It Could Happen Here - Parables of Sowing and Talents Ft. Andrew

Episode Date: May 13, 2022

Andrew takes the lead once again to discuss Octavia Butler's masterpieces Parable of the Sower and Parable of the TalentsSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

You should probably keep your lights on for Nocturnal Tales from the Shadowbride. Join me, Danny Trejo, and step into the flames of fright. An anthology podcast of modern-day horror stories inspired by the most terrifying legends and lore of Latin America. Listen to Nocturnal on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hi, I'm Ed Zitron, host of the Better Offline podcast, and we're kicking off our second season digging into tech's elite and how they've turned Silicon Valley into a playground for billionaires. From the chaotic world of generative AI to the destruction of Google search, Better Offline is your unvarnished and at times unhinged look at the underbelly of tech

brought to you by an industry veteran with nothing to lose. Listen to Better Offline on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, wherever else you get your podcasts from. On Thanksgiving Day 1999, five-year-old Cuban boy Elian Gonzalez was found off the coast of Florida. And the question was, should the boy go back to his father in Cuba? Mr. Gonzalez wanted to go home and he wanted to take his son with him. Or stay with his relatives in Miami? Imagine that your mother died trying to get you to freedom. Listen to Chess Peace, the Elian Gonzalez story on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, I'm Jacqueline Thomas, the host of a brand new Black Effect original series, Black Lit.

The podcast for diving deep into the rich world of Black literature. Black Lit is for the page turners, for those who listen to audio books while running errands or at the end of a busy day. From thought provoking novels to powerful poetry, we'll explore the stories that shape our culture. Listen to Black Lit on the Black Effect podcast network, iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. AT&T. Connecting changes everything. Oh. All right. Well, show's started. I like that these intros are getting shorter every time.

Yeah, we've gotten it onto one syllable, so there's not much room where we can go from there. Look, you know what? An honest man only needs one syllable, sometimes less, sometimes half a syllable. We'll eventually get this down to just grunts. That's really what I'm moving towards is an entirely... Shouldn't we be moving towards telepathy? Yeah, yeah telepathy we don't even record a podcast where we just like put up transmit

the information instantaneously just a blank audio file that says now think about farming and I must say that that sounds very um that sounds very sci-fi and um that's my way of doing a slick segue here Because today we will be talking And I'm very excited to talk about this She's one of my favorite authors I really enjoyed discussing the ideas present in all Huxley's work But this one has a special place in my heart

Today we'll be taking a look at Octavia Butler's Parable of the Sower and Parable of the Talents. And the themes and ideas present within. Yes, back at you again with another podcast banger. But first of all, hi, I'm Andrew, sometimes known as saint andrew i'm kind of trying to rebrand as something else still figuring that out um and you can find me on youtube at saint andrewism but this episode is not about me and my branding this episode is about octavia butler and my branding this episode is about octavia butler born in 1947 and growing up in segregation era america she became an award-winning sci-fi author with a lot of influences and a lot of themes and ideas being covered in her work considering the very white male dominated

scene that is sci-fi the fact that she was able to not only break into it but also present some things that haven't been explored before in with angles that haven't really been explored before um really um has touched a lot of people she was somewhat afrofuturist but she was also very much um a lot of her stories really blended um a lot of people have a lot of different backgrounds and and histories and she always managed to work aspects of herself into her main characters um she was a big critic of hierarchies which really draws me to her and she also very relatably has at times struggled with writer's block and depression. She wrote over two dozen essays, speeches, short stories and novels in her time on this earth

but unfortunately she had a stroke and died in 2006 one of the or other two of the books that i've had the most of whose that have had the most impact on me and of course i haven't read her entire bibliography yet but i hope to get to it um is power of the sewer yeah right and you know i think a lot of people have heard about it again a lot more relevance um after you know as climate catastrophe continued to accelerate as you know we drew closer to the year that the um book is set in and with regard to the second book as we had you know trump come into office um and i'll get into why that's relevant in a bit in the first book um just to give a brief synopsis global climate

change and economic crisis has led to a whole set of social crisis and chaos in the early 2020s um the book is set in california and they are struggling with pervasive water shortages and masses of poor people will do basically anything to live to see another day everybody is struggling so basically today in this setting 15 year old lauren olamina lives inside a gated community with her preacher father, family, and neighbors. Sheltered somewhat from the surrounding chaos. However, when we hear gated community, now we think of, you know, like, really rich people. In this case, gated community is just like a regular community that had to put up a bunch of walls to prevent like pyromaniacs from like, yeah, it's like a it's a suburb that used to be like a well off suburb. But as things got worse, it just turned into people hiding behind their walls because they were scared of poor folks, right?

