Parable of the Talents by Octavia Butler
Authors: Octavia Butler
Tags: Fiction, Science-Fiction
Ads: Link
Earthseed is not a fatalistic belief system. God can be directed, focused, speeded, slowed, shaped. All things change, but all things need not change in all ways. God is inexorable, yet malleable. Odd. Hardly religious at all. Even the Earthseed Destiny seems to have little to do with religion.
"We are Earthseed," Olamina says. "We are the children of God, as all fractions of the universe are the children of God.
But more immediately we are the children of our par-ticular Earth." And within those words lies the origin of the Destiny.
That portion of humanity that is conscious, that knows it is Earthseed, and that accepts its Destiny is simply trying to leave the womb, the Earth, to be born as all young beings must do eventually.
Earthseed is Olamina's contribution to what she feels should be a species-wide effort to evade, or at least to lengthen the specialize-grow-die evolutionary cycle that humanity faces, that every species faces.
"We can be a long-term success and the parents, our-selves, of a vast array of new peoples, new species," she says, "or we can be just one more abortion. We can, we must, scatter the Earth's living essence—human, plant, and animal—to extrasolar worlds: 'The Destiny of Earthseed is to take root among the stars.'"
Grand words.
She hopes and dreams and writes and believes, and per-haps the world will let her live for a while, tolerating her as a harmless eccentric. I hope that it will. I fear that it may not.
************************************
My father has, in this piece, defined Earthseed very well and defined it in fewer words than I could have managed.
When my mother was a child, protected and imprisoned by the walls of her neighborhood, she dreamed of the stars.
Literally, at night she dreamed of them. And she dreamed of flying. I've seen her flying dreams mentioned in her earliest writings. Awake or asleep, she dreamed of these things. As far as I'm concerned, that's what she was doing when she created her Earthseed Destiny and her Earthseed verses: dreaming. We all need dreams—our fantasies—to sustain us through hard times. There's no harm in that as long as we don't begin to mistake our fantasies for reality as she did. It seems that she doubted herself from time to time, but she never doubted the dream, never doubted Earthseed. Like my father, I can't feel that secure about any religion. That's odd, considering the way i was raised, but it's true.
I've seen religious passion in other people, though—love for a compassionate God, fear of an angry God, fulsome praise and desperate pleading for a God that rewards and punishes. All that makes me wonder how a belief system like Earthseed—very demanding but offering so little comfort from such an utterly indifferent God—should inspire any loy-alty at all.
In Earthseed, there is no promised afterlife. Earthseed's heaven is literal, physical—other worlds circling other stars.
It promises its people immortality only through their chil-dren, their work, and their memories. For the human species, immortality is something to be won by sowing Earthseed on other worlds. Its promise is not of mansions to live in, milk and honey to drink, or eternal oblivion in some vast whole of nirvana, its promise is of hard work and brand-new possibili-ties, problems, challenges, and changes.
Apparently, that can be surprisingly seductive to some people. My mother was a surprisingly seductive person.
There is an Earthseed verse that goes like this:
God is Change.
God is Infinite,
Irresistible,
Inexorable,
Indifferent.
God is Trickster,
Teacher,
Chaos,
Clay—
God is Change.
Beware:
God exists to shape
And to be shaped.
This is a terrifying God, implacable, faceless, yet malleable and wildly dynamic. I suppose it will soon be wearing my mother's face. Her second name was "Oya." I wonder what-ever possessed my Baptist minister grandfather to give her such a name. What did he see in her? "Oya" is the name of a Nigerian
"We are Earthseed," Olamina says. "We are the children of God, as all fractions of the universe are the children of God.
But more immediately we are the children of our par-ticular Earth." And within those words lies the origin of the Destiny.
That portion of humanity that is conscious, that knows it is Earthseed, and that accepts its Destiny is simply trying to leave the womb, the Earth, to be born as all young beings must do eventually.
Earthseed is Olamina's contribution to what she feels should be a species-wide effort to evade, or at least to lengthen the specialize-grow-die evolutionary cycle that humanity faces, that every species faces.
"We can be a long-term success and the parents, our-selves, of a vast array of new peoples, new species," she says, "or we can be just one more abortion. We can, we must, scatter the Earth's living essence—human, plant, and animal—to extrasolar worlds: 'The Destiny of Earthseed is to take root among the stars.'"
Grand words.
She hopes and dreams and writes and believes, and per-haps the world will let her live for a while, tolerating her as a harmless eccentric. I hope that it will. I fear that it may not.
************************************
My father has, in this piece, defined Earthseed very well and defined it in fewer words than I could have managed.
When my mother was a child, protected and imprisoned by the walls of her neighborhood, she dreamed of the stars.
Literally, at night she dreamed of them. And she dreamed of flying. I've seen her flying dreams mentioned in her earliest writings. Awake or asleep, she dreamed of these things. As far as I'm concerned, that's what she was doing when she created her Earthseed Destiny and her Earthseed verses: dreaming. We all need dreams—our fantasies—to sustain us through hard times. There's no harm in that as long as we don't begin to mistake our fantasies for reality as she did. It seems that she doubted herself from time to time, but she never doubted the dream, never doubted Earthseed. Like my father, I can't feel that secure about any religion. That's odd, considering the way i was raised, but it's true.
I've seen religious passion in other people, though—love for a compassionate God, fear of an angry God, fulsome praise and desperate pleading for a God that rewards and punishes. All that makes me wonder how a belief system like Earthseed—very demanding but offering so little comfort from such an utterly indifferent God—should inspire any loy-alty at all.
In Earthseed, there is no promised afterlife. Earthseed's heaven is literal, physical—other worlds circling other stars.
It promises its people immortality only through their chil-dren, their work, and their memories. For the human species, immortality is something to be won by sowing Earthseed on other worlds. Its promise is not of mansions to live in, milk and honey to drink, or eternal oblivion in some vast whole of nirvana, its promise is of hard work and brand-new possibili-ties, problems, challenges, and changes.
Apparently, that can be surprisingly seductive to some people. My mother was a surprisingly seductive person.
There is an Earthseed verse that goes like this:
God is Change.
God is Infinite,
Irresistible,
Inexorable,
Indifferent.
God is Trickster,
Teacher,
Chaos,
Clay—
God is Change.
Beware:
God exists to shape
And to be shaped.
This is a terrifying God, implacable, faceless, yet malleable and wildly dynamic. I suppose it will soon be wearing my mother's face. Her second name was "Oya." I wonder what-ever possessed my Baptist minister grandfather to give her such a name. What did he see in her? "Oya" is the name of a Nigerian
Similar Books
