Speaker 1: Oh all right, well Joe started, I like these interests
Speaker 1: of getting shorter every time we've bend it onto one syllable,
Speaker 1: So there's not much we can go fee there. You
Speaker 1: know what, an honest and honest man only needs one syllable,
Speaker 1: sometimes less, sometimes half a syllable. We'll eventually get this
Speaker 1: down to just grunts. That's really what I'm moving towards
Speaker 1: is an entirely shouldn't we be moving towards like telepathy? Yeah, telepathy.
Speaker 1: We don't even record a podcast where we just like
Speaker 1: put up transmit the information instantaneously, just a blank audio
Speaker 1: file that says, now, think about farming. I sa that
Speaker 1: that sounds very Um, that sounds very sci fi. And
Speaker 1: that's my way of doing a slick segue here, because
Speaker 1: today we will be talking and I'm very excited to
Speaker 1: talk about this. Um. She's one of my favorite authors. Um.
Speaker 1: You know, I really enjoyed discussing The idea is present
Speaker 1: in Huxley's work, but this one has a special place
Speaker 1: in my heart. Today we'll be taking a look at
Speaker 1: Octavia Butler's parable of the sewer and parable of the talents,
Speaker 1: and the idea is present within. Yes, back at you
Speaker 1: again with another podcast banger. But first of all, UM, Hi,
Speaker 1: I'm Andrew UM sometimes known as st Andrew. I'm kind
Speaker 1: of trying to rebrand as something else, still figuring that out, UM,
Speaker 1: and you can find me on YouTube at st Andrewism.
Speaker 1: But this episode is not about me and my branding.
Speaker 1: This episode is about Octavia Butler bo and growing up
Speaker 1: in segregation y America. She became an award winning sci
Speaker 1: fi water UM with a lot of influences and a
Speaker 1: lot of themes and ideas being covered in her work.
Speaker 1: Considering the very white, male dominated scene that is sci fi,
Speaker 1: the fact that she was able to not only break
Speaker 1: into it but also presents some things that I haven't
Speaker 1: been explored before, with angles that haven't really been explored before. UM. Really,
Speaker 1: U has touched a lot of people. She was somewhat
Speaker 1: after a futurist, but she was also very much UM.
Speaker 1: A lot of her stories really blended UM. A lot
Speaker 1: of people have a lot of different backgrounds and and
Speaker 1: and histories, and she always managed to work aspects of
Speaker 1: herself into her main characters. UM. She was a big
Speaker 1: critic of hierarchies, which really draws me to her and UM.
Speaker 1: She also relatively has at times struggled with writer's block
Speaker 1: and depression. She rode over two dozen essays, speeches, short stories,
Speaker 1: and novels and her time on this earth. But unfortunately
Speaker 1: she had a stroke and died in two thousand and six.
Speaker 1: One of the or other two of the books that
Speaker 1: have had the most of whos that have had the
Speaker 1: most impact on me. And of course I haven't read
Speaker 1: her entire bibliography yet, but I hope to get to it.
Speaker 1: Um is part of the sewer right, and you know,
Speaker 1: I think a lot of people have heard about it again,
Speaker 1: a lot more relevance UM after you know, as kind
Speaker 1: of patash. We continue to accelerate as you know, we
Speaker 1: drew closer to the year that the book is set in,
Speaker 1: and regard to the second book, as we had you know,
Speaker 1: Trump come into office. Um. And I'll get into why
Speaker 1: that's relevant in a bit. In the first book, just
Speaker 1: to give a brief synopsis, global climate change and economic
Speaker 1: crisis has let's a whole set of social crisis and
Speaker 1: chaos in the early twenties. Um. The book is set
Speaker 1: in California and they are struggling with pervasive water shortages
Speaker 1: and masses of poor people will do basically anything to
Speaker 1: live to see another day. Everybody is struggling, so basically today,
Speaker 1: in this setting, fifteen year old Lauren Lamina lives inside
Speaker 1: a gated community with her preacher father, family and neighbors,
Speaker 1: sheltered somewhat from the surrounding chaos. However, when we hear
Speaker 1: gated community, now we think of, you know, like really
Speaker 1: rich people, but in this case, gated community is just
Speaker 1: like a regular community that had to put up a
Speaker 1: bunch of walls to prevent like pyramid acts from like reading,
Speaker 1: it's like it's a suburb that used to be like
Speaker 1: a well off suburb, but as things got worse, it
Speaker 1: just turned into people hiding behind their walls because they
Speaker 1: were scared of poor folks, right, Like it's there's an
Speaker 1: element of it that almost reads like a slasher movie
Speaker 1: in the opening of the book, which is one of
Speaker 1: the things that's really compelling about it. Yeah yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: they really Um. She really gets you invested in the setting,
Speaker 1: in the character early on, and part of what really
Speaker 1: gets you invested in Lauren as a protagonist is the
Speaker 1: fact that she suffers from a unique vulnerability or strength,
Speaker 1: depending on how you look at it. Um oftentimes vulnerability,
Speaker 1: and that is hyper empathy syndrome, which is basically but
Speaker 1: she's able to feel others emotions, others pains. So when
Speaker 1: others are very very sad, she feels very very sad.
