How a lie becomes the truth

Maybe some of you remember the piece Jules has written a couple of weeks ago on George Orwell’s dystopia Nineteen Eighty-Four, one of the greatest novels of the 20th century. If you enjoyed it - which I certainly did – this is your lucky day. That same novel also drew my attention, yet for a different reason. I have not been fascinated by the writer’s possible intention to ensure that we remember the importance of personal freedom and privacy, but by the possible intention which I picked up by reading it: ensuring that we are aware of our own truth, and the freedom to express it, to a certain extent. I will elaborate on this intention further below, but first I want to fresh up your mind by giving a short summary of Nineteen Eighty-Four.

Summary

The novel is set in an alternate reality 20th century London, which is now called Airstrip One. Together with the America’s, Australia, the rest of Great Britain and several other parts of the world, it is part of the greater nation Oceania. This continent is ruled by The Party, an ultra-authoritarian government led by the mysterious Big Brother. The Party regulates and monitors everything in the population’s daily life; work, marriage, upbringing, etc. Even the history and language of the nation are under control of that ‘omniscient’ government, to keep a thumb on the own will of the population. Or what is left of it, since no one really knows anymore what is truth and what is lie due to all the changes in ‘facts’ The Party has made over the years. “He who controls the present controls the past. He who controls the past controls the future.” Personal emotions are not tolerated, and enjoying the wonderful experiences of love is even forbidden. Instead The Party has embraced ultimate obedience, domination, hatred and fear.

In this frightening world a young Inner Party worker, named Winston Smith, has given his life for the ruling existence of The Party, working in the Ministry of Truth. His job is the burden of erasing and creating history, as to the will of Big Brother.

Although, that attitude is what he radiates to the outside world. Deep inside he becomes more and more aware of the cruelty and unfair methods The Party maintains. Because The Party can control, regulate and monitor the actions of its people, but it cannot fully control their thoughts. Winston starts to “inwardly rebel” and now only wants to escape the permanent monitoring and regulating of the government, and live an own life in which he can embrace his emotions (and especially love) - even though he knows that will lead to inevitable death. And so it happens; due to the constant monitoring and regulating, The Party can arrest Winston for his ‘unorthodox actions’, and knead him into a new slave of Big Brother. “Thoughtcrime does not entail death; thoughtcrime IS death”.

The Aspect of Truth

What drew my special attention in Orwell’s novel was the concept of truth. In his reality future society this value is altered in many aspects, which even makes the main character not confident about his own truth anymore; Winston does not even know in what year he is living, he only has a vague idea which no one else can confirm either. The Party regulates and monitors the society already for such a long period, that too many lies have become the real ‘truth’. As explained, The Party controls and monitors the actions of its population in various ways. Via constantly adjusting the past and present to the predictions and statements of Big Brother, so that He stays Godlike towards its people, they try to force ultimate obedience from their people driven by pure fear.

One of those altering manners is by adjusting the current language into one without ‘unnecessary words’; the so-called Newspeak. With such an adjustment meaningful grammar constructions, with which people can express their emotions and sorrows, fade away as well. Especially the disappearance of contradictions is highlighted in the novel, by the slogan “War is Peace, Freedom is Slavery, Ignorance is Strength”. Without contradictions people cannot express themselves in a similar way as their emotions let them feel anymore. Therefore they can only use the censured amount of words and expressions The Party allows them to use, which does not give them the opportunity to express their real emotions. They only can and will hear themselves expressing the will of The Party, and if this action continues long enough they will even start to believe what they say, because they never hear something else anymore. Everyone will ‘agree’ with Big Brother, and thus his power will only increase.

