Swords, Sorcery, and Socialism - Parable of the Sower

Episode Date: April 3, 2023

Imagine a world where the climate crisis gets so bad that the US brings back company towns and slavery. A far stretch, but Octavia Butler has already done the hard work for us in her seminal novel, Parable of the Sower. Ketho and Asha talk about change, community, and the most realistic apocalypse ever encountered.patreon.com/swordsandsocialismEmail: [e-mail] The Show: @SwordsNSocPodAsha: @Herbo_AnarchistKetho: @MusicalPuma69

🎵 Bro. Are you fucking real, man? Come on. Hello, everyone, and welcome back to Swords, Sorcery, and Socialism, a podcast about the politics and themes hiding in our genre fiction. As always, I'm Asha and I'm here with my co-host, Ketho. How's it going, Ketho? Howdy. Today we are here with our final book of our run of black authors.

famous one that I had always sort of known was popular, but had somehow managed to not know anything about the plot at all until this point, which resulted in some real shock. As I read the book, we are talking about Parable of the Sower by Octavia Butler. Yeah. A book that we both kind of falsely thought was her breakthrough novel turns out to be a novel from much later in her career, like almost the end of her career, just happens to be her most well-known and radical amongst left-leaning groups. Yeah. I just had the feel to me of a book that was like you know an author's like breakthrough novel like i really thought that's what it was uh but yeah to my surprise after i read it i learned it came out very late on in her career and actually is kind of like the

least sci-fi of a lot of the other books she's read that are books she wrote that are all in the sci-fi genre that seems to be the least sci-fi of them yeah as far as what i know about things like lilas brood it's very hard sci-fi um yeah and this this is i wouldn't even call this post-apocalyptic i would call this mid-apocalypse this is just apocalyptic this is apocalyptic. We open in media revs apocalypse. And I love when technically we can't get there yet, but I love when media is like in the distant future, the year 2005. And you're like, oh my God, the future passed.

But this is set in 2024. Yeah, 2024. So right around the corner. And I'll be honest with you. Of the books we've read that are apocalyptic about the future, this one seems to be the one that's most likely. Yeah, because she's writing in terms of climate catastrophe more so than anything else. So she's clearly – I mean mean she wrote this in when did the 1993 so amongst the savvy climate change was known and understood so she was writing from

that perspective of oh what's this gonna look like in 30 years and where it hasn't yeah spoiler alert spoiler alert it's real bad real real bad um bleak and depressing yeah so when you combine parable of the sower with uh the fifth season we have two of the possibly the most well-written and depressing books we've read for this podcast by far and maybe i've read generally ever yeah can we think of anything that's bleaker i mean i'd say like you know you could say starship troopers is bleak but like it doesn't consider itself bleak it doesn't yeah it does not consider itself bleak and that um so the tone is not a bleak tone nothing else we've read is nearly this bleak no because i mean even even um can't go for lebowitz like talks about how things are cyclical and always have a chance to be better yeah even our other like apocalypse

book canticle i think is a more positive outlook on humanity than this one it's like wow i fifth season i feel like yeah these are more depressing than most apocalyptic novels i've ever encountered this is reading this is like reading like the road for anyone who's had to read the road or has ever read the road yeah i mean i've heard that it's just really really depressing but i haven't this is like this is like the road or like watching one of my favorite movies of all time children of men i just let somebody borrow that book i had that book i love children of men so i mean it's a good movie i haven't i owned the book and haven't read the book but amazing the movie is really good. I do think I'm going to make a quick comparison here between Children of Men and Parable of the Sower.

Okay. There is a very famous, or famous to me anyway, tweet about Children of Men that said, I was just imagining Children of Men that the rest of the world is fine. And the UK just sort of chose to be like that. I was literally about to say the same thing. That's how I feel about the USA in Parable of the Sower. It's like it's destroyed here, but it's fine everywhere. Well, because this is jumping into the story, but when they're setting up these company towns in California, they're all foreign companies.

They're Canadian companies or Japanese companies or German companies. So other countries still have functioning economies that have the resources to go set up company towns in a different nation. They're still doing international trade, right? Like, so these other countries can't be that horrible off comparatively. Comparatively.

So like, I know we can't focus on them at all because from our perspective of the novel, like Lauren doesn't know anything about those countries. So we don't know anything about those countries. But like the fact that other countries can like come set up company towns in America for to get the slave labor to me, just is like children of men being like, ah, Britain just is that way, and the rest of the world is fine. It's just like real life, you know? Yeah, yeah. They're just choosing to be that way.

They're just choosing to be insane. I think more so for great britain than the u.s our our trends are like happening everywhere right now freaking turf island is just like what if we did all these stupid things constantly it's gonna date this episode spectacularly but like there's currently a massive controversy going on in the uk because a single like soccer analyst for football from international listeners football analyst just accurately described current government policy in the uk and the bbc and the right wing have had such a meltdown that he's been suspended from his like soccer commentary job. And in solidarity,

every other professional commentator and soccer player who does commentary for BBC has are all striking or basically just refusing to do the program. So they ran their match of the day highlight program with no commentary at all and just ambient music over the highlights of every goal because they couldn't find a single person to scab over the highlights of every goal because they couldn't find a single person to scab over the suspended Gary Laker. That's funny. That's so funny. They literally got like fucking weirdo right-wing Tory journalists from like the Telegraph to sit in on their like soccer commentary show because they couldn't get any actual players or experts

to sit in on the show so you've got a bunch of weirdos that don't actually watch the sport trying to talk about it because they can't get anyone else to do it because they're mad that gary lineker was like we're super racist to immigrants and the bbc was like this is like oh bbc is like this is unacceptable this coming on the coattails of the canceling a David Attenborough climate special because it would have upset the Tories. Yes. They're just a bunch of giant babies. So again, the UK chooses to be that way.

But I also think in Parable of the Sower, I brought this up because I think America has chosen to be that way in this book. Now, some of it's obviously climate change related, but the response to it I think was definitely one that the politicians in this story chose because the new president is literally like a we need to bring back child labor and company towns kind of guy. Who's secretly essentially just saying – and Lauren points this out slavery with extra steps. Yes. Literally just bring you back slavery as the solution to their economic problems, which I, to be fair is something I think America,

the American right ring would definitively do. Yeah. There's, there's not even really questioning that. No. So parable of sower is, I guess I think Wikipedia calls it a speculative fiction novel which i guess makes more sense because it's sort of speculating what would happen if

the climate catastrophe uh accelerated i do like you said i do disagree that it's post-apocalyptic because i think the apocalypse is ongoing yeah it's currently happening um this isn't fallout where people are rebuilding. No. This is people trying to get the heck out. This isn't even mechanical for Leibovitz where they're rebuilding. This is like the apocalypse is still happening and things are getting worse. This book's motto essentially at the end of every chapter is, but wait, it gets worse. At least until like the final chapter or two.