Speaker 1: When others are in pe and she feels that seame
Speaker 1: excruciating pin um hm and so on and so forth.
Speaker 1: And so she has to find sort of navigate this
Speaker 1: chaosk food while dealing with this UM, with this um
Speaker 1: disorder that she's struggling with. At the same time, though,
Speaker 1: she's also navigating faith and the ideal of faith and
Speaker 1: philosophy because her father is like a preacher and he
Speaker 1: is the preacher of their little gated community, and so
Speaker 1: she has grown up in the church, but she also
Speaker 1: has found issues in UM, the religion that she grew
Speaker 1: up in places where she thinks it is sort of
Speaker 1: lead people a straight And that's kind of also what
Speaker 1: is drawn me to Lauren as a character, because I too,
Speaker 1: you know, have had to negotiate to navigate that whole
Speaker 1: religious realm. And so that's basically the setting she's in
Speaker 1: this community UM. It's chaos on the outside. She's not
Speaker 1: gating her high per empathy syndrome, and she's also dealing
Speaker 1: with the ideas of religion and change and so and
Speaker 1: so forth. So as she's there um sort of thinking internally,
Speaker 1: she's keeping this Juno and she's developing this new system
Speaker 1: of thought which he calls earth Seed, and we're gonna
Speaker 1: get into good Seed. But it basically shapes uh the
Speaker 1: decisions that she makes and the outcome of both books,
Speaker 1: and as well as how they progress throughout. The second
Speaker 1: book places her in and really trying not to spoil,
Speaker 1: which is difficult to do because the second book Lea
Speaker 1: is directly after the first book and so and so forth.
Speaker 1: But I'll try to speak in broad brushes because I
Speaker 1: really think people should go and read it as blind
Speaker 1: as possible. Um Lauren. Of course, eventually we will get
Speaker 1: into spoilers, by the way, so I'll try to let
Speaker 1: folks know when we get into that. But in the
Speaker 1: second book, um Lauren is working on a community um
Speaker 1: founded on her faith earth Seed, and they begin to
Speaker 1: face persecution. I'll see after the election of this ultra
Speaker 1: conservative president who vows to quote make America great again.
Speaker 1: Being you know, a young black woman in a minority
Speaker 1: religious faction in the United States of America. UM. Her
Speaker 1: colony becomes a target of President Jared's reign of terror. UM.
Speaker 1: And at the same time, Lauren's future daughter is navigating
Speaker 1: the discovery of the mother that she didn't knew, that
Speaker 1: she didn't know through the journals that her mother kept
Speaker 1: through the years. And I think I'll leave it at that.
Speaker 1: There are a lot of themes that you know, Butler
Speaker 1: covers in these texts, UM, and in fact, I've seen
Speaker 1: them described as but Lerian, which I would agree with,
Speaker 1: because she covers them in other books of Who's as
Speaker 1: well in different ways. UM. She talks about poverty and
Speaker 1: slavery and freedom, just what perseverance. She navigates the this
Speaker 1: idea of community and what community means, what how community
Speaker 1: is both a balance of inclusion and exclusion at the
Speaker 1: same time, and also the whole cycle of creation, destruction,
Speaker 1: and rebirth that really defines human history right now, Well,
Speaker 1: in that books, in the setting of that book, UM,
Speaker 1: slavery has made a comeback more than it already has.