Another way of altering the truth can be found in Winston’s job. He has to adjust the past to the predictions and statements of Big Brother. If Oceania is in war with Eurasia at this point of history, but it would be more convenient for whatever reason (for example, to keep control over the population driven by fear, or for certain resources) that Oceania is in war with Eastasia, Winston would have to change the news items into this new present, and erase the past war with Eurasia on paper to make the new war - which was of course already several years ongoing for the conscience of the population – the new ‘truth’. As if Big Brother has always been right and will always be right. Because “He who controls the present controls the past. He who controls the past controls the future.”

Yet the pinnacle of altering the truth to keep the own will of the people under control, is the fact that even the opposition is under the control of The Party itself. Opposition leader Emmanuel Goldstein, who has written the book - a compendium of all heresies, which circulates here and there – is held by The Party to be the Enemy of the People. However, when Winston is arrested by The Party and tortured by O’Brien to knead his own will back into ultimate obedience to The Party again, it appears that O’Brien is one of the writers of the book. Which means that both Emmanuel Goldstein and the book are created by The Party. That ultra-authoritarian government even controls their own opposition. But where does that leave the concept of truth, real TRUTH?

Conclusion

To be honest Orwell’s dystopia was quite shocking to me, since the story told in the novel could become our reality future if we are not aware of the actions of the powers that rule us. And although even such an ultra-authoritarian government as The Party could only control the actions of its people and not their thoughts, we still must be conscious of the fact that also that last bit of personal property does not come under control of one malevolent person, with crazy ideas on domination and ultimate obedience. People driven by such a powerful will, will always try to find a way to come to your thoughts as well, and brainwash you until you do not know which thoughts and emotions are you own and which ones are implemented.

And in the end I assume that this is also one of the intentions George Orwell wanted to reach with writing Nineteen Eighty-Four; ensuring that we are aware of our own truth, and the freedom to express it. If we would have not listened to survivors of the second World War for example - who experienced the horrible happening themselves and have formed their own truth about it- who knows what lies would have come into the world about what precisely happened in that period of time. Gladly, we have listened to the various experiences several people have had - although not every experience has been one to remember - to form a correct picture, to know the real truth.

One should always better derive his information from a first source, to make sure the stories told are not influenced by misleading untruths. Be aware of your own truth, before taking the truth of another for granted. Otherwise a lie becomes the truth.

Alexandra Danen, 1st year student, LUC

The LUC Dean's Masterclass is run each semester for the students who made the honour roll in the previous semester.

Party at the end of the world/year

Dear students,




There's so much to say about the last year (the first year) of LUC, but there was no time to say it at our Finishing-Line party a couple of nights ago. Actually, there was time, but there was too much alcohol and too much noise for anyone to make sense of anything any of us were saying ... so, instead, I thought I'd pen a little something here.
The first thing to say is this: wow!
And the second thing, which is a slight expansion of the first, is this: well done!

I mean these things in various and complicated ways. The most obvious (but certainly not the least important) is simply to observe how much you have all accomplished over the last year. LUC has risen from nothing into a thriving and exciting community of learning since last summer -- you have built it through your toil and tears and laughter, and you should be incredibly proud of what you have done. I am certainly proud of you ... well, of most of you ;) It has been wonderful to watch how you have taken on this challenge.
On another level, it's also just fantastic to see how many of you are still here! It has been a very intense ride; there has been a lot of work, a lot of arguing, scheming, debating and structuring, a lot of playing (maybe not enough playing), and not a lot of sleeping. But you are still here, and (most of you) still smiling. It's very inspiring for me to see how you have all drawn energy from your own activities and from the satisfaction of expending all your energy on building something worthwhile.
Some of you will recall something I said at the (unofficial) opening of the college last summer, when I told you to take your responsibilities at LUC seriously, because you were all specially selected to be here, and because your being here means that other people (who wanted to be here) were not. Well, you're still here, and I am unspeakably proud of the way you have honoured your responsibilities this year.
In other words, you have not only survived but thrived. In some intensive institutions, like Cambridge University, where I did my undergraduate work, the end of year events are sometimes called the 'Survivor's Ball.' This term usually refers to the fact that you've made it through the exam-hell at the end of term ... or sometimes to the fact that you're still conscious for the group photo at end of the ball. At LUC this year, though, the idea of survival has a more profound meaning: it reminds me of the ideas about challenge, violence, bloodshed, toil, change and tears that we discussed right at the start of the year, when we watched Apocalypse Now as the Dean's Choice movie. Oh, the horror, the horror …
While I don't want to claim that you have survived the apocalypse this year at LUC (!), I also don't want to diminish the sense of our having confronted some angels and daemons together. And, most importantly, I want to spare a little thought for the Greek origins of the term apocalypse, which refers to the idea of revelation or of lifting the veil of ignorance. The apocalypse reveals a process that discloses something hidden or profound in a time or context of ignorance, misperception, or falsehood. In other words, like the virtual, architectural tram-ride that was built by one of the teams for the Designing Academic Inquiry poster conference, the apocalypse is a trial and a process that leads to enlightenment (or a horrible death ... but we're all survivors!).



