The dangerous philosophy of Ursula Le Guin

we live in capitalism its power seems inescapable so did the divine right of kings any human power can be resisted and changed by human beings resistance and change often begin in art very often in our heart the art of words [Applause] among the most acclaimed and respected science fiction writers of the 20th century a best-selling author in 40 languages multiple winner of the Hugo and nebula Awards and inspiration to Generations who have followed her here in the 21st century Le Guin has become something more than a beloved author she has become an icon she may be the only classic Sci-fi writer to regularly trend on Twitter's one of my favorite authors science fiction is the art that builds worlds in her science fiction stories Ursula Le Guin didn't just tell us a better world was possible she showed us better Worlds by building them in the imagination of generations worlds where life is fairer more equal and more just at this point in time when a better world seems to be slipping through our fingers I want to understand the better worlds that Ursula Le Guin showed us I want to dig down to the big ideas that shaped Le guin's storytelling I want to understand not just Ursula Le Guin the Sci-Fi writer but Ursula Le Guin the philosopher through the medium of sci-fi and fantasy Ursula Le Guin spoke a powerful philosophy a philosophy that shows us how the art of words can resist and change the world in which human imagination our ideas and feelings our dreams and visions and the Very Stories We Tell have the power to shape reality it's a philosophy of immense power the power to build worlds and the power to destroy them wait wait wait right there we're talking about a kissy author the lady who rode those dragon books right well you might be confusing the subject of this Essay with Anne McCaffrey or janiolin or any of the intelligent sci-fi and fantasy writers who have created beautiful and politically relevant stories for children if you mean to change the world where better to start than the dreams of the young Ursula Le guin's career stretched over six decades but the work she remains most famous for and that we're going to be thinking about here were created in a brief few years between 1968 and 1974. think of these as Le guin's Bob Dylan years when she created the tunes most of us still hum along to that's not to reduce the rest of Le guin's career but here we're thinking about the core philosophy of Le Guin her big Ideas you don't need to have read these books to follow this and we won't be spoiling them in fact we're not going to be talking about most of what's special about these stories not the quality of Le guin's writing or her poetic imagery we're just going to find the big ideas that are the philosophy of Ursula Le Guin to do that we're going to name check a number of famed philosophers you don't need to know who Emmanuel Kant is have read Hegel or any of the German idealists but if you want to go deeper into philosophy I recommend the channel of Professor Michael sugru as an excellent guide if things get a bit too abstract and confusing along the way just hang on we'll try to bring it all together at the end okay the left hand of Darkness published in 1969 the lathe of Heaven 1971 and the dispossessed 1974 defined Le Guin as a science fiction author in a unique achievement Le Guin simultaneously wrote and published a fantasy trilogy The Wizard of Earth sea 1968 the tombs of echuan 1970 and the farthest Shore 1972. and for good measure in 1973 Le Guin published the ones who walk away from amilas one of the most famous science fiction stories ever published what kind of music do you usually have here oh we got both cards we got country and western science fiction surely omolas is a fantasy story Le Guin was one of many authors who saw Science Fiction and Fantasy as flip sides of the same coin all fiction is metaphor science fiction is metaphor Le Guin argues in her introduction to the left hand of Darkness but metaphor for what keep that question in mind on our journey to understand Le guin's writing and her philosophy we need to place her in context as a woman writer working in the male dominated field of American Science Fiction of the late 1960s but the women on your planet are logical that's the only planet in this galaxy that can make that claim a machine does not care Tom Godwin the cold equations the cold equations 1954 is a science fiction story Ursula Le Guin would have read when she was a young writer and fan of Amazing Stories magazine it tells of a young woman who stows away on a spacecraft but the ship only has fuel for its Mission so the cold equations of reality dictates the girl must be blown out of the airlock it's widely believed that while the story was offered by Tom Godwin it's rather incredible ending the young woman willingly accepts her sacrifice was dictated by the legendary editor of Amazing Stories magazine John W Campbell Campbell shaped the field of American Science Fiction which grew up in the pulp magazines of the early 20th century around the idea of stories that extrapolate to current science into the future Campbell formalized the label science fiction to describe such stories the cold equations exemplifies cambelly and sci-fi that sees reality as a set of cold hard facts sitting out in the void of space reality as a machine that