Parable of the Sower (Earthseed, #1) in War Nerd Reading List

Jun 16, 2021 A. Redact rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Parable of the Sower is a much needed antidote to the masculine apocalyptic fantasy of libertarian self-reliance. In this tradition, the apocalyptic scenario is often the backdrop for a lone character to battle against man and nature, free from the impediments of collectivist civil society and egalitarian morality. The masculine hero returns to the state of nature where a man could rule his own kingdom and make his own destiny. Others are never to be trusted and, with few exceptions, only serve Parable of the Sower is a much needed antidote to the masculine apocalyptic fantasy of libertarian self-reliance. In this tradition, the apocalyptic scenario is often the backdrop for a lone character to battle against man and nature, free from the impediments of collectivist civil society and egalitarian morality. The masculine hero returns to the state of nature where a man could rule his own kingdom and make his own destiny. Others are never to be trusted and, with few exceptions, only serve as obstacles to the hero's self-actualization. The masculine fantasy allows the reader to indulge in the fantasy of self-determination, once his boss and wife are out of the picture.

Butler, on the other hand, provides an impressively prescient account of the social rot at the core of American society (the book was published in 1993) and a highly plausible account of how our society will fall. Unlike many traditional post-apocalyptic scenarios, Butler's world is one where the apocalypse is an ongoing event distributed unevenly across class and race in the US. For the rich and powerful, society continues to function in a basically normal way. Just like our own ruling class, Butler's rich are already so far removed from the lives of even the upper middle class that they either do not know or do not care what life is like for the majority of working people. Just like now, civil governance, the market economy, and the police largely exist to benefit a small group of ruling elites.

In Butler's future, we still exchange money, we still pay taxes, we still try to sell our labor to purchase goods and services, but the government has abandoned any obligation to take care of working people. Favelas now crowd around walled enclaves and the more money you have the thicker and more secure the walls. The dispossessed poor are left to fend for themselves and it is no longer safe to travel in public spaces without weapons or armed guards. In effect the US government retreats from the public sphere, allowing it to be reclaimed by lawlessness and desperate violence while continuing to serve the privatized society that the rich can afford to build for themselves. Butler’s future is only a slightly more developed version of our present situation where the rich have built their own private civil society on top of our crumbling one. Where they have ready access to quality healthcare, education, arts and culture, the beauty of nature, and a shared sense of the good, we have a decrepit public infrastructure, sublimated class conflict, and merciless individualism.

For a book written in the 1990’s, Butler’s vision of the future is impressively free of the then popular liberal triumphalism that declared an “End of History.” Butler is clear that even if we bought the vision of 1990’s peace and plenty (a delusion largely shared by the white middle class and its intelligentsia), the unresolved conflicts that define the United States and the threat of climate change were still lurking beneath the surface, only bought off by the market for the time being.

Butler accurately predicts that the ravages of climate change will only exacerbate our existing class and racial antagonisms. While her original audience may have had a hard time envisioning the rolling wild fires that imperil the main characters, it’s now all too easy to picture the California landscape covered in flames as people flee to escape it. The rising population of unhoused people in major cities and the state’s disinterest in helping them in any meaningful way is also quite familiar to the contemporary reader.

Beyond Butler’s shocking prescience (the book is eerily set in 2024, so hopefully she’s not too too prescient), her vision of survival is exciting and original. As Butler and her characters know, the human species has only narrowly dodged past extinction events and thrived to the degree that it has because we are inherently social and reliant on the cooperation of others. Our babies are hopelessly vulnerable and even our young children require a community to raise and protect them. Any sustainable vision of survival must provide for weak and vulnerable members of the group. But this is not merely altruism: babies and children, despite their temporary disadvantages, will grow up to support and sustain the community and the next generation. Even weak members of the community strengthen and sustain it. The true danger is isolation and alienation.

While Butler is a strong writer, the book is ultimately a work of genre fiction. Her message is clear and she wears her political and ethical convictions on her sleeve. As I get older I wish we had more popular writing like this. We need more “didactic” writers with the courage to earnestly articulate their beliefs. While I personally enjoy the modernist and post-modernist styles of writing that refuse to provide clear answers or easy interpretation, this approach needs to be dethroned as the pinnacle of “literary” writing and good taste. Ambiguity, in and of itself, is just the preference of one group of readers, and that group is mostly white men from the global north who enjoy reading the work of CIA-sponsored writing schools and literary magazines. The inert and depoliticized nature of contemporary American culture is a product, probably in no small part, of the bourgeois prejudice against straight forward and unabashed ethical and political advocacy.

Parable of the Sower is the first in a planned trilogy of books that Butler was unable to complete in her lifetime. The sequel, Parable of the Talents, is a lesser book on all fronts, but it’s worth reading as a compliment to PotS. The hard won, fragile optimism of PoTS runs headlong into the brutal reality of reaction in PoTT and Butler has important things to say about the weaknesses and limitations of intentional community building in the shadow of US empire. ...more

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Sep 22, 2017 Tom Buchanan rated it it was amazing

Such a sweet and hard book. Butler has this completely unique sense of empathy that I think comes in part from the fact that she's talking about an America where national currency coexists with the most brutal forms of human chattel, a world that contains both the dream of a college education and the threat of cannibalism. It's not about a world that has ended, it's about a world that's arriving or already half-here.

Also I just looked up recipes for acorn bread and a lot of them are like "Soooo, ...more

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