So, we began the year rather ominously with Apocalypse Now, and we end here, on the way to enlightenment, ready for something new to begin after the end of the world (of the first year of LUC). I can’t wait to see what the next year will bring, and I’m excited to know what a post-apocalyptic LUC might look like!
Meanwhile, there are a few people I’d like to thank for their help, industry and enthusiasm this year, without which we would not have made it through in such a spectacular way. In some ways, I could say this of all of you, but there are some particular people who should be recognised.
The first group is the board of our shiny new student association (which became a legal association on Monday of this week), Fortuna. The members of this board, under the sagely guidance of our first ever student president, Flip, have worked extremely hard and accomplished so much, not only organizing so many great events and processes, but also actually creating the association from scratch. My thanks to Flip and his team: Stefan, Sanne, Marc, Georgina, Marline, and Laurens (and also thanks for the sweat-shirt!).
Instead of listing names of other individuals (who will receive a letter from me in the summer), I’d also like to give special thanks to those students who organized reading groups, those on the Housing Committee, those who organized the Amnesty Benefit activities, the inter-UC sports tournament, the Act Aware events, the Current Affairs evening, the Pax Magazine, the Debating Union and the World Foresight conference. You have all brought something special and valuable to LUC, and you have my gratitude and admiration.

I wish you all a sunny and rejuvenating break, and look forward to welcoming you all back again, together with a whole new year of students, at the end of the summer.

Cheers and beers,

Chris (the dean)

LUC poster boys (and girls)

 A little piece of history forms in each moment, but today there was a genuine milestone at LUC. We were proud to host our first ever Student Poster Conference at the culmination of our core course, Designing Academic Inquiry. Our students have worked extremely hard on a wide range of original research projects, all of which involved primary research and sophisticated analysis on topics focussed in the city of The Hague itself.

Posters in the conference included:
+Public transportation
+Healthcare
+Recycling and waste management
+Sporting and leisure facilities
+Museums and cultural provisions
+Parks and open public spaces

Not having been directly involved in the progress of this important course, which was convened with great energy and discipline by Dr Cissie Fu, this was the first time that I had seen the results of this semester’s creative labour and dedication. I was struck by the vitality of the poster presentations as well as by the quality of the research that rooted them. Our students have taken serious the idea and meaning of academic inquiry and designed projects that demonstrate real social and political conscience, of the kind that many mature scholars often lack. Without exception, each of the projects probed into concrete and serious concerns for The Hague today, with implications for any urban space.