does not care and cambelly and sci-fi displayed a casual disregard for women whom it frequently caricatures unreasoning creatures who put feelings before the cold hard equations of reality early science fiction was created by women writers like Margaret Cavender Sean Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley hundreds of other women writers through the 18th and 19th centuries imagined a diverse array of utopian and feminist Futures you can learn more in my podcast episode about the true History of Science Fiction but canbellian science fiction largely wrote women out of the field the history of of Science Fiction was Rewritten to start with Jules Verne and H.G Wells relative latecomers and the definition of Science Fiction was narrowed to exclude those earlier feminist Utopias and include only pure scientific speculation the ones who walk away from omilas 1973 can be read as a rejoinder to stories like the cold equations both are short stories that use a kind of reductio AD absurdum pushing an argument that limits of logic to show where it breaks the city of omilas is a perfect Utopia except for one child who is held prisoner to suffer for all most in omelas except this bargain but the ones who walk away from omilas exemplify a higher morality rejecting Injustice and accepting the unknown perhaps even death instead in her introduction to her debut novel The Left Hand of Darkness written some years after its publication Le Guin devastates the cambellian idea of speculative sci-fi stating that it always arrives somewhere between the gradual Extinction of human Liberty and the total Extinction of human life if the cold equations argues that reality is a machine that does not care omalas replies even so the only moral path is to resist whatever the consequence is and so the gauntlet was thrown down for a clash of philosophies between cambelly and sci-fi versus Ursula Le Guin cambelly and sci-fi believed a better world could be made by science and technology any problem could be fixed by just building bigger and better machines that the natural universe is made of matter particles and forces an uncaring machine governed by the cold equations of reality we can call this the philosophy of materialism realism or naturalism Ursula Le Guin was a revolutionary force in science fiction because she championed an alternate philosophy a philosophical school which argues that the human world is shaped by human thinking that the Universe and everything in it are the product of human mental formations of human ideas the philosophy of idealism I think her hard times are coming when we will be wanting the voices of writers who can see Alternatives can see through our fear-stricken society and its obsessive Technologies to other ways of being we will need writers who can remember Freedom the realists of a larger reality foreign the left hand of Darkness explores one of the most controversial and politically charged issues of our time gender generally Ali is a man on a mission to invite the planet of gethan to join the Acumen a political Alliance trying to re-establish Galactic Civilization the people of gethin have no fixed gender identities which generally is very slow to understand he forms a deep relationship with a Geffen native but is unable to overcome his gender perceptions to recognize that he's in love our entire pattern of socio-sexual interaction is non-existent here they cannot play the game they do not see one another as men or women this is almost impossible for our imagination to accept what is the first question we ask about a newborn baby Ursula K Le Guin the left hand of Darkness even when the left hand of Darkness was written women were still seen as the second sex Evolution and biology materialist philosophy argued had made women smaller weaker even less intelligent their role was as second-class Citizens if they were citizens at all those were the cold equations of gender understood through the dominant materialist philosophy that was reality feminist philosophers from Simone de Beauvoir to Judith Butler argued instead that gender was performative sex may be biologically determined but contributed only a part to the performance of gender in opposition to the dominant realist concept of gender was constructed an alternative idealist philosophy gender was a mental concept an idea that could be changed or even abandoned in the imagined world of Geffen Le Guin is able to model gender performativity to see what remains behind after gender is removed the left hand of Darkness became a classic work of Science Fiction because it moved the idealist philosophy of gender performativity out of the realm of theory and into the powerful world of story Ursula Le Guin completed seven novels in the heinish sequence each exploring radical ideas that would influence science fiction authors who followed including e m Banks and Anne Leckie the dispossessed is arguably the most radical of Le guin's novels a refugee scientist the creator of Le guin's famous ansible travels from the anarchist Utopia of anares to the capitalist nation of uras like any good Utopia since Thomas Moore defines the concept kept in his 1516 book of that title the dispossessed imagines a world run under a single political ideology anarchism in this case and what the consequences might be the outcome is equivocal as Le Guin concedes in her books subtitle