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PRODIGY IS, AT ITS essence, adaptability and persistent, positive obsession.
None of us goes out to school any more. Adults get nervous about kids going outside. But today was special.
All the adults were armed. That’s the rule. Go out in a bunch, and go armed.
I can take a lot of pain without falling apart. I’ve had to learn to do that. But it was hard, today, to keep pedaling and keep up with the others when just about everyone I saw made me feel worse and worse. My father glanced back at me every now and then. He tells me, “You can beat this thing. You don’t have to give in to it.” He has always pretended, or perhaps believed, that my hyperempathy syndrome was something I could shake off and forget about.
Hyperempathy is what the doctors call an “organic delusional syndrome.” Big shit. It hurts, that’s all I know.
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?
The adults say things will get better, but they never have.
The truth is, I don’t care about any of those things, but they keep me busy and make me tired, and most of the time, I sleep without dreaming.
God is Power— Infinite, Irresistible, Inexorable, Indifferent. And yet, God is Pliable— Trickster, Teacher, Chaos, Clay. 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.
But we can rig the game in our own favor if we understand that God exists to be shaped, and will be shaped, with or without our forethought, with or without our intent.
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.
Dangerous question. Sometimes I don’t know the answer. I doubt myself. I doubt what I think I know. I try to forget about it. After all, if it’s real, why doesn’t anyone else know about it. Every one knows that change is inevitable. From the second law of thermodynamics to Darwinian evolution, from Buddhism’s insistence that nothing is permanent and all suffering results from our delusions
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.
Irrational as usual,
Tracy’s maternal instincts didn’t kick in,
I’ve been taking care of little kids since I was one, and I’m tired of it.
She was too wrapped up in her own misery and fear to be of much use.
I hadn’t talked about before. I’d written about them. Sometimes I write to keep from going crazy. There’s a world of things I don’t feel free to talk to anyone about.
I was rolling—too fast, maybe.
“The changes.” I thought for a moment. “They were slow changes compared to anything that might happen here, but it took a plague to make some of the people realize that things could change.”
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.”
Books aren’t going to save us.” “Nothing is going to save us. If we don’t save ourselves, we’re dead. Now use your imagination. Is there anything on your family bookshelves that might help you if you were stuck outside?” “No.” “You answer too fast. Go home and look again. And like I said, use your imagination.
“I still don’t believe you,” she said. “Things don’t have to be as bad as you say they are.”
Drowning people Sometimes die Fighting their rescuers.
This is just more denial: A dumb little game of “If we don’t talk about bad things, maybe they won’t happen.” Idiot! I’ll never be able to tell her anything important again.
Sometimes the way to move Dad is to go at him from several directions.
“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.” His mouth crooked into a little smile. “It’s interesting that you chose to begin your efforts with the book you lent to Joanne. Did you ever think of teaching from that book?” “Teaching … my kindergartners?”
People go to bed soon after dark to save electricity, but between dinner and darkness they spend time on their porches or in their yards where it isn’t so hot. Some listen to their radio on front or back porches. Now and then people get together to play music, sing, play board games, talk, or get out on the paved part of the street for volleyball, touch football, basketball, or tennis. People used to play baseball, but we just can’t afford what that costs in windows. A few people just find a corner and read a book while there’s still daylight.
“We can’t live this way!” Cory shouted. I jumped. I’ve never heard her sound like that before. “We do live this way,” Dad said. There was no anger in his voice, no emotional response at all to her shouting. There was nothing. Weariness. Sadness. I’ve never heard him sound so tired, so … almost beaten.
SOMETIMES NAMING A THING—giving it a name or discovering its name—helps one to begin to understand it. Knowing the name of a thing and knowing what that thing is for gives me even more of a handle on it.
I’ve never felt that I was making any of this up—not the name, Earthseed, not any of it. I mean, I’ve never felt that it was anything other than real: discovery rather than invention, exploration rather than creation.
The thing is, even with my writing problems, every time I understand a little more, I wonder why it’s taken me so long—why there was ever a time when I didn’t understand a thing so obvious and real and true.
Why is the universe? To shape God. Why is God? To shape the universe.
All that you touch, You Change. All that you Change, Changes you. The only lasting truth Is Change. God Is Change.
Then, someday when people are able to pay more attention to what I say than to how old I am, I’ll use these verses to pry them loose from the rotting past, and maybe push them into saving themselves and building a future that makes sense.
A tree Cannot grow In its parents’ shadows.
Tomorrow, I’ll be sixteen. Only sixteen. I feel older. I want to be older. I need to be older. I hate being a kid. Time drags!
The Destiny of Earthseed Is to take root among the stars.
He’s a strange, solitary, whiny man.
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.
But if everyone could feel everyone else’s pain, who would torture? Who would cause anyone unnecessary pain?
If this is what’s happening to us, what must it be like for people who are really rich
In not very much time, I think the new hires would be in debt to the company. That’s an old company-town trick—get people into debt, hang on to them, and work them harder. Debt slavery. That might work in Christopher Donner’s America. Labor laws, state and federal, are not what they once were.
“When it comes to strangers with guns,” I told her, “I think suspicion is more likely to keep you alive than trust.” She made a sharp, wordless sound of disgust. “You know nothing about the world. You think you have all the answers but you know nothing!”
Freedom is dangerous, Cory, but it’s precious, too. You can’t just throw it away or let it slip away. You can’t sell it for bread and pottage.”
I’ve changed my mind. I used to wait for the explosion, the big crash, the sudden chaos that would destroy the neighborhood. Instead, things are unraveling, disintegrating bit by bit.
The company-city subgenre always seemed to star a hero who outsmarted, overthrew, or escaped “the company.” I’ve never seen one where the hero fought like hell to get taken in and underpaid by the company. In real life, that’s the way it will be. That’s the way it is.
Given any chance at all, teaching is what I would choose to do. Even if I have to take other kinds of work to get enough to eat, I can teach.
All successful life is Adaptable, Opportunistic, Tenacious, Interconnected, and Fecund. Understand this.