Speaker 1: You know, you have these extreme forms of death slavery
Speaker 1: and marital slavery, and probably even plantation slavery. UM. I
Speaker 1: believe plantation slavery is mentioned in the second book. Um,
Speaker 1: and of course the slavery is inflicted upon the poor,
Speaker 1: particular a lot of company town style slavery right, where
Speaker 1: people are like bonded, bound to a specific location because
Speaker 1: of their employer, who protects them in this increasingly dangerous,
Speaker 1: banded filled world. Yeah, exactly. And in this world, you know,
Speaker 1: race remains a factor. Even though these books are written
Speaker 1: in the eighties and nineties. I believe Parabolos overs three
Speaker 1: and people right again like He's got or Butler has
Speaker 1: a character using the same phrase. Trump would win the
Speaker 1: president say, on, um, what is it twenty four years
Speaker 1: before the start of his campaign. Um. Hard to overstate
Speaker 1: the degree to which she was ahead of the curve
Speaker 1: on a lot of things, because I mean, to be fair,
Speaker 1: she knew America. You know, she grew up in segregation,
Speaker 1: your America. She had to deal with her mother was
Speaker 1: a domestic liberal, and so she had to go in
Speaker 1: with her mother in these rich white families places through
Speaker 1: the back door. Um. And you know, obviously that would
Speaker 1: have shaped how she saw herself and herself in relation
Speaker 1: to the wider world through to America as an idea,
Speaker 1: and so I think that as she's writing of this
Speaker 1: you know, sort of horrific future, she's drawing a lot
Speaker 1: from the horrific past, or rather America's horrific past, of
Speaker 1: which her history is of heart. So Lauren, who is
Speaker 1: in some ways Octavia but herself inside Um, spends a
Speaker 1: lot of time in the book. In both books, allying
Speaker 1: with people who are also minorities, who come from mixed backgrounds,
Speaker 1: people who tend to be overlooked by the dominant Christian
Speaker 1: religious right white um order, because I believe she finds
Speaker 1: some sense of safety and strength in people who have
Speaker 1: been so aligned slavery. Also ends up affecting Lawrence community too,
Speaker 1: Um in many ways that I don't want to spoil.
Speaker 1: But despite it all, the theme of perseverance is really
Speaker 1: what carries the story alone. Lauren ultimately is the archetype
Speaker 1: of the persevera. You know, she preaches a sermon and
Speaker 1: the importance of perseverance. She tries to get others to
Speaker 1: see the importance of hard work, and she sticks to
Speaker 1: her goals no matter what happens, and a lot happens
Speaker 1: that would quite honestly discourage a lot of people, to
Speaker 1: put it lightly, and yet she perseveres, and so let's
Speaker 1: tie that in as well to American history. Particularly in
Speaker 1: the first book, she ends up having to make a
Speaker 1: journey north um to northern California, and throughout that journey,
Speaker 1: you know, she meets with other people and interacts with
Speaker 1: the people, She makes allies and avoids enemies, and you
Speaker 1: can honestly draw some parallels to the underground real Road.
Speaker 1: Of course it's not an exact one to one, but
Speaker 1: in the sense of having to work with people along
Speaker 1: the way to progress out of a terrible situation, a
Speaker 1: hellish situation for the hoop, not the guarantee, but the
Speaker 1: hoop of some form of salvation when you get to
Speaker 1: the end of the journey. She doesn't do it to Lune.
Speaker 1: She does it with others um and that's kind of
Speaker 1: what keeps her hoop alive. But it's not just externals.
Speaker 1: She has a lot of intrinsic motivation to persevere, which
Speaker 1: is driven by her philosophy. I mean, I think one
Speaker 1: of the things, because there's there's a lot of meaning
Speaker 1: and why she picks the parable of the sower in
Speaker 1: the parable of the talents for and it's it's pretty
Speaker 1: obvious and necessary next of the books, it's She's not
Speaker 1: like hiding it under layers or anything. But one of
Speaker 1: the things that in particular the second book deals with, um,
Speaker 1: I mean in the first book to do a degree
Speaker 1: is kind of the the pointlessness of responding to dystopian
Speaker 1: change in society by just like hunkering down in a
Speaker 1: bunker and trying to hide from it and protect your
Speaker 1: family like that. One of the reoccurring themes is the
Speaker 1: degree to which that doesn't work. And one of the
Speaker 1: things that's really interesting about this is a dystopian novel.