an ambiguous Utopia anarchism is a political ideology built on idealist philosophy it asserts that humans are not simply products of nature driven by greed and violence in a fight for survival instead human ideas about Humanity like justice fairness and peace are fundamental to human existence anarchism has its roots with idealist philosophers like Jean-Jacques Rousseau who believed in the essential goodness of humanity remove unjust social structures like kings and governments Rousseau argued and human goodness would flourish Rousseau's ideas directly inspired both the French and American Revolutions fought in the name of ideas like Liberty freedom and equality if Le guin's Anarchist Utopia is ambiguous it's because real world anarchies are too the Anarchy that followed the French Revolution cost thousands of lives to The Gila team and the American Revolution produced not an anarchist Utopia but modern capitalism but the idealist philosophy of the dispossessed goes even deeper than politics Le Guin takes on one of the most fundamental arguments in philosophy the concept of time itself the refugee scientist shevek is developing a new theory of time that will lead to the creation of the ansible Le guin's famous invention for faster than light communication but chevex Theory arises not from a breakthrough discovery of quantum physics but from an insight into the shape of time time has two aspects there is the arrow the running River without which there is no change no progress or direction or creation and there is the circle or the cycle without which there is chaos a meaningless progression of instance a world without clocks or Seasons or promises Ursula K Le Guin the dispossess Le guin's concept of time is mirrored in the great granddaddy of idealist philosophy Emmanuel Kant Kant famously and rather controversially classified both time and space not as things happening out there in the universe but as categories of human perception space and time are the framework within which the mind is constrained to construct its experience of reality Kant argued that humans could only ever perceive reality through the structures of our mind the reality Beyond these structures the thing itself could never be known space time objects movement relationship were not the true numera of reality but the phenomena of the Mind later idealist philosophers would ask the question how are the structures of the Mind formed the answer that would revolutionize modern philosophy was language that the structures of the mind and the reality we experience are shaped by the language we speak languages as a power that can shape reality are Central to Ursula Le guin's philosophy not least her Earthsea novels and to understand Earthsea we need to look beyond the conscious mind and towards its Dark Shadow the unconscious the unconscious mind is co-extensive with the universe Ursula Le Guin the dispossessed [Music] Earthsea is a fantasy land an archipelago of islands where magic rules magic is practiced through language in Earthsea all things have a common name and a true name knowing the true name of a thing gives you power over that thing whether it's a cloud a flower a goat or a dragon the true name reveals the thing itself the wizard of Earth sea 1968 reaches its inciting incident when the ambitious young wizard dead accidentally succeeds in severing himself from his shadow with this act GED who had been a wild and Powerful young wizard becomes meek and uncertain to regain his power GED will have to reintegrate his shadow GED had neither lost nor won but naming the shadow of his death with his own name had made himself whole a man who knowing his whole true self cannot be used or possessed by any power other than himself Ursula Le Guin the wizard of Earthsea the Shadow and the self are Central images from the psychological fairies of Carl Jung in her essay in myth and archetype in science fiction Ursula Le Guin talks about the place of jungian symbolism in her storytelling it's clear that the Earthsea novels are expressions of Carl Jung's theory of archetypes the tombs of achuan continues the jungian fantasy tanar is a young woman who has been raised as The High Priestess of an Arcane Faith she is lost within a labyrinth and guided to Freedom by GED who appears as the masculine ideal of tanar's Dreams the archetype the Carl Jung labels the anima Carl Jung was a swish psychiatrist who began his career in the realist materialist Paradigm with his mentor Sigmund Freud Jung was an early Explorer of the concept of the unconscious the idea that most of our thinking happens outside the awareness of the conscious mind study of the unconscious through Carl Jung into the deep Waters of idealist philosophy young was ambivalent towards philosophers like Kant and Hegel but the deeper he swam into the unconscious the more unescapable idealism became Jung left his scientific research and spent years in inner contemplation producing his famous illuminated manuscript the Lieber Novus young claims to have discovered structures of the unconscious mind structures he called the archetypes of self Persona Shadow anima and more Ursula Le Guin adopts these ideas of the unconscious and the jungian archetypes to rewrite The Narrative of fantasy the war between the dark lord and the good king of tolkien's Middle Earth are replaced in the Gwen's Earth sea with the Quest