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
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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
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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
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Replying to @arthur_affect @iridienne and
And (this is a VERY Daoist theme) - society made Orr and shaped what he can dream
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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!"
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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.
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Replying to @nberlat @arthur_affect and
looking "a bit" like activists isn't much of an argument he's her comment on activism, though.
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Replying to @zhinxy_vs_media @arthur_affect and
He looks a lot like caricatures of activists, and there are no activists in this world to compare him to. So it seems reasonable to wonder what that says re her ideas about changing society.
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Replying to @nberlat @zhinxy_vs_media and
Like, our dreams are limited, bu my the limits have meaning, and here and in omegas part of the impossible dream is apparently that ppl like MLK exist.
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Replying to @nberlat @zhinxy_vs_media and
Haber's first big dream literally eliminates MLK from history I mean, this is extremely explicit in the story It's Heather's whole backstory -- her mom and dad met organizing for SNCC, her parents got together because of her white dad's efforts at performative allyship
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She exists because of the hope of racial reconciliation through empathy and hard work and her parents split up and her childhood was rocked by how that hope failed She is profoundly shaped by her anger and bitterness over that failure
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Replying to @arthur_affect @nberlat and
Orr loves her for that, for her anger and her cynicism that existed in contrast to the deep and abiding hope that still got her through every day In his mind, she embodies that same contradiction in American history So when that history goes away, she winks out too
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Replying to @arthur_affect @nberlat and
This is seriously a very important, very major part of the book and this critique comes across like you skimmed over it
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End of conversation
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