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we can afford the stars.”
I let my father baptize me in all
three names of that God who isn’t mine any more.
We adapt and endure, For we are Earthseed
God exists to be shaped. God is Change.
Prayers only help the person doing the praying, and then, only if they strengthen and focus that person’s resolve.
our only real relationship with God. They help us to shape God
super-parents, super-kings and queens, super-cops—to be our gods and to look after us—to stand between us and God.
“The police,” my father told them, “may be able to avenge you, but they can’t protect you.
Drowning people Sometimes die Fighting their rescuers.
But God exists to be shaped.
CIVILIZATION IS TO GROUPS what intelligence is to individuals.
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.
The life that perceives itself
Moral: The weak can overcome the strong if the weak persist. Persisting isn’t always safe, but it’s often necessary.
We are that aspect of Earthlife best able to shape God knowingly.
But they were our guns, not hired gunmen. No one could turn them against us.
“All that you touch You Change. All that you Change Changes you. The only lasting truth Is Change.
Unite— Or be divided, robbed, ruled, killed By those who see you as prey.
Why personify change by calling it God?
“People forget ideas. They’re more likely to remember God—
Earthseed is being born right here on Highway 101—
From San Jose up through San Francisco, Oakland, and Berkeley, there is chaos.
some will discover that they enjoy their new power—the power to make others submit,
To shape God, Shape Self.
we all shape Change whether we mean to or not.
Sculptor and clay.
Learn or die.
We are born Not with purpose, But with potential.
We give our dead To life.
an installment-plan World War III.
make America great again.”
Seize Change. Use it. Adapt and grow.
Anyone who had a trade was always in the process of teaching it to someone else.
“If I had to die,” I said, “if I had to get shot by strangers, shouldn’t it be while I was trying to help the community, and not just while I was trying to run away?”
“We give our dead To the orchards And the groves. We give our dead To life.”
Again, Always again
“Civilization is to groups what intelligence is to individuals.
Civilization provides ways of combining the information, experience, and creativity of the many to achieve ongoing group adaptability.”
What I’m trying to do isn’t quite normal. It’s been done. New belief systems have been introduced. But there’s no standard way of introducing them—no way that can be depended on to work. What I’m trying to do is, I’m afraid, a crazy, difficult, dangerous undertaking. Best to talk about it only a little bit at a time.
We all feed one another’s hungers.
“It’s a hard truth. Too hard for some people to take, but that doesn’t make it any less true.”
Beware: At war Or at peace, More people die Of unenlightened self-interest Than of any other disease.
We human beings seem always to have found it comforting to have someone to took down on—
superiors to look to for direction and help.
She saw chaos as natural and inevitable and as clay to be shaped and directed.
“Name even one that didn’t involve questions, challenges, argument. It’s our way.
To be led by a coward is to be controlled by all that the coward fears.
When vision fails Direction is lost. When direction is lost Purpose may be forgotten. When purpose is forgotten Emotion rules alone. When emotion rules alone, Destruction…destruction.
