Feeding on Illusions

Welcome to the Convivial Society, a newsletter about technology, culture, and the moral life. You may have noticed that over the last month or so new installments are coming your way at an unusual clip of about once per week. I don’t know that this pace will continue indefinitely, and some of you might prefer if it didn’t. But it has been helpful to write more frequently, so thank you for indulging me and supporting my work. Below, in old school blog fashion, you’ll find me riffing on a post from Mandy Brown who is, in turn, channeling Ursula Le Guin. As always, I hope you find it helpful. One last thing, I’m trying to keep up with reader emails, but please forgive me if I miss a few along the way.

Cheers,

Michael

I regret to say that I have not read much of Ursula Le Guin’s writing. At some point along the way, I read “The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas,” but that’s about it. This is a matter of regret because I know her work is highly regarded by many people whose opinion on such matters I implicitly trust. It’s also the case that whenever I encounter some fragment of her writing, it always strikes me as wise, provocative, and generative.

This was once again the case when I recently read a slice of dialog from one of Le Guin’s Earthsea novels, The Tombs of Atuan (1970), in a brief, bracing reflection published by Mandy Brown on her rich and beautifully conceived website, A Working Library.

The excerpt features an exchange between a wizard and young women after they have escaped great danger but are now weary and hungry with a long way to go before they might find some food. Knowing something of the wizard’s power, the young woman wonders whether he might not be able to make life a little easier for them.

“Can you find food for us?” she asked, rather vaguely and timidly.

“Hunting takes time, and weapons.”

“I meant, with, you know, spells.”

“I can call a rabbit,” he said, poking the fire with a twisted stick of juniper. “The rabbits are coming out of their…