Speaker 1: Um this is a novel that is, both of these
Speaker 1: novels are kind of imagining the collapse of a lot
Speaker 1: of aspects of American society, but it is not. At
Speaker 1: no point does the United States really collapse in these books.
Speaker 1: And and even like as much as authoritarianism is present,
Speaker 1: at no point is the government completely taken over and
Speaker 1: completely under the control of like a unified fascist regime
Speaker 1: or anything. Like. Elections are still happen in company elections
Speaker 1: going on the piece, but you know, you said have
Speaker 1: to pay them to, you know, And and the the
Speaker 1: like Christian death squad type things that are roaming around
Speaker 1: are distinctly non state actors they have backing to as
Speaker 1: an extent from the state. They're not really opposed by it,
Speaker 1: but it's it's it's again, it's this thing that we
Speaker 1: we are actually dealing with where collapse doesn't look like okay,
Speaker 1: everything's fallen apart, and now it's whoever's got the strongest
Speaker 1: group of buddies, who can who can you know, do
Speaker 1: their best in the waste land. It's like no, no, no.
Speaker 1: It is about groups of people trying to navigate in
Speaker 1: an increasingly dysfunctional state. And the only way to actually
Speaker 1: survive that is um Survival is complicated, and it's never
Speaker 1: as simple as just like picking a good farm to
Speaker 1: hide on. You know that that's that's not going to
Speaker 1: work out for you exactly. I just want to point
Speaker 1: out as well, that's as just functional as things. People
Speaker 1: are still going to work, not just the people who
Speaker 1: are you know, in company talent or in debt bondage,
Speaker 1: but even Lawrence father, you know, he takes his bike
Speaker 1: every d and rides out into that chaos to go
Speaker 1: on work for a weege to come back and to
Speaker 1: try to support his family. And of course in this
Speaker 1: kid community, we see that the attempts to see gated.
Speaker 1: You know, it's also a few tile like the rich
Speaker 1: have their high security communities and be able to escape
Speaker 1: in helicopters when anything happens, but they have no security
Speaker 1: even in this illusion of security and not huntering down
Speaker 1: strategy they were taken wasn't working. In the first half
Speaker 1: of the book really shows why. Yeah, it's um, it's
Speaker 1: it's a it's a book about collapse by somebody who's
Speaker 1: uh who, who grew up in a situation where her
Speaker 1: her childhood had a lot of elements of the collapse
Speaker 1: that many particularly like many folks are concerned about now,
Speaker 1: Like that's what she grew up in was there's no
Speaker 1: there's no protection, violence can come from all sides, and
Speaker 1: it's random. Um, and you have no there are no
Speaker 1: guarantees in this like world that you've come into, Which
Speaker 1: is this thing that like people are freaking out about
Speaker 1: now as we encounter kind of aspects of the the
Speaker 1: world order that we had grown up with that we
Speaker 1: feel like are falling apart. And I think the thing
Speaker 1: that's so compelling about Butler is her books kind of
Speaker 1: are coming from the perspective of someone for whom that
Speaker 1: order and that world were never real. Yeah. Yeah, And
Speaker 1: that's why her contributions to sci fi is so valuable,
Speaker 1: you know, because all of these sci fi writes it's
Speaker 1: just like regular privileged white Kays and you know, and
Speaker 1: and they just come with that experience. And this isn't
Speaker 1: often um repeated critique of sci fi. UM you see,
Speaker 1: didn't tweet to themselves sometimes, where like a lot of
Speaker 1: it is just like particularly like a literally did sci
Speaker 1: fi is like whoa, what if the things that white
Speaker 1: people did other people happen to white people? You know,
Speaker 1: like this whole idea that these alien invasion um fears
Speaker 1: an alien invasion story to just like what if clualism
Speaker 1: but too white people to rich countries, you know. M hm.
