First off, let me apologize for getting this up much later than I had originally planned. Parable of the Talents is a very engaging work of fiction, and I was really surprised with how many ideas that were stirred up in this single book. I wasn’t sure where Butler was going at first when she started delving more into Larkin’s upbringing all the way to her adulthood, but it tied in nicely with the ultimate end, the culmination Olamina’s ambition, the original seed of Earthseed finally sprouting and leading its people to be among the stars.
Earthseed’s motto of the potential to grow sounds like something straight out of a ridiculous animated series, but is the basis of what Olamina aspires to do, what many have dreamed of before – a utopia, the ideal “perfect” place to live. In fact, Earthseed reminds me of the fictional underwater world of Rapture, a creation of business mogul Andrew Ryan from the Bioshock series. the difference between the two is that Rapture failed and devolved into a dystopia, and Earthseed has just begun to fulfill “the Destiny”. Sadly, we’ll never get to learn what becomes of Earthseed.
Ben’s post posed the question of whether abandoning the Earth to find salvation in the stars was the appropriate thing to do. Regardless of its correctness, I believe that the cause of such insane ideas like Earthseed is the hope that there is a better future out there somewhere. It’s just never where we, as humans, presently are. With the creation of utopias in works of fiction, writers seem to unconsciously place these utopias in a different realm than on where we as humans inhabit, Butler no exception. Salvation like this couldn’t possibly exist. Or could it?
Why is it always the space? The stars? Underwater? Another dimension? Can this sort of thing never come into fruition right here on Earth?
Dystopias, on the other hand, seem an all too realistic possibility.
The origins of the word dystopia from the writings of J.S. Mill in the 1800’s define it as an “imaginary bad place”. However, the image that Butler paints in this work of speculative fiction is a frightening image that could very well be America in the not-so-distant future, and not-so-imaginary at all. Not to get all political-y and such, but I have heard that analysts believe capitalism is only a temporary system, and will not last forever – if our entire economy were to just suddenly collapse, the dystopian setting of Parable of the Talents could very well be ours. I speculate that this could be the potential “Pox” that is referenced a few times throughout the novel, but I haven’t read Parable of the Sower (which might explain what the Pox is) so I can’t be 100% sure.
So why is it that paradise seems like a ridiculous fantasy, but death & decay an inevitability? I blame human nature. We’ve seen it being tested, being pushed to its limits in Girls, exposing the ugliness of men and women alike. We’ve seen people act out of fear, when a Fascist regime ruled over Germany. Psychologically speaking, how far have humans really come? Making the same mistakes over and over, coming to the same conclusions, acting out decisions that have been made hundreds of times in the past doesn’t seem like the correct way to progress forward. As crazy as Olamina’s “cult” was, it does lay out a lot of simple truths that we miss & forget in our day-to-day lives.
“These days, projecting blame is almost an art form.” – Lauren Oya Olamina, Saturday, June 10th, 2035.
Humans blame. Vent their frustration, confusion, sadness & anger in a state of helplessness. Through fear, control of society & its people changes from generation to generation. A new leader is born, the old one dies, or fades into obscurity. Some leaders create destruction. Others bring hope. And one way or the other, after a period of solace or of discord, society slowly begins to re-build itself, to adapt to change. The cycle continues.
So I leave this to everyone to ponder and discuss – is the idea of a utopia an impossible fleeting dream? As we, as humans, stuck in a seemingly perpetual loop of destruction and recreation? Are reoccurring dystopian scenarios all we have to look forward to?
“We keep falling into the same ditches…and when we look at all of that in history, we just shrug our shoulders and say, well, that’s the way things are. That’s the way things always have been.” – Lauren Oya Olamina, Tuesday, June 19th, 2035.
As a pure aside, I wanted to start out that, if my boyfriend heard you say TTGL was ridiculous, he’d be after you with every sharp thing he owned. Kamina is his idol and, after watching the second movie (hard to find, just came out), one of our male friends said that it was “so manly it gave him his period.” Just saying.
