Another World is Possible

One of the greatest sci-fi authors.
- One of the greatest fantasy authors
  
  Los dos!

thanks for sharing. I've been feeling pretty hopeless lately and this helped me today
- Feel free to chill around here. I'm all about uplifting peeps!
  
  I mean I hear you but the top three posts talk to a depressing dystopian present. Even this one reminds us of our past and current oppression.
  I trust many find comfort in these memes but all I see is reminders of a world I don't like.
- Remember, it took the black death and like 1/2 the population dying to bring about this change
  
  I mean the black death was like 450 years before the French revolution... I think it just took some angry French people for change

Divine right of kings simply morphed into capitalism. We didn't get rid of jack shit, and we never will.
- Feudalism is entirely different from Capitalism, which is entirely different from Socialism. Class dynamics have changed, and will change.
  
  Feudalism is entirely different from Capitalism
  Not really, no. Even though feudalism doesn't consider greed and resource hoarding inherently virtuous like capitalism does, both are at their core about the few rich and powerful exploiting and abusing the many poor and powerless through ownership of the necessities for life and a greater capacity for violence.
  
  Capitalism is like Fuedalism in a trenchcoat
- I agree These systems both emerged from inherent humanity, not conspiracy.
  
  That would make sense for capitalism, if humanity didn't have to have its permanent, essential characteristics beaten, traumatised and groomed out of them with land seizures, branding, whipping, workhouses, schools, prisons, debtors prisons, being forced to sell their children, slavery and the threat of homelessness and starvation for hundreds of years.
  People didn't just accept either of those two systems and there's nothing remotely inherent about them. They were both forced on people through violence or the threat of it.
  
  "inherent humanity" - what a magical term. you might have a magical worldview! which means you won't even recognize this as an insult, which is sad, but a little funny.

Not to piss in the lemonade, but some places still have the divine right of kings.
- If Charles is the divine choice, why did he get cancer?
  
  God changed his mind 💀
- The point is that societies could progress past it, that it's not inescapable.
  So the fact that there are still absolute monarchies does not invalidate that societies that are better are possible, like most of our societies today.
  Every empire seems unassailable and eternal, until it doesn't. The USSR seemed like it will last beyond our lifetimes, until it didn't.

I met a traveller from an antique land,
Who said—“Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. . . . Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed;
And on the pedestal, these words appear:
My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings;
Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal Wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.”
Shelley’s Poetry and Prose (1977)
- One of my favorite poems. First published in 1818:
  https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ozymandias

I've only read two books of Le Guin's, and they were both memorable:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Word_for_World_Is_Forest
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Dispossessed
The second one is more relevant to this meme.
- Absolutely 100% run (don't walk!) and get The Left Hand of Darkness. It is easily one of the best sci-fi/fantasy books I have ever read.
  
  I just finished it two days ago. I agree completely.
  I will caution people that because of the writing style the beginning of the book (at least to me) is a bit disorienting. It takes a minute to find her rhythm.
- The Dispossessed had been in my backlog for a while now. I really need to get to it.
- Funny this cropped up, I just finished The Left Hand of Darkness two days ago. Very good book with some beautiful prose.
  It was the first Le Guin book I've read. I'll be reading more.
- I just finished the dispossessed. Didn't find it as compelling as reviews had me hoping. The sci-fi depiction of anarchism wasn't flattering and the main character wasn't easy to like either.
  Spoiler and trigger alert: I put the book down for a while after he sexually assaulted a woman, but eventually finished it and wasn't impressed by the ending or by the fact that his assault was glossed over and not mentioned again.
  
  Yes, that's a fair assessment. It's not an enjoyable book and to some extent isn't meant to be -- the cover of the version I read said something about an "ambiguous utopia," the story structure is pretty far from a Campbellian Hero's Journey, and the main character is not relatable. The book is more memorable than enjoyable.

Capitalism doesn't even work in the US prices ate kept high
- I'm trying to parse your sentence. Can you use punctuation?
  
  Capitalism doesn't even work in the US. Prices are kept high.
  
  God this website is worse then reddit ever was with people like you.

The problem is that this time we've likely got a few decades at the most to form a movement before a huge chunk of the world becomes uninhabitable and society crumbles under the weight of war and famine.
Looking at how things are going, I have little hope that the majority of people are willing to let go of the status quo.
- We live in the most peaceful time in all of human history. It's bad but not that bad.