Le Guin's Post-Election Essay is Profoundly Helpful

[jesse_the_k]

After reading Ursula K. Le Guin's essay on the election, I was, for a few moments, able to breathe deep and focus on the long view. I recommend it to all, especially the anxious & paranoid:

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My song for many years was We Shall Overcome. I will always love that song, what it says and the people who have sung it, with whom I marched singing. But I can’t march now, and I can’t sing it any longer.

My song is Ain’t Gonna Study War No More.

Though we’ve had some great scholars of peace, such as Martin Luther King, studying it is something Americans have done very little of.

The way of the warrior admits no positive alternatives to fighting, only negatives — inertia, passivity, surrender. Talk of “waging peace” is mere glibness, you can’t be aggressively peaceful. Reducing positive action to fighting against or fighting for, we have not looked at the possibility of other forms of action.

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http://bookviewcafe.com/blog/2016/11/21/the-election-lao-tzu-a-cup-of-water/

Thanks to sonia for the link.

Comments

[wohali]

Thank you for sharing, I've passed it on.

[jesse_the_k]

I'm glad you liked it.

[luzula]

Thanks for the link. Beautiful poem, too.

A bit of a tangent: I think this whole Taoist "not doing" thing is really relevant and necessary when it comes to environmental stuff. Actually what we as a species need to do there is not to take action, but to do less. Not buy that gadget. Not take that plane trip. Etc. It's just that this runs counter to our whole economic system.

[jesse_the_k]

Not tangential at all. Because "not doing" is essential to the nonviolent resistance Le Guin champions.

Re environment: just so. I'm sure there are clever engineers who think they can manufacture their way to superior CO2 sequestration, and I bet they're wrong. (Like the fellow you smacked down in your op-ed.)

Where do your anarchist circles stand on violence v non-violence?

(While not yet ready to Fully Discuss Politics, I must admit I live in fear of a US black bloc hothead bombing a federal building next February and it becomes the Reichstag Fire and then it all falls apart.)

[luzula]

I guess I know both pacifists and not-so-pacifists. Me, I am not inclined towards violence and want to avoid it both on a personal and a political level. But if it's necessary in self-defense, so be it. I can also imagine situations when I would be for offensive violence, but that would be if it's self-defense in a wider sense. I bet that can be an awfully slippery slope, though.

I donated money to a hospital for rehabilitation of soldiers fighting against the IS in Rojava, so I guess that is financial support for violent struggle.

(Ack. Yes, I can see why you'd fear that. Sweden had something similar on a small scale in 2001; there were political riots and cobblestone throwing and then there was a lot of repression.)