Welcome back.
The two months under the fascist Trump regime has moved as slow as a footrace between the former and current president and I feel like I am tightrope walking between anger and going numb. Both feel unproductive, when neither lead me to do anything more than worry. At times like this, I turn to Lauren Olamina to show me the way.
Stories like this one, show why it is so important to read and engage with fiction. While I will never argue the merit of reading nonfiction, I firmly believe that the right stories, by the right authors, can teach you something intangible that goes beyond pure information. We can read the same novel and come away with something different. It can be the tragedy of a world too far gone, a warning of our own plight, or it can be the journey that helps guide us through our own hellish version of America.
Butler wrote about a future world, but that distant time is already partly in our past. The story starts in 2024 and continues through 2027. Past, Present, Future. Beginning, middle, end. Let’s get into it.
Past
2024
Your teachers
Are all around you.
All that you perceive,
All that you experience,
All that is given to you
or taken from you,
All that you love or hate,
need or fear
Will teach you—
If you will learn.
God is your first
and your last teacher.
God is your harshest teacher:
subtle,
demanding.
Learn or die.
-Earthseed: the Book of the Living
2024 is short. It’s only 27 pages. Lauren Olamina lives in Robledo, California, a small, gated community largely led and held together by her father. Relying on his own knowledge as a Baptist pastor he has pulled the neighborhood together to better assure all their safety. Lauren, despite holding her father in the highest respects, believes that the community is stuck in the past, and has begun to question not only her father, but the God he worships.
This is the shortest section, but in it Butler is sowing the seeds of conflict; throughlines that follow Lauren in an America that is different from our own, but similar enough to cause alarm. There are clashes between those who spend their time yearning for better times, and those who struggle to sustain themselves on stories of better times and all while waiting for a time that will clearly never return.
Butler asks the questions that if answered carefully, can perhaps avert the worst that humanity is capable of. What role should empathy have in our society? What that of religion? These questions only become more pressing because of what ties both our world and Lauren Olamina’s world together: The decline of the American Government.
In both worlds, a controversial figure has won the presidential race. A president who wishes to cut government spending and offload everything to private corporations. A president that even sensible people, like Lauren’s father, consider voting for.
It’s one of the many disagreements Lauren has with her father. She cringes at the idea of spending a fortune so she can be baptized with potable water into a religion that she no longer practices, especially when water is so precious. Climate change has made water a highly limited commodity and the wealth disparity has grown so large that people are willing to kill for it. This harsh reality has even begun to break through the walls of Robledo.
For Lauren, the violence holds a different sort of danger. Lauren suffers from hyperempathy syndrome. Any sensation that she perceives from another person she immediately feels in herself. A truly debilitating problem in a world that is so full of pain and violence.
The year ends with Charles Morpeth Donner winning the election. Donner plans to scale back government regulations so corporations can take in homeless workers and provide them with adequate room and board. Lauren asks, “What’s adequate, I wonder: A house or apartment? A room? A bed in a shared room? A barracks bed? Space on a floor? Space on the ground?” She goes on, “what about those suspended laws? Will it be legal to poison, mutilate, or infect people—if you provide them with food, water, and space to die?”
The year and chapter end with her father deciding not to vote. Politicians turn his stomach.
Present
2025
When apparent stability disintegrates,
As it must—
God is Change—
People tend to give in
To fear and depression
To need and greed.
When no influence is strong enough
To unify people
They divide.
They struggle,
One against one,
Group against group,
For survival, position, power.
They remember old hates and generate new ones,
They create chaos and nurture it.
They kill and kill and kill,
Until they are exhausted and destroyed,
Until they are conquered by outside forces,
Or until one of them becomes
A leader
Most will follow,
Or a tyrant
Most fear.
-Earthseed: the Book of the Living
Things continue to deteriorate both within the neighborhood and within the familial structure of the Olamina home. All while the American Government continues to cede their power and responsibility to private corporations. While some people believe that the new president will be able to do some good, Lauren is not convinced.
“He’s like a symbol of the past for us to hold on to as we’re pushed into the future. He’s nothing. No substance. But having him there, the latest in a two-and-a-century-long line of American Presidents make people feel that the country, the culture that they grew up with is still here—that we’ll get through these bad times and back to normal.”
