forced to think again. When they do so, what had seemed a fundamental truth about their universe turns out to be anything but. [...] Here is what I learned from Le Guin: Imagination is a beautiful and a shadowy builder. Over the generations, it supplied language, gods, music, arts, pretty much everything we sum up as culture. But imagination’s power comes at a familiar price: all power corrupts. Looking at those delightful surfaces painted onto the world by past acts of imagination, it can become hard to catch sight of what is really there, underneath. The philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein has a wonderful phrase: “a picture held us captive.” It applied to divine right of kings at one time, and may apply now to capitalism. Ending a picture’s captivity involves cracking common sense, and that is where some of my favorite writers come in. Jane Austen’s wit helped her readers peer beneath the surface of Regency England’s marriage market; Mark Twain’s Huck Finn tore aside the racial lies of 19th century America. During the Nixon era, Le Guin’s fantasy and her science fiction did the same: she pushed aside captivating pictures and let the light shine in. Then she returned to Earthsea decades later and did it all over again.

John Plotz, Dragons Are People Too: Ursula Le Guin’s Acts of Recognition.

[nicolegendary]

we live in a top!eddie/bottom!buck fandom majority and its power seems inescapable. but then, so did the divine right of kings

[palatinewolfsblog]

"We live in capitalism.

Its power seems inescapable.

So did the divine right of kings.

Any human power can be resisted and changed by human beings.

Resistance and change often begin in art,

and very often in our art, the art of words."

- Ursula K. Le Guin, US-american Author and "Activist of the Imagination".