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The Dispossessed (Le Guin)
Um, okay. On rereading this post, I am not actually sure this will be interesting to anyone but me, but this ate my brain until I wrote it down, so I am inflicting it upon you.
Le Guin's recent work, I feel, sometimes has the feel that she's sacrificing a clear eye to Make a Point. Not so in The Dispossessed. The thing that struck me most heavily on reread is the merciless truth of her view of her "ambiguous utopia" of Anarres. It seems clear to me that we are meant to think of the anarchist (-ish) Anarres as superior and capitalist Urras as inferior; and Shevek, the protagonist, certainly thinks so. And Anarres has a number of wonderful things about it. But it is flawed too, and Le Guin does not shrink from enumerating those flaws.
I was very, very impressed by how incredibly spot on Le Guin gets the advantages and disadvantages of Anarres -- because a significant portion of my life is spent in a very Anarres-like setting, and I can attest that she gets it exactly right (so right that either she is extremely good at extrapolating or she lived her own version of Anarres, though clearly not my version).
The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints is an Anarres society, to a very large degree. (And yes, I know Le Guin would be writhing at having her atheistic radical feminist society compared to a super-religious conservative patriarchical one -- yes, there are a lot of differences, of course; I am going to focus on the... emotional feel? That's not quite right, but as close as I'm going to get.) The LDS church is largely a lay organization -- leadership positions are rotated through the congregation, the same way they are rotated through Anarres' society. But there is a central bureaucracy to standardize across the church, the same way Anarres must have a central bureaucracy (e.g., the central computer that does the work postings) to function across the entire society even though it likes to suppose itself an anarchist society.
The good and wonderful things: It's like having a huge extended family. And it is taken for granted that everyone pulls together to get things done. These are most often things like ward dinners or putting out a directory, which in most churches would be handled by an outside agency (it remains weird to me that Dave's church catered a dinner for its 50th anniversary, because a Mormon church would neeeeever do that), and less things like a planet-wide famine, but you can bet your survivalist boots that if there were a large famine, no Mormon would starve even if a bunch of them went somewhat hungry. And it's comforting to have a large base of similarity between you and everyone else in the society.
The not-so-great things: It's hard sometimes to find people who really share your interests. I don't know any physicists from church who live around here. Although there are a couple of people who enjoy reading SF, there's no one at church I talk to about the kinds of things I post here.
The only way this kind of organization can work is by brainwashing, I mean, teaching the children from a very early age as to the superiority of the society. Furthermore, the very language, in both cases, promotes the group construction. The Odonians eschew the possessive case so that people don't think of possessions as theirs. Come to think of it, Mormons do this too, to a lesser extent -- a lot of talk about the law of consecration (the idea, once tried literally (it was a resounding failure), that all one's possessions belong to God), a lot of references to that verse in Malachi about tithes and offerings, people being called "Sister X" and "Brother Y" (you know, writing it like that it sounds awfully fundamentalist weird, but I never even thought about it like that growing up -- it was just what people were called, like you called all women past teen years "Miz Z" (uh, yeah, the South, why do you ask?)), etc.
Such a society is held together by social pressure (reinforced by the early-age teaching). There is a LOT of social pressure to conform to the society and its ideals. This is good when the ideals are good, but it is easy for that social pressure to turn into pressure on cultural things that have really nothing to do with the original ideals of the society (it took me an embarrassingly long time to realize that you could like the Simpsons , even Homer and Bart, and still be a good Mormon, and it took my sister even longer). And that counters one of the main ideas that both Odonians and Mormons believe; as Shevek says, "We fear our neighbor's opinion more than we respect our own freedom of choice."
The bad things: There can be people who exist to serve their own ends, both on the local level and on the global level, and because the society is based on trust that this doesn't happen, these people can do a great deal of damage. There's a reason that every so often there are big scandals about abuse and things in the Mormon church. (This being said, there is a lot more awareness about abuse today, and a heck of a lot more preaching from the pulpit at the highest levels against -- but I wonder how long it would have taken did we not live in an open society where most of the people are not, in fact, Mormon.)
And what happens to the people who question and criticize the society? Well, bear in mind that a large part of how the society is held together is social pressure, and when ordinary social pressure fails, the weight of the society itself comes to bear. Tirin is a disturbing cautionary tale -- his satires questioning Anarres land him in an asylum. Even Shevek, who does not question the tenets of his society, gets a lot of abuse for questioning the execution of them. And in the LDS church -- again, it used to be worse, and probably still would be if we didn't live in an open society... You can be in favor of gay marriage and still be Mormon. But you cannot publicly (Facebook and quasi-anonymous LJ's don't count, but something like Tirin's play would) come out against Church leadership and expect to remain. Of course, thankfully, getting excommunicated from the LDS church is nothing like the level of getting stuck in an asylum.
I don't quite belong in my society, though not the same way as Shevek (issues I don't want to discuss here). Like Shevek, I acknowledge there are flaws. Like Shevek -- and Le Guin -- I still think it's pretty darn awesome, especially when it is done right.