But wait, there's more's more yeah but you know it gets worse so we follow a main character of lauren olamina who is a um a young like a mixed race girl who lives in this like little walled cul-de-sac with her father her stepmother her like five siblings and a whole bunch of other neighbors in this like walled in cul-de-sac. And what's happened is essentially the climate catastrophe has gotten so bad and the economy has gotten so bad that a lot of the country, I guess, or at least a lot of Southern California has descended into essentially lawlessness. And everyone that's still relatively,

I'm going to use this like quote unquote, like normal or trying to hang on to a sense of American normalcy, live in these like walled neighborhoods with like heavy gates and walls and guard. And like they have to guard themselves from like criminals breaking over and stealing all their shit

and raping and killing them. That's the world they live in and like leaving the walls is to invite disaster upon yourself now at the beginning of the novel when she's like because there's a lot of time skips or a few time skips early on we start the novel she's you know like 15 or something and she's 14 15 something 14 15 at the very beginning when we start to like learn about the neighbors learn about the world and then every time we skip ahead it's because something new and bad has happened and things have gotten slightly worse it's like she forgets to journal and then remembers to journal after something terrible happens yeah because the uh the frame narrative

is that these are journals kept by la. Like she writes down stuff that happens. So yeah, it's like she doesn't journal when things are just riding along, but as soon as like something changes or something happens, she journals about it. And in this world, anytime anything changes, especially for the first half, it's always bad,

which I want you to keep note of that. When something changes, it's bad because change is going to be literally the most important thing throughout this entire story. Yeah, it's the absolute core theme of this novel. Change. Change. Everything you touch, you change. Everything you change, changes you.

Change is God. That is a mantra you hear over and over because that is Lauren's mantra. That is the mantra of this, she calls it a religion that she has created that she calls Earthseed. created that she calls Earthseed. Because in her view, all other sort of religions have failed to accurately give people a way to live and survive in this world that she finds herself living in. And so what she has done is felt inspired to essentially create a new religion, a new set of precepts to guide your life by that she thinks will actually help keep people alive. And she does, cause she doesn't think any current sort of religious faith or societal organization works. And this is shown really, really well through the community that she's in

at the beginning and, and where her ideas come from, because her dad is a preacher who's essentially attempting to hold this community together through very traditional Baptist Christianity, like force of will. And force of will. So it's, and her big issue with it is that it kind of, it respects adherence more than change. It's not flexible. It's not malleable. What it does is it's very rigid and in a lot of ways kind of is expecting something to intervene on their behalf. that basically all of the adults are always like talking about the good old days and like always fantasizing about the fact that they're going to get back. They're going to bring the old times back. Eventually the new president is going to bring the old times back.

This different change is going to bring the old times back. And that's literally a reflection that goes in parallel with this, with like their Baptist faith is that like you said, it doesn't change. And it's, it's anticipating that if they just like, hold on, things will get better without their input,

but then they hold on and things just get worse. Yeah. Lauren is essentially worse, exponentially worse. Lauren is essentially reprimanded at one point for like causing a mild panic by trying to say that she believes that things are not going to get better and that everyone should prepare for things to get much worse. And that the only way they'll survive things getting worse is if they prepare in advance. And everyone does not like this. This is, you know know pop up in the corner

everyone disliked that yeah um because it challenges their dogmatic view that things will be better if they just hold on like her dad weirdly despite being the centerpiece of holding everything together i think is also the only one that kind of gets it, but he's so stuck. He's so stuck in his ways that even though he admits that she's probably right, he doesn't, he himself cannot do it differently. Yeah. He,

he wants to do what's best for the community, but he can't. Yeah. He understands that what they're doing probably won't work in the end, but he refuses to do it a different way or is unable to do it a different way he is a change through small steps he's a reformer uh dsa over here uh and lauren is definitely the radical the revolutionary yes not revolutionary in that we need to not and i'll i'll get the little sect here, not revolutionary in like the vanguardist sense where she's going to like overthrow her dad and institute like a new system for the cul-de-sac, right? For the neighborhood.

is prepare all of us to work cooperatively together without dogma to be prepared for anything that comes. It's much more of a bottom-up revolutionary than a top-down one. Oh yeah, this book has, there are some elements that one could consider Marxist, there are some elements that one could consider anarchist, but it's the majority, I can see why a much larger subset of anarchists

have latch onto this, um, than Marxists. Because the main message of Earthseed is one of mutual aid, mutual help, no leader, no set dogma besides the fact the only set dogma is that everything changes and so that you need to be adaptable and cooperative and that like setting up anyone in any person in charge is bad there's even a somewhat of an eradication of things like the division of labor within the group like which is again a very it's very kropotkin thing is no division of labor gonna call this book mutual aid a factor of survival uh yeah i mean in essence that's what kropotkin was saying too is that it helped our survival so it was super important to our evolution that really is kind of what earthseed is, her religion. That's kind of what it is.

It's evolution. It's changing and surviving long enough to change successfully. Yeah, I think more what it is, Earthseed is the idea that you need to be adaptable enough to survive long enough that you can change that if you don't change you die and if you don't if you're not willing to take the steps necessary now to survive you will not be given the opportunity to change you know what i mean like you need to take immediate action now to survive once you have survived you can adapt to survive. Once you have survived, you can adapt to survive more successfully and that it is a continual process

that will never stop. You always have to be adapting and changing and surviving and that anyone that doesn't will die, which when you put it that way, it makes it sound very like like call it sort of the shitty like survival, you know, the shitty take of survival of the fittest.

That's not what it is because it's not about fitness. No. Like a lot of what Bill's people would describe as the fittest get fucking killed. It's survival of the adaptable. Yeah. The changeable, the adaptable, the flexible. And the cooperative. It's the entire community in which Lauren lives at the beginning is they live together, but they're insular.

They're living in their own little pocketed homes. It's very, I mean, they're in a cul-de-sac so it's it's semi-suburban in like here are the houses on this cul-de-sac that are individualized that are like these very separated and while occasionally the community comes together to do nice things for each other for the most part when it comes to day-to-day survival they don't do stuff together Aside from a handful of things that really it's Lauren's dad that is trying to push things like group gun training and other stuff like that. But for the most part, they're insular. They are individualized. They're in a community, but they kind of aren't a community.

Yeah. They're living within the same walls, but they don't act like a community. They don't act like... They still act like how Americans now see their neighbors. Like, those are just my neighbors. Yeah. Like, I know them. Well, I should say Americans viewed their neighbors in, like, the 50s. Like, I know

my neighbors, but, like, we're not super cooperative. It also is important to point out that the neighborhood she lives in before Collapse would have been well off, but not super well off and is multicultural. There's like one or two white families and then the rest are either black or like Hispanic or a combination thereof. And that's like, that is a key factor in this, like in the neighborhood and then in their group going forward. Because along one of the most important things in Earthseed, aside from adaptability and this need for cooperation, is the importance and necessity of like multiculturalism. Like they're the only group

that like, they literally have to always be on the lookout for the fact that like harry is white and the rest of them aren't and that other people are going to look at them weird for that reason yeah because there's there's some like one of the reasons at least lauren thinks that stuff fall apart is is that there is there is like a sort of extant like in-group out-group thing going on in the community and earth seed the group is is an exception to this the the in-group out-group stuff seems to be it's mentioned at least briefly that that seems to almost happen to the people that are living outside of these communities too i mean yeah it's pretty saying pretty explicitly that like a lot of the areas outside of

the community, other communities and stuff have essentially become de facto racially segregated. So earth seed is like this very unique exception to the rule that is supposedly not supposedly an exception to the rule that is kind of common place. And, and then you,

you already mentioned the token white guy. Oh, Harry. Oh, Harry. The, the resident like him, Bo of the group,

you know, he kind of is wouldn't want to have it any other way. So, but so they live in this like wild community, right? Lauren's like writing down her ideas and as she's writing down her ideas and like coping with growing up a little bit and like trying to formulate her opinions, the world just keeps getting worse. Like originally they were pretty safe for a long time.