for self-knowledge the evil we must defeat is not out there in the world Le Guin tells her young readers but inside our own cells the farthest Shore the third volume of earth sea introduces the darkest and most complex of the jungian archetypes the demiurge or false god magic has left the land of Earth sea and GED now an older man must sail out to find the cause the farthest Shore is a haunting and challenging story dead is now the mentor to a young prince Aaron who will complete his own Heroes Journey Through the story as they travel Aaron is tormented by doubts about his mentor sometimes get appears as the archmage of Rogue at other times he's just an ignorant old man earthc has fallen under the magic of a dark wizard named Cobb Cobb needs no armies Of Orcs he is not Conquering the world the power of magic is to rewrite reality itself the conflict between GED and Cobb is about who controls reality the demiurge is an archetype that dates back to at least early Christianity the Gnostic sect believed the Old Testament Jehovah to be a false god named Yao de boath Carl Young described his own encounter with the demiurge named Abraxas in his Lieber Novus in the farthest Shore Ursula Le Guin has encountered her own demiurge the ending of the story is opaque and symbolically dense it reads as though the author is struggling to navigate the inner world she is exploring Le Guin is a young writer in her 40s who is unpacking these ideas as she goes after the furthest Shore and those six years of intense creativity Ursula Le guin's writing slows substantially she doesn't return to Earthsea for 18 years perhaps she is searching for answers to the questions raised by her philosophical questing and her encounter with the demiurge and the dangers that encounter revealed to begin to pull all these ideas together and before we dive into a final Le guin's story let's think more about philosophy philosophy means love of wisdom from the Greek Philo a form of love and Sophia the goddess of wisdom only a fool would think that a philosophy without women would be wise but as is widely noted the Canon of philosophy features almost no women the Storyteller and philosopher Clarissa pinkola Estes suggests that women have instead passed their wisdom down through stories it's increasingly recognized that many of the greatest Mythic stories passed down through history were perhaps offered by women the anonymous Jay author of The Genesis myths was a Babylonian princess God may not be a woman but his scriptwriter was analysis of the Odyssey suggests Homer was a woman writer satirizing the toxic masculinity of the classical era European folklore is stamped with the names of Hans Christian Anderson and The Brothers Grimm but these were stories told by women for women about women add in those women writers who created science fiction their names scrubbed from its history and we have a pattern forming to give Ursula leguen her full Jew we must think of her in that tradition of great women's storytellers philosopher poets who expressed their wisdom in stories that LE guin's stories are not only great science fiction but mephic stories that Express a deep and Powerful philosophy and as she explored the power of this philosophy Ursula Le Guin also considered the dangers that came with such power in the archetypal figure of the demiurge slow Le Guin titled the lathe of heaven after a mistranslation from the Taoist poet zwangzi that mistake aside the title poetically captures the essence of Le guin's philosophy George Orr are likely nods to Orwell and 1984. is an ordinary man who believes his dreams can change reality but instead of using this power for himself or is exploited by the psychologist William Harbor a man of stronger will Harbor's various attempts to shape ore's dreams to Make a Better World all result in a worse world but make Harbor ever more powerful the strength of Harbors will allows him to control reality until all fights back the conflict between ore and harbor in the Laver Heaven mirrors the conflict between GED and Cobb in the farthest Shore both are encounters with the demiurge archetype conflicts over the most fundamental question if human willpower can reshape reality the question becomes whose will it's kind of like old fairy tales where somebody's trying to do good and is always sort of defeated by reality you've got to go with the flow you can't push the river as the Buddhists say uh and poor Haber in the book is is a do-gooder but George is sort of in tune with things I go with the flow man go with the flow man and uh of course this is a Taoist book the taoism in is was pretty conscious what do you mean by that a lot of people say what does she mean a Taoist book well in the in the crooner sense that the taoism says you do things by not doing things and all attempt to do and to to to set things right and to make things happen eventually backfires the lathe of Heaven is Le guin's Taoist novel The Gwyn had a lifelong interest in the Eastern philosophy of taoism in contrast to the Confucian tradition that emphasizes rigid social order and taoism is a philosophy of change and flexibility that emphasizes the need to flow with the forces that surround us the lathe of heaven with its failed experiments in reshaping human social order is Le guin's most complex Fort experiment on the question of is a better world possible and what if the