Questions such as how systems of public transportation also provide a surveillance matrix that challenges us to reconsider the appropriate balance between our public safety and individual privacy are provocative, powerful and important. Asking questions about the relationship between cultural productions, architecture, performance and national identity speak to the heart of LUC’s developing profile in ‘Political Arts.’ Interrogating public spaces, sporting facilities, and parks as sites of social, political and cultural interaction and productivity reflects a cultivated sensitivity about the ways in which people interact with, transform, and are transformed by their environment. Furthermore, tackling environmental issues in the form of recycling and food-waste management by supermarkets, public institutions and private individuals in The Hague demonstrates a sounds understanding of the kinds of everyday implications of grand sustainability problematics that inspire LUC’s majors in Sustainability and International Development. This powerful concern for environmental wellbeing was also echoed by an important level of social consciousness and awareness of public health issues, particularly in the form of a consideration of the impact of obesity in The Hague.

Recognizing the quality and scale of the accomplishment of the students of LUC at the end of their first year in The Hague, Ingrid van Engelshoven, Alderwoman for Education in the city of The Hague, gave us the honour of visiting the conference and speaking to the participants about their achievements. The told the students that they inspire her and the city of The Hague to take seriously their role as global citizens as well as residents of the city, explaining that she feels The Hague is lucky to have LUC in its heart as well as in its head. The city of international peace and justice is a vibrant and exciting intellectual and ethical environment in which LUC has a very special place. Ms Van Engelshoven spoke warmly about how the staff and students of LUC should no longer consider ourselves as visitors in this city, but instead should feel that this is our home, just as she considers that we are now ‘one of us.’ And finally, she asked me not to force everyone to work so hard, so that they can get outside and enjoy more of the city …

Congratulations to the students on this fantastic accomplishment – I’m impressed and proud of you all!

Posted by Chris (the dean)

Global challenges with Michael Jackson

EARTH SONG, by Michael Jackson (1995)


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XAi3VTSdTxU&feature=player_detailpage
Earth Song (lyrics, excerpt)

What about sunrise
What about rain
What about all the things
That you said we were to gain...
What about killing fields
Is there a time
What about all the things
That you said was yours and mine...
Did you ever stop to notice
All the blood we've shed before
Did you ever stop to notice
The crying Earth the weeping shores?

posted by Thomas

War and peace in 1984

“War is peace, freedom is slavery and ignorance is strength.” There are probably only a few of us who don’t recognise these sayings. To clarify, these lines are the three slogans of the Party in George Orwell’s 1984. Before last month, and I say this with great shame, I was one of the few who wouldn’t have recognised the slogans. Perhaps that is exactly what caused 1984 to have such a huge impact on me. The stories told by my peers who had already read 1984, the hailing of the novel being one of the greatest of the 20th century and the often made connection between 1984 and Brave New World (which happens to be one of my favourite novels) raised my expectations to a maximum. Often, high expectations only lead to disappointment or disillusionment. Orwell’s great dystopia, however, did not only live up to my expectations, it also blew me away.
Given the fact that so many of us have already read 1984, it seems illogical to portray merely a summary of it in this blog. Rather, I’d like to share with you my perception of the novel. First, for the ones who share the same shame as I did one month ago, let me provide a small summary. The novel is set in alternate reality 20th century London, which is now called Airstrip One and has been integrated into the greater nation of Oceania (the America’s, Australia, Great Britain and several other parts of the world). Oceania is ruled by the Party, an ultra-authoritarian government led by the mysterious and almost godlike Big Brother. The Party regulates and monitors every aspect of daily life: work, marriage, exercise, family and spare time. Even the history and language of Oceania are under direct influence and regulation of Party policy. By altering history and thereby altering knowledge, the Party has an incredible power over its subjects: “He who controls the present controls the past. He who controls the past controls the future.” All in all, Oceania has become a nation which has abandoned freedom, rights and love as we know them. On the other hand, the nation has embraced domination, fear and hatred.

Orwell shows us the life of a simple Inner Party worker, Winston Smith. Winston works for the Ministry of Truth and is burdened with the task of creating and erasing history. More and more, Winston realises the brutality and cruelty of the Party and “inwardly rebels” against the life he is forced to live. Despite the realisation that rebelling against the Party will lead to inevitable death, Winston finds himself increasingly resisting the Party rule. Irrevocably, the Party, through its methods of monitoring and regulation, arrests Winston for his crimes against Big Brother. Finally and unfortunately , Winston has to pay the price for his unorthodox actions.