Speaker 1: Another part of the reason that the attempt to hunker
Speaker 1: down and stuff and basically exclude others from their community
Speaker 1: failed is because and Lauren rights this in her diary,
Speaker 1: exclusion breeds resentment among the excluded. So even though Lawrence neighborhood,
Speaker 1: while you know, gated and wall and stuff, was not
Speaker 1: particularly rich, just the mere fact that they had those
Speaker 1: walls up basically signaled to the outside world that they
Speaker 1: had something to hide some sort of resources they wanted
Speaker 1: to safeguard, even if the only thing they had to
Speaker 1: safeguard with themselves because a lot of the members of
Speaker 1: the community were you know, unemployed and extremely poor, that
Speaker 1: alone sort of symbolized, uh sort of. It was sort
Speaker 1: of a beacon um drawing people to eventually UM attack.
Speaker 1: And that's a slight spoiler, but yeah, and you know,
Speaker 1: despite the problems that exclusion and are causing, UM, Lauren
Speaker 1: as she realizes that her community could not handle that approach.
Speaker 1: Even then, as she's progressing your authors stuff and she's
Speaker 1: to beating with herself, you know, who to bring into
Speaker 1: her fold Exclusion and inclusion. They play a role, you know, Um,
Speaker 1: she has to find form bonds and you know, stay safe.
Speaker 1: But at the same time, the bonds that she forms
Speaker 1: could put her in danger if she's betrayed or if
Speaker 1: the people that she invests and end up being harmed
Speaker 1: in some way, because the harm that they experience will
Speaker 1: ultimately affect her as well. So, as Lauren is making
Speaker 1: her way up Noah, she is continuing to wrestle with
Speaker 1: this idea of inclusion and exclusion because as she's progressing
Speaker 1: north in hopes of you know, building a community of
Speaker 1: some kind, creating, joining, forming community or some kind. She's
Speaker 1: also forming and establishing her religion. Like I mentioned before,
Speaker 1: it played a major role in the community that she
Speaker 1: came from, and in fact, novel points so that one
Speaker 1: of the reasons people are attracted to, you know, religion,
Speaker 1: to Christianity in this chaotic time and in general, really
Speaker 1: it's because it provides hope and hope in the form
Speaker 1: of an afterlife, and hope is what people really really
Speaker 1: need in these hellish twenties that they are dealing with.
Speaker 1: The Lauren comes to realize that the hope and hope
Speaker 1: and the afterlife ultimately isn't enough for the people that
Speaker 1: have invested so much into it. Um one of the
Speaker 1: people in the community, Um ends up despite being a
Speaker 1: staunch believer that UM trigger warning by the way for suicide. Um,
Speaker 1: despite being a strong believer that you know, suicide is
Speaker 1: a sin and I was sending straight to hell. She
Speaker 1: is so lost hope and can no longer trust in,
Speaker 1: has been dealing with so much pain that she ends
Speaker 1: up taking her own life. Yeah, and she takes her
Speaker 1: own life, And as Lauren remarks, she takes her own
Speaker 1: life knowing Um, or at least believing the pain hereafter,
Speaker 1: and yet she finds it more of a reprieve than
Speaker 1: the pain she was experiencing here now. And so as
Speaker 1: Lauren is witnessing these things happening around her, Um is
Speaker 1: dealing with, you know, loss and her baptism and her
Speaker 1: father's commitment to the church, she is continuing to develop
Speaker 1: the idea of earth Seed, and she begainst the contrast
Speaker 1: earth Seed from christian with Christianity Um, and particularly in
Speaker 1: the sense of how the two religions address hope and change.
Speaker 1: In Christianity, you know, they have the hope Um of
Speaker 1: the afterlife against this brutal life life now a life,
Speaker 1: whereas earth Seed simply presents the central principle. God has changed.
Speaker 1: That's the first principle of earth Seed. Second is that
Speaker 1: shape God. So first you have to recognize and accept
Speaker 1: that change is inevitable, often destructive, but you could also
Speaker 1: recognize your poet to shape it Um. And so from
Speaker 1: that comes the third principle, which has to to um
Speaker 1: pursue the destiny, the destiny being the establishment of humanity
Speaker 1: and other worlds. And to be quite honest, I am
Speaker 1: as this is one aspect of the philosophy of hearths
Speaker 1: see that I think I diverge from Um Laura and
Speaker 1: of course has a lot of focus on the heavens,
Speaker 1: as in the cosmic heavens and scattering seed, which is,
Speaker 1: you know, humanity across you know, all these different planets,
Speaker 1: establishing ourselves in different worlds. But I feel as though
Speaker 1: the destiny is in a way once the destruction, I
Speaker 1: think it's it's a misplaced um, a misplaced who I guess.
