Ursula K. Le Guin — 28. It Doesn’t Have To Be the Way It Is
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Ursula K. Le Guin — 28. It Doesn’t Have To Be the Way It Is
History can get stuck and can go into reverse. Powerful interests will do whatever they can to resist, divert, confuse or disrupt trends that they find threatening. Imagination is one of the weapons with which to confront them—imagination that is compelling, rigorous and thought through.
I’m reminded of the words of sci-fi author Ursula K. Le Guin: “We live in capitalism. Its power seems inescapable. So did the divine right of kings.” Of course, it was also noted by philosophers Fredric Jameson and Slavoj Žižek that “It’s easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism.” Such a statement displays the narrative wei
... See more“The exercise of imagination is dangerous to those who profit from the way things are because it has the power to show that the way things are is not permanent, not universal, not necessary.”
— Ursula Le Guin ― The Wave in the Mind: Talks and Essays on the Writer, the Reader and the Imagination