Eventually someone breaks in and robs one of the houses. Somebody breaks in and like beats up somebody, someone breaks in and like rat steel tries to steal some rabbits and their little incursions and then the incursions get worse and worse and things get worse worse people start to be killed people start to disappear notably most importantly her dad the reverend um and once he's gone that's like the linchpin that the neighborhood then like starts to fall apart because all the things that were happening to make the place safer were essentially spearheaded by him and held together by his like force of will and his preaching and it's not long after that the things get rapidly start to decline until the point where one night the fucking pyros just like

ram a car through the front gate and set fire to every building and steal and rape and murder and that destroys the community and that's like about halfway through the book yeah that it is an interesting it's an interestingly long wait for the inciting incident usually inciting incidents and stories happen within the first like third butler really takes the time for you to get to know everyone in the neighborhood and like learn the backstory and she really lets you like i want to say like stew in the like the coming storm like there's so many chapters of like that it really builds a sort of it's almost more like a horror novel in the, like she forces you to feel the creeping anxiety of what you know is going to

happen eventually, but she doesn't let it happen too quickly. You know, like, you know, you know, she takes something bad is going to happen to this community, but she,

she makes you wait for it, which masterful writing, but you're like you said, it really does come later than you expect. And then when it does happen, it's, it's weirdly, it takes forever for it to happen. When it does happen, it is quick and brutal. Yeah. This isn't, I wouldn't call this a particularly traditionally structured novel. Not just because it is told in like journal format, but also because the inciting incident happens like halfway through the book. There's a climax, but not really.

It's not like this ramping up of constant tension. Not really. It's not like this ramping up of constant tension. I would say that sort of the climax is what the shootout they have with the drugs, with the pyros, where Jill dies. And then the ensuing run down the road through the firestorm. Yeah, it's like that's it. But I don't know. It's not like the... The story's nowhere close to's, that's it. But I don't know. It does. It's, it's not like the.

The story is nowhere close to being over at that point. You have to like get to, if you get to Bankole's land, you got to figure out what they're going to do. Like I'd say there's more like little mini, there's no one big climax, but there's lots of little ones. Lots of little climaxes. And then you get to the end and, you you know for a book that was extremely bleak um there's a moat of hope there thrown in at the end there has to be because if not uh it would come out of this book yeah this would have been pointless if if there wasn't so this book does not shy away from brutality at all and that makes it i think hard to place like we were already mentioning genres it it makes it hard to place in terms of like is this an adult novel is this why is this well

because we we haven't mentioned it yet but obviously if you've read it you know that lauren has this sort of like a genetic difference, drug-caused thing where she's hyper-empathetic. Where like seeing people in pain makes her experience that same pain as them. This manifests in a number of ways. Like if she shoots someone with a gun, it feels like she's been shot, right? Which I think is more of like an inciting thing that like forces her to think about earthseed the way she does but it it is it's not particularly used like a ya novel would where somehow this i don't know um it would be much more in your face

if it were a traditional ya novel uh but so like it has some ya elements like she's young we start when she's like 14 or 15 and by the end of the book she's young. We start when she's 14 or 15 and by the end of the book she's 18. She's sort of got a power. I don't want to call her a chosen one, but she's the one with a vision for Earthseed. And along the way she picks up companions

who aid her in her quest. So you've sort of got this YA type structure, but it's way too brutal to be a YA book. There is way too much like torture and like rape and murder for this to be a normal YA book. It's also not science fiction because there's really no science fiction going on.

I guess speculative fiction is sort of how it's labeled. And I guess that works because there's a speculation about the climate catastrophe, I guess. But like, it's mostly just like, I don't know, it's just a story. Yeah, it's very difficult to place. But I think part of that has to do with how close it is to the modern world in terms of technology and anxieties and our own understanding of a bleak future this feels almost too close to reality to call it science fiction just because usually when you think of sci-fi you think alike again we've said it before i think it's like going back we're talking about sci-fi like you know dystopian from the past. It's always like, oh, after the nuclear war, what will the world be like?

You know what I mean? Or something like that. This is the first one I've read that uses climate catastrophe as the inciting event of the apocalypse. And like you said, that's one that's much more real to us now and so it has a very different feel to it than like oh the apocalypse was caused by aliens yeah the nuclear war one ones always make me think of like the 60s it's like it was written during the cold war and you can tell because that was the anxiety this is very much a post-cold war like apocalypse yeah this is very much a post-Cold War apocalypse. This is very much a modern apocalypse that they're dealing with.

Yeah, this is, ooh, the thing that's going to kill us might not be nuclear war. The other difference of that is it's not an instant apocalypse. It wasn't like a single apocalyptic event that the world then has to work through. It's even different than all of the other modern apocalypse stuff is often like zombie apocalypse stuff, which is also often like the zombie apocalypse is an event that happens. And then a lot of it is what you do afterwards. This story is the apocalypse is ongoing. It is happening.

It is still happening. It is actually getting worse in some ways. It's a slow degradation. It's a slow degradation, which again is encapsulated in the slow degradation of the neighborhood that they live in. And it's all about changing

with the continued degradation or the continuation of this apocalypse. That's not ending anytime soon. There's no light. There's no, like the apocalypse will be over and we can go back to normal. Cause going back to normal is the one thing you cannot do. Yeah.

It's there is no, in essence, there is no normal. Everything is normal. Yeah. Change is God. God is change. And so like, it's a very, I think that's partly why this one's more impactful because there's no like, it doesn't tangibly map to a lot of the apocalypses that we become accustomed to in pop culture.

You know, it's not the Thanos snap, which is like a single instant event. It's not a zombie apocalypse. It's not a zombie apocalypse. It's not a nuclear war. It's a thing that is happening to you constantly for your whole life. Yeah. Which for people of our age, the idea that you're just living through a constant series of crises that you have to manage forever, I think feels, hits a little more home than I think even Judith Butler or Octavia Butler could have intended maybe, or that she couldn't have

known in advance that like people of our generation, like the people, the children that were born around the time she was writing this book would grow up to live in a constant series of apocalypses yeah because this is i mean it's a pre-911 novel i mean yes maybe she could have predicted it that's why she said it in 2024 yeah she didn't set it very far in the future for herself that's only 30 years i think that was kind of insightful. Yeah, I think she's kind of right. She's, she's prescient. That's the word. Say it that way. She's, she's very, she's got excellent foresight. Yeah. Yeah. Unfortunately. Yeah. As bleak as that might be. So let's focus on Earthseed a little bit. I think let's try and focus on its actual precept. We've

obviously talked about a little bit, but let's try to focus on it a little bit. So Earthseed is this religion way of life that Lauren creates. It is the central, I'm looking up here, like the central tenets. I guess I missed it when I was reciting the thing. I missed the third of the four stanzas. It's all that you touch, you change. All that you change changes you. The only lasting truth is change. God is change. And then the other central, the central paradox of her, of her faith of earth seed is why is the, why does, why is the universe? Why does the universe exist? To shape God. What does God exist to do to shape the universe? Now, like a lot of the people in the book when you first hear that you're like what the fuck does that mean yeah yeah that does