Moving on to PotT, the reason why everything always seems to be somewhere else reminds me of The Little Mermaid’s paraphrasing of an old adage: the seaweed is always greener in somebody else’s lake. It’s all about having what you don’t have. When you’re in a relationship, you want the freedom of your single friends. When you’re single, you want the security of a relationship. When you are hot, you want to be cool. When you’re cold, you want to be warm. It’s all just a continual series of opposites, or at least near-opposites.
It is, indeed, terrifying to realize that this future has the potential to exist, to come forth. Reading Nia’s exhortations on what became of the education system, I fear for future generations, wondering if that will actually come to pass, if the rich will eventually decide that poor people shouldn’t be educated. I agree with Lauren. Leaving a child illiterate is nigh criminal.
I also agree that human nature is the seed (no pun intended) of a lot of the problems depicted in this potential future. Lauren is constantly referring to how people will instinctively be distrustful or cold, instinctively fearful or distant.
As a side note, I like how you quoted the book by date. Although I have the tendency to quote from page numbers because it has been ingrained in to my brain, it feels like the right way to do it, given the formatting of PotT.
History repeats itself. People are always saying that the only way to stop that cycle is to learn about it, prevent it. Mostly, that’s the history majors talking. But, I don’t really know about that. I don’t really think there’s a way out of the perpetual cycle. I think that we’re mostly stuck this way. If someone has a realistic idea for how to break free, I’m all ears. Or, rather, eyes.
I think the reason why people have stopping writing utopian scenarios is because they watch the world around them and lose hope that they’ll ever occur. Some people say utopian writings are a way to escape from reality and enjoy yourself for the moment. But that means you eventually need to come back to the real world. Experience the pain of noticing that the perfection you just witnessed isn’t real and the reality is far worse. By writing dystopias, the opposite occurs. As horrified as you are, you come out thinking how much better things are. Unless, as the case is in PotT, it shows a future instead of a present. By showing a future, we are made to ponder, as you have just done and as we all have by now, whether or not these things will come to pass. At this point, I’d much rather just shut off the thinking parts of my brain. It’s too much to consider that things like this could come to pass.
!~Side Note~!
Haha, well for the record I didn’t mean ridiculous in a necessarily bad way – TTGL is just ridiculous in the sense of a work of fiction having harmless, stereotypical shounen fun, and was enjoyable in that sense if not in any other sense.
!~Side Note~!
I do not think that it is possible for any large over-reaching utopia to come about. It might work for a limited amount of time on the small scale but that is it. People will always ruin whatever good thing they have going for them or is going for somebody else. As shitty as that sounds, those are just the facts.
I think utopias are more frightening than everybody gives them credit for. i would always be worried that it was actually a dystopia in disguise because I don’t believe that there is a way for everyone to be happy. Fear, misinformation or some other system of control are the most common “utopian” motivators and rarely are they founded on good intentions.
Isn’t life supposed to have some difficulty anyways. What does happiness mean if you have never felt any hardships. Happiness is something that should be earned. Even if the first generation of a utopian society had to fight for their lifestyle, the second or third would lose what that struggle meant and begin to take for granted the all the good things they have. The three unalienable rights which the USA was founded upon are Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness. Not happiness but the pursuit of it.
Although it would be great, I really don’t think that we will be able to achieve a large-scale utopia. When it comes down to it, people will do what’s best for them. So, to imagine a world where everyone gets along in an ideal community without any evil is very very difficult. The truth is that there will always be people who don’t agree with something and this will cause people to argue and fight and demolish this idea of a utopia. People aren’t supposed to get along. So in my opinion, a fantasy land where everyone is happy and in agreement is almost scary. Maybe its because of all of the evil and terrible things I have seen this country endure but as strange as it sounds, I just cant imagine it being any other way.
However, I also cannot imagine what a dystopia would be like. A world where every value is discarded and there is no freedom is definitely scarier than a peaceful nation. Butler’s novel made me realize several things that I had not previously even thought of. The dystopia that she described in her novel reminded me of what the world was like several centuries ago. So, I couldn’t even picture our world reversing and going back to those unfair times in the future. However, I’m sure that most of the people of Acorn didn’t either. These people lost everything; they’re families, friends, shelter and freedom. Like Olamina stated in the novel, meeting someone who had not experienced some sort of severe hardship was almost impossible.