because they were scared of poor folks, right? Like it's, there's an element of it that almost reads like a slasher movie in the opening of the book, which is one of the things that's really compelling about it. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. They really, she really gets you invested in the setting and in the character early on.

And part of what really gets you invested in Lauren as a protagonist is the fact that she suffers from a unique vulnerability or strength, depending on how you look at it. Oftentimes vulnerability. And that is hyper-empathy syndrome. Which is basically that she's able to feel others' emotions, others' pains. So when others are very, very very sad she feels very very sad

when others are in pain she feels that same excruciating pain um and so on and so forth and so she has to sort of navigate this chaos world while dealing with this um with this um disorder that she's struggling with. At the same time, though, she's also navigating faith and the idea of faith and philosophy because her father is like a preacher and he is the preacher of the delegated community. And so she has grown up in the church,

but she also has found issues in um the religion that she grew up in places where she thinks it has sort of led people astray and that's kind of also what has drawn me to lauren as a character because i too you know have had to negotiate and navigate that whole religious realm. And so that's basically the setting. She's in this community. It's chaos on the outside. She's navigating her hyper-empathy syndrome.

And she's also dealing with the ideas of religion and change and so on and so forth. So as she's there sort of thinking internally, she's keeping this journal and she's developing this new system of thought, which she calls Earthseed. And we're going to get into Earthseed, but it basically shapes the decisions that she makes and the outcome of both books and as well as how they progress

throughout the second book places her in i'm really trying not to spoil which is difficult to do because the second book leads directly after the first book and so on and so forth but i'll try to speak in broad brushes because i really think people should go and read it as blind as possible. Lauren, of course, eventually we will get into spoilers, by the way, so I'll try to let folks know when we get into that. But in the second book, Lauren is working on a community

founded on her faith, Earthseed, and they begin to face persecution i'll say after the election of this ultra conservative president who vows to quote make america great again being you know a young black woman in a minority religious faction in the United States of America, her colony becomes a target of President Jarrett's reign of terror. And at the same time, Lauren's future daughter is navigating the discovery of the mother that she didn't know through the journals that her mother kept through the years. And I think I'll leave it at that. There are a lot of themes that Butler covers in these texts. And in fact, I've seen them described as butlerian which I would agree with because

she covers them in other books of hers as well in different ways she talks about poverty and slavery and freedom she also perseverance she navigates the this idea of community and what community means what how community is both a balance of inclusion and exclusion at the same time and also the whole cycle of creation destruction and rebirth that really defines human history right now well in that books in the setting of that book um slavery has made a comeback more than it already has you know you have these extreme forms of debt slavery and marital slavery and probably even plantation slavery um i believe plantation slavery is mentioned in the second book. And of course, the slavery is inflicted upon the poor. Yeah, and a lot of like company town style slavery, right?

Where people are like bound to a specific location because of their employer who protects them in this increasingly dangerous bandit filled world. Yeah. Exactly. And in this world, you you know race remains a factor even though these books are written in the 80s and 90s i believe parable the sower is uh 93 and yeah talent is 98 yeah yeah right right so again like he's got or butler has a character using the same phrase, Trump would win the presidency on, what is it, 24 years before the start of his campaign? Hard to overstate the degree to which she was ahead of the curve on a lot of things. things because i mean to be fair she knew america oh yeah you know she grew up in segregation era america she had to deal with um her mother was a domestic laborer and so she had to go in with her mother in these rich white families places through the back door um and you know obviously that would have shaped how she saw herself and

herself in relation to the wider world through to america as an idea and so i think that as she's writing of this you know sort of horrific future she's drawing a lot from her horrific past or rather america's horrific past of which her history is a part so lauren who is in some ways octavia butler's self-insert um spends a lot of time in the book in both books allying with people who are also minorities who come from mixed backgrounds people who tend to be overlooked by the dominant christian religious right white um order because i believe she finds some sense of safety and strength in people who have been so maligned slavery also ends up affecting lauren's community too um in many ways that i don't want to spoil but despite it all the theme of perseverance is really what carries the story along.

