In the time that we have left, pt. 3

Octavia Butler is on the list

Sometimes, it takes an extraordinarily long preamble to get myself writing. That's why I bolded Octavia Butler's name above. To remind me, no matter how long it takes me to actually get to the point, when I do get there, I want to be focussing, however briefly, on Octavia Butler.

I've decided that I want to try and write everyday. And, as much as possible, I want to be writing the story of the Devolution Movement, real and/or imagined. But I'm going to have to be flexible about that everyday thing. I've never been a person who could pull that off. Nevertheless, in the broadest possible meaning of the term, I am a writer. I am a writer and I want to be a writer who writes. So, I've got to create a structure that helps me do that and I have to forgive myself when I don't.

But to facilitate both writing and forgiveness, I'm going to add interludes to the structure into which I'm trying to fit myself. That means that I am going to allow myself some days on which I write, but never, ever get to the point. I will call those writing fragments Interlude, as in "Interlude 1, " "Interlude 2," ad nauseam. Hopefully, there won't be too many such posts and quite a few more entries headed, "In the time that we have left..."

Anyway, Octavia Butler...

She saw so much coming in our shared future. She saw dystopia and she saw struggle. She called out white supremacy and she encouraged us to see that we are all hurtling into the same future and warned us not to deceive ourselves about the forces that would mobilize to maintain privilege and inequality.

Butler's book, The Parable of the Sower, was published in 1993. The book centers on the story of Lauren Olamina, a teenager who foresees a troubling future for herself and her tribe, and who conceives of a resilient and sacred community that seeks to bend the moral arc of the universe.

In an afterword to the book, Butler outlined the social, political, cultural and environmental conditions that shape the world we live in:

"...look where we are now, and...consider where some of our current behaviors and unattended problems might take us. I considered drugs and the effects of drugs on the children of drug addicts. I looked at the growing rich/poor gap, at throwaway labor, at our willingness to build and fill prisons, our reluctance to build and repair schools, and at our assault on the environment. In particular, I looked at global warming and the ways in which it is likely to change things for us...I considered spreading hunger as a reason for increased vulnerability to disease.  And there would be less money for inoculation or treatment. Also, thanks to rising temperatures, tropical diseases like malaria and dengue would move north. I considered the loss of coastline as the level of the sea rises. I imagined the United States becoming, slowly, through the combined effects of lack of foresight and short-term unenlightened self-interest, a third world country."

So, there we are. Olivia Butler's account of what she was thinking about when she wrote Parable of the Sower. That was 30 years ago. Butler was thinking about challenges that we are facing now years before they became even remotely visible to most of the rest of us. And though she wasn't quite saying that the change we need to undergo, if we are to survive the wrenching social and environmental dislocations ahead, must be a species-level change, she very nearly said something like that.

So, is Octavia Butler one of the prophets of the Devolution Movement?

Hell, yes.