Image by Lucian Alexe, via Unsplash.
by Melody Lei
In 1935, the Austrian-Irish theoretical physicist Erwin Schrödinger created a thought experiment to study quantum mechanics by envisioning a cat sitting in a box with an object that had a 50% chance of killing the cat and a 50% chance of staying dormant. While the cat is in the box, from the outside, it is simultaneously dead and alive. The conclusion of this thought experiment is that, regardless of how much calculation we perform, we do not perceive objects in a singular state but as multiple at the same time, with each being as “real” as the next. This idea has implications in physics while also provoking dilemmas in philosophy and sociology. How can a person carry two contradictory beliefs at once? Does the potential of an action determine its worth or is it determined by its outcome? Through paradoxes, hidden truths of the world could be revealed, demonstrating how what is real is not necessarily defined by what we can calculate. Ursula Le Guin explores the interconnected nature of physics and philosophy through her 1974 science fiction novel The Dispossessed. The central character of the novel, Shevek, is a physicist and a man of two worlds. He travels to Urras, a capitalist state with vast class divides, and is faced with sharp contrasts to his home planet, Anarres, which is a communal, stateless society. The first chapter concludes with Shevek declaring in Urras that they “have their anarchist” (23); however, what we typically conceive as anarchy is far from the society Shevek lives in. The popular perception of anarchy is the absence of order and principles, but Anarres, as a society, is arguably more principled than Urras, with the people within it abiding by stricter codes of conduct. The result of Anarres is a community of people who wield the potential to enact chaos, act selfishly, and toss aside principles at every moment but refuse to do so. Anarres parallels the existential quandary of Schrödinger’s cat because it is simultaneously free and unfree. Its society runs on the potential for there to be chaos while depending on that potential not being realized. Le Guin demonstrates that the nature of freedom is paradoxical and that for there to be progress, this truth must be acknowledged.
Throughout the novel, Urras is often likened to a prison. One of Shevek’s initial encounters with Urrasi protocol is being locked inside a room, which fills him with “a kind of rage … which he had never felt before in his life” (10). Later, when he attempts to leave Urras, he must seek sanctuary so as not to be found by the government that is chasing him. Anarres, despite having no governments or prisons, does not contrast Urras sharply on this frontier. The novel opens with a wall on Anarres that could easily be climbed over, yet no one does – it is “an idea of boundary” (1). Initially, Anarres is described as, from the outside perspective, “a great prison camp, cut off from other worlds and other men, in quarantine” (2). Shevek is the first person in nearly two centuries to have left the planet, and upon his departure, “those who had wanted to kill him resorted … to rock throwing” (4). Furthermore, Anarres is not a place of potential, diversity, and possibility but rather a uniform, utilitarian society where individuals follow strict obligations to the collective. Salas, a musician, is restricted from sharing his music because he doesn’t “write the way [he] was trained to write at the conservatory” (164). When Tirin, a friend of Shevek, wrote a play that “could seem anti-Odonian” (159), he was shunned by society, was not accepted in jobs he wanted to do, and was sent to the therapy center. The strictly judgmental nature of Odonian society is propagated by the scarcity of Anarres. Resources on it are scarce, due to it being previously a mostly unpopulated moon. There are periodic droughts causing “rationing [to be] strict; labor drafts were imperative. The struggle to grow enough food and to get the food distributed became conclusive, desperate” (231). Such a society would not survive without a tight-knit society where the majority of people shared the same values while prioritising unity and selflessness above individuality. Since he was a child, Shevek was told off for “not sharing, merely egoizing” (28), and when he got older, he was criticized because “what … he likes to do isn’t always what his society needs from him” (248). Ironically, Shevek must escape to the prison-like Urras to obtain the freedom he cannot find within the free Anarres.
The restrictive nature of Anarres comes from its fragile conditions. Shevek proposes that their “brotherhood … begins in shared pain” (59). The Odonians lean on each other so they can survive in a budding society cut off from resources. Without this pain and the unity that comes from it, Anarres is at risk of collapsing in on itself. As a result, Anarres is a more principled and lawful society than Urras. This order is enforced by the social conscience, a force arguably greater than the laws of Urras. When Shevek is asked by a Urrasi child why anyone does “the dirty work” (141), he responds with “the social conscience, the opinion of one’s neighbors. There is no other reward on Anarres, no other law … When that is so, then … the opinion of the neighbors becomes a very mighty force.” He further elaborates that those who do not comply are shunned or beaten up. Vea, a Urrasi woman, expresses her views on the Odonian view of life: “I think you Odonians missed the whole point. You threw out the … laws and all that, but you … just stuck it inside your consciences … You’re just as much slaves as ever! You aren’t really free” (206). This lack of freedom is demonstrated when Shevek researches his Theory of Simultaneity – a theory in physics that has no immediate practical application on Anarres. His research is hindered by the community of scientists on Anarres for years until he is told that “if other physicists don’t see value in your work … if it means nothing to other people, what’s the good of it?” (247). He is criticized because his “behavior reflect[s] … a degree of privatism, of nonaltruism” and that his research “doesn’t get bread into people’s mouths.” However, the Odonians, for the most part, do not believe themselves to be slaves because they are driven by a social conscience that feels indistinguishable from their own, rather than physical force pushing them towards an end. Shevek “had assumed that if you removed a human being’s natural incentive to work – his initiative, his spontaneous creative energy – and replace it with external motivation and coercion, he would become a lazy and careless worker” (78). In reality, if the Odonians did not behave selflessly, they would be wrecked by drought, abused by their neighbors, and their society would collapse, but the lack of laws leads them to view their actions as their own initiative, and that belief makes all the difference to what they see as slavery and freedom. Similar to Schrodinger’s cat, if the potential freedom of Anarres is never realized, it ceases to exist, but so long as it could be realized, it is real. The Odonians are motivated by the potential of freedom, the belief that they are driven by their internal initiative rather than external force, but if Anarres cannot survive unless it is kept in a strict equilibrium where the activities of its members must play out in controlled regiment, then it is a prison none the less, only it is a prison that cannot be seen because the mind is held captive along with the body. The belief of a choice, even if they never had one, is the fuel the Odonians run on.