um initially i mean i'm i'm inherently skeptical anyone starts talking to me about god i get really i'm like hmm what the fuck are you talking about? And then, but she goes into it. When she gets into it, I think this is actually a really interesting concept. I think the thing that you, us, and that obviously the other characters in the book hung up on is her referencing it as God. Because we are very focused on thinking of God as like the Christian God, right? Or the Abrahamic God, like the God that is an entity that exists, right? With will. And she explains it, I think, pretty well in one of the passages is where she's being it is God is the if you think of God as like the creator of the universe, God as the force that makes the universe happen. From her experience, the only thing that makes the universe happen, the only permanent in the universe is that things are changing and that everything that change, everything that happens

changes the universe in some way or another. And so that is God. God, the only permanent force in existence is change. Ironically, the one unchanging thing about the universe, the one thing that shapes the universe is change. And so therefore God must be change because what is it that's affecting your life? It's change. So therefore, ergo, change is God. God is change. But her important takeaway from this isn't that just God has changed, ergo, there's nothing you can do about it. That's, I think, the most important part. It's not, this is where it breaks away from sort of like, you know, her Baptist dad, right? Where, you know, you have God and God is God, and there's not really anything you can do about that. Yeah, but say, in the idea of God as an extant force,

you are appealing to, but not influencing. Yeah, which is an interesting sort of Christian theological debate. I'm sure also, you know, Islamic or Jewish, because I just don't know those traditions as well. Like, what is the point of prayer? Because like in some branches of Christianity, like you can pray to God and God will like change things for you, for you praying to God about it. And other ones are like, I mean, you can pray, but that's basically just to let God know that you still care. But like, there's nothing you can actually do because God has a plan and your prayers don't actually change it at all. That's an interesting sort of Christian like paradox, I think of like,

what's the point of praying if there's a divine plan, but leaving that aside, Lauren solves that by saying that, yeah, God is change and that affects everyone's lives. But as humans with intent and desire and autonomy, we can shape God by enacting change ourselves. That you can't stop change from happening, but you can direct it. You can try to set things up so that change will happen either in your favor or less harmfully than it otherwise would. This is a very, I mean, from my perspective, a very leftist conception. It's effectively rejecting the idea of normal. It's effectively rejecting the idea of normal. It's effectively rejecting the idea of the status quo, even being a thing that exists. Other than the status quo is everything is

changing constantly. Constant impermanence. It makes me think of some Buddhist stuff to the idea of constant impermanence. Nothing lasts forever. Everything is impermanent. Everything is changing. Everything, nothing will remain the same. And you can either embrace that or reject it. It also kind of takes the Buddhist tenet that like most of life is suffering. Yeah. Yeah.

I mean, this book, especially, especially in this world. Especially in the world of parable, most of life is suffering. Yeah. It's just, and trying to find a way to cope with that and then live a, still live a fulfilling life in spite of that, as opposed to rejecting it outright. Well, I think that's where, I mean, Lauren herself, when she's having a debate with Bankole, I think about this, he's pointing out like, oh, that sort of earth seed sounds Buddhist to me. This sort of earth seed sounds Christian to me. This sort of earth seed sounds like this other one. And she says, you're right. A lot of the tenets of earth seed are already expressed in similar ways in various religions, but that to her, none of them like put it all together properly. So she even admits in the book that this sounds

Buddhist or this sounds whatever. It's just that she doesn't think they do it right. Because obviously the Buddhist answer is to just simply like try to remove yourself from the suffering, right. To just like detach from it where earth seeds response is that no, you need to take an active role in making these changes. If not beneficial, the least harmful that they can be. Like you don't just go, if the crops fail, you don't just go, well, I guess they failed. Yeah. It's like what you need to do is already have set up redundant crops. You need to have stores. You need to like have diversified your foodstuffs. So that way, if the crops fail, you're prepared to weather that

storm. Yeah. You have to prepare for change. Constantly be it's constant vigilance in a way. Yeah. That like a dust storm could kill you if you're unprepared. But if you've already set up your life and your community in such a way that you're ready for it, a dust storm can be nothing more than like an annoyance. Like if you've already worked together to like secure your houses so the dust can't get in or to like protect your crops or stuff like that, then the change itself isn't necessarily harmful. Yeah. You had to make a few changes in order to prevent the bigger change from being a big problem. Yeah. I would say that Ursi would even argue that if you know a dust storm with high winds is coming, you can have contingencies to make that change work for you you can set up you could probably they'd probably like find a way to set up some sort of wind generated power source like to recharge batteries that they use with wind turbines that are powered by this sandstorm or you know things that need to

be cleaned you can set outside to get blasted clean by the dust like that's earth seed is that like this change is happening this sandstorm is coming what do you do about it have you prepared for it and can you set up a way to take advantage of this change and and that's to her what it dealing with god is god is that is is is the sandstorm coming and just are you going to make it so this sandstorm is beneficial or are you simply going to be killed by it are you are you going to do something about it are you going to make it so this sandstorm is beneficial or are you simply going to be killed by it are you are you going to do something about it you're going to sit and wait for something else to happen are you going to be pat uh active or passive and that's her big problem with her the community she

grows up in is that despite her dad doing his best it's still passive and that's why eventually they get killed yeah the whole thing just gets burned down because it because they refuse to change with the changing world which is in and of itself is we we've mentioned a lot of these things sound you vaguely leftist or anarchistic or whatever but like that in and of itself is an anti-conservative position because conservatism at its heart, one of its central tenets is that you shouldn't change, that things should not change, that you should keep them the way they are or the way they were. And like just her conception of the world is one in which that lifestyle is not one that can exist successfully. Yeah. I mean this is the opposite of the return mindset. Yeah.

It's like there's no such thing as return. There is only forward. Yeah. I mean, here's the thing. Even if you are changing in an attempt to get back to something else, you're just going to create something different. It's very much like you can always go home again so long as you understand that home is somewhere you've never been yeah i like thinking about well i don't like thinking about this but i i a good example is someone like mussolini trying to bring back the roman empire

you know it's like that being a goal it's like but you're that's not how that works it's like you can never do that again it's gone even if you conquered the same exact territory even if you dress the same exact way even if you acted the same way it would still be different than it used to be you can't return to anything there's no yeah there's no way to go back to anything because the conditions have changed like the things like you said they're going back to rome you can't go back to rome because the world in which rome existed in no longer exists so it is not a world you can return to because all of the other material conditions of the world are no longer the same. And there's the Marxism. Like you,

your life is shaped by your material conditions. They, it just is. People, people change their behaviors based on what material reality they're in. Like, that's just, that's just how it works.

She's arguing that you should, you have to change your, change your life based on the material reality you find yourself in. Or you die. Yeah. Or you die. Or you will be set on fire by the psychos from Borderlands. Yeah. Oh, man. Like, it's, again, even if it wasn't necessarily intended, it is a Marxist, like, interpretation of society. You can only go forward.

There is no such thing as going back because that world does not exist anymore. And never will again. Never will again. Like certain symptoms can come back. Certain things can come back, which is also very clear in this book with the return of slavery and company towns. But they're different than they were before. A lot. They're very similar, but they're still different than they were before.