Speaker 1: I mean, there's that's kind of one of the points
Speaker 1: of the book, right, because there's, especially in the second book,
Speaker 1: there's a lot from the perspective of her daughter that
Speaker 1: kind of shows how as as much her philosophy is
Speaker 1: a really understandable and in some ways admirable adaptation to
Speaker 1: the completely fucked up times she was born into, it's
Speaker 1: also in the same way that a lot of other
Speaker 1: people's philosophy has become, you know, and that her parents
Speaker 1: and stuff are earlier in the first book, it's a
Speaker 1: way for her to kind of justify not paying attention
Speaker 1: to the people in her life and not not taking
Speaker 1: proper care of them, because she's got this thing that's
Speaker 1: bigger than them, she works, and you really by the
Speaker 1: by the end of the second book, you really have
Speaker 1: to sort of contend with the fact that you know,
Speaker 1: you sort after grapple with how things with her daughter
Speaker 1: would handle India. I guess I'll leave it at that. Um. Yeah, Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's part of it. I mean, she's so dedicated to
Speaker 1: this cause, so this new religion of who um and
Speaker 1: you know she's recruiting people into it. You know, she's
Speaker 1: selling people leavest this hoop. You know that following its
Speaker 1: believe in the Destiny, eventually you know, space is going
Speaker 1: to become the real life heaven. We could actually get
Speaker 1: out there and can you start for herself for ourselves?
Speaker 1: And that's part of it as well, part of the
Speaker 1: what idea of the Destiny is, you know, a fresh
Speaker 1: stock for humanity, a sort of a maturation of humanity,
Speaker 1: This idea that you know, once humanity establishes itself in
Speaker 1: other wounds, that it would have grown up as a species. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And it's It's one of the things that I really
Speaker 1: respect about these books that I think a lesser writer
Speaker 1: wouldn't have been able to pull off, is that the
Speaker 1: degree without beating you in the head with it. You
Speaker 1: see her as first failed by the philosophies and ideologies
Speaker 1: of her parents generation and by the systems that people
Speaker 1: had gotten stuck in. She's very much a character who
Speaker 1: grows up in a world where all the adults are
Speaker 1: stuck UM essentially like a system that has become a
Speaker 1: death cult, and she has to figure out a way
Speaker 1: out of it. What she comes to believe in so
Speaker 1: much that in her own way, she becomes stuck in
Speaker 1: that new thing, and it renders her unable to see
Speaker 1: certain things that are important. And the book never portrays
Speaker 1: her as completely right or completely wrong, because that's just
Speaker 1: not how civilization works. Things just change over time. And
Speaker 1: you know, the the ideology that her parents and the
Speaker 1: adults are all stuck in in the beginning of the
Speaker 1: book is an ideology that worked to a degree at
Speaker 1: some point in the past. Um, which is just it,
Speaker 1: It's it's It does a really good job of of
Speaker 1: showing a number of things, which is kind of what
Speaker 1: it's like to be a kid realizing that the adults
Speaker 1: have fucked you, what it's like to become radicalized UM
Speaker 1: and realize that the world doesn't have to be the
Speaker 1: way that it is, and what it's like to let
Speaker 1: that radicalization lead you somewhere to where you miss important things,
Speaker 1: Like there's so much going on in the evolution of
Speaker 1: what the characters believe in this book that is is
Speaker 1: just masterful from a storytelling standpoint. Yeah, I mean the
Speaker 1: second book really does a good job showing her sort
Speaker 1: of blindness as well when it comes to things going on,
Speaker 1: because what ends up happening one of the worst incidents
Speaker 1: in that second book is something that's of course not
Speaker 1: a victim blame, but it is something they could have
Speaker 1: prepared for a bit more, a lot more. Actually, Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's it's they're good books. There are books that you
Speaker 1: will if you're like me, you will start reading them
Speaker 1: and you will get really into the first book, and
Speaker 1: then you'll take a ten minute break to like check
Speaker 1: the news, and something will send you into a panic spiral,
Speaker 1: and you'll read the next two books getting increasingly depressed.
Speaker 1: It's good because the third book never released. Yeah, she
Speaker 1: never quite got to make it. Yeah, and I'll get
Speaker 1: into that as well in a bit, and how it
Speaker 1: ties into the destiny, right, but just a realtory, you know,
Speaker 1: who is principle? God has changed, God is not a person.