Right now, I think that we have a good middle point to a dystopia and a utopia and most people are content with that. Of course there is still evil and destruction among us but this is almost inevitable. People will always have disagreements in regards to certain topics and for this reason, I think that a utopia somethings more of a fantasy rather than a reality.
Utopias imply that all participants are happy, and thus equal. I feel that we, as humans have a problem with being equal. At least in our current society we strive to out do each other. In a utopia, everyone has to remain at the same level; if any person sees another (a ruler for example) that is above them, they will feel cheated out of their utopia. Of course it is possible to have utopia at the expense of others however, I’m sure many naive rulers have lived in complete bliss and power, ignorant to the means used by their ancestors to attain their wealth.
Another reason that utopia never works is because of the capacity of the human imagination. Utopia itself is a product of our dreams of perfection and grandeur. As long as we can still imagine we will always be trying new things and ideas; humans refuse to accept the mantra “if it aint broke, dont fix it,” because we always seek change and uniqueness..
I believe that science fiction writers have always written of utopias in faraway lands, planets, galaxies, and oceans because in order to have a utopia a group of people must have a fresh start, and a fresh start implies that they move away from the old civilization and start anew somewhere else. When i think of real life Utopia’s i think of Plymouth Plantation or Roanoke Island, places where people came to escape a civilization and try their hand at utopia once more; all of these places inevitably failed.
Our concept of Utopia stems from Sir Thomas More’s novel about a fictional community with the ideal social and political set-up. The idea of a perfect society is understandably appealing, but could it work in our world? I think a Utopian society would be impossible to support, at least in our current state. A utopia requires that all citizens have the same goals and ideals, which we are far from holding. Our current political parties are far from agreeing with each other, and as I mentioned last week, religious divide and mistrust will also make a utopia hard to achieve.
Beyond questioning the ability for a utopia to exist, we should question whether a utopia is something we should desire. As Ben mentioned in the previous post, trying to support perfection can be a dangerous task. Immediate questions that come to mind are: who decides what is ideal and how is a Utopian society maintained? Will everyone be forced to follow what someone decides is the ideal? Olamina saw the danger in the ideal society that Senator Jarret tried to create after he won the presidency. He wanted to have a religious revival, and bring back the good ole’ days. In the midst of his campaign, dissenters were captured and tortured into converting to his belief system. Their experience was traumatizing and far from what is ideal, as their pain far outweighed their pleasure making the outcome not the best for the welfare of the society. What is best for the greater good?
The idea of the “greater good” reminded me of the movie Hot Fuzz, where a small English town resorts to violence in order to keep their citizens in step. On the outside, the community looks like a model town, but the residents are secretly being killed or forced to remain against their will.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rO9xhRrsy9A
In terms of utopias, I would be hard pressed to believe that someone could convince me that somewhere in the distant future the earth would be a utopia. Like others have said, there’s really no plausible way that everyone could be convinced that everyone is equal, happy, etc. If anything, our current society state could probably be classified as some kind of dystopia. There is currently large scale inequality and unhappiness and I don’t see the whole world turning into one big happy family.
If utopias are going to be considered to be a plausible option, I would say that they are possible if and only if the society is on the small scale. I can picture a “utopia” if there were a limited number of people living in the same area with the same ideals. Other than that, a utopia throughout the world seems pretty farfetched.
i feel as though a Utopian society could never come to power or prevail in the future. Human nature thrives on competition, to overcome each other an boost out own self esteems. We are incredibly self centered beings, I truthfully don’t believe that we could really abandon our need to be motivated by self and work towards the betterment of the group.
There is also the issue of our incredible ability to neglect the past. For instance, Jarrett was reminiscent of Hitler, and yet no one really seemed to make this direct connection, to identify that history was in fact repeating itself. The propganda of the masks and other literature available, including the news discs were directly manipulated by the reigning power of time, another echo of Nazi Germany.
This subject becomes even more complicated when education becomes a privilege rather than a right. When we abandon the education of our citizens, we abandon our future, and the ability to question power and action. Education is essential. Without it, a Utopian society would be difficult to create and propagate into the future.
