Radial acceptance of the present: Octavia Butler’s Parable of the Sower

I've been reading a lot of sci-fi / fantasy written by African-American authors this year, and recently had my first exposure to Octavia Butler, who’s prescient fiction hits a bit close to home.

Her books Parable of the Sower and Parable of the Talents are set in a near-future world in which society is on the verge of collapse. Climate change has run rampant, the government has for all intents and purposes been eclipsed by the power of large corporations, and racial tension shapes community behavior in uneasy ways. (See what I mean?)

It's likely that at publication in '93 and '98, what was portrayed felt like one of many possible futures, used more abstractly to explore the questions of what we value as a society, what we preserve, and what we are comfortable abandoning. From the vantage point of 2021 (a mere 3 years before Sower’s 2024), things feel… a bit worse. Climate change already disrupts our cities in profound ways, and meaningful action has not been taken, despite the increasingly dramatic impact. A powerful uprising around racial injustice took place, but seems oddly dampened post-election. There is growing authoritarian sentiment in the US and abroad. And billionaires are having their own privatized space race, for God's sake.

Speaking of space and God, however, reminds me to return to Butler’s writing, and the philosophy she offers as an aid in our fragile times: Earthseed.

——

The core idea of Earthseed is to embrace Change itself as God, acknowledging that it is the truest constant in our shifting lives and universe. From there, adherents are encouraged to be extremely practical, working hard to shape the self into a being that can better accommodate and make use of change. “God is Change. Shape God.” The long-term goal of Earthseed is the Destiny: to "back up" humanity and create societies among the stars. The Destiny offers a “focus, a goal, something big enough, complex enough, difficult enough, and in the end, radical enough to make us become more than we have ever been.”

One of Earthseed’s most interesting qualities is a brutal practicality in response to a broken down world. Reading these books and absorbing their plausibility saddened me, but offered an odd comfort. Looking at the next several decades, it’s hard to know what will be required of us. Will we Mad Max-ify, becoming strange and cruel? Will we band together to solve our looming problems and create utopia? Will we scrape through by the skin of our teeth? Whichever way things fall, it’s impossible to imagine a world that will not radically change. Earthseed internalizes and metabolizes this reality more fully than almost anything I’ve read in fiction or philosophy.

It’s almost trite to say that people don’t like change, and try to avoid it by living in the past. Nostalgia seems like a natural part of us, whether it’s fashion reinvention, throwback Thursdays, or the idea of simpler, better “good ole days,” and the US is particularly addicted to stories about itself that promote certain ideals despite less rosy realities. Our senators hold an idealized version of 1800s senate preceedings and refuse to change them to pass crucial reforms. For decades, our leaders have called climate solutions too radical even as our lives are increasingly upended. It is apparently very hard for us to accept present dangers quickly enough to meaningfully address their causes.

——

Radical acceptance of our changing present (which is eventually visualized in Talents) would dramatically transform our country and world. Seeing our situation with clear eyes is the only way to begin to address it, and Butler’s protagonist Lauren Oya Olamina understands this well. If someone has set your house ablaze, you must not live in denial or daydream. Confront what is happening. See the change, and shape what you can, moving through the fire.

Radical acceptance of change can offer a strange emotional balance, as well. Yes, our world may pass away, but not all worlds, not The World. In a harsh future, our deep and unwieldy histories may be lost, but humans will continue in some form long after, creating new cultures and experiences all their own. What will their children have except for the present? Would our impossibly rich and top-heavy society even sound possible? What might they build instead?

I’m trying to follow Butler’s advice these days by living in the present and acknowledging that which is, so that I may face it head on. I will have been hundreds of different people before I die, and I will try to embrace each version of myself as they pass. I will be that which observes and acts accordingly. I will try to look the world in the face, for only then will I see it’s too-bright beauty. Only then will I see those around me with clear eyes. Only then will my love be based on What Is.

God is Change. Shape God.