Lauren ultimately is the archetype of the perseverer. You know, she preaches a sermon on the importance of perseverance. She tries to get others to see the importance of hard work. And she sticks to her goals no matter what happens and a lot happens that would quite honestly discourage a lot of people to put it lightly and yet she perseveres and so to tie that in as well to american history particularly in the first book she ends up having to make a journey north to northern california and throughout that journey she you know she meets with other people and interacts with other people um she makes allies and avoids enemies

and you could honestly draw some parallels to the underground railroad of course it's not an exact one-to-one but in the sense of having to work with people along the way to progress out of a terrible situation a hellish situation for the hope not the guarantee but the hope of some form of salvation when you get to the end of the journey she doesn't do it alone she does it with others and that's kind of what keeps her hope alive but it's not just external she has a lot of intrinsic motivation to persevere which is driven by her philosophy Welcome. I'm Danny Thrill. Won't you join me at the fire and dare enter? Nocturnum, Tales from the Shadows, presented by iHeart and Sonora.

An anthology of modern-day horror stories inspired by the legends of Latin America. From ghastly encounters with shapeshifters to bone-chilling brushes with supernatural creatures. I know you. Take a trip and experience the horrors that have haunted Latin America since the beginning of time. Listen to Nocturnal Tales from the Shadows as part of my Cultura podcast network, available on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. is your unvarnished and at times unhinged look at the underbelly of tech from an industry veteran with nothing to lose. This season, I'm going to be joined by everyone from Nobel-winning economists to leading journalists in the field, and I'll be digging into why the products you love keep getting worse and naming and shaming those responsible. Don't get me wrong, though. I love technology. I just hate the people in charge and want them to get back to building things that

actually do things to help real people. I swear to God, things can change if we're loud enough. So join me every week to understand what's happening in the tech industry and what could be done to make things better. Listen to Better Offline on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, wherever else you get your podcasts. Check out betteroffline.com. Hola mi gente, it's Honey German and I'm bringing you Gracias, Come Again. Thank you. We're talking real conversations with our Latin stars, from actors and artists to musicians and creators sharing their stories, struggles, and successes. You know it's going to be filled with chisme laughs and all the vibes that you love. Each week, we'll explore everything from music and pop culture to deeper topics like identity, community, and breaking down barriers in all sorts of industries.

Don't miss out on the fun, el té caliente, and life stories. sorts of industries. Don't miss out on the fun, el te caliente, and life stories. Join me for Gracias Come Again, a podcast by Honey German, where we get into todo lo actual y viral. Listen to Gracias Come Again on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, I'm Jacqueline Thomas, the host of a brand new Black Effect original series, Hey, I'm Jack Peace Thomas, the host of a brand new Black Effect original series, Black Lit, the podcast for diving deep into the rich world of Black literature. I'm Jack Peace Thomas, and I'm inviting you to join me and a vibrant community of literary enthusiasts dedicated to protecting and celebrating our stories. stories. Blacklit is for the page turners, for those who listen to audiobooks while commuting or running errands, for those who find themselves seeking solace, wisdom, and refuge between the chapters. From thought-provoking novels to powerful poetry, we'll explore the stories that shape our culture. Together, we'll dissect classics and contemporary works while uncovering the

stories of the brilliant writers behind them. Blacklit is here to amplify the voices of Black writers and to bring their words to life. Listen to Blacklit on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I mean, I think one of the things, because there's a lot of meaning in why she picks the parable of the sower and the parable of the talents for, and it's pretty obvious in the context of the books. She's not like hiding it under layers or anything. I mean, in the first book, too, to a degree, is kind of the pointlessness of responding to dystopian change in society by just like hunkering down in a bunker and trying to hide from it and protect your family. Like one of the reoccurring themes is the degree to which that doesn't work. And one of the things that's really interesting about this is a dystopian novel um this is a novel that is