Which I don't know if we want to get into that little bit now, because we want to talk about, I think some of the things that she was like prescient about is like the way the U.S. would react to this sort of ongoing economic. How we're already seeing the U.S. start to react. The environmental crisis, how we're already seeing the u.s start to react the environmental crisis how we're all seeing the us react to it is number one like a socially like just like a conservative reaction to it like as we've been talking about like the wanting to go back to the way things were which you already see in like the right wing of american politics the other thing that's returns are company towns which has come up in

modern political discourse i mean i just saw i just saw some fucking articles the other day about people like you know what you're jerking off about you know elon wanting to build a company town or some bullshit uh it's like in parable obviously all these like cities essentially have no way to function anymore because a lot of their neighborhoods have collapsed into lawlessness and crime. The few neighborhoods that do exist, nobody really makes any money anymore. So they can't really pay taxes.

And these local, these local municipalities don't have the capacity to govern anymore. And so one town, what it does is essentially sells itself to a private company from overseas, from like Canada or Germany or Japan or something. And this private company comes in and brings in like private security guards

and gives everyone jobs, but like at low wages and then pays them in company script and they can only shop at the company store. And suddenly you've just got the early, like the late 18, early 1900s again. Yeah.

And slavery with extra steps, slavery with extra steps. And Lauren and her dad accurately point out that this is what's happening because one family in their neighborhood applies for and moves to this new company town. And Lauren and her dad are like, we'd rather stay here and try to live free than sell ourselves into slavery, which again is a pretty acute message coming from, you know, an African-American author. Yeah. I mean, that's a, that's a pretty solid, um, way to be. It's the classic better die on my feet than live on my knees or whatever this is a miliano zapata yeah but it's that's her dad's stance is like why i'm

not i've we fought for this freedom that we have why would i just give it up for a sense of security which in america you're very familiar with that whole argument because it's been ongoing ever since 9-11. The idea of sacrificing liberty and autonomy for the sense of security. Of security. A sense of security, not even actual security. But the sense of – because even if you go into this company town, as they point out later, like when they're living in the neighborhood, they point out that like, it seems like a company town,

but maybe it's all right. Then on the road, they essentially meet people who are runaway slaves who are like on like farms that were basically slaves. Yeah. And they're like, actually, no,

it's not just company towns. We've just reverted all the way back to slavery again. And there's nothing we can do about it. They'll kill you and steal your children. Yeah. It's because that's what happens to one of them they like they they manage to escape but their kids are quite literally captured from them yeah that's partly causing them to run that's that was um i don't remember it's one of the ones they pick up later on yeah she like it's like her and her daughter have run away from basically a uh a slave plantation because her two sons were like taken from her and sold and so she and her daughter like run yeah that oh it's it's uh it's emory i don't even doubt that that's

something that would absolutely happen oh 100 like if corporations could set up like slavery again they 100 would do that yeah there's no there's no questioning it uh they absolutely would company towns absolutely would get set up again um these like slave plantations absolutely get set up again i think i saw a freaking fucking the ancaps arguing the company town you're free to leave like what no you're not that's the but you could leave yeah and be homeless yeah with no money because all your money is in a script that's useless it's useless to anybody else you can't buy a house anywhere else so i think she's so i think she's accurate about the fact that these like shitty things would come back in any crisis in america i think she's accurate that the president that gets elected is like this like removes child labor laws that's 100 arkansas literally just did

that yeah like this past week arkansas removed rules governing child labor This is a thing that's happening right now Just rolling back the clock And so like that's 100% a thing that she was accurate That America would do The other thing I think she's So accurate about is the way like a lot of Small towns react to all the

Travelers going through Where some towns are like will sell to you But if you're here they they become sundown towns. But for all travelers are like, if you're still here after dark, we will kill you. But like if you come through during the day, we'll sell to you. That's just like a post civil war thing that happened in America. Like you can Google sundown towns. And the idea is that like if you were black and were in this town after sunset, it was illegal for you to be there after sunset and you were likely to be jailed or killed if you were.

That's what a lot of these little towns along the highway in California that they travel through essentially become. Once again, bleak and not too far off from – it's someone on the cover of my copy and it's the most recent edition a new forward from nk jemisin ironic i wonder why yeah and then uh john green quote at the top this is uh brilliant endlessly rich pairs well with 1984 or the handmaid's tale i think the handmaid's tale more so than 1984 yeah i think i am one of those people thinks 1984 gets overused as a comparison oh it does uh just for dystopia um by the way but by the way i'm never covering that book for this that's okay that's that's fine that's overdone um if anyone who's listening is curious we did a bonus with czar power podcast on the book we which is essentially 1984 before 1984 um by a russian

author by a russian author and it's uh better and i will actually be releasing that one on our patreon i don't think i have yet but i will You can also listen to it on Czar Powers Patreon. But I'll put it in our Patreon as well. Yeah, it's We by Zamyatin. And yeah, it's 1984, but from a perspective of a Russian that was living through the early Soviet Union. But the comparison with, I think, Handmaid's Tale is a bit more accurate. Because that's more of like what christian dominionists would do yeah the the shtick i was suddenly remembering was uh margaret atwood did a master class and one part of the

trailer because i didn't actually do the master class um i'm not gonna pay for that uh she um said there's a reason that a lot of things in my books feel real. And she's like, and that's because they've happened before. And this book has a very similar feeling where all of the things that are happening in The Handmaid's Tale and Gilead are things that have historically been done to women. Yes. Period. They've been done to women as systems of control before and that's why it feels like it could happen again is because they're real things that actually happened this is a similar

thing where between the company towns the return of slavery the even to an extent like you like you were saying the sundown towns like all this stuff is stuff that she definitely researched and knew were things that actually existed research and lived through because we haven't talked about her that much but if to give a brief like bit of her early life uh her dad died when she was like seven. So she was raised by her mother and her maternal grandmother in a strict Baptist environment, which gives you an idea about that. But aside from her personal stuff, I want to point out that her mother worked. This is, by the way, she was born in 1947. And then early on, and so like in like the fifties, when she was a child and into the early

sixties, what she was doing when she hung out with her mother, her mother worked as a house cleaner for white people, like in the kind of white people who had a back door to their house, that the cleaners had to go in and out. So they wouldn't be seen going in and out the front door. This is the help type. Yes. It's very much. This is the help type. Yes, it's very much her mother was the help for these rich white people. That's what like her mother was doing when she was growing up.

This is of course deep during the Jim Crow era. Yes, this is deep Jim Crow era. And also if you look at her early career, she was influenced. She went to Pasadena City College at night after like work during the day she was introduced this would have been in the mid 60s the mid to late 60s she was going to this Bessie Community College uh I was classmates with a couple people who were like actively involved in the Black Panthers. Ooh, that I didn't know. And that is awesome.

It says right here, explaining her talking about some of her work, particularly her early story like Kindred and some other stuff. It says an African-American classmate involved in the Black Panther movement loudly criticized previous generations of African-Americans for being subservient to whites. As Butler explained in later interviews, the young man's remarks were a catalyst that led her to respond with a story providing historical context for the subservience, showing that it could be understood as a silent but courageous survival. So this idea that like, despite the fact that white people were dominating African-Americans and whereas the Black Panther movement was saying like we were like that people had in the past had been weak and should have resisted more violently.

