Parallels in: Octavia Butler's "Parable of the Sower," Eugene Thacker's "In the Dust of this Planet," and Pre-Christian Anglo-Saxon England

Radiolab - In The Dust Of This Planet - [Horror, fashion, and the end of the world …]

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  1. Eugene Thacker's In the Dust of this Planet is a philosophical book about the end of the world, or the world-without-us. The world-without-us can be difficult to contemplate, but we can look at it in two ways, it is either a world in which humans have never existed, or a world in which humans have become extinct. It is the latter option that is more relevant as there is a very real possibility that humanity will one day become extinct, whether it be from a natural disaster, or we somehow cause our own destruction: extinction is possible in the future of the human race. Religion is one way in which cultures have adapted in order to implement a coping mechanism at the thought of death and distinction, they provide the comforting possibility of a life after death. Thacker essentially discusses the complications of imaging a world in which humans no longer exist. His theories on humanity and religion have many parallels with Octavia Butler's Parable of the Sower and medieval practices. Thacker explores religion in a variety of ways through history, from the influence of medieval Paganism, to the role religion plays in today's society.

    Thacker discusses Paganism as a pre-Christian religion which overlaps and interferes with Christianity during the conversion:

    To begin with, paganism denotes less a negative or reactive mode, than an entirely different, and ultimately pre-Christian outlook. Historically, the different forms of paganism overlap with the rise of Christianity as a dominant religious, juridical, and political force. Paganism, as a polytheistic - and sometimes pantheistic - viewpoint, stood in stark contrast to the doctrinal sovereignty of the Church (Thacker, 15).

    This outlook on Paganism can also be applied to Butler's Earthseed. Thacker mentions the clash between Paganism and Christianity. Although historical the clash of these two British religions can still be seen today, in all existing Anglo-Saxon Churches in England one will be able to find an ancient yew tree within the grounds, usually somewhere in the graveyard. This is because yew trees symbolised sacred Pagan sites of worship. In order to obliterate Paganism whilst integrating into early Anglo-Saxon culture, Churches were built on sacred Pagan sites as a way of appropriating them and encouraging Pagans to convert because they could still worship at the same place, it was still sacred, its adaptation just represented a new religion. Earthseed is also presented as a stark contrast to the Church. Earthseed aims to be a unified community which does not adhere to the patriarchal control of the Church. Christianity had its place inside the walled communities, but the lawless chaos outside the walls requires something more akin to Paganism. It demands a religion which is adaptable and forces its followers to mold it to their needs in order to aid survival. However, one of the reasons Earthseed has to be adaptable is because it, like Paganism, is marginalised:

    While these different forms of paganism sometimes overlap with the traditional Judeo-Christian outlook, more often than not they are marginalized, and in some cases, driven underground into secret societies ... Whereas heresy was viewed by the Church primarily as an internal threat, with paganism one finds, in some cases, and entirely different framework - an external threat (Thacker, 15). 

    Earthseed is only directly marginalised by the Church when Lauren remains inside her walled compound. She represents both an internal and external threat with her new religion. She is an internal threat within her Christian family because her father is a Baptist preacher, in creating Earthseed she challenges both his parental and religious authority. She also represents an external threat as a new religion which competes and conflicts with Christianity. Once outside the walled community, Earthseed is no longer directly threatened by Christianity, but by the big military corporations instead. Earthseed harbours the corporations' runaway slaves and potentially presents an alternative place to find safety. The corporations thrive in the violent, lawless world of Parable of the Sower because they provide people with the safety they long for in return for hard labour. The founding of a safe environment within the Earthseed community (once established) threatens the dominance of the corporations meaning Earthseed is seen as an external threat. Like Paganism, Earthseed has to defend itself from the outside threat of Christianity/ the corporations. 