both of these novels are kind of imagining the collapse of a lot of aspects of american society but it is not at no point does the united states really collapse in these books and and even like as much as authoritarianism is present at no point is the government completely taken over and completely under the control of like a unified fascist regime or anything yeah like elections are still happening campaigns are still going on the police still exist but you know you still have to pay them to you know for them to pay any attention to you and and the the like christian death squad type things that are roaming around are are distinctly non-state actors. They have backing to an extent from the state. They're not really opposed by it, but it's, again, it's this thing

that we are actually dealing with where collapse doesn't look like, okay, everything's fallen apart. And now it's whoever's got the strongest group of buddies who can do their best in the wasteland. It's like, no, no, no. It is about groups of people trying to navigate in an increasingly dysfunctional state. And the only way to actually survive that is, survival is complicated. It's never as simple as just like picking a good farm to hide on. You know, that's not going to work out for you.

Exactly. I just want to point out as well that as dysfunctional as things, people are still going to work out for you. Exactly. I just want to point out as well, that as dysfunctional as things are, people are still going to work. Not just the people who are, you know, in company towns or in debt bondage, but even Lauren's father, you know,

he takes his bike every day and rides out into that chaos to go and work for a wage to come back and to try to support his family. And of course, in this gate community, we see that their attempts to stay gated you know it's ultimately futile like the rich have their high security communities and they're able to escape in helicopters when anything happens but they have no security even in this illusion of security and that hunkering down strategy they were taking

wasn't working and the first half of the book really shows why. Yeah, it's a book about collapse by somebody who grew up in a situation where her, her childhood had a lot of elements of the collapse that many, particularly like, uh, many folks are concerned about now. Like that's what she grew up in was there's no,

there's no protection. Violence can come from all sides and is random. Um, and you have no, there are no guarantees in this like world that you've come into which is this thing that like people are freaking out about now as we encounter kind of aspects of the the world order that we had grown up with that we feel like are falling apart and i think the thing that's so compelling about butler is her books kind of

are coming from the perspective of someone for whom that order and that world were never real. Yeah. Yeah. And that's why her contributions to sci-fi is so valuable, you know, because all of these sci-fi writers are just like regular privileged white guys and,

you know, and they just come with that experience. And this is an often um repeated critique of of sci-fi um you see it in tweets and so sometimes where like a lot of it is just like particularly like alien related sci-fi it's like whoa what if white the things that white people did other people happen to white people you know like this whole idea that these alien invasion fears and alien invasion stories are just like, what if colonialism, but to white people, to rich countries, you know. hunker down and stuff and basically exclude others um from their community failed is because and lauren writes this in her diary exclusion breeds resentment among the excluded so even though lauren's neighborhood while you know gated and wall and stuff was not particularly rich

just the mere fact that they had those walls up basically signaled to the outside world that they had something to hide some sort of resources they wanted to safeguard even if the only thing they had to safeguard were themselves because a lot of the members of the community were you know unemployed and extremely poor that alone sort of symbolized uh sort of it was sort of a beacon um drawing people to eventually um attack and that's a slight spoiler but yeah and you know despite the problems that exclusion ends up causing um lauren as she realizes that her community could not handle that approach even then as she's progressing north and stuff and she's debating with herself you know who to bring into her fold exclusion and inclusion they they play a role you know um she has to find form bonds and you know stay safe but at the same time

the bonds that she forms could put her in danger if she's betrayed or if the people that she invests in end up being harmed in some way because the harm that they experience will ultimately affect who as well welcome i'm Danny Thrill. Won't you join me at the fire and dare enter Nocturnum, Tales from the Shadows, presented by iHeart and Sonorum. An anthology of modern-day horror stories inspired by the legends of Latin America. From ghastly encounters with shapeshifters

to bone-chilling brushes with supernatural creatures. I know you. Take a trip and experience the horrors that have haunted Latin America since the beginning of time. that have haunted Latin America since the beginning of time. Listen to Nocturnal Tales from the Shadows as part of my Cultura podcast network, available on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Hi, I'm Ed Zitron, host of the Better Offline podcast, and we're kicking off our second season digging into how tech's elite has turned Silicon Valley into a playground for billionaires. From the chaotic world of generative AI to the destruction of Google search, Better Offline is your unvarnished and at times unhinged look at the underbelly of tech from an industry veteran with nothing to lose. an industry veteran with nothing to lose. This season I'm going to be joined by everyone from Nobel winning economists to the leading journalists in the field and I'll be digging into why the products you love keep getting worse and naming and shaming those responsible. Don't get me wrong though, I love technology, I just hate the people in charge and want them to get back to building things that actually do things to help real people.