Butler's take was more that they didn't really have a choice. And you'll see this now where Earthseed came from the best thing they could do the most like rebellious act that they could take often was simply to survive the most rebellious thing people could do during the slave era was to survive their enslavement yeah instead of laying down and taking it surviving. Yeah. Or, or as opposed to always like violently trying to kill the slave master. Cause she, I think her port was that that wasn't always a practical or even possible route to take. Cause I think her perspective would be something like,

sure. If some, like say it's killed their slave master, then what? Yeah. Then the police come and like then they get recaptured by other slavers and get punished for it now i'm not one to actually be an expert on this subject but from what i've read about her and what she said and her like

theory of earthseed that sometimes the best thing you can do is simply to adapt and survive and i think you see that sometimes in parable when they're on the road, you see occasionally you see terrible things happening and their response to it is to put their head down and keep walking. They don't stop and help every single person that they could potentially stop and help because stopping to help everyone can actually harm you. It's about being judicious with when you have the capacity to actually be helpful to somebody else,

which they do do. I mean, that's how they grow the group. Yeah, I think she's more resistant. Lauren is more resistant to it at first about adding anyone to the group and then over time realizes that she kind of has to and that's how they pick up

Travis and Natividad and their baby. That's how they pick up Bankole. That's how they pick up the Gilchrist sisters and Grayson and Emery. Right. That that's mirrored in Bankole too. Bankole starts out very like, we don't need anybody else. No one else is important. Yada, yada, yada.

And becomes more open to the idea of community over time. He also just wants to take Lauren and go to his land and then like have that be it. And she's like, no, all these people are with us. Either they all go or no one goes. Which again, he has the opening up of this sort of idea that like actually you do need to help some people. Like you can't help everyone but you should help the people that you have the capacity to help and who are willing to help you yeah the mutual aid principle in effect yeah it's very like

it's a powerful message she has very clear some books like their message as you read it like you get the message they're going for but you've got to kind of like extract it you know what i mean you gotta kind of pull the message out of the work butler very clearly knows what she's trying to explain to you and is very good at getting it across to you there's no like oh is this really what she meant yeah no there's no ambiguity here at all. Not really. She's being very direct.

I mean, even just the fact that this is billed as, I mean, the title just being Parable of the Sower. It's like this is essentially a parable. And if you look up the Bible verse, it makes sense. It's not too different from what she's saying. No, I mean, that's why she chose it, right? It's the idea that like you, you're spreading seeds. And if you spread your seed in bad places, they won't grow. But you have to spread it to the places where it will be useful and will be picked up.

And then, you know, it can flourish from there. And that's still also reflected in the choice to help certain people and put your heads down for others. You know, it's like if your help isn't going to do anything, if it's not going to help them or help you, you can't help. You just you shouldn't. You shouldn't because you expose yourself to harm. Yeah. It's like at that point you would be harming yourself and someone else and not helping them. Getting. Sorry, i'm side note less serious i'm getting flashbacks to knights of the old republic too you're crea in my ear well crea is a bit more like randian

but you know you see what i'm saying yeah she's more like she's more like hyper nihilistic about it she's more like hyper-nihilistic about it. She's not hopeful. No. Sorry, it was just a – But yeah, Kreia being like, why did you help that person? I mean sometimes though you're sitting there and you're like, Kreia, I gave someone like 50 credits. Can you shut up? Can you back the fuck off?

I've got 10,000 of these things. But like, I've got 10,000 of these things. But yeah, it like in your choice of companions, it's very clear that when they decide to like, attempt to bring someone on board, they basically have a direct conversation with them being like, you can travel with us if you accept the basic premise of the thing we are working towards. Oh yeah.

Like if you, if you do not, if you are not willing at least to entertain earth seed, then we don't have time or energy for you. We need to know that we can trust you and rely on you. And if not, it's wasting both of our times. Yeah. There's, there's an element of, you don't necessarily have to totally accept it, but you do have to not reject it. You have to not work against it. I mean, she has that conversation directly with Bankole, like at least twice. Because Bankole is the most resistant to it.

Yeah, weirdly, yeah, actually. Well, him and I think Harry is resistant to it. But Harry eventually just sort of accepts it because Harry is the last one to agree at the end to like stay at bon bancoli's land which i think is interesting that uh the men often tend to be the most resistant to earth seed i think that's probably intentional um i'd imagine so and that the men that are and the men that are the most the of the men the ones that are the most readily accepting to earthseed are men with children yeah the earth that's like explicit that the people with children are more accepting of earthseed and that the men with children particularly uh grayson he is like the first guy essentially to agree to stay even though he's also one of the least forthcoming characters in the entire party.

I think there's something to be said about the femininity of Earthseed. It's a very nurturing thing. It is just in its essence, it's never explicitly stated to be this way, but in its essence, it is anti-patriarchal. Yeah, just foundationally, it just is. literally rejects that it's possible to completely dominate and control change. Like you can manipulate it, you can influence it, but it's not like you're going to be getting into like, it's not like you're going to have total control over everything that happens. Yeah.

Like to try and be a patriarch is to attempt to stop change from happening essentially within like your group, like your family. And like a lot of the bad people from her old neighborhood were like these patriarchs. It was Moss. It was. Yeah, it was Mr. Moss who had his like little his like multiple wives. One of whom the one who's in the group, Zara, was 15. When he essentially bought her from her mother as a bride. Or even in the community, you've got even her dad, to some extent, a little bit.

Oh, yeah. The kind of stubbornness, the resistance to change. It's tied to masculinity. It is. The other people in the group who take the earth seed faster are zara you know the former child bride it's like nativity with her with her with her kid you know what i mean it's like it's lauren it's like they're the ones that sort of take to it first i'll say it's a very intentional choice that lauren is the one who's coming up with this that lauren is like it's that it's an intentional decision as contrasted to the the other religious

persuasions that are even mentioned that were all spearheaded by men and it doesn't surprise me i know historically butler in her at least as far as I understand things like Lilith's brood, is considered a feminist author. While it's not explicit in this book, it's more of an implicit thing. During her little sermons on Earthseed, she's never saying anything about femininity and patriarchy. But it's just inherent and it's implicit in the story regardless. implicit in the story regardless yeah again just want to point out again that like the two men who are the most the two characters who are the most resistant to agreeing to earthseed are harry a young man with no kids and bancola an old man with no kids whereas um grayson essentially agrees to it for the protection of his daughter yeah but was about to say as soon as it becomes about somebody else and travis travis at least is interested in it like like psychologically interested in it from pretty early on he's the one where you get a lot of their little like socratic dialogue between him asking lauren questions and lauren answering them is with travis because they have that whole scene like sitting at the picnic table on the beach they they do this. But it also needs to be pointed

out that he gets into it and eventually agrees to it because of his partner, Natividad, and their child. And then it's Harry and Mancole who are both sort of like, and I think that it can be reflected in sort of the like, they're still holding on to that

old idea of, you know, like the old American idea of the man who can go out and make things happen. The, the independent. I mean, that's also rejected right at the end of the novel because you find out that like Ben Coley's sister and their family who were killed, what was happening? They were sitting at home while the dad went out and tried to work. Well,