However, she does not believe that things can ever return to normal, and after telling all of this to her closest friend, her father confronts her. He says that this kind of talk causes panic, but Lauren still believes that embracing this fear might spur people to act. In the end, Lauren keeps preparing and planning on her own, while the violence the community experiences continues to escalate.
Lauren still disagrees with her father, but she values the community that he has built. When her brother, Keith, disagrees with their father, he allows his pride to lead him beyond their neighborhood walls. Unlike his sister, who searches for a life that can grow despite the chaos and depravity of the world, Keith embraces this violence as necessary to exist in the world around him. Using his ability to read and write, something taught to him by Lauren and his mother, he is able to carve out a place for himself on the outside, at least at first.
During this two-year stretch, things continue to get worse as people living on the street grow more desperate, and more willing to turn to violent means to get at the riches behind their neighborhood walls. Her father instructs the community to take precautions. They institute a system to keep watch at night. All while Lauren keeps questioning the path they are heading down.
On one of Keith’s visits home, Lauren asks him about the outside world. He confides in her, telling her that he has met a group of men that protect him because of his ability to read and write. He has found protection, but it is very different from the safety he found in Robledo. These men use their numbers to prey on the vulnerable, and Keith takes part in it as well. Yet, this decision to rely on violence to survive proves to be Keith’s undoing, when a more powerful gang preys on him.
They find his body dumped on the street with clear evidence that he was brutally tortured before he was killed. This is our first parable, a warning against adopting the world’s violent ways. It’s only a matter of time before that same violence will eventually be enacted on you or the people you love.
Then again, Lauren’s father tried to do things the right way and he met a similar fate. After days of searching, it is accepted that he is likely dead, but no body is ever found. At her father’s impromptu funeral, Lauren preaches that, “the weak can overcome the strong if the weak persist. Persisting isn’t always safe, but it’s often necessary.” Yet, in her heart, she doesn’t fully believe her words when she tells them that they will persist in protecting their home. Lauren had been planning to leave Robledo to search for a life that she can actually live, but now she wonders how she can abandon her family and community as they grieve the loss of their leader. If she stays, is she doomed to remain in the path of an unavoidable disaster?
The last entry she writes from the “safety” of Robledo is one of foreboding. She wonders if a man in their community who just lost his entire family, will live much longer.
The Tipping Point
2026
All struggles
Are essentially
Power struggles.
Who will rule,
Who will lead,
Who will define,
refine,
confine,
design,
Who will dominate.
All struggles
Are essentially
power struggles,
And most
are no more intellectual
than two rams
knocking their heads together.
-Earthseed: the Book of the Living
I want to take a second to pause here, on the brink of the present and the future. While I am drawing parallels between the world in Parable of the Sower and our own, I realize that these realities are fundamentally different. For example, when I first started writing this piece, I would have said that the decline of our American Government was not nearly as advanced, but Trump and Musk appear determined to catch up, and the Democrats are happy to watch it all go up in flames if they can keep begging for donations.
While some people may celebrate the decline of the federal government, Butler has a chilling reminder of the alternative. A private company purchases a town from the US government, providing jobs and security for the residents/employees. A job and security seems like a good offer, even Lauren’s stepmother is taken by the idea of a return to normalcy under the rule of a private corporation.
Lauren is not convinced as she understands the dangers of relying on a group that is motivated by profits alone. They will be safe while they are working for the company, but what becomes of them when they are no longer profitable? It’s the same for all of us. Offloading essential services to corporations will always lead to this. Helping people is not profitable, and corporations will always choose to maximize profits regardless of the human cost.
Lauren tells her friend to start reading books and developing skills that will help them survive beyond the walls. It might sound extreme in our own situation, but I believe that Lauren is touching on something important. We can only do what we can. I was furious when Chuck Schumer decided to lick the boot of fascism so willingly when he voted to pass the republican funding bill, but at the end of the day, I can’t cast that vote.
The things we can control are far more local. Lauren is right, in that educating ourselves, and finding concrete ways to resist is all we can do. I agree that everyone would benefit from a continued focus on learning. We don’t need to reach for the survival books yet, but one cannot discount the value of education. After all, both the Democrats and the Republicans are relying on the American public to continue blaming each other as the billionaires profit.