Speaker 1: It doesn't love or hate or watch over us or
Speaker 1: no worse. It just is second principle shape God. God
Speaker 1: is maalable. God is power, infinite, irresistible and exorable, indifferent,
Speaker 1: and yet God is pliable. Tricks to teacher CHIOSK Clay
Speaker 1: and truly emphasizes the change is neither good nor bad,
Speaker 1: but it is potential. And we could and we have
Speaker 1: a choice to either be a victim of change, the
Speaker 1: victim of God, or we can become a partner of God,
Speaker 1: or we can become a shape of God, or we
Speaker 1: could just stay as God's plaything as changes prey. It's unavoidable,
Speaker 1: but all actions can shapest direction and speed, and the
Speaker 1: end change prevails. And there's a comfort in that because
Speaker 1: once we can understand that, you can return that efforts,
Speaker 1: the inevitability of change can be what thrust us forward.
Speaker 1: And I think, Um, I think people who are invested
Speaker 1: in in activism, in organizing and just revolutionary work, I
Speaker 1: think their aspects of we see that I think be
Speaker 1: very motivating, very impactful, very energizing because despite you know
Speaker 1: how circumstances play out, Um, there's a recognition that we
Speaker 1: are never entirely disempowered, you know, And so like just
Speaker 1: the last point, I want to get into a the destiny.
Speaker 1: I think that's what it would make me if I
Speaker 1: were to be in this world. I think that's where
Speaker 1: I would diverge from the earth Seed orthodoxy, because, I mean,
Speaker 1: Lauren talks about how, you know, history is just this
Speaker 1: repetitive thing. We have all these wars and kill a
Speaker 1: bunch of people and impoverish others and spread disease and hunger,
Speaker 1: and the whole thing is just because that's how it's
Speaker 1: always been, just me, and we have to accept that
Speaker 1: we can choose to do more, make something more of ourselves,
Speaker 1: and to who making something more of ourselves is establishing
Speaker 1: ourselves another planet. So if she is earted orthodoxy, I
Speaker 1: suppose I'm a earth Seed Protestant. You see Martin Luther
Speaker 1: nailing your thesis to I don't know the door of
Speaker 1: her house in Seattle exactly. I would be a reformer
Speaker 1: of the of the destiny in the sense that I
Speaker 1: seek the destiny could be creating a heaven here on
Speaker 1: Earth like rather than pursuing it cosmic heaven. And I
Speaker 1: don't think it's even something that Lauren at least I
Speaker 1: don't recall Lauran ever grappling with the possibility because she
Speaker 1: really is fixated on this cosmic um idea. I think
Speaker 1: she grabbed the possibility that humanity can mature quote quote
Speaker 1: here on Earth. You know. Um, she doesn't really draw
Speaker 1: munch attention or has so much time thinking about things
Speaker 1: like ecosystem restoration or you know, changing the pushing back
Speaker 1: against the government or the economic system that is impoverishing
Speaker 1: and inflicting violence upon people. She's just really fixated on
Speaker 1: the destiny. And so that's when I get into the
Speaker 1: Fluid Book and things I learned about the third book
Speaker 1: when I was researching for this episode. But actually planned
Speaker 1: on exploring the fulfillment of the destiny in the third book,
Speaker 1: um parable of the trick. Still. In fact, she intended
Speaker 1: to have a seven part series, so the third book
Speaker 1: would have been near the middle, as the story would
Speaker 1: have focused on another woman named Imara who is living
Speaker 1: on it called me in the future, on a planet
Speaker 1: called Boom, far away from Earth. Cold. It is not
Speaker 1: the heaven that was hoped for, but gray, dank and
Speaker 1: utterly miserable. Everybody is homesick, um homesick, not just in
Speaker 1: like oh, I haven't been home in a while kind
Speaker 1: of thing. Homesick in the sense of like you know
Speaker 1: when someone is like an amputee and they have this
Speaker 1: sort of phantom limb sensation. Yeah, this homesickness is like
Speaker 1: a phantom limb pain, a neurological debilitation. It's like trying
Speaker 1: to graft humanity answer a new planet, and it's it's
Speaker 1: it's like if humanity were a branch and this new
Speaker 1: planet as a tree, and like both the tree and
Speaker 1: the branch are kind of rejecting each other. Um. And
Speaker 1: so she never really got very far into writing Parable
Speaker 1: of the Tricksters. In fact, she had a lot of
Speaker 1: different um ways of approaching it, a lot of different
Speaker 1: manuscripts that she got, you know, a couple of pages
Speaker 1: into and then discarded. You know. So in some versions
Speaker 1: the colonist end up having like creeping blindness. In others
Speaker 1: they get this telepathy um. In other versions, she has
Speaker 1: to solve a murder. Another version, she becomes a ghost.