What struck me most about the novel was the extreme methods the Party used in observing, monitoring and controlling its population and the therewith involved consequences. It was not only the types of methods that disturbed me, but also the motivations and implications behind them. The portrayed denial of peoples’ rights, freedoms and privacy on such a scale and to such an extent made me realise that we should always remember to cherish those rights and freedoms that our predecessors have bitterly fought for. In the end, I assume this is what George Orwell intended with writing 1984: ensuring that we remember the importance of personal freedom and privacy. The irony here is that many of us don’t seem to realise that we are unconsciously already giving up many of our privacies through aspects of daily life. Take, for instance, the widespread registration of individual data connected to the OV-card (a card that has to be used for many parts of public transportation). Or another example: yesterday I was throwing away the trash with my little brother. Since two years, there is one location where to dispose of your domestic waste per street. Every household in the particular street is given an individual key to open the waste containers which are provided by the municipality. When walking back home after throwing away the trash, my little brother told me that the municipality registers every time trash is thrown away by a household. This is done through a chip put into every single key given to households. Of course, this is only a small and unimportant example of the giving up of individual privacy, but we should realise that small examples like these occur on a very frequent basis in daily life. Furthermore, we don’t only give up our rights through direct and possibly harmless government registration, but also through exposure by the use of public networks such as Facebook or Twitter. If a government had the ill will to monitor its citizens for wrong purposes, it wouldn’t even have to install the methods as seen in 1984: they would just have to check our Facebook updates. For now, enough cheesy talk of this undergraduate student with his naïve views on life. However, I would like to end this blog entry with a funny and ironic little screenshot I took today from my own Facebook page:

Jules van de Sneppen, 1st year student, LUC

The LUC Dean's Masterclass is run each semester for the students who made the honour roll in the previous semester.

First ever LUC poster conference!

The first ever cohort of students of Leiden University College The Hague are in the midst of an interdisciplinary methodology course entitled "Designing Academic Inquiry", which springs off disciplinary building blocks to reach higher planes of academic thinking. This systematic mapping of method and knowledge will not only equip our honours students with concrete skills in research design and analysis in a liberal arts and sciences framework, but will also culminate in the first ever LUC student research poster conference on 12 May 2011.

Having completed the lecture component of the course, with individual assignments based on the themes below,
* Objectivity + Subjectivity
* Deduction + Induction
* Causation + Correlation
* Language + Representation
* Structure + Agency

all LUC students are now applying their conceptual and methodological understanding by finalising their group research project. Each seminar will present a set of academic posters on one of the following topics pertaining to the city of The Hague:
* Public transportation
* Healthcare
* Recycling and waste management
* Sporting and leisure facilities
* Museums and cultural provisions
* Parks and open public spaces

With the guidance of their course instructors, the students are excited to deliver their findings to an audience within and beyond LUC, including key representatives from City Hall. It will be a pleasure to welcome you to this special event; please do join us on 12 May, 13:00 - 15:00, at Lange Voorhout 44 for a glimpse into a foundational step towards addressing global challenges.

Posted by Cissie Fu

Reparations for your soul

LUC is happy to invite you to the final seminar in our Visiting Speakers Series 2010/2011.

We are delighted to be able to host Dr. Claire Moon of the London School of Economics, to talk about 'Who will pay reparations for my soul? Compensation, Social Suffering and Social Control in Argentina.' In her seminar, Dr Moon will discuss how state reparation to victims of (state) atrocities can work to administer and control social suffering but can, in some cases, intensify the trauma rather than ameliorate it. She will use the refusal of state reparations by the Argentinian mothers of the Plaza de Mayo as an example to make this argument.

