Parable of the Talents (Earthseed, #2)

by Octavia E. Butler

We are born Not with purpose, But with potential.

I have also read that the Pox was caused by accidentally coinciding climatic, economic, and sociological crises. It would be more honest to say that the Pox was caused by our own refusal to deal with obvious problems in those areas. We caused the problems: then we sat and watched as they grew into crises.

Holy shit! Whew, anyone thinkin of monkey pox? Yikes

I have watched education become more a privilege of the rich than the basic necessity that it must be if civilized society is to survive. I have watched as convenience, profit, and inertia excused greater and more dangerous environmental degradation. I have watched poverty, hunger, and disease become inevitable for more and more people.

Such leaders knew that they could depend on fear, suspicion, hatred, need, and greed to arouse patriotic support for war.

I was 17. Now I’m 23

Paracetco,

It stopped the deterioration of their intellectual function and enabled them to make excellent use of whatever memory and thinking ability they had left. It also boosted the performance of ordinary, healthy young people. They read faster, retained more, made more rapid, accurate connections, calculations, and conclusions. As a result, Paracetco became as popular as coffee among students, and, if they meant to compete in any of the highly paid professions, it was as necessary as a knowledge of computers.

‘For the kingdom of Heaven is as a man traveling into a far country who called his own servants, and delivered unto them his goods. And unto One he gave five talents, to another two, and to another one; to every man according to his several ability; and straightway took his journey’ ”

To each of the two servants who had traded well and made profit for their lord, the lord said, “ ‘Well done, thou good and faithful servant; thou hast been faithful over a few things, I will make thee ruler over many things: enter thou into the joy of thy lord.’ ” But to the servant who had done nothing with his silver talent except bury it in the ground to keep it safe, the lord said harsher words. “ ‘Thou wicked and slothful servant …’ ” he began. And he ordered his men to, “ ‘Take therefore the talent from him and give it unto him which hath ten talents. For unto everyone that hath shall be given, and he shall have in abundance: but from him that hath not shall be taken away even that which he hath.’ ”

some group, some gang, perhaps, attacked the Dovetree place just north of us. There were, yesterday at this time, 22 people living at Dovetree—the old man, his wife, and his two youngest daughters; his five married sons, their wives and their kids. All of these people are gone except for the two youngest wives and the three little children they were able to grab as they ran.

Worse, the poor still get arrested and indentured for indebtedness, vagrancy, loitering, and other “crimes.”

Granted, the Dovetrees did supply the area with home-distilled whiskey and homegrown marijuana, but they’ve been doing that since long before we arrived. In fact, they were the best-armed farm family in the area because their business was not only illegal, but lucrative. People have tried to rob them before, but only the quick, quiet burglar-types have had any success. Until now.

“They didn’t steal or burn anything until they had beaten us, shot us.” Aubrey said. “Then they took our fuel and went straight to our fields and burned our crops. After that, they raided the houses and barns. They all wore big white crosses on their chests—crosses like in church. But they killed us. They even shot the kids. Everybody they found, they killed them. I hid with my baby or they would have shot him and me.” Again, she stared toward the clinic room.

Witches! In 2032! A witch, in their view, tends to be a Moslem, a Jew, a Hindu, a Buddhist, or, in some parts of the country, a Mormon, a Jehovah’s Witness, or even a Catholic. A witch may also be an atheist, a “cultist,” or a well-to-do eccentric. Well-to-do eccentrics often have no protectors or much that’s worth stealing. And “cultist” is a great catchall term for anyone who fits into no other large category, and yet doesn’t quite match Jarret’s version of Christianity.

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.”

"help us to make American great again", from Ronald Regan to Donald Trump

Join us and thrive, or whatever happens to you as a result of your own sinful stubbornness is your problem.

Jarret’s people see alcohol and drugs as Satan’s tools. Some of his more fanatical followers might very well be the tunic-and-cross gang who destroyed Dovetree.

We are now 59 people—64 with the Dovetree women and children, if they stay. With numbers like that, we barely do exist. All the more reason, I suppose, for my dream.

My “talent,” going back to the parable of the talents, is Earthseed.

my mother, of course, and Harry Balter and Zahra Moss, who were also refugees from my mother’s home neighborhood in Robledo. There was Travis, Natividad, and Dominic Douglas, a young family who became my mother’s first highway converts. She met them as both groups walked through Santa Barbara, California.

