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One of the greatest sci-fi authors.
One of the greatest fantasy authors
Los dos!
thanks for sharing. I’ve been feeling pretty hopeless lately and this helped me today
Feel free to chill around here. I’m all about uplifting peeps!
I mean I hear you but the top three posts talk to a depressing dystopian present. Even this one reminds us of our past and current oppression.
I trust many find comfort in these memes but all I see is reminders of a world I don’t like.
Hey, if you read theory, it becomes obvious that Capitalism is unsustainable! Either we all die, or the future will move beyond it!
Remember, it took the black death and like 1/2 the population dying to bring about this change
I mean the black death was like 450 years before the French revolution… I think it just took some angry French people for change
On top of a depressed economy from endless war and poor management of state funds, the details of the lives of nobles started to get published for just anyone to read which was unprecedented. Although no single thing can be attributed to causing the revolution, I think that just learning about how the nobility lived really put a difficult situation over the top for them.
If anything I think our societal problem is that everyone remembers what happened to Robespierre.
Divine right of kings simply morphed into capitalism. We didn’t get rid of jack shit, and we never will.
Feudalism is entirely different from Capitalism, which is entirely different from Socialism. Class dynamics have changed, and will change.
Feudalism is entirely different from Capitalism
Not really, no. Even though feudalism doesn’t consider greed and resource hoarding inherently virtuous like capitalism does, both are at their core about the few rich and powerful exploiting and abusing the many poor and powerless through ownership of the necessities for life and a greater capacity for violence.
Both are class societies, yes. Both are fundamentally different relations of classes.
There are differences, yes, but they’re built on the same foundation and as such by definition NOT fundamentally different.
They don’t have the same foundation. Aristocrat/serf dynamics are entirely different from Bourgeois/Proletarian relations.
Reading Marx would help you.
Aristocrat/serf dynamics are entirely different from Bourgeois/Proletarian relations.
They most certainly aren’t.
Reading Marx would help you.
I have. Guess what: he wasn’t right about everything.
Serfs have a certified existence, they do not sell their labor in a market. They work their land, without participating in Capitalism.
Proletarians do not have a certified existence. They compete against each other in a labor market.
The difference is stark despite both being working classes.
Capitalism is like Fuedalism in a trenchcoat
It’s a fundamentally different stage of class society with fundamentally different mechanics.
Fundamentally different? Lords are still in control, just now we call them “Billionaires” and act like the “Market” protects us.
Unlike serfs, workers must compete with each other as well as Capitalists. The Market protects nobody but the interests of Capital.
I agree These systems both emerged from inherent humanity, not conspiracy.
That would make sense for capitalism, if humanity didn’t have to have its permanent, essential characteristics beaten, traumatised and groomed out of them with land seizures, branding, whipping, workhouses, schools, prisons, debtors prisons, being forced to sell their children, slavery and the threat of homelessness and starvation for hundreds of years.
People didn’t just accept either of those two systems and there’s nothing remotely inherent about them. They were both forced on people through violence or the threat of it.
.They were both forced on people through violence or the threat of it.
And so is revealed the violence inherent to the system.
“inherent humanity” - what a magical term. you might have a magical worldview! which means you won’t even recognize this as an insult, which is sad, but a little funny.
I can recognise nonsense when I see it, and viewpoints based on assumptions rather than evidence.
Not to piss in the lemonade, but some places still have the divine right of kings.
If Charles is the divine choice, why did he get cancer?
God changed his mind 💀
Bro wants a refund
The point is that societies could progress past it, that it’s not inescapable.
So the fact that there are still absolute monarchies does not invalidate that societies that are better are possible, like most of our societies today.
Every empire seems unassailable and eternal, until it doesn’t. The USSR seemed like it will last beyond our lifetimes, until it didn’t.
I’ve only read two books of Le Guin’s, and they were both memorable:
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Word_for_World_Is_Forest
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Dispossessed
The second one is more relevant to this meme.
Absolutely 100% run (don’t walk!) and get The Left Hand of Darkness. It is easily one of the best sci-fi/fantasy books I have ever read.
I just finished it two days ago. I agree completely.
I will caution people that because of the writing style the beginning of the book (at least to me) is a bit disorienting. It takes a minute to find her rhythm.
The Dispossessed had been in my backlog for a while now. I really need to get to it.
I just finished the dispossessed. Didn’t find it as compelling as reviews had me hoping. The sci-fi depiction of anarchism wasn’t flattering and the main character wasn’t easy to like either.
Spoiler and trigger alert: I put the book down for a while after he sexually assaulted a woman, but eventually finished it and wasn’t impressed by the ending or by the fact that his assault was glossed over and not mentioned again.
Yes, that’s a fair assessment. It’s not an enjoyable book and to some extent isn’t meant to be – the cover of the version I read said something about an “ambiguous utopia,” the story structure is pretty far from a Campbellian Hero’s Journey, and the main character is not relatable. The book is more memorable than enjoyable.
Funny this cropped up, I just finished The Left Hand of Darkness two days ago. Very good book with some beautiful prose.
It was the first Le Guin book I’ve read. I’ll be reading more.
I met a traveller from an antique land,
Who said—“Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. . . . Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed;
And on the pedestal, these words appear:
My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings;
Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal Wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.”
Shelley’s Poetry and Prose (1977)
Capitalism doesn’t even work in the US prices ate kept high
I’m trying to parse your sentence. Can you use punctuation?
Capitalism doesn’t even work in the US. Prices are kept high.
Thank you!
God this website is worse then reddit ever was with people like you.
What’s wrong with asking for punctuation?
If you don’t understand what someone says, you should ask for clarification instead of making assumptions.
I wonder why a site built by Marxist-Leninists to answer the failings of Capitalist Reddit due to the profit motive has a bunch of anti-Capitalists. Who knows?
They’re replying to the person asking for punctuation, not the one talking about capitalism in the US.
Kings had nothing on capitalism. You could overthrow a king.
You can overthrow Capitalism, it weakens itself.
Easier to kill a man than an idea.
The problem is that this time we’ve likely got a few decades at the most to form a movement before a huge chunk of the world becomes uninhabitable and society crumbles under the weight of war and famine.
Looking at how things are going, I have little hope that the majority of people are willing to let go of the status quo.
We live in the most peaceful time in all of human history. It’s bad but not that bad.
I agree with the sentiment and also wonder if she’s still ferociously pro-copyright?
She passed away in 2018. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ursula_K._Le_Guin
She died about 6 years ago
Oh wow, I had no idea. Thank you for telling me.
So, to be clear, it’s rather unlikely that she’s still fiercely pro-copyright.
Bruh she died
and look where that got kings, EATEN
great quote from an amazing author.
any idea why the image saves a .json?
Is this quote from The Dispossessed? Or another of her many works?
Thanks! What a great speech! Her voice shines through as always
the thought process has just been replaced with nepo baby billionaires who think they are special because they were shit out of the right vagina.
What do you propose exactly?
Anarchism, naturally.
Swoon
