Timely Octavia Butler Poem

Octavia Butler, who died a few years ago, was a very successful African American science fiction writer from California, who wrote many popular books. About 6 or 7 years ago, I had the pleasure of meeting and chatting with her when she visited Hampton U to speak to the students, and prior to her arrival, I read her book "Parable of the Sower."

The book has stuck in my mind ever since, for it is one of the best, and I think most accurate, works of dystopic fiction I've come across. Set in 2025 or so, it depicts the young heroine, Lauren, growing up in a gated community in the LA area, as California, the nation, and the world steadily disintegrate into terminal chaos and violence, while maintaining the outward facade of our social infrastructure. Her community is trashed by a crazed gang of pyromaniac druggies, and she takes off with a few straggling survivors on a harrowing quest, on foot, along with a swarm of mutually hostile fellow refugees, up the increasingly empty highways (due to peak and decline of oil) toward Northern California, in a desperate quest for land on which to begin anew.

In the course of her quest, Lauren starts writing short verses which she collects as "Earthseed: the Book of the Living," in an attempt to create a new religion or sustaining ideology through the increasing chaos and corporate domination of the world around her, as she builds her community of refugees. Her "Earthseed" religion is a provocative combination of Gaian Buddhism and hard-headed Machiavellian realism. Its major premise, which is entirely compatible with the Dharma, is that "God is Change." And Butler develops the implications of this idea in some very imaginative and provocative ways.

These days, with the primordial catastrophe in the Gulf on one hand, and the poisoning of our public discourse by the scurrilous and paranoid corporate-funded hate-mongers of Fox News, Clear Channel Radio, and the Republikan party on the other, I am relating more and more to Butler's dark and scary vision of the immediate future. So here one interesting and unnerving poem from the "Earthseed" series that very much captures my current mood:

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.

(Chapter 10--p.91)

Rings true, doesn't it? A brief review of the recent century shows this pattern of social chaos, strife, and disintegration again and again. As China slid into chaos before, during, and after World War II, Mao emerged first as a "leader (whom) most followed" and then morphed into a fanatical "tyrant (whom) most feared." Many other nations, such as Vietnam, Yugoslavia, the Middle East, and many African nations, saw and continue to see today this same descent into civil strife, chaos, and resulting tyranny, while a few, such as India or South Africa, were fortunate enough to have an inspired "leader most follow" such as Gandhi or Mandela.

Kenya has recently seen both--a "tyrant most feared" in Daniel Arap Moi, and a "leader most will follow" in Wangari Maathai. And after the US invaded Iraq and Afghanistan, deposing "tyrants (whom) most feared," the result has been horrific social strife and factional violence "until they are exhausted or destroyed," so that, of course, they can then be "conquered by outside forces"--namely, the US military and its installed puppet regimes.

If in fact America is now headed in this same direction toward a maelstrom of civil strife and breakdown of social order, as I strongly fear is the case, what can we each do, individually, to avoid "giving in to depression/to need and greed" so that we can at least strive to become, within our own sphere of influence, a "leader most will follow" and thereby resist the rise of a "tyrant most will fear"? In times of social collapse and the descent into chaos, it is essential, above all, to focus first on inner development and mental training, as Thich Nhat Hanh and his followers did in Vietnam, so that they developed the resiliency to become "a lotus in a sea of fire," practicing and promoting peace even at the daily risk of their lives and taking care of everyone, abandoning no one. The other Gaian bodhisattvas--such as King, Gandhi, Mandela, the Dalai Lama, and Wangari Maathai, have likewise been able to achieve their sustained moral leadership in the midst of invasion, imprisonment, corruption, pervasive violence, and exile by likewise creating a strong foundation in spiritual practice, each within his or her own traditions. This is our task today as well--and for me, at least, the process always begins--whenever I feel myself overwhelmed with grief and despair at the encroaching vortex of global chaos, violence, and despair, by going back to my breath, my mantra:

Breathe, Observe, Let Go.

Be well, Do good work, Keep in touch.

Learn, Teach, Heal, Create.