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Prodigy is, at its essence, adaptability and persistent, positive obsession. Without persistence, what remains is an enthusiasm of the moment. Without adaptability, what remains may be channeled into destructive fanaticism. Without positive obsession, there is nothing at all.
All that you touch You Change. All that you Change Changes you. The only lasting truth Is Change. God Is Change.
They never miss a chance to relive the good old days or to tell kids how great it’s going to be when the country gets back on its feet and good times come back.
Better to have them think anything than let them know just how easy it is to hurt me.
For reasons that don’t make a lot of sense to me, Dad thinks I need more humility. I think my particular biological humility—or humiliation—is more than enough.
A lot of people seem to believe in a big-daddy-God or a big-cop-God or a big-king-God. They believe in a kind of super-person. A few believe God is another word for nature. And nature turns out to mean just about anything they happen not to understand or feel in control of.
Some say God is a spirit, a force, an ultimate reality. Ask seven people what all of that means and you’ll get seven different answers. So what is God? Just another name for whatever makes you feel special and protected?
We do not worship God. We perceive and attend God. We learn from God. With forethought and work, We shape God. In the end, we yield to God. We adapt and endure, For we are Earthseed And God is Change.
She jumps on me for sharing pain with the living, but she tries to share it with the dead.
Or maybe she just went crazy because her God was demanding too much of her. She was no Job. In real life, how many people are?
God is Power— Infinite, Irresistible, Inexorable, Indifferent. And yet, God is Pliable— Trickster, Teacher, Chaos, Clay. God exists to be shaped. God is Change.
God can’t be resisted or stopped, but can be shaped and focused. This means God is not to be prayed to. Prayers only help the person doing the praying, and then, only if they strengthen and focus that person’s resolve. If they’re used that way, they can help us in our only real relationship with God. They help us to shape God and to accept and work with the shapes that God imposes on us. God is power, and in the end, God prevails.
My God doesn’t love me or hate me or watch over me or know me at all, and I feel no love for or loyalty to my God. My God just is.
Intelligence is ongoing, individual adaptability. Adaptations that an intelligent species may make in a single generation, other species make over many generations of selective breeding and selective dying. Yet intelligence is demanding. If it is misdirected by accident or by intent, it can foster its own orgies of breeding and dying.
A victim of God may, Through learning adaption, Become a partner of God, A victim of God may, Through forethought and planning, Become a shaper of God. Or a victim of God may, Through shortsightedness and fear, Remain God’s victim, God’s plaything, God’s prey.
Is that the way it’s going to be, I wonder? Is that the future: Large numbers of people stuck in either President-elect Donner’s version of slavery or Richard Moss’s.
Belief Initiates and guides action— Or it does nothing.
God, I hate this place. I mean, I love it. It’s home. These are my people. But I hate it. It’s like an island surrounded by sharks—except that sharks don’t bother you unless you go in the water. But our land sharks are on their way in.
“I mean he’s like… like a symbol of the past for us to hold on to as we’re pushed into the future. He’s nothing. No substance. But having him there, the latest in a two-and-a-half-century-long line of American Presidents make people feel that the country, the culture that they grew up with is still here—that we’ll get through these bad times and back to normal.”
“Things are changing now, too. Our adults haven’t been wiped out by a plague so they’re still anchored in the past, waiting for the good old days to come back. But things have changed a lot, and they’ll change more. Things are always changing. This is just one of the big jumps instead of the little step-by-step changes that are easier to take. People have changed the climate of the world. Now they’re waiting for the old days to come back.”
Drowning people Sometimes die Fighting their rescuers.
“It’s better to teach people than to scare them, Lauren. If you scare them and nothing happens, they lose their fear, and you lose some of your authority with them. It’s harder to scare them a second time, harder to teach them, harder to win back their trust. Best to begin by teaching.”
Dad focused on the two-part nature of this situation. God decides to destroy everything except Noah, his family, and some animals. But if Noah is going to be saved, he has plenty of hard work to do.
