Ursula K. Le Guin accepts the National Book Foundation's Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters at the 65th National Book Awards on Novembe...
Yeah generally that’s the case. Personally, I don’t see any fundamental problem with empowering individuals, but I look at it from Maslov’s hierarchy of needs perspective. Once we make sure everybody’s basic needs are taken care of, then we can start worrying about maximizing personal freedoms. Anarchists generally only tend to care about the top end of the pyramid, and often it’s because they have their needs largely met already.
I don’t know if she was actually a practicing anarchist but she had a pretty interesting take on it IMO:
My novel ‘The Dispossessed’ is about a small world full of people who call themselves Odonians. The name is taken from the founder of their society, Odo, who lived several generations before the time of the novel, and who therefore doesn’t get into the action - except implicitly, in that all the action started with her.
Odonianism is anarchism. Not the bomb-in-the-pocket stuff, which is terrorism, whatever name it tries to dignify itself with, not the social Darwinist economic ‘libertarianism’ of the far right, but anarchism as pre- figured in early Taoist thought, and expounded by Shelley and Kropotkin, Goldman and Goodman. Anarchism’s principal target is the authoritarian state (capitalist or socialist); its principal moral-practical theme is cooperation (solidarity, mutual aid). It is the most idealistic, and to me the most interesting, of all political theories.
Too bad she was an anarchist…
Anarchists do have solid critiques of capitalism, it’s when it comes to solutions when things get shall we say questionable.
Honestly, their critiques of capitalism stems from their individualism.
Yeah generally that’s the case. Personally, I don’t see any fundamental problem with empowering individuals, but I look at it from Maslov’s hierarchy of needs perspective. Once we make sure everybody’s basic needs are taken care of, then we can start worrying about maximizing personal freedoms. Anarchists generally only tend to care about the top end of the pyramid, and often it’s because they have their needs largely met already.
Fair enough.
I don’t know if she was actually a practicing anarchist but she had a pretty interesting take on it IMO:
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Oh, I didn’t even see how old the thread was. It just showed up in my feed somehow. My bad.