I swear to god things can change if we're loud enough, so join me every week to understand We'll see you next time. mi gente. It's Honey German and I'm bringing you Gracias, Come Again, the podcast where we dive deep into the world of Latin culture, musica, peliculas, and entertainment with some of the biggest names in the game. If you love hearing real conversations with your favorite Latin celebrities, artists, and culture shifters, this is the podcast for you. We're talking real conversations with our Latin stars, from actors

and artists to musicians and creators sharing their stories, struggles, and successes. You know it's going to be filled with chisme laughs and all the vibes that you love. Each week, we'll explore everything from music and pop culture to deeper topics like identity, community, and breaking down barriers in all sorts of industries. Don't miss out on the fun, el té caliente, and life stories. Join me for Gracias Come Again, a podcast by Honey German,

where we get into todo lo actual y viral. Listen to Gracias Come Again on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, I'm Jack Peace Thomas, the host of a brand new Black Effect original series, Black Lit, the podcast for diving deep into the rich world of Black literature. I'm Jack Peace Thomas, and I'm inviting you to join me and a vibrant community of literary enthusiasts dedicated to protecting and celebrating our stories. Black Lit is for the page turners, for those who listen to audiobooks while commuting or running errands, for those who find themselves seeking solace, wisdom, and refuge between the chapters.

From thought-provoking novels to powerful poetry, we'll explore the stories that shape our culture. Together, we'll dissect classics and contemporary works while uncovering the stories of the brilliant writers behind them. Black Lit is here to amplify the voices of Black writers and to bring their words to life. Listen to Blacklit on the iHeartRadio app,

Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. So as Lauren is making her way up north, she is continuing to wrestle with this idea of inclusion and exclusion. Because as she's progressing north in hopes of, you know, building a community of some kind, creating, joining, forming a community of some kind. She's also forming and establishing her religion. Like I mentioned before, it played a major role in the community that she came from. And in fact, the novel points out that

one of the reasons people are attracted to religion, to Christianity, in this chaotic time, and in general really, is because it provides hope, and hope in the form of an afterlife. And hope is what people really really need in these hellish 2020s that they are dealing with the lauren comes to realize that the hope and the hope in the afterlife ultimately isn't enough for the people that have invested so much into it um one of the people in

the community um ends up despite being a staunch believer that um trigger warning by the way for suicide um despite being a strong believer that you know suicide is a sin and i was sending straight to hell she is so lost hope and can no longer trust in has been dealing with so much pain that she ends up taking her own life and she takes her own life and as lauren remarks she takes her own life knowing um or at least believing the pain hereafter and yet she finds it more of a reprieve than the pain she was experiencing here now and so as lauren is witnessing these things happening around her um is dealing with you know loss and her baptism and her father's commitment to the church she is continuing to develop the idea of earthseed and she begins to contrast earthseed from christ with christianity um and particularly

in the sense of how the two religions address hope and change in christianity you know they have the hope um of the afterlife against this brutal life life now life whereas earthseed simply presents the central principle god is change that's the first principle of earthseed second is that shape god so first you have to recognize and accept that change is inevitable often destructive but you could also recognize you have the power to shape shape it and so from that comes the third principle which is to pursue the destiny the destiny being the establishment of humanity and other worlds humanity and other worlds and to be quite honest i am as this is one aspect of of the philosophy of earth sea that i think i i diverge from um lauren of course has a lot of focus on the heavens, as in the cosmic heavens, and scattering Earthseed, which is humanity across all these different planets, establishing ourselves in different worlds.

