Another experiment, although this as more of a thing by the resident book-lover than as the forum mod--book discussion threads! For this forum, I'm going with books and fiction that have direct transhuman or EP related themes.
The book to discuss for this thread is Ursula Le Guin's The Dispossessed: An Ambiguous Utopia. I only recently read this book, partly at the instigation of a friend, partly so I would have fiction to recommend to others on how Anarcho-Communism/Anarcho-Syndicalism might work--and the pitfalls that they might run into as subsequent generations are raised and taught.
I found it fascinating; a well-written depiction of a multiple-century-old functioning An-Comm/An-Syn society, where the children don't even manage to comprehend the concept of "imprisonment" or ownership, but avoiding the Mary Suetopia issue of giving it serious and earnest flaws, thanks to being run by human beings. There is censorship, courtesy of a reactionary and closed mind-set of the majority of the population. There is unconsenting hierarchy, due to the focus on the community over the individual, the excuse of the needs of survival, and the formation of crony cabals within the syndicates. At the same time, the presence of those flaws, and the recognition by the main characters that these are not what their society was meant to be, highlights the ideals of their home to even greater heights.
And, I'll admit, that the entire time I was reading the book, I kept thinking, "oh, man, oh, man, I'd love to see what these people would do with just one CM."
So, has anyone else read it, and what did you think of the depictions of anarchism vs. democracy, and the other themes of the book?
One thing that I find most interesting is the concept of social decay as applied to an anarchist society. You see this all the time in other literature and in real life history--you have the founders of the society be bold, idealistic, with the determination to see things through... and then, having built things, their successors and descendants, having not had those formative trials, but having simply inherited what their predecessors built, don't really believe in it, or don't understand how it came to be. The Chinese call it the Mandate Of Heaven; over on TVTropes, it's called the Cycle Of Empires. But here, for this book, it's shown in an interesting fashion. Without structures to corrupt, people build them unconsciously, just to be able to corrupt them.
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"Democracy is two wolves and a lamb voting on what to have for lunch. Liberty is a well-armed lamb contesting the vote." -Benjamin Franklin