Speaker 1: Sometimes she's an earth an earth Seed skeptic. Sometimes she's
Speaker 1: a true believer. Sometimes she's a hyper rampath. Sometimes she's
Speaker 1: cured of it um. Sometimes the planet itself is filled
Speaker 1: with giant dinosaurs, other times small animals, other times intelligent
Speaker 1: aliens um. And there's also this idea, this I would say,
Speaker 1: very Twilight Zone esque idea that the aliens that they
Speaker 1: do encounter tokens of their escalating collective madness. And so
Speaker 1: the whole idea of power of the tricks to and
Speaker 1: would have been the subsequent books was, you know, the
Speaker 1: continuation of the concept of choice choosing to either you know,
Speaker 1: live together, we'll together, struggle together, or you know, fight
Speaker 1: and scheme and lose their minds, break down, die and
Speaker 1: murder alone. In her speech to the u N in
Speaker 1: two thousand one, that would be like five years before
Speaker 1: she passed away, I think she did. In like I
Speaker 1: said two thousand and six, she speaks about how before
Speaker 1: she even like started working on the first Parable novel,
Speaker 1: she wanted to write a novel about a utopian civilization
Speaker 1: where everybody had a kind of hyper empathy. But then
Speaker 1: actually figured it would be a utopian society because everyone
Speaker 1: would be inclined to, you know, behave in a more
Speaker 1: pro social way, because any anti social activity they would have,
Speaker 1: you know, inflicts upon others, would be inflixed upon themselves. Immediately,
Speaker 1: but then she realized it wouldn't work because sharing pain,
Speaker 1: the threat of shared pain, doesn't necessarily make people behave
Speaker 1: better towards another. She points to be the popular painful
Speaker 1: supports of you know, like boxing and American football, you know.
Speaker 1: And so she recognizes that this idea of everyone being
Speaker 1: a hyper em path because a lot of trouble. I mean,
Speaker 1: if everyone feels each other's pain, who wants to be
Speaker 1: a dentist, you know, who wants to be a newse um?
Speaker 1: And so she discards that idea, and then she basically
Speaker 1: created Lauren, who was a lone hyper and path in
Speaker 1: the would that is empathy deficient ultimately, I think, But
Speaker 1: I guess the heart of you know, a lot of
Speaker 1: the issues that we're dealing with, um, she grapp us
Speaker 1: with a lot of questions that should still be explored,
Speaker 1: the idea of inclusion and exclusion, that balance when you know,
Speaker 1: developing community, concept of perseverance, UM, concept of hope, the
Speaker 1: creation and destruction and re booth of really life and
Speaker 1: just what makes life life. I guess I'll wrap things
Speaker 1: up with the code this tolerance have a chance only
Speaker 1: if we wanted to tolerance like any aspect of peace
Speaker 1: is forever a wek in progress, never completed, and if
Speaker 1: we are as intelligent as we'd like to think, we
Speaker 1: are never abandoned. That's it us change cheap guarded peace. Well,
Speaker 1: I think that's about as good a line as any
Speaker 1: to end on. Go read Octavia Butler. If you haven't
Speaker 1: check her out, go to the library. Her ships all
Speaker 1: over the library. Libraries are filthy with Octavia Butler books.
Speaker 1: You'll find it or steal it off the internet. She's
Speaker 1: not gonna mind. It could Happen here as a production
Speaker 1: of cool Zone Media. For more podcasts from cool Zone Media,
Speaker 1: visit our website cool zone media dot com, or check
Speaker 1: us out on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts,
Speaker 1: or wherever you listen to podcasts. You can find sources
Speaker 1: for It could Happen Here, updated monthly at cool zone
Speaker 1: Media dot com slash sources. Thanks for listening.