But we, insofar as we have power over the world and over one another, we must learn to do what the leaf and the whale and the wind do of their own na… - Ursula K. Le Guin

Having intelligence, we must not act in ignorance. Having choice, we must not act without responsibility.

For fantasy is true, of course. It isn’t factual, but it’s true. Children know that. Adults know it too and that’s precisely why many of them are afraid of fantasy. They know that its truth challenges, even threatens, all that is false, all that is phony, unnecessary, and trivial in the life they have let themselves be forced into living. They are afraid of dragons because they are afraid of freedom.

A child free from the guilt of ownership and the burden of economic competition will grow up with the will to do what needs doing and the capacity for joy in doing it. It is useless work that darkens the heart. The delight of the nursing mother, of the scholar, of the successful hunter, of the good cook, of the skillful maker, of anyone doing needed work and doing it well—this durable joy is perhaps the deepest source of human affection, and of sociality as a whole.

A machine is more blameless, more sinless even than any animal. It has no intentions whatsoever but our own.