Earthseed. I am Earthseed. Anyone can be. Someday, I think there will be a lot of us. And I think we’ll have to seed ourselves farther and farther from this dying place.
All that you touch, You Change. All that you Change, Changes you. The only lasting truth Is Change. God Is Change.
Food prices are insane, always going up, never down. Everyone complains about them.
Here’s the birthday gift that came into my mind this morning as I woke up—just two lines: The Destiny of Earthseed Is to take root among the stars.
All struggles Are essentially power struggles. Who will rule, Who will lead, Who will define, refine, confine, design, Who will dominate. All struggles Are essentially power struggles, And most are no more intellectual than two rams knocking their heads together.
Civilization is to groups what intelligence is to individuals. It is a means of combining the intelligence of many to achieve ongoing group adaptation. Civilization, like intelligence, may serve well, serve adequately, or fail to serve its adaptive function. When civilization fails to serve, it must disintegrate unless it is acted upon by unifying internal or external forces.
When apparent stability disintegrates, As it must— God is Change— People tend to give in To fear and depression, To need and greed. When no influence is strong enough To unify people They divide. They struggle, One against one, Group against group, For survival, position, power. They remember old hates and generate new ones, They create chaos and nurture it. They kill and kill and kill, Until they are exhausted and destroyed, Until they are conquered by outside forces, Or until one of them becomes A leader Most will follow, Or a tyrant Most fear.
Any Change may bear seeds of benefit. Seek them out. Any Change may bear seeds of harm. Beware. God is infinitely malleable. God is Change.
We are coming apart. The community, the families, individual family members.… We’re a rope, breaking, a single strand at a time.
“Not now,” he said. “Not at first.” He shook his head. “Kagimoto, Stamm, Frampton: Japanese, German, Canadian. When I was young, people said it would come to this. Well, why shouldn’t other countries buy what’s left of us if we put it up for sale. I wonder how many of the people in Olivar have any idea what they’re doing.”
“Why do you always expect the worst of everyone?” “When it comes to strangers with guns,” I told her, “I think suspicion is more likely to keep you alive than trust.”
All successful life is Adaptable, Opportunistic, Tenacious, Interconnected, and Fecund. Understand this. Use it. Shape God.
We are Earthseed The life that perceives itself Changing.
This country is going to be parceled out as a source of cheap labor and cheap land. When people like those in Olivar beg to sell themselves, our surviving cities are bound to wind up the economic colonies of whoever can afford to buy them.”
Moral: The weak can overcome the strong if the weak persist. Persisting isn’t always safe, but it’s often necessary.
“We have God and we have each other. We have our island community, fragile, and yet a fortress. Sometimes it seems too small and too weak to survive. And like the widow in Christ’s parable, its enemies fear neither God nor man. But also like the widow, it persists. We persist. This is our place, no matter what.”
There is no end To what a living world Will demand of you.
We’ll adapt. We’ll have to. God is Change. Strange how much it helps me to remember that.
We are Earthseed. We are flesh—self aware, questing, problem-solving flesh. We are that aspect of Earthlife best able to shape God knowingly. We are Earthlife maturing, Earthlife preparing to fall away from the parent world. We are Earthlife preparing to take root in new ground, Earthlife fulfilling its purpose, its promise, its Destiny.
In order to rise From its own ashes A phoenix First Must Burn.
I have to write. There’s nothing familiar left to me but the writing. God is Change. I hate God. I have to write.
Kindness eases Change
Earthseed Cast on new ground Must first perceive That it knows nothing.
Embrace diversity. Unite— Or be divided, robbed, ruled, killed By those who see you as prey. Embrace diversity Or be destroyed.
Once or twice each week A Gathering of Earthseed is a good and necessary thing. It vents emotion, then quiets the mind. It focuses attention, strengthens purpose, and unifies people.
‘The Destiny of Earthseed is to take root among the stars,’ or among the ashes.”
Changes. The galaxies move through space. The stars ignite, burn, age, cool, Evolving. God is Change. God prevails.
