Parable of the Talents

by Octavia E. Butler

Jarret condemns the burnings, but does so in such mild language that his people are free to hear what they want to hear. As for the beatings, the tarring and feathering, and the destruction of “heathen houses of devil-worship,” he has a simple answer: “Join us! Our doors are open to every nationality, every race! Leave your sinful past behind, and become one of us. Help us to make America great again.”

“They should be small communities,” she said. “No more than a few hundred people, never more than a thousand. A community whose population grew to more than a thousand should split and ‘parent’ a new community.”

Beware: Ignorance Protects itself. Ignorance Promotes suspicion. Suspicion Engenders fear. Fear quails, Irrational and blind, Or fear looms, Defiant and closed. Blind, closed, Suspicious, afraid, Ignorance Protects itself, And protected, Ignorance grows.

Beware: All too often, We say What we hear others say. We think What we’re told that we think. We see What we’re permitted to see. Worse! We see what we’re told that we see. Repetition and pride are the keys to this. To hear and to see Even an obvious lie Again And again and again May be to say it, Almost by reflex Then to defend it Because we’ve said it And at last to embrace it Because we’ve defended it And because we cannot admit That we’ve embraced and defended An obvious lie. Thus, without thought, Without intent, We make Mere echoes Of ourselves— And we say What we hear others say.

“That’s what Earthseed was about,” I said. “I wanted us to understand what we could be, what we could do. I wanted to give us a focus, a goal, something big enough, complex enough, difficult enough, and in the end, radical enough to make us become more than we ever have been. We keep falling into the same ditches, you know? I mean, we learn more and more about the physical universe, more about our own bodies, more technology, but somehow, down through history, we go on building empires of one kind or another, then destroying them in one way or another. We go on having stupid wars that we justify and get passionate about, but in the end, all they do is kill huge numbers of people, maim others, impoverish still more, spread disease and hunger, and set the stage for the next war. And when we look at all of that in history, we just shrug our shoulders and say, well, that’s the way things are. That’s the way things always have been.”

“There seem to be solid biological reasons why we are the way we are. If there weren’t, the cycles wouldn’t keep replaying. The human species is a kind of animal, of course. But we can do something no other animal species has ever had the option to do. We can choose: We can go on building and destroying until we either destroy ourselves or destroy the ability of our world to sustain us. Or we can make something more of ourselves. We can grow up. We can leave the nest. We can fulfill the Destiny, make homes for ourselves among the stars, and become some combination of what we want to become and whatever our new environments challenge us to become. Our new worlds will remake us as we remake them. And some of the new people who emerge from all this will develop new ways to cope. They’ll have to. That will break the old cycle, even if it’s only to begin a new one, a different one.

Now I smiled. “Exactly. I’ve been saying things like that for years. Some people might want to do it for the sake of their children—to give them the chance to begin again and do things right this time. But that idea alone won’t do it. It won’t bring in enough people, money, or persistence. Fulfilling the Destiny is a long-term, expensive, uncertain project—or rather it’s hundreds of projects. Maybe thousands. And with no guarantees of anything. Politicians, on the other hand, are short-term thinkers, opportunists, sometimes with consciences, but opportunists nevertheless. Business people are hungry for profit, short- and long-term. The truth is, preparing for interstellar travel and then sending out ships filled with colonists is bound to be a job so long, thankless, expensive, and difficult that I suspect that only a religion could do it. A lot of people will find ways to make money from it. That might get things started. But it will take something as essentially human and as essentially irrational as religion to keep them focused and keep it going—for generations if it takes generations. I suspect it will. You see, I have thought about this.” Len thought about it herself for a while, then said, “If that’s what you believe, why don’t you tell people to go to the stars because that’s what God wants them to do—and don’t start explaining to me that your God doesn’t want anything. I understand that. But most people won’t understand it.”

“You’re good at talking to people,” she said. “They like you. Hell, they trust you. Why can’t you just preach to them like any other minister? Preach the way Jarret does. Have you ever heard any of his speeches? Most of them are sermons. Newspeople have a hard time opposing anything he wants because he’s always on God’s side. Guess whose side that puts them on?” “And you think I should do that?” “Of course you should do that if you believe what you say.” “I’m not a demagogue.” “That’s too bad. That leaves the field to people who are demagogues—to the Jarrets of the world. And there have always been Jarrets. Probably there always will be.”

Even the pretense of having an educated populace was ending. Politicians shook their heads and said sadly that universal education was a failed experiment. Some companies began to educate the children of their workers at least well enough to enable them to become their next generation of workers. Company towns began then to come back into fashion. They offered security, employment, and education. That was all very well, but the company that educated you owned you until you paid off the debt you owed them. You were an indentured person, and if they couldn’t use you themselves, they could trade you off to another division of the company—or another company. You, like your education, became a commodity to be bought or sold. There were still a few public school systems in the country, limping along, doing what they could, but these had more in common with city jails than with even the most mediocre private, religious, or company schools. It was the business of responsible parents to see to the education of their children, somehow. Those who did not were bad parents. It was to be hoped that social, legal, and religious pressures would sooner or later force even bad parents to do their duty toward their offspring.

This hit home. With college debt rising and the privatizing of public education this outcome seems like a potential reality.