Le Guin's recent work, I feel, sometimes has the feel that she's sacrificing a clear eye to Make a Point. Not so in The Dispossessed. The thing that struck me most heavily on reread is the merciless truth of her view of her "ambiguous utopia" of Anarres. It seems clear to me that we are meant to think of the anarchist (-ish) Anarres as superior and capitalist Urras as inferior; and Shevek, the protagonist, certainly thinks so. And Anarres has a number of wonderful things about it. But it is flawed too, and Le Guin does not shrink from enumerating those flaws.
I was very, very impressed by how incredibly spot on Le Guin gets the advantages and disadvantages of Anarres -- because a significant portion of my life is spent in a very Anarres-like setting, and I can attest that she gets it exactly right (so right that either she is extremely good at extrapolating or she lived her own version of Anarres, though clearly not my version).
The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints is an Anarres society, to a very large degree. (And yes, I know Le Guin would be writhing at having her atheistic radical feminist society compared to a super-religious conservative patriarchical one -- yes, there are a lot of differences, of course; I am going to focus on the... emotional feel? That's not quite right, but as close as I'm going to get.) The LDS church is largely a lay organization -- leadership positions are rotated through the congregation, the same way they are rotated through Anarres' society. But there is a central bureaucracy to standardize across the church, the same way Anarres must have a central bureaucracy (e.g., the central computer that does the work postings) to function across the entire society even though it likes to suppose itself an anarchist society.
The good and wonderful things: It's like having a huge extended family. And it is taken for granted that everyone pulls together to get things done. These are most often things like ward dinners or putting out a directory, which in most churches would be handled by an outside agency (it remains weird to me that Dave's church catered a dinner for its 50th anniversary, because a Mormon church would neeeeever do that), and less things like a planet-wide famine, but you can bet your survivalist boots that if there were a large famine, no Mormon would starve even if a bunch of them went somewhat hungry. And it's comforting to have a large base of similarity between you and everyone else in the society.
The not-so-great things: It's hard sometimes to find people who really share your interests. I don't know any physicists from church who live around here. Although there are a couple of people who enjoy reading SF, there's no one at church I talk to about the kinds of things I post here.
The only way this kind of organization can work is by brainwashing, I mean, teaching the children from a very early age as to the superiority of the society. Furthermore, the very language, in both cases, promotes the group construction. The Odonians eschew the possessive case so that people don't think of possessions as theirs. Come to think of it, Mormons do this too, to a lesser extent -- a lot of talk about the law of consecration (the idea, once tried literally (it was a resounding failure), that all one's possessions belong to God), a lot of references to that verse in Malachi about tithes and offerings, people being called "Sister X" and "Brother Y" (you know, writing it like that it sounds awfully fundamentalist weird, but I never even thought about it like that growing up -- it was just what people were called, like you called all women past teen years "Miz Z" (uh, yeah, the South, why do you ask?)), etc.
Such a society is held together by social pressure (reinforced by the early-age teaching). There is a LOT of social pressure to conform to the society and its ideals. This is good when the ideals are good, but it is easy for that social pressure to turn into pressure on cultural things that have really nothing to do with the original ideals of the society (it took me an embarrassingly long time to realize that you could like the Simpsons , even Homer and Bart, and still be a good Mormon, and it took my sister even longer). And that counters one of the main ideas that both Odonians and Mormons believe; as Shevek says, "We fear our neighbor's opinion more than we respect our own freedom of choice."
The bad things: There can be people who exist to serve their own ends, both on the local level and on the global level, and because the society is based on trust that this doesn't happen, these people can do a great deal of damage. There's a reason that every so often there are big scandals about abuse and things in the Mormon church. (This being said, there is a lot more awareness about abuse today, and a heck of a lot more preaching from the pulpit at the highest levels against -- but I wonder how long it would have taken did we not live in an open society where most of the people are not, in fact, Mormon.)
And what happens to the people who question and criticize the society? Well, bear in mind that a large part of how the society is held together is social pressure, and when ordinary social pressure fails, the weight of the society itself comes to bear. Tirin is a disturbing cautionary tale -- his satires questioning Anarres land him in an asylum. Even Shevek, who does not question the tenets of his society, gets a lot of abuse for questioning the execution of them. And in the LDS church -- again, it used to be worse, and probably still would be if we didn't live in an open society... You can be in favor of gay marriage and still be Mormon. But you cannot publicly (Facebook and quasi-anonymous LJ's don't count, but something like Tirin's play would) come out against Church leadership and expect to remain. Of course, thankfully, getting excommunicated from the LDS church is nothing like the level of getting stuck in an asylum.
I don't quite belong in my society, though not the same way as Shevek (issues I don't want to discuss here). Like Shevek, I acknowledge there are flaws. Like Shevek -- and Le Guin -- I still think it's pretty darn awesome, especially when it is done right.