Lauren is also firm in that learning is not enough. Action must be taken. For her, that was creating an emergency kit that she could grab regardless of the disaster. The actions we need is closer to her father’s playbook. It means seeking out points of common ground with people and working to foster community. I will still hold disdain for any leader that legislates through austerity and hatred, or any leader that declines to resist, while asking me for donations. I will also continue calling representatives, finding organizations that I can align with, and trying to maintain a positive outlook even when things look so bleak. If you want to get involved in some of these actions, I highly recommend Indivisible. You can find local chapters and action items that will be tailored for what you can do.
2026 ends, and Lauren does not write another entry until July 31st, 2027. It seems that the passage of time even began to pacify our protagonist. As we will soon see, Lauren was right. Change is inevitable, and it is bearing down on Robledo, whether she prepares for it or not.
Future
2027
Belief
Initiates and guides action—
Or it does nothing.
-Earthseed: the Book of the Living
In the final section, we take a step forward into the unknown. It is the fear that hides in all of us. Not a source, but the source of our anxiety. The darkness in the abyss that is waiting to look back. The thing that acts as both an event and an edict: Change. Lauren’s religion, Earthseed, is one that believes God is Change. Several verses have been quoted throughout this piece, but I wanted to leave the full discussion for this section. Lauren uses this verse as the first introduction to Earthseed.
All that you touch
You Change.
All that you Change
Changes you.
The only lasting truth
Is Change.
God
Is Change.
Religion is inherently personal, and it seems almost purposefully inflammatory for Lauren to call it a religion, especially considering that her father was a pastor. She is challenged on this point several times, yet she insists that Earthseed is a religion and that is exactly what this section is focused on. It is in 2027 that Lauren’s story truly delivers on the promise of a parable. As we move through this critical year for Lauren, we can look at the actions she takes as a lesson that can more broadly be applied to our own world. When change comes for Lauren in the form of screaming and fire, she is forced to finally take action.
#1
A victim of God may,
Through learning adaption,
Become a partner of God,
A victim of God may,
Through forethought and planning,
Become a shaper of God.
Or a victim of God may,
Through shortsightedness and fear,
Remain God’s victim,
God’s plaything,
God’s prey.
-Earthseed: the Book of the Living
If there were ever a time when Lauren could be described as a victim of God, it would be now. She tried to get her community to change, but she grew complacent and like everyone else, she was caught off guard. While her training helped her to wake up alert and ready to escape, she was lucky to make it out of the burning neighborhood alive. Now, in the sobering light of day, Lauren must rely on her religion to survive.
Lauren describes the other looters as human maggots, and despite her hyperempathy, she is even tempted to kill one of them. For many, this violent urge is perfectly understandable, and her restraint is hard to fathom. The desire for revenge and violent retribution may not be an admirable trait, but it certainly feels human. Then again, she knows that if she were to shoot and kill the scavengers, her hyperempathy would take her down as well. One could make the argument that Lauren’s common sense won out over her base instincts, but I believe her patience comes from operating under the auspices of Earthseed.
There is no point in relying on the police to help her, or for some sense of justice to be carried out on her family and friend’s behalf. As a victim of God, all she can do is adapt. Her God does not care about how things were, and Lauren knows that dwelling on it or killing for it will not save her. Perhaps in our own lives we should try to focus on helping ourselves and those around us, instead of hurting those that share the same set of needs.
#2
Lauren finds Harry and Zahra, two neighbors who survived the attack. They decide to stick together and make their way north. They are better off than most, having meager supplies and a gun.
Outside of the neighborhood walls, they are vulnerable to attacks at any time, and they are forced to exercise caution, not even lighting a fire at night. Lauren struggles with a question that she must contemplate while surviving in this society that clearly answered wrong. Where does empathy fit into society?
There was a reason that Lauren only picked through the remains of her own home. It’s the same reason she chose to share supplies with Harry and Zahra at first. She is trying to survive and everyone around them is trying to do the same, though they may be surviving in different ways. One cannot always avoid violence.
Lauren does not hesitate to kill if it means protecting herself or her allies, but threats can take many shapes, and she finds it hard to trust anyone. It seems out of character when she stops a man from stealing another couple’s water. It’s hardly cautious, making an enemy to help someone that they hardly know.
