Le Guin was not a friend to gee-whiz futurism of the kind that characterized old-school Golden Age science fiction (just as Ayn Rand honestly was kind of an ultimate reductio ad absurdum of that mindset) Haber in Lathe of Heaven is kind of an avatar of that ideology
-
-
Replying to @arthur_affect @iridienne and
And just in terms of his personality he embodies what's repulsive about it He's just such a douche He's gets so *annoyed* whenever you bring up a child in the closet in Omelas "Fuck you, who says there has to be one? Dream bigger man"
2 replies 0 retweets 8 likes -
Replying to @arthur_affect @iridienne and
"If I had a dream machine, I would simply imagine a second City of Omelas, inside the closet, and therefore that Child would not be suffering but be happy And then assuming there was a smaller closet with a smaller Child, I would address the infinite regress with Cantorian sets"
1 reply 0 retweets 7 likes -
Replying to @arthur_affect @iridienne and
I do think about the wacky fact that all the new worlds created in The Lathe of Heaven are literally inside Orr's mind That there's one reading of the story where literally nothing is happening but Orr having a dying hallucination after a nuclear war
1 reply 0 retweets 9 likes -
Replying to @arthur_affect @iridienne and
Le Guin is careful not to say anything about the objective external universe in The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas It's not the *world* that says the Child has to exist, it's not God who says it, it's not "natural law" It's *you*, it's *your imagination* that can't handle it
1 reply 0 retweets 8 likes -
Replying to @arthur_affect @iridienne and
The reason Haber's dream machine keeps on fucking up and not actually making the perfect utopia Haber carefully programmed into it is the machine doesn't do the dreaming George Orr's brain does the dreaming The world can only be as perfect as Orr can imagine it being
3 replies 0 retweets 9 likes -
Replying to @arthur_affect @iridienne and
And (this is a VERY Daoist theme) - society made Orr and shaped what he can dream
1 reply 0 retweets 5 likes -
Replying to @zhinxy_vs_media @arthur_affect and
To come back around to my biggest issue with Noah's piece - Haber is NOT an "activist." Haber does not agitate for change in his society. Haber has dreams of heroism, sure. But only when a magic dude who can change reality falls in his lap does he go "I can make shit happen!"
1 reply 0 retweets 5 likes -
Replying to @zhinxy_vs_media @arthur_affect and
There aren’t any activists though in that world. Haber looks a bit like caricatures if activists I think. Like, he’s not MLK, but ppl said MLK was like him, and LeGuon doesn’t contest him with actual activists, but with perfect balance George.
4 replies 0 retweets 1 like -
Replying to @nberlat @zhinxy_vs_media and
Heather is explicitly the child of two activists, whose life has been deeply shaped by the legacy of civil rights activism and who considers herself steeped in that tradition
2 replies 0 retweets 2 likes
The first and biggest "unwanted side effect" of Haber's utopian dreaming is when Haber's high-handed decision to simply wish away the concept of racism and race erases Heather completely Her personal history was so tied up in that history that without it she ceases to be
-
-
Replying to @arthur_affect @nberlat and
Again, a potentially very hamfisted metaphor and one best dealt with with a light touch (the problematic implications of this are, in a sense, addressed by the decision to have George "dream bigger" in a subsequent dream and somehow, unexpectedly, bring her back)
1 reply 0 retweets 2 likes -
Replying to @arthur_affect @nberlat and
But the idea is powerful if you don't push it too much Simply *wishing* that oppression didn't exist does not constitute fighting against oppression It is, quite literally, erasure of the people who live in that oppression and whose identities were shaped by it
1 reply 0 retweets 3 likes - Show replies
New conversation -
Loading seems to be taking a while.
Twitter may be over capacity or experiencing a momentary hiccup. Try again or visit Twitter Status for more information.