 

Claire Moon is senior lecturer in the sociology of human rights at LSE, a member of the Advisory Board of the Centre for the Study of Human Rights, LSE. She is the convenor of the Atrocity, Suffering and Human Rights Research Group and has been reviews editor of the British Journal of Sociology since 2007. Dr. Moon is also a member of the British Sociological Association.

As usual, this seminar will take place in the LUC Manor, Lange Voorhout 44, at 16.15-18.00.

Your response: Osama bin Laden's death

‘Obama > Osama’

- Rron Nushi, Facebook status 2/5/2011

‘I mourn the loss of thousands of precious lives, but I will not rejoice in the death of one, not even an enemy. Returning hate for hate multiplies hate, adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars.’

- Martin Luther King

‘I welcome the death of Osama Bin Laden’

- Julia Gillard, Australian Prime Minister

‘The operation shows those who commit acts of terror against the innocent will be brought to justice, however long it takes’

- Tony Blair, former UK Prime Minster

‘Finally the leader of the terrorist al-Qaeda group faced his inevitable destiny. What an exciting end. He was killed by Americans in Pakistan and not in Afghanistan. The man they nicknamed "the leader of the mujahideen" was killed in his spacious house and not on the battlefield or carrying out jihad. He died with his wife and not with the youth he misled.’

- Tariq Abd-al-Hami, in Al-Sharq al-Awsat (pan-Arab newspaper)


‘Following Bin Laden's crimes, the US manufactured an excuse to wage an unholy war on Muslim countries… Now, after US President Barack Obama's announcement of Osama Bin Laden's killing, will the end of the war against terror be declared or does the US still have outstanding goals?’

- Unknown, editorial in Al-Jumhuriyah (Egyptian newspaper)


Please leave your responses to either the above reactions of politicians, journalists and editorials, or your general reaction to the recent events surrounding Osama bin Laden's death.

Cecilia Diemont, 1st year student, LUC

Personal utopias and the dispossesed

The past updates on this blog about our Masterclass mentioned books that critically assessed the State, the functions of the State and what the goals of the State ought to be, or potentially could be – both to the horror and awe of people. Assumptions were shattered and possibilities explored; in the backdrop of a religion-changing England, one Thomas More explored the importance of ‘a’ religion ; Looking Backward and The Iron Heel both were written with the Communist Manifesto in mind. But it is an offspring of Marxism, and a last assumption that we still have left hanging in our mind in our recent encounters with utopia’s that Ursula K. Le Guin tries to examine – and maybe even do away with – in her fantasy landmark The Dispossessed.

Published in 1974, at the height of the Cold War, Le Guin shows us a possible third way away from the capitalist structure of America and the state-run enterprise of the USSR: a Stateless society. In The Dispossessed, the idealist anarchists, following the teaching of a certain ‘Odo’, leave the planet of Urras to form an utopia on its moon, Anarres. Urras, in turn, mirrors our world during the Cold War: A-Io is a wealthy nation driven on capitalism, with a clear hierarchical system based on the ‘haves’ and ‘have-nots’. In Thu, they chose to follow the teachings of ‘Odo’, centered on freedom and equality, towards a authoritarian State ruled in name of the proletariat. These nations even fight proxy wars over nations that follow their ideological structure, as becomes apparent when in the second half of the book war breaks out in Benbili.
The society of Anarres is based on anarcho-syndicalism: the idea that you should not be a ‘slave to the wage’, but rather work for your needs. To this end, the Anarresti abandon the concept of ‘ownership’. You do not own your goods, as ownership means that you have control over that product, and can decide which people can and cannot use this product. This is problematic as this creates a power imbalance (opposing egality) and does not necessarily distributes goods according to what people actually need. Therefore, you do not own things on Anarresti, but you take what you, as an individual, need to survive. As a consequence, a societal norm exists that you also actively contribute towards the production of goods that can meet the needs of society. The anarchists furthermore eradicate ownership so completely that they construct a language, Pravic, that does not know these concepts in words. The usage of possessive pronouns, for instance, is eradicated. At birth, one is separated from its parents in order not to feel attachment, or stake a claim upon their parents. Characters stress that Anarres is a voluntarily society: all the work that is done, is done because the people want do these specific jobs (egoistically) or feel that they have a certain skill or aptitude towards a certain type of work that would suit the community (altruistically). The first mode of reasoning, however, is cancelled out by the societal norm which deems ‘egoizing’ to be the worst possible act.