Perhaps at the time, Lauren had only acted instinctively, but in doing so, she begins to learn how they can find allies in this world full of threats. The couple only offer their thanks at first, but they clearly feel safer around Lauren’s group, and during the day, they walk close by them on the road. At night, they camp close by as well. While keeping watch for her group, Lauren hears the couple under attack, and with her gun and precious ammunition, she shoots one of the attackers and scares the others off.
Harry questions why Lauren would take such a risk, and she says, “We’d be damned fools to wait and try to get [allies] when we need them. By then, they might not be around.”
Lauren doesn’t demand loyalty or exact a price for the couples allegiance. You can see the influence that her father’s community has had on Lauren, and although she disagreed with the overall goals of that community, she sees the necessity of others. Lauren reminds us of a lesson that we often forget. One that is crucial as we set out to build bridges and form stronger communities.
Kindness eases Change
-Earthseed: the Book of the Living
#3
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.
-Earthseed: the Book of the Living
What does orgies of breeding and dying look like? That is shown when Emery, a desperate mother attempting to keep her and her nine-year-old alive, find safety amongst Lauren’s group. Emery grew up poor, and after her father died in a gunfight, her mother pushed her to marry to insure that she wouldn’t starve. After having two boys and a daughter, Emery and her husband had a somewhat normal life working as farmhands.
Until their farm was sold to a massive agriculture conglomerate, and things began to change. They no longer worked for money, but for company scrip. It could be used to pay for room and board that the company provided, yet it was never quite enough to pay off all the debts they owed to the corporation. It is illegal to leave a job with debt still owed to the company, and if you do, they can have you arrested, and returned to work for the company as a criminal. Even death is not an escape from the debt, as it is passed on to any living relatives. Emery’s debt doubled when her husband got a sick and died, never having seen a doctor.
Emery knew she needed to escape when her sons were taken from her, and after she refused to work until they were returned, they threatened to take her daughter as well. That was when she escaped, risking the dangers of the outside world for a chance at a better life.
If you are at all familiar with American history, you know that none of what Butler has written here is her own creation. Children being separated from their parents and being sold into slavery has happened before, as has the system of enslavement through company scrip, often referred to as sharecropping.
While I like to try to remain hopeful, it is necessary to fully face the warning Butler is giving us. When slavery was abolished, it was only the end of a label. Whether it is through sharecropping, outsourcing work to other countries with no worker protections, or the continued enslavement of the incarcerated, the US has never abolished slavery.
Government should govern for the people, but just like Lauren’s America, our government is only concerned in serving corporations and billionaires. The result is corporations ruling us. When our world is governed around maximizing profits, it’s only a matter of time before it will be profitable for you and your family to be the ones being crushed. Cruelty is permissible if it results in higher profits, and that must be used to motivate us to continue fighting fascism regardless of the form it takes.
Prodigy is, at its essence, adaptability and
persistent, positive obsession. Without
persistence, what remains is an enthusiasm of
the moment. Without adaptability, what
remains may be channeled into destructive
fanaticism. Without positive obsession, there is
nothing at all.
-Earthseed: the Book of the Living
In acting out this parable, Lauren answers questions that we must answer if we are going to pull ourselves out of this tailspin. We can see that empathy is sometimes forgotten due to an overabundance of caution and suspicion, but it is incredibly necessary. In describing Earthseed as a religion, Lauren is also showing us the role that religion is meant to play. It should act as a call to action. The people in Lauren’s group are free to maintain their own beliefs, as her religion does not care about the specifics of a person’s beliefs as long as their actions progress them toward Earthseed’s purpose; taking seed amongst the stars.
Her heaven is distant, but observably real. Earthseed is a religion, because fervor towards real change and progress in this life is required for us to right this ship or at least protect all we can while it sinks. It means no longer waiting for things to return to normal while waiting for salvation after death. It requires enthusiasm, and the same ability to dream and to have faith. It demands us to picture a better society and work towards it, ignoring false idols that only wish to lead us astray.
the most devastating book you ever recommended. 10/10. In the words of that talking monkey from rise of the planet of the apes, "apes together strong."