    The previous chapter discussed the link between nature in both Paganism and Earthseed. Thacker takes this a step further and discusses it in relation to the perceived threat to Christianity; because Pagans were thought to work magic, the Church often associates them with Satanism, but Thacker distinguished between the two: 

    The iconography [between Paganism and Satanism] is also different. Instead of demonic invocations and the Black Mass, there may be images of animistic nature, elemental and earth powers, astral lights and astral bodies, the metamorphoses of human and animal, human and plant, and human and nature itself. in paganism one is always "on the side of" nature and its animistic forces. The magician is less one who uses nature as a tool, and more like a conduit for natural forces (Thacker 15-16).

    Earthseed is "on the side of" nature in the same way as Thacker's interpretation of Paganism. Nature could be seen as the driving force of Earthseed, the "change" that is God. Equally, the followers of Earthseed aim to channel the forces of nature for a similar purpose as the Pagan magician: as a means of survival. On the other hand, the compatibility of the Earthseed community with nature is one of the reasons it presents such a threat to the big corporations. The existence of Earthseed proves that harmony with nature can be successfully achieved and the destructive, controlling force of the corporation is no longer the only option for survival. 

    Another philosophical idea explored by Thacker is that of Cosmic Pessimism, the idea of a world in which the human race no longer exists, or as Thacker names it: the world-without-us. The theory of the world-without-us can also be easily applied to the world of Parable of the Sower:

    The view of Cosmic Pessimism is a strange mysticism of the world-without-us, a hermeticism of the abyss, a noumenal occultism. It is the difficult thought of the world as absolutely unhuman, and indifferent to the hopes, desires, and struggles of human individuals and groups. Its limit-thought idea is the idea of absolute nothingness, unconsciously represented in the many popular media images of nuclear war, natural disasters, global pandemics, and the cataclysmic effects of climate change (Thacker, 17).

    This description perfectly describes the physical world of Parable of the Sower, but also the struggles faced by the Earthseed group. The post-apocalyptic world is quite literally full of natural disasters, global pandemics and is dictated by climate change. Due to climate change, water has become an expensive commodity over which people and companies fight for control. Moreover, Earthseed's central ideology - to aim for the stars - is centered on the fear of the world-without-us, human extinction has become a very real possibility and the aim of Earthseed is to populate space in order to survive. Additionally, Earthseed accepts nature's indifference towards humanity and uses this knowledge to benefit its followers:

    There is no end
    To what the living world
    Will demand of you (Butler, 137).

    Phrases such as this are scattered throughout Butler's Earthseed, with them she aims so show that Lauren Olamina knows there is no benevolent God protecting her, but that she must use her religion to protect herself and her followers.

    The theme of the grandiosity of nature and the almighty power of God links with theories of the Sublime. In his book, The Sublime, Philip Shaw discusses "a God too high for human comprehension" (Shaw, 19). This correlates with the image of God as an abstract idea: change. The God of Earthseed is almost incomprehensible, merely being presented as an inevitability of life rather than an omnipotent being:

    God is neither good
    nor evil,
    neither loving
    nor hating.
    God is Power.
    God is Change.
    We must find the rest of what we need
    within ourselves (Butler, 245).

    For Lauren, God is an ideology. She believes change is the most powerful, destructive element to the world. If we could capture a picture of Lauren's god: the unpredictability of nature, change itself, one might envisage one of Tuner's famous shipwrecks - see figure 2. If God were a physical being he would be subject to change meaning he would not be omnipotent, therefore God as the most powerful, must be change itself:

    Objects of this world are, according to Plato, subject to time and change; the nature of such objects is therefore relational or comparative: a physical object may be pleasing or terrifying depending on the manner in which it is considered, the way in which it is represented. By contrast, an ideal object such as truth is timeless; its nature is fixed and is independent of discourse (Shaw, 20). 

    If we substitute truth for change, it is possible to understand - from a philosophical point of view - why Lauren sees God as change itself. Lauren experiences the world as Thacker describes it: "absolutely unhuman," the only constant in Lauren's world is change. For Lauren, God cannot be a physical object, otherwise he is subject to time and change, meaning he is not a stable constant. The only way for Lauren and other Earthseed followers to be able to survive in the violence and unpredictability of a post-apocalyptic world is to accept that change is continuous and they must adapt to survive.