feel as though the destiny is in a way i wouldn't say destruction i think it's it's a misplaced um a misplaced hoop i guess i mean there's that's kind of one of the points of the book right because there's in especially in the second book there's a lot from the perspective of her daughter that kind of shows how as as much her philosophy is a really understandable and in some ways admirable adaptation to the completely fucked up time she was born into it's also in the same way that a lot of other people's philosophies become you know and that her parents and stuff uh are earlier in the first book it's a way for her to kind of justify not paying attention to the people in her life and not not taking proper care of them because she's got this thing that's bigger than them yeah she works yeah um and you really by the end of the second book you really have to sort of contend with the fact that you know you sort of have to grapple

with how things with her daughter will handle in the end i guess i'll leave it at that um yeah and yeah um that's part of it i mean she's so dedicated to this cause to this new religion of hers um and you know she's recruiting people into it you know she's telling people this this hope you know that follow earth sea believe in a destiny eventually you know space is going to become the real life heaven we could actually get out there and make a new start for herself for ourselves and that's part of it as well part of the whole idea of the destiny is you know a fresh start for humanity a sort of a maturation of humanity this idea that you know once humanity establishes itself in other worlds that it would have grown up as a species

yeah and it it's one of the things that i i really respect about these books that i think a lesser writer wouldn't have been able to pull off is that the degree to which that beating you in the head with it you see her as first failed by the philosophies and ideologies of her parents' generation and by the systems that people had gotten stuck in. She's very much a character who grows up in a world where all the adults are stuck. Yeah. Essentially like a system that has become a death cult. And she has to figure out a way out of it,

which she comes to believe in so much that in her own way, she becomes stuck in that new thing. And it renders her unable to see certain things that are important. And the book never portrays her as completely right or completely wrong, because that's just not how civilization works. Things just change over time. And, you know, the ideology that her parents and the adults are all stuck in in the beginning of the book is an ideology that worked to a degree at some point in the past um which is just it it's it's it does a really good job of of showing a number of things which is kind of

what it's like to be a kid realizing that the adults have fucked you, what it's like to become radicalized and realize that the world doesn't have to be the way that it is, and what it's like to let that radicalization lead you somewhere to where you miss important things. There's so much going on in the evolution of what the characters believe in this book that is just masterful from a storytelling standpoint. Yeah. And I mean, the second book really does a good job showing her sort of blindness as well when it comes to things going on

because what ends up happening, one of the worst incidents in that second book is something that's, of of course not to victim blame but it is something they could have prepared for a bit more yeah a lot more actually yeah it's it's they're good books they are books that you will, if you're like me, you will start reading them and you will get really into the first book. And then you'll take a 10-minute break to check the news and something will send you into a panic spiral and you'll read the next two books getting increasingly depressed. It's good. It's a good book.

The next book. Because the third book never released. Yeah. She never quite got to make it. Yeah. And I'll get into that as well in a bit and how it ties into the destiny right yeah but just to reiterate you know first principle god has changed if god is not a person it doesn't love or hate or watch over us or know

us it just is second principle shape god god is malleable god is power infinite irresistible inexorable indifferent and yet god is pliable trickster teacher chaos clay and truly emphasizes the change is neither good or bad but it is potential and we could and we have a choice to either be a victim of change a victim of God, or we can become a partner of God, or we can become a shaper of God, or we can just stay as God's plaything, as change's prey. It's unavoidable, but our actions can shape its direction and speed. In the end, change prevails. And there's a comfort in that. Because once we understand that,

we can return that effort. The inevitability of change can be what thrusts us forward. And I think people who are invested in in activism in organizing and just revolutionary work i think there are aspects of food see that i think could be very motivating very impactful very energizing because despite you know how circumstances play out um there's a recognition that we are never entirely disempowered you know and so like just the last point i want to get into about the destiny i think that's what would make me if i were to be in this world i think that's where i

would diverge from the earthseed orthodoxy because i mean lauren talks about how you know history is just this repetitive thing we have all these wars and kill a bunch of people and impoverish others and spread disease and hunger and her whole thing is just because that's how it's always been that's being we have to accept that we can choose to do more make something more of ourselves and to who making something more of ourselves is establishing ourselves another planet so if she is earthseed orthodoxy i suppose i'm an earthseed protestant hey you're reformed i think you're earthseed martin luther nailing your theses to i don't know the door of her house in seattle exactly i would be a reformer of the of

the destiny in the sense that i say the destiny could be creating a heaven here on earth like rather than pursuing a cosmic heaven i don't think it's even something that lauren at least i don't recall lauren ever grappling with the possibility because she really is fixated on this cosmic um idea i don't think she grapples with the possibility that humanity can mature quote unquote here on Earth. You know, she doesn't really draw much attention or spend much time thinking about things like ecosystem restoration or, you know, changing the. Pushing back against the government or the economic system that is impoverishing and inflicting violence upon people. She's just really fixated on the destiny.