new world turns out not to be better at all it's a book that asks hard questions about the utopian vision of a better world utopianism was given a new energy by the philosophy of Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel Hegel built on the idealism of Kent to argue that the structures of the human mind didn't just shape our perception of reality but the history and development of human civilization history Hegel argued had a shape and by understanding that shape we could progress to the end of History where a better world was possible hegel's ideas influenced both liberal and socialist utopian dreams but the most famous thinker to be inspired by the hegelian model of History was Karl Marx father of Marxism Marx's ideas for a communist Utopia at the end of History were so convincing to peoples who dreamed of a better world the Communist Revolution spread worldwide in the 20th century but time and again these utopian revolutions served not the workers but a new intellectual Elite who had the intelligence and strength of will to lead such revolutions like George or the workers of the world discovered they did have the power to make a better world but that power was taken from them by men of stronger will like William Haber or Joseph Stalin or Mao Zedong or Adolf Hitler or Fidel Castro the Cuban dictator who famously declared a better world is possible all fiction is metaphor science fiction is metaphor [Music] the lathe of Heaven is metaphor for the human will to power no lone man can reshape reality with his dreams but the human Collective has it within our power to create almost any reality we can dream or imagine but whose dreams whose imagination will be made real whose will has the power science fiction in its golden age under John W Campbell created metaphors for the philosophy of realism and naturalism it expressed the dreams of rational men who believes the world could be made better with science and technology and but as those dreams became real as the space Rockets nuclear weapons and artificial intelligence of sci-fi dreams came into reality they failed to Make a Better World technology is just a tool in the hands of humans driven by human ideas Ursula Le Guin was not alone in challenging cambelly and science fiction other authors of the new wave like Samuel Delaney and JG Ballard joined her but Le guin's stories have proved the most long-lasting because they are the most powerful metaphors for the philosophy that challenges materialism the philosophy of idealism to Make a Better World Le Guin argues we need to understand the inner world of imagination and dreams that shape the outer World in this essay we've looked at some of the philosophical ideas that Ursula Le guin's stories Echo I'm not suggesting Ursula Le Guin set out to create metaphors for cantian idealism but rather that LE Guin as a great thinker and Creator was discovering for herself new ways of conceptualizing reality and by expressing those ideas in stories Le Guin became one of or perhaps the greatest philosopher Poets of our time if we were to give Ursula Le guin's philosophy and name we might call it radical idealism radical in three senses firstly that it models a pure idealism in which language archetypes of the unconscious and the conceptual structures of Mind create our reality secondly that there is a power in knowing the true names at the root of reality and that fundamental concepts like gender and identity can be controlled and changed thirdly that control over the root concepts of reality should serve radical social change the danger of Ursula Le guin's philosophy of radical idealism is twofold firstly there is the haunting question of whose reality as we awaken to the potential of the human Collective will to reshape our reality in the image of our dreams and stories we need to be aware that our dreams do not become nightmares and that the story We Tell is a good one there is the constant threat that those who win the fight for reality are those with the strongest will but the least wisdom the Demi urges of our time the second danger is less obvious but more immediate if we accept the idealist model that the mind and Imagination can in some sense shape reality then it's clear that we aren't the first to realize this those with real power have always known it Caesars and Kings politicians and popes billionaires and media magnates all know that part of their power rests on controlling the narrative shaping the ideas and Concepts that in turn shape our reality the power of Ursula Le guin's storytelling is that it reaches into our dreams and Imagination it weaves meaning from symbol metaphor and archetype it crafts Mythic stories to awaken all who read it to the Deep truths of our reality truths that are no longer hidden and secret but are now being learned by all Ursula Le guin's philosophy is dangerous because it awakens the once powerless to the potential of our own power those who cling to unjust power over others might find that very dangerous indeed listen to the long-form audio commentary on the dangerous philosophy of Ursula Le Guin by subscribing to the Science Fiction podcast at damiengwater.com forward slash podcast and next watch the ocean of story

Channel: Science Fiction with Damien Walter

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Length: 37min 25sec (2245 seconds)

Published: Sat Sep 16 2023