At this point, you might be wondering what the point of this is. If a society attempts to create a world free of rules but depends on rules being adhered to, is that still freedom? As Bedap says to Shevek:
“The circle has come back around to the most vile kind of profiteering utilitarianism. The complexity, the vitality, the freedom of initiative that was the center of the Odonian ideal, we’ve thrown it all away. We’ve gone right back to barbarism. If it’s new, run away from it; if you can’t eat it, throw it away!” (165)
“I want to be free!” Exclaims Vea, but it seems as if human society can be anything but free. This is the dilemma Shevek struggles with throughout the novel, illustrated by a metaphor he created as a child. His metaphor entails throwing a rock at a tree: “it can’t … get from you to the tree … then it has to be halfway between halfway and the tree … it doesn’t matter how far it’s gone, there is always a place … that’s halfway between the last place it was and the tree” (27). This hypothetical does not seem to have a real-world application. After all, rocks hit trees all the time. However, the purpose of paradoxes is to illustrate the disconnect between what should be and what is. The law of conservation insists that energy cannot be created nor destroyed; therefore, since the universe exists right now, it must have always existed. In that case, what was the first event, and what will be the last event? There are two possibilities. The first possibility is that there was nothing before the first event; however, that is not possible because of the law of conservation. How could something have come out of nothing? The second possibility is that there was something before the first event, but in that case, that something would have been the first event and so on. According to its own laws, the universe should not exist, but because it broke its own laws, it does.
The nature of revolutions is similar. Each time humanity attempts to progress, it is like we are throwing a rock towards a destination, one that is never reached, and we are always stuck halfway. When we on Earth abolished the rule of Kings on earth, we did not abolish central control, and when Anarres abolished governments, they did not abolish societal control. Similar to how energy cannot be created or destroyed, when resources are allocated to one group of people in a society, it often comes at the expense of another. If “suffering is the condition on which we live,” (57) and all we choose is how it is distributed rather than alleviating it, then what is the point? Are we not then subjects of the universe, doomed to change but never to evolve? Why would we risk what we have in the present and throw the current system into disorder for a future that cannot be reached? Shevek adamantly opposes this worldview, claiming:
“You don’t understand what time is … you say the past is gone, the future is not real, there is no change, no hope … So there is nothing but the … rich, real, stable present … But it’s not real … not stable, not solid – nothing is. Things change … You cannot have anything … least of all can you have the present, unless you accept it with the past and future” (324).
These ideas are supported by his Theory of Simultaneity – a theory he has been working on for the entire novel and the majority of his life. This theory claims that the sequential progress of time is merely a subjective experience, arguing that “time goes in cycles … within the system, the cycle, where is time? Where is beginning or end? Infinite repetition is an atemporal process” (210). This theory makes sense of the paradox of the existence of the universe. If time does not occur on a linear line but is rather a sphere with no beginning and end, there does not need to be a place where the universe starts and ends. The universe has always existed, with the beginning and end occurring at the same time. The theory carries political implications along with metaphysical ones. As opposed to the linear progression of the rock flying towards a tree, simultaneity demonstrates that change exists on more than one dimension, with a society sitting at multiple points of progress depending on which angle it is viewed from. From the perspective of Anarres, Urras is a broken society without a future, but when Shevek speaks to a woman from Terra, a desolate planet, she views Urras as “alive, tremendously alive” (323). “You … see my Paradise as Hell.” People who fight to preserve the past and protect the present are fighting for the future that someone in the past fought for. The most revolutionary implication of this theory, however, is that it makes the impossible possible. According to it, Schrödinger’s cat can indeed be dead and alive at the same time. Freedom can coexist with restriction because the possible and the present exist at the same time. Shevek not only creates this theory but demonstrates it throughout the whole novel by being one of the first to realize the freedom his society offered. He breaks the values of Odonian and sets off to Urras, and by doing so, he exemplifies Anarres’ purpose better than anyone else in his society since its settlement.
Throughout The Dispossessed, Shevek walks the thin boundary that defines him as Schrödinger’s anarchist, simultaneously fulfilling the potential freedom Anarres offers him by acting “from the center of [his] soul” (165) while risking losing that very freedom by realizing it as he physically departs from its source. He creates a theory that provides an alternative understanding to the paradox of the universe’s existence by revolutionizing the idea of time itself. Ursula Le Guin explores and resolves the metaphysical and sociological themes of her story through a single theory, demonstrating how understanding the paradoxical and cyclical nature of the universe is pivotal to understanding ourselves as a social species. Perhaps based on our current understanding of the world, real change and freedom are unachievable, but we are only here because the impossible was made possible. If the universe could only be made sense of by changing our perspective on it, then a change of perspective may be what we need to see beyond all that we know and are possessed by.
Works Cited
Le Guin, Ursula. The Dispossessed. Foreword by Karen Joy Fowler. Harper Perennial, 2024.