Parable of the Sower Philosophical Viewpoints Quotes

This passage from Lauren's verses opens Parable of the Sower—a placement that automatically shows us the high importance these words have for the novel. The book is fundamentally about Lauren and her religion/philosophy, and Lauren is, as Bankole later points out (21.35), a very unusual young woman. That is, she's a prodigy: an incredibly talented young person. This passage offers a definition of, or a perspective on, prodigy, as a way for us to understand Lauren and, by extension, the philosophical viewpoint of Earthseed.

Basically, this passage says prodigy consists of three elements: 1) persistence, 2) adaptability, and 3) positive obsession. To be a successful prodigy, a person needs to have some sort of obsession that's a positive, healthy thing, and the individual needs to stick with it—to be persistent at it—and adapt. The person needs to work with change. If the person doesn't adapt or doesn't recognize the importance of change, then he or she risks getting stuck in destructive fanaticism: devotion to old ideas that aren't suitable any longer, and that may be destructive if imposed. Lauren and Earthseed are going to be about persistent, adaptable, positive obsession as a way to solve problems.

Often, philosophies and religions get boiled down to a slogan that can fit on a bumper sticker or in a tweet. If that had to be done for Earthseed, the message that would survive would be God Is Change. This three-word phrase is the take-away many readers remember about the novel years later. We're introduced to it with this passage right at the start of the very first chapter, so it's clearly pretty important. It's a big flashing light saying, hey, readers, think about how change (growing, replacing, altering)—and also the refusal to change (stubbornness, denial)—affect both Lauren and you.

People in Lauren's Robledo community, for example, such as Joanne in Chapter 5, tend to think that their security situation won't change dramatically, and even if it were to, that they would have no power to affect the outcome. With this Earthseed verse, Lauren is insisting that, in contrast, people are empowered to change things, and they themselves will be altered by making changes. In fact, according to Lauren, this creativity based in change can be thought of as a controlling principle or God.

Incidentally, someone else who talked about the importance of change was the pre-Socratic Greek philosopher Heraclitus more than 2500 years ago. See any parallels?

According to Earthseed, we can change things and solve problems—but it turns out this isn't so easy. God is Power, Lauren writes. She says God's infinite, irresistible, inexorable, indifferent: a bunch of scary-sounding words that mean God is tough stuff. For example, Lauren talks about a hurricane that just wipes a bunch of people out (2.45) and says that this particular natural force might be an example of God. In that case, maybe someone had a bunch of change planned to solve problems, but a fluke hurricane simply canceled the program by killing the planner.

On the other hand, as Lauren points out, God is Pliable. Reality consists of stuff we can work with, even hurricanes (by using science to observe weather phenomena and make predictions, for example). God may be Trickster and Chaos—a challenging force to work with—but God is still Teacher and Clay. So, despite all the difficulties, God exists to be shaped.

Yeah, for some people, that might be a heretical thing to say: rather than God being above people in a hierarchy (see 2.43 and 18.50), God is something that people have some degree of power over and can alter or shape.