The True Life with Ursula Le Guin: Reflections on Peace, Gender and the Creative Spirit

In the beginning of her story suite, Five Ways to Forgiveness, Ursula Le Guin offers us a window of hope, of possibility. She reminds us that many cultures have dedicated themselves to peace. Scholar Luke Kemp echoes this, telling us that throughout humanity’s long history peace and relative equality has been the norm. And yet today we are told that are told again and again that war is necessary, whether that’s war between nations, war between neighbours, or even war within ourselves. Perhaps it’s only necessary for the profits of certain industries.

Ursula offers another perspective, another possibility:

On the planet O there has not been a war for five thousand years, she read, and on Gethen there has never been a war.” She stopped reading, to rest her eyes and because she was trying to train herself to read slowly. “There has never been a war.” In her mind the words stood clear and bright, surrounded by and sinking into an infinite, dark, soft incredulity. What would that world be, a world without war? It would be the real world. Peace was the true life, the life of working and learning and bringing up children to work and learn.

We might wonder, why has there never been a war on Gethen? The answer is that the people who live there do not live fixed as women and men. The people of Gethen change throughout their lives and anyone can become pregnant. Who would want to go to war if they could become pregnant? Who would want to be on a battlefield carrying precious new life within their own bodies?

On Gethen, there is no possibility of gender superiority and inferiority. There is no possibility of suggesting that those who care for others are less important than those who seek power over others. And there is no possibility of saying that some gender is real and others is not.

What a relief that would be.

Luckily, we don’t need to wait for the whole of the world to change to be happy, to be at peace. We can practice for ourselves, each day.

It’s true that on Earth, not all of us can become pregnant. But we can all give birth through our creativity. Whether we write or sing, dance or cook, paint or draw, garden or host gatherings, the same creative spirit that forms babies can form all kinds of amazing things. When our focus is on loving creation, including ourselves, then we find the peace that is the real world, that is our true nature.

Unlearning the habits of judging and controlling, through practices of loving and creating, we can allow ourselves to explore our gifts, to see what might come through us. Who knows what we might birth together?

References

Kemp, Luke (2025) Goliath’s Curse: The History and Future of Societal Collapse.

Le Guin, Ursula K (1969) The Left Hand of Darkness.

Le Guin, Ursula K (2024) Five Ways to Forgiveness.

This article was first published at Listening to Grandmother’s Wisdom