then they get there and then Harry goes out to try and like find work in the town after they get there and then harry goes out to try and like find work in the town after they get there and he can't find anything either the idea that you can go out just as a single man and like support your family and provide is just proven to just not work it just doesn't not anymore not anymore change is happening it has you know, you see, even when they're on the road, while they're changing and making things better, every community they go through suffers, essentially the ones that haven't changed. Like they'll go through a town that has like, you know, stores and guards and shit. And then they'll hear like the fighting happening the day like that night after they leave town back behind them. They'll hear the, you know, the battle between security guards and travelers and crazies happening behind them

because that city hadn't changed yet the town that gets like destroyed like hit by an earthquake and then ravaged by the travelers on the road is because it's like a small farm town that's right off the interstate that just didn't move didn't put up any defenses didn't put up any walls didn't have a plan to run away and it gets destroyed again, that's because they're hanging on to these old patriarchal roads. If you don't mind now, unless you have another point about that, I want to talk about the things I will say my couple little bones I want to pick with the story because I can't love anything unadulteratedly, of course. No, not allowed. Not allowed. I can't. My brain don't work that way. I have a couple of things that I don't't necessarily maybe i don't necessarily agree with and now the argument

obviously can be had about whether these are things that butler actually believed or if there are things that she simply instituted to make the story work because it is a parable and maybe the world needed to be constructed this way in order for the story to you know be more effective right either one of these things could be true but i still to, I just want to poke at him a little bit. Number one is her society in parable is her view of humanity is incredibly Hobbesian. If you look at the way travelers on the road behave, the way communities behave, her view of how humans will behave in an apocalypse scenario is one that would incredibly maps onto the Hobbesian, solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short. Continual fear, danger of violent death. That is the world that they inhabit in Parable. They're literally constantly on guard from assault or rape or murder or robbery. And I just don't agree with Butler that in an apocalypse scenario that the average person will so readily take to their, if I can call it that, animalistic instincts.

I think there's a degree of truth to it, like to an extent there will be violence. I feel like this is particularly exaggerated. Like she intentionally goes out of her way to make it more brutal than I think people would actually be, or at least that I would like to believe people would actually be. And just given the way that we understand disaster response in terms of like, oh, a hurricane, you know, floods an entire town, the people of that town aren't turning on each other. Now, goodness knows what will happen if resources get so scarce

that resources can't be flown in from anywhere else. But it still is very almost radically cruel to have people behaving the way they are in this novel on the whole. I always kind of took that sort of Mad Maxian, Fallout-style insanity to be satire almost. Hyperbolic. Hyperbolic.

It's exaggerated for the purpose of dramatic effect and for aesthetic effect in the case of something like Mad Max. So I think that might be part of the reason that she gets real weird with her drug stuff too um is she wants to find a explicit reason why her world would be more brutal than the real world if this happened yeah which was the next one i was going to get into she has this drug in this world called you a pyro or row or whatever you want to call it that people take and it essentially turns them into war boys or like the psychos from borderlands yeah they're like they just paint their faces and then like they set things on fire simply because while you're on the drug things being on fire watching something on fire is better than sex. And so this drug like spreads across America and it leads to an increase in

arson and it creates this little ecosystem where like these, these pyros will like break into a neighborhood, set everything on fire, like rape and kill. And then all the travelers and homeless people and other scavengers then use that destruction as a way to then go in and scavenge everything they can from the destroyed neighborhood. Yeah, I feel like despite the the drug thing being like no drug actually does this or could really do this. Yeah, I was just I was saying before you said that that feels to me very like war on drugs.

Like if you do this drug, you'll lose your mind and murder your neighbor. Again, there are drugs like that in like Fallout. But again, it's Fallout like they're doing it as as almost parody of. Yeah. Of drug panic style stuff. Yeah. Because they're socially conscious media so and i and i think for the most part butler is as well but the way this book is written um it is very serious so while the drugs

like that make sense for the psychos in fall in vegas i mean or for the fiends in fall in vegas um it doesn't make a whole lot of sense for a very prescient very real post-apocalyptic like apocalyptic novel see it's the one thing that feels like slightly outlandish of everything like her hyper empathy makes more sense to me than like a drug that makes you do art yeah because the hyper empathy doesn't even really do that much in terms of like it it helps her formulate her ideas yeah um but it's not like she uses this power consciously or actively or is able to like you know it's not like a superpower no it's really honestly more of a handicap than anything. Yeah.

But like I was just saying that I can – like that to me is less a stretch of the imagination, less breaks the immersion. But the idea that there's just like – again, like war boys out there who every night get hopped up on drugs and set things on fire just because the drug makes them like it. To me, it just sort of stands out from the rest of this entirely very realistic, very grounded. I would honestly believe it more if there was no drug involved. Yeah, if it was just like, I don't know, sometimes at night people break in

and set fires as a distraction to steal stuff and sometimes the fires get out of control because there's no water. That makes sense. But it would also make more sense to me if the Pyros were more of like a fanatic doomsday cult. That too. Like if it was like a religion almost,

like it's a fanatic end times cult where they're like, no, we need to accelerate the end times in order for revelation to occur. That would make more sense to me than like they get hopped up on drugs. Guys were taken psycho. Yeah. Again,

I just, you know, dudes just like screaming, guys just screaming, witness me as they like burn down a walled neighborhood. Yeah. Right. Like,

I don't know that it's not a huge criticism it just that was always the one that felt the weirdest to me in the book is it feels the bit that's the least realistic of everything else that's happened yeah i just you portray society as very you know brutal and that sort of thing which i didn't necessarily i don't personally i think sort of detracts from an otherwise really good like story that's going on. Do you have anything else before I get on my final hobby horse? No, I think we've kind of touched on everything. But here we go.

You know what my final hobby horse is going to be. You know what it's going to be. Okay. I want to caveat this before I start. I want to say this book was really good it's very sad it's very depressing it's also very very good I'm repeating my my fifth season thing here with

why are you listening to this if you haven't read it holy shit go read this book even if you know what's going to happen that doesn't make the book any worse and it also makes it almost makes it I mean it also makes it almost makes it, I mean, it also makes the story more impactful because you know what the fuck is going to happen as before it happens,

but very good book. However, I'm going to get on my personal grievance train here. Here we go. Why, why does our just now 18 year old protagonist have to get into a relationship with a 57 year old man? Why is this necessary? I get the one argument you could make is some weird psychological thing about replacing her father figure.

She's got daddy issues that are unresolved because he was the only thing holding her life together. And then he disappeared and she never even got closure of seeing his dead body. Okay. However, why does our 18 year old girl have to be in a sexual relationship with a 50 with a man old enough to be her father? Almost old enough to be her grandfather. Yeah. I'm about to say actually reasonably old enough to be her grandfather. Like, why is this a thing?

It's like every book we read. Why does this keep happening? That's honestly why book we read. Why does this keep happening? That's honestly why I'm getting more upset about it is because it happens all the time. Like, you could make Ban Kole 37 and he could still fulfill roughly the same role. I wonder if... And it would be less weird.

I wonder if she had this set up for something in Parable of the Talents or parable of the trickster. That I just haven't gotten to yet. That we either haven't gotten to yet or that she never got to herself. Why is Ben Cullen so obsessed with her marrying him? Why even get married? You live in an apocalypse. Yeah.

