I’m facilitating an Adult Religious Education session on the novel The Dispossessed, by Ursula K. LeGuin, on February 28. I know some people will come who haven’t read it, but you’ll get a lot more out of the class if you have, so you might want to get a hold of the book now.
As promised, I’m posting questions about it ahead of time. This first one is more along the lines of a thought experiment and can be carried out whether you’ve read the book or not.
As you go through your day, wonder what it would be like if no one in our society had money or private property–if everything belonged to everyone. (On Anarres, one of the novel’s invented worlds, if you want a new shirt, you walk into a clothing depository and pick one up.)
For example, if you go to a restaurant tonight: If this were Anarres, what would happen when you walked into a restaurant? Who is cooking, how does the food get there? Would there be a restaurant? Etc. This is repeatable wherever you are and whatever you are doing.
How does it feel to imagine this different economy? Freeing, frightening, fragile . . . ?
By the way, Ursula LeGuin will be speaking in Berkeley on Tuesday, February 26. I’ll be there.
Cross-posted at the UUCPA blog. I am closing comments here* so that responses are gathered in one place–click on over to the UUCPA blog to add your comments.
*Except Stacy’s. That got through before I remembered to close comments. 🙂
Sermons in Stones 
1 comment
February 8, 2013 at 1:12 pm
Stacy Dohogne Lane
I just love that book so much. Every time I read it I get something new from it. I am really fascinated by the lack of possessive pronouns–“the mother” instead of “my mother”. That’s how it is for me. I reread it every couple of years, and like you, I keep getting new things from it. This time, preparing for the class, I read it really closely, making lots of notes about repeated themes and images, and I kept yelping, “This is such a brilliant book!” –AZM
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