Next came Allison Gilchrist and her sister Julian—Allie and Jill. But Jill was killed later along the highway. At around the same time, my mother spotted my father and he spotted her.

Justin Rohr became Justin Gilchrist when the group found him crying alongside the body of his dead mother.

family. Last came the two families of ex-slaves that joined together to become one growing family of sharers. These were Grayson Mora and his daughter Doe and Emery Solis and her daughter Tori.

That was it: four children, four men, a...

Every member of Earthseed learned to read and to write, and most knew at least two languages—usually Spanish and English, since those were the two most useful.

“And the Hollys mentioned him to their friends the Sullivans, and the Sullivans mentioned him to their daughter who had married into the Gama family, and the Gamas told the Dovetrees because old Mrs. Dovetree—the matriarch—had been a Gama. That was when we began to get to know our nearest neighbors, the Dovetrees.”

The neighbours around the area.

nonsense.” You take Jarret and you get beatings, burnings, tarrings and featherings. They’re a package. And there may be even nastier things in that package.

Jarret’s supporters are more than a little seduced by Jarret’s talk of making America great again. He seems to be unhappy with certain other countries. We could wind up in a war. Nothing like a war to rally people around flag, country, and great leader.

the Peralta and Faircloth families in particular—might b...

Interesting that they fear Edward Jay Smith’s supposed incompetence more than they fear Jarret’s obvious tyranny.

Raids and gangs are dangerous because they kill outright. Peace is dangerous because it encourages complacency and carelessness—which also kills sooner or later.

aloe vera for use in easing burns and insect bites, and there were big mounds of agave.

We collect any herb, fruit, vegetable, or nut-producing plant, any plant at all that we know or suppose to be useful.

Cactus by cactus, thornbush by thornbush, we’ve planted a living wall in the hills around Acorn.

The one good thing about sharing pain is that it makes us very slow to cause pain to other people. We hate pain more than most people do.

Some of the faces of her god are biological evolution, chaos theory, relativity theory, the uncertainty principle, and, of course, the second law of thermodynamics. “God is Change, and, in the end, God prevails.”

God is Change. God is Infinite, Irresistible, Inexorable, Indifferent. God is Trickster, Teacher, Chaos, Clay— God is Change. Beware: God exists to shape And to be shaped.

As we mix their essence with the earth, We remember them, And within us, They live.”

I will remember this when remembering the dead

he believes that large, important things are done only by powerful people in high positions far away from here. Therefore, what we do is, by definition, small and unimportant.

“That God is Change?” “Yes.” “I don’t even know what that means.” “It means that Change is the one unavoidable, irresistible, ongoing reality of the universe. To us, that makes it the most powerful reality, and just another word for God.”

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—a bottom level of fellow creatures who are very vulnerable, but who can somehow be blamed and punished for all or any troubles. We need this lowest class as much as we need equals to team with and to compete against and superiors to look to for direction and help.

Since we can’t change the stupid, greedy, vicious things that powerful people do, they think we should try to ignore them. No matter how many times we’re forced to admit we can’t really hide, some of us still find ways to try.

No Christian minister could ever hate sin as much as Marc hated chaos. His gods were order, stability, safety, control.

Uncle Marc knew that the stars could take care of themselves.

He wasn't looking towards the stars. he was occupied with what was happening in the country at the time

I was collared with some a few months ago. They said their whole deal was to help the poor by killing off the rich and letting the poor take their stuff. If you lived in a place where the houses weren’t falling down, and especially if you had a wall around your neighborhood or your house, that meant you were rich. The crazy thing was, a lot of the paint kids really were rich. One of the girls I met, her family had more money than our whole neighborhood put together. She had pretty much given up everything for the paints, but in the end her friends betrayed her. One day while she was spaced out on something, they sold her to be collared because she was still young and cute, and they needed money for drugs.

again. I would have been okay. Poor, but okay. Poor doesn’t matter as much if you can make a place for yourself and be respected.

What would it have meant to Dan that he had saved his sister, even though he had not been able to save himself? Did he ever imagine such a thing? Would it somehow have been all right? Enough?

I would never hesitate to save my sister before saving myself. I hope it was enough for Dan

In small communities, she believed, people are more accountable to one another. Serious misbehavior is harder to get away with, harder even to begin when everyone who sees you knows who you are, where you live, who your family is, and whether you have any business doing what you’re doing.

When men have absolute power over women who are strangers, the men rape.