Marriage is unimportant at that point. What's the point of the paperwork? That's what fifth season does better they just get into a weird poly fuck puddle that is uh in terms of sexuality the fifth season is the one who has handled it the best like in in parable everyone is straight number one and number two they all immediately pair off and start fucking like zara and harry start fucking like three days after their neighborhood gets burned down hey listen sometimes that's i guess another take on sexuality that i don't personally understand like don't everyone if you follow me on twitter you know i'm I'm very sex positive. I'm very horny. Okay. We're aware,

but the whole, like when they say things like in the writing where she's like, Oh, you know, I yearned for bank hole a, because it's something I've just needed for so long. She's like, hasn't had sex in like, I don't know, three months. And she's like, I couldn't resist. don't know three months and she's like i couldn't resist i was so i needed it so badly and i'm like you haven't gone three months without fucking what like zara's husband literally got murdered like four days ago zara watched her baby be tossed live into a burning house. And within less than a week, she's like, I'm just going to start fucking this young stud unprotected. I,

I, that is just not a mindset that I can personally comprehend. I personally don't get it. Yeah. Maybe other people handle grief differently than I would, but I personally would not handle my grief by fucking the first person I could lay my hands on. Like if my log, if I had a fucking spouse and child and they were murdered in front of me, my first response wouldn't be, I need to fuck the first person I can find.

Yeah. Yeah. And I definitely wouldn't be like, ah, man, i haven't had an orgasm in three months i better fuck someone who could be my grandparent the whole like like and like laura's lauren's rationalization that like it doesn't matter we're on the road we're all adults now has a weird libertarian energy to it has a very weird age is just a number ben cole don't worry about it energy that i don't particularly like i mean i guess we can be thankful she was at least 18 and not like freaking uh neuromancer not neuromancer uh snow crash over here. Mm. Uh, where she's like a 15 year old 15 and having sex with Raven.

Yeah. Uh, yeah, it's not that bad, but her, she literally gets when she's like, basically he's like, we're both,

we're both adults here. What's it matter? We're on the road. Society's collapsing. We like fucking what's the big deal, which on the one hand, sure. On the other hand,

he's 50 fucking seven. Yeah. I'm not doing age gap discourse here i'm doing the grandparent gap discourse it's weird i'm sorry it's fucking weird the only book we've had that really handles sexuality properly is the fifth season i think and it has an awkward like two people that have to fuck a stretch of stuff and it still handles it better it still handles it better i just the other ones that handle it better are the ones that simply don't have sex at all in them oh yeah yeah oh that's the most controversial part of the dispossessed i'm talking about earthsea oh yeah earthsea has no we haven't talked about the dispossessed yeah and if we've covered so far okay stuff we've covered so far so far like the le guin books are covered so far don't have sex

in them when it when or if we ever do do the dispossessed that will be a that might as well be a whole episode it's just what the hell is going on in this weird. What are the relationships relationships in this world? But like, he's also in a polycule. Yes. I forgot. But like,

I don't know. Again, I'm sorry to all the listeners who think this might be a stupid hill for me to die on every episode but i just why can't we have more books that doesn't have a weird sex relation things going on like why do all these books have to be like so fucking weird with it be normal be normal i think the upsetting thing is that this, this might actually be kind of normal, which is really fucked. Yeah. Well,

because in any other scenario, we would view him as like sort of a predator. Number one, he's a lot older than her. Number two, he's richer than her. Number three, he owns land.

He is in like, he has a, there's a power dynamic gap going on in their relationship over the fact that she essentially needs him for the land that they need to live on for Earthseed. Well, she agrees to marry him only when he agrees to, like, let them all live on his land. That's a little fucking weird. Yeah. At least she was smart enough to bring other people with her.

But he is like weirdly possessive of her, even from the jump. He's like, you will come with me. It's fucking weird, folks. Yeah, it's weird. But that's enough of my personal pet peeve. I can guarantee you for the next couple episodes,

we will not have to deal with my episodes we will not have to deal with my we won't have to deal with my personal pet peeve for like three months I know what we're doing for the next like two and a half months and that's not on the cards baby nice wholesome well wholesome is the wrong word

wholesome but it doesn't have weird sex stuff no final thoughts for parable the sower it's very good i if you didn't get it like we at least from our political perspective actually kind of agree with a lot of the stuff that she has to say with the concepts of earth seat a lot of it makes a lot of sense it maps onto a lot of anarchist ideas for how to make a better world what do you do you? You're multicultural. You work in a community. You have to do mutual aid. The only thing you can do is to prepare your best to handle what's coming. It's very informative. You can take a lot of good messages

from it. Okay. Bye. Our episode has gone on long enough. Let's give a little, well, as we always do, we'll give a little preview for what's coming up. This was the end of our series on black authors and also serves as the beginning of our series on, uh, hope versus despair because earth seed is about hope. The people that are static that don't want to change are essentially giving into like despair that like, oh, well, we just have to sit here and wait. Yeah.

Earthseed is very hopeful outlook. Earthseed is about finding hope, creating hope in a place where there is mostly just despair. It's creating hope for yourself. is mostly just despair. It's creating hope for yourself. And so this serves as our turning point to go from our episodes about Black authors to go to our episodes about hope. Hope and despair, and hope primarily.

So coming up, I don't know what order we're going to do them in, but our next two episodes, and audience, we are going to give up on trying to hold things to calendar month. Cause clearly we're incapable of holding things to calendar month schedules. So we're just going to do themes.

Um, upcoming theme for hope. We're going to do two episodes in one order or another. I am going to deliver a collegiate lecture on hope versus despair in Lord of the Rings. I am sorry in advance. If you're not a fan of Tolkien. I am. And boy, am I going to just do essentially like a collegiate lecture, and I'm sorry in advance.

I will be the attentive collegiate audience with questions. Yes, with questions to interrupt me and make me further explain myself. The other episode we want to do for Hope vs. Despair is the final novel in the Earthsea trilogy, which is The Farthest Shore by Ursula K. Le Guin. That'll round out the original three of Earthsea anyway. We're not talking about Sahanu or anything else

yet. But the original three of Earthsea, and I think also has a lot of good messages about hope and despair in it. So we will do those two will be out next. After that, we will begin our series covering the entirety of Chronicles of Narnia, featuring a few special guests. We will be doing all the Chronicles of Narnia because it seems like fun. We are going to cover probably the first three books in one episode, I think.

Then we're going to have an episode on our few episodes covering the rest of the books. And don't worry, the last battle is going to get into this episode all by itself. Because boy, are we going to talk about revelations. Jinkies. But we're going to have some special guests for that sort of stuff thank you all

for listening um we do have a patreon which we will have an episode out shortly uh we are going to talk about get out to finish out our series on black authors black creators we're gonna watch get out or kethel's gonna watch it for the first time. I've seen it, but we're going to watch, get out and talk about that. Don't know what we're going to do for hope and despair month. We'll have some other, I'm sorry. We are a little inconsistent on that as well, but again,

like everything else, it's hard, but our patron is $3. You can join it. If you would like, we have a good, we have a few backlog episodes that are also pretty good. Write and review us on your apps because that's apparently good for podcasts

to do. Thanks for listening. Thanks for sticking with us. We hope you enjoyed these episodes. Uh, any final thoughts, Ketho? I think that's all.

All right. Thank you all for listening. We'll see you soon for a collegiate lecture. Goodbye. Bye. at lecture. Goodbye! Bye! Bro. Are you fucking real, man? Come on.