The book is written as the story of the anarchist Shevek, a brilliant scholar of physics, who comes to visit Urras in an attempt to understand the society that his people have left behind and broke contact with. A second storyline unfolds in which his motivations for leaving Anarres – at least temporarily – become clear, and the tensions within this utopian society unfold.
Because it seems that a certain form of centralization is unavoidable when you effectively want to distribute goods and labours, and when you need to deal with foreign nations, and therefore a certain power imbalance will necessarily be created, and that issues arise when the economical and the collective take precedence over the social and individual desires, as humans value emotional ties more than ties towards the collective. But, more importantly, le Guin shows the problematic aspects of dogmatic reasoning. Shevek’s first inquiries into physics are frustrated by the senior physician, whose theory were developed in a conflicting field with Shevek’s, and therefore denies these theories publication. Discussing the social norm of collective altruism is also considered a taboo and frowned upon: challenging the status quo is straw manned as ‘egoizing’ by most people in Anarresti society. But also on Urras freedom of information is ostracized, with the newspapers being considered fodder for the lowly educated, and the upper class relying on insider information and mouth-to-mouth storytelling (One could argue that in this way the upper class ‘possesses’ information as well as material goods). This creates problems as it tempers the revolutionary spirit, it tempers the critical reflexion of the ideals that made the Anarresti go to Anarres in the first place, and it allows ideological flaws within the system to be sustained. In this way, le Guin shows us the problem of dogma in the era of McCarthyism.
Another pressing and prevalent problem in The Dispossessed deals with resource scarcity. Halfway through the book Shevek mentions that Odo’s ideas were specifically written with the resource-abundant planet of Urras in mind. In contrast, Anarres is a planet plagued with droughts, infertile soil and a lack of natural resources and biodiversity. This forces the anarchists to put the economical above the social ; it is a necessary evil for survival, because if you don’t co-operate, we all will die.

The question, however, is whether resource abundance would solve this problem. Le Guin remains vague on this, but I suspect myself that this is not the case: as the social norm against profiteering is more effectively coerced in times of need, when you realize the consequences of going against that norm directly, it could logically follow that people would not be so much bothered by the norm when they could leave the society and start ‘profiteering’.
But is this ‘third way’ then doomed to fail? No, not in the way that it is worse than the options known to men in 1974, or maybe even today. Because the Dispossessed does not deny – and certainly spends a lot of time in pointing out – the flaws that capitalism and communism have. The interesting omission, of course, is the role of liberal democracy within le Guin’s framework, as this form of government now used by an enormous amount of countries in the world is lacking in voice in this narrative. However, ‘liberalism’, might be the victorious voice in the end. Because the reader, having realized the imperfections of these State systems, is then introduced to the Hainish. This old alien society, the presumed ‘ancestor’ of the human civilizations, has ‘tried’ all State forms, and they too realized the imperfections of all systems. Their solution is daunting: the individual Hainish can all choose to try out the system they think suits them best. It is a solution that does not only need the eradication of a State, and of a social contract binding you to a State or society. It needs the dismissal of emotional ties, it needs to dismiss that we have a moral obligation towards caring for people who cared for us, or for the survival of the ones near to you. Le Guin’s final suggestion is that individuals need to be free in order to choose ones personal utopia.

Daan Welling, 1st year student, LUC

The LUC Dean's Masterclass is run each semester for the students who made the honour roll in the previous semester.