Earthseed: Parable of the Sower and Parable of the Talents

by Octavia E. Butler

They were fought, ostensibly, to defend against vicious foreign enemies. All too often, they were actually fought because inadequate leaders did not know what else to do. Such leaders knew that they could depend on fear, suspicion, hatred, need, and greed to arouse patriotic support for war.

Jarret’s people could be behind it. Jarret insists on being a throwback to some earlier, “simpler” time. Now does not suit him. Religious tolerance does not suit him. The current state of the country does not suit him. He wants to take us all back to some magical time when everyone believed in the same God, worshipped him in the same way, and understood that their safety in the universe depended on completing the same religious rituals and stomping anyone who was different.

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.”

This book won nebula 1999!

You would think that there were enough real orphans in this filthy world. How dare anything that calls itself a church create new orphans with its maggots and its collars?

How many people, I wonder, can be penned up and tormented—reeducated—before it begins to matter to the majority of Americans?

You know the kind of shit men say to one another when they want to stop other men from listening to a woman.

They look at us with unmistakable hatred, disgust, and contempt, and they insist that it’s love that they feel.

Christian America was, at first, much more a refuge for the ignorant and the intolerant than it should have been.

The working poor who love Jarret want to be fooled, need to be fooled. They scratch a living, working long, hard hours at dangerous, dirty jobs, and they need a savior.

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. FROM

On the other hand, one way to make people afraid of you is to have a crazy side—a side of yourself or your organization that’s dangerous and unpredictable—willing to do any damned thing.

It was as though my teachers believed that all the possible stories had already been created, and it was a sin to make more—or at least it was a sin for me to make more.