The Language of the Night - Ursula K. Le Guin

This is a compilation of many essays by Le Guin on writing and writing science fiction in particular. She deals with the pronouns used in sci-fi to describe characters, with special updated notes covering her newer thoughts on "he" as a gender neutral pronoun (she doesn't believe it is in the 1980's like she did in the 1970's).

But Le Guin covers far more than writing science fiction. She touches on the emerging hustle culture she saw in the 1970's where any "sensible" working person in America wouldn't be caught reading fiction because it can't be justified as self-improvement or for work.

She also has insightful things to say about how reading is active and accepting trash is akin to accepting the low performance of government, a slippery slope that will only yield the worst writing and the worst politicians.

Reading is not a passive reaction, but an action, involving the mind, the emotions, and the will. To accept trashy book because they are "bestsellers" is the same thing as accepting adulterated food, ill-made machines, corrupt government, and military and corporative tyranny, and praising them, and calling them the American Way of Life or the [[American Dream]]. It is a betrayal of reality. Every betrayal, every lie accepted, leads to the next betrayal and the next lie. Pg 240

There is certainly enough here for almost anyone to walk away wondering about the state of our world, and how we treat the art and artist inside our economic system.

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# The Language of the Night

- when we judge the value of art by it's commercial success and artists must live on this value judgement exploration is censored to feed the creative blast that is capitalism so the artist can eat. Pg XV
- see [[Against Creativity - Oli Mould]]
- this type of censorship is outside any book burns or political censorship. It's invisible and assumed as "the way the world is" yet it is a market choice and halts any type of creativity that can't be monetized

- when it's possible to make "real money" in a craft that quickly becomes the only measure used to judge success. Pg XVIII
- no longer content getting published at all, you must see the money
- new you must turn your hobby into a side business and [[hustle culture|hustle]]. It's not okay to simply enjoy it and stay content with it being a hobby.

- [[The Invincible - Stanislaw Lem]] Pg XXXIV

- if an activity cannot be justified as work or for self-improvement then it is often looked down on as it doesn't fit with [[Puritan Work Ethic|Protestant Work Ethic]] or [[capitalist]] [[workism]] Pg 24
- hence the disdain for reading fiction found in many "sensible" working people

- nothing is more personal than pain because you suffer alone, yet in sympathy we find a bridge to connection. Pg 68

- if you're going to write sci-fi you need to understand and research how science works so you can be somewhat accurate. Pg 120-122

> ...and there are no right answers to wrong questions... Pg 137
- in reference to the wrong question of "where authors get their ideas from"

- when anyone writes there are 2 copies. The ideas you had in your head and the objective thing you wrote. Pg 143
- what it started as before it took on its own life as you wrote it
- the thing you imagined writing is always better than what you were able to get on the page.

- no entire group of people is monolithically evil and depicting them as such does yourself a disservice just as it does them a disservice. Pg 145
- not all Americans carry guns
- not all Christians are good or bad
- however you divide a group this rings true

- [[The Second Sex 231020200657]] Pg 162
- [[The Feminine Mystique 231020200658]] Pg 162

> Does anybody ever come up to a musician and say, Tell me, tell me -- how should I become a tuba player? No! It's too obvious. If you want to be a tuba player you get a tuba, and some tuba music. And you ask the neighbors to move away or put cotton in their ears. And probably you get a tuba teacher, because there are quite a lot of objective rules and techniques both to written music and tuba performance. And then you sit d own and you play the tuba, every day, every week, every month, year after year, until you are good at playing the tuba; until you can--if you desire--play the truth on the tuba.
>
> This is the same with writing. You sit down and you do it, and you do it, and you do it, until you have learned how to do it. Pg 213
- yet everyone asks how to become a writer and hates the advice to sit down with the tools to write (computer, typewriter, pen/paper) then spend 10 year writing and getting better

- [[We - Yevgeny Zamyatin]] Pg 230

> Genuine newness, genuine originality is suspect. Unless it's something familiar rewarmed, or something experimental in form but clearly trivial or cynical in content, it is unsafe. And it must be safe. It mustn't hurt the consumers. It mustn't *change* the consumers. Shock them, *épater le bourgeois*, certainly, that's been done for a hundred and fifty years now, that's the oldest game going. Shock them, jolt them, titillate them, make them writhe and squeal--but do not make them think. If they think, they may not come back to buy the next can of soup. Pg 232, 233
- this is in reference to "challenging" art that is a can of soup. Sure it's odd, but it's not challenging in a way that makes people think
- is the "left" hard to get people into because it makes them think hard about themselves and their beliefs?

> Reading is not a passive reaction, but an action, involving the mind, the emotions, and the will. To accept trashy book because they are "bestsellers" is the same thing as accepting adulterated food, ill-made machines, corrupt government, and military and corporative tyranny, and praising them, and calling them the American Way of Life or the [[American Dream]]. It is a betrayal of reality. Every betrayal, every lie accepted, leads to the next betrayal and the next lie. Pg 240
- this is [[drift to low performance]] from [[Thinking in Systems - A Primer - Donella H Meadows]]
- this praising of corporations and technology is what we have in [[The Techno-Optimist Manifesto]] where [[Marc Andreessen]] praises technology and we've drifted to this low performance in what [[Cal Newport]] says that any technology must be good instead of questioning how the technology serves us.