And so that's when I get into the third book and things I learned about the third book when I was researching for this episode. Butler actually planned on exploring the fulfillment of the destiny in the third book, Parable of the Trickster. In fact, she intended to have a seven-part series, so the third book would

have been near the middle as the story would have focused on another woman named imara who is living on an earth seed colony in the future on a planet called bo far away from earth quote it is not the heaven that was hoped for but gray dank and utterly miserable everybody is homesick um homesick not just in like oh i haven't been home in a while kind of thing homesick in the sense of like you know when someone is like an amputee and they have this sort of phantom limb sensation yeah this homesickness is like a phantom limb pain, a neurological debilitation it's like trying to

graft humanity onto a new planet and it's it's like if humanity were a branch and this new planet was a tree and like both the tree and the branch are kind of rejecting each other um and so she never really got very far into writing parallel of the tricksters

in fact she had a lot of different um ways of approaching it a lot of different manuscripts that she got you know a couple pages into and And then discarded. So in some versions. The colonists end up having creeping blindness. In others they get this telepathy. In other versions. She has to solve a murder. In other versions. She becomes a ghost.

Sometimes she's an earthseed skeptic. Sometimes she's a true believer. Sometimes she's a hyper empath sometimes she's cured of it um sometimes the planet itself is filled with giant dinosaurs other times small animals other times intelligent aliens um and there's also this idea this i would say very twilight zone-esque idea that the aliens that they do encounter are tokens of their escalating collective madness and so the whole idea of power the trickster and would have been the subsequent books was you know the continuation of the concept of choice choosing to either you know live

together work together struggle together or you know fight and scheme and lose their minds break down die and murder alone in a speech to the un in 2001 that would be like five years before she passed away i think she died in like i said 2006 she speaks about how before she even like started working on the first parable novel she wanted to write a novel about a utopian civilization where everybody had a kind of hyper empathy but then and she figured it'll be a utopian society because everyone would be inclined to you know behave in a more pro-social way because any anti-social activity they would have you know inflicted upon others would be inflicted upon themselves immediately but then she realized it wouldn't work because sharing pain the threat of shared pain doesn't necessarily make people behave better towards

another she points to the the popular painful sports of you know like boxing and american football you know and so she recognizes that this idea of everyone being a hyper empath could cause a lot of trouble i mean if everyone feels each other's pain, who wants to be a dentist? You know, who wants to be a nurse? And so she discarded that idea and she basically created Lauren, who is a lone hyper empath in a world that is empathy deficient. Ultimately, I think Butler gets to the heart of, you know, a lot of the issues that we are dealing with. She grapples with a lot of questions that should still be explored. concept of perseverance, concept of hope, the creation and destruction and rebirth of life and just what makes life, life.

I guess I'll wrap things up with a quote. Does tolerance have a chance? Only if we want it to Tolerance Like any aspect of peace Is forever a work in progress Never completed And if we are as intelligent

As we'd like to think we are Never abandoned That's it God has changed Shape God Peace Well I think that's about as good a line as any to end on That's it. Artists change. Shape God. Peace. Well, I think that's about as good a line as any to end on.

Go read Octavia Butler. If you haven't, check her out. Go to the library. Her shit's all over the library. Libraries are filthy with Octavia Butler books. You'll find it. Or steal it off the internet. She's not going to mind.

It Could Happen Here is a production of Cool Zone Media. For more podcasts from Cool Zone Media, visit our website, coolzonemedia.com, or check us out on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. You can find sources for It Could Happen Here updated monthly at coolzonemedia.com slash sources. Thanks for listening. You should probably keep your lights on for Nocturnal Tales from the Shadow. Join me, Danny Trejo, and step into the flames of rife. An anthology podcast of modern day horror stories inspired by the most terrifying legends and lore of Latin America. Listen to Nocturnal on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

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