I feel as though we might indeed be left in the flux of cycles generation to generation, building and changing what was to what could be and yet at the same time using nostalgia and reminiscing as means to manipulate even our own perceptions of what have been. This cycle catches us between destruction and creation of society what was and what shall be. Change is inevitable rendering the stagnation of a Utopian society impossible.
I feel whenever there is an attempt to create a Utopian society it usually fails miserably. I believe that is why all of these types of societies usually display non-humans in a new environment. It just is not possible because of human nature. Especially in a system of capitalism that there is in the US at this time. The only way for one to ever come about, every person would have to be brain washed and raised teaching this methodology. But then again, who would want to live in a perfect world with no problems at all. Problems are what makes life interesting. Without any conflict in daily life, it would just be plain boring.
As for attempts to create a Utopian society here is one I saw in a video entitled “Zeitgeist”.
http://www2.thevenusproject.com/
*The views expressed here are those of the The Venus Project and not necessarily those of myself
The idea of a large-scale utopia in regards to who we, as a species, are now is something I consider impossible; world peace falls along those same lines. I’m going to go right on believing that until someone invents a microchip to make us all mindless drones, and installs it in every single one of us. Smaller scale utopias, maybe, but no settlement larger than the distance a relatively fit person could walk in the space of a day.
I also don’t believe in the… usual ideas of ‘utopia,’ which I’ve come to understand as a place where everything turns out well, where everyone is happy just about every single second of every single day. As pointed out, it’s hard to know what happiness is without being unhappy, and everyone has such different ideas of both. The usual idea of ‘perfect,’ a key concept in the notion of ‘utopia,’ is another that I continue to question. The lack of even a single flaw is a flaw to me, a paradox I’m still struggling to properly explain. Another key point of a ‘utopia’ has also always seemed to be universality, which is just another something I don’t believe in.
The main issue with our inability to create and maintain a utopian society doesn’t seem to be so much the difference between ‘have’ and ‘have no,’ but more the relationship between ‘have (not)’ and ‘want.’ Tied into this are the concepts of ‘better’ and ‘best.’ I’d really like to see what would happen if we let go of these concepts, or at least stopped making such a big fuss about them.
Ah, the age old question: Are we as humans doomed to infinitely repeat ourselves in cycles of perpetual violence and destruction? I’d like to say no. The part of me that believes in hope and change and a better future says no. But, the hard facts of history tell us otherwise. The very beginnings of human civilization are wrought with wanton destruction. Tribes, clans, city-states, nations, and empires all fought each other over and over again for power and control. Each time, one power would fall and be replaced by another that promised a better future and a more peaceful time. Sometimes we do see moments of peace and prosperity in history that could be seen as a utopia. But these moments are always temporary, fleeting glances at the life we desire, but will never permanently achieve. It is is not that human nature in itself causes this. It is whatever humans believe to be human nature that causes it. So many people claim that race is a biological aspect of life, and that it is a part of human nature for their to be lower and upper races. Race theorists of the antebellum period argued that the black man was the lowest of the low, the bottom of the ladder in the hierarchy of races. By viewing race as a part of human nature, it allowed for the cycle of violence and destruction seen in American slavery to continue for hundreds of years. The same goes for the war with Islamic extremists who see their religion as God ordained and fight those who seek a moderate peace because they see those peace-makers as going against human nature. Human nature is not to blame for the cycle of violence. As an intelligent, civilized species human nature does not truly exist. Only paradigms, bias, and prejudice that we believe to be part of human nature exist. And until the human race is able to look outside of themselves and see that the perpetual cycle of destruction is something they create, not something that inherently exists inside them, then any sort of utopia cannot exist for more than a fleeting moment. Nonetheless, there is hope in this. You cannot change the nature of something, but you can change how the human race thinks. The final creature of Pandora’s box is still safe inside.
I too do not believe that a large-scale utopia can exist. It is the very compulsion that causes people to seek a utopia, that of always wanting more, that ultimately leads to its destruction. That being said, what would happen if a group of people truly wanted the same things?
If a group of people who share the same values were to live together and not betray their own ideals, a society could be formed that may fulfill all of its citizens needs and, thus, allow them all to be happy. Such a place could be regarded as a Utopia. Of course problems would arise as time passed, from people being born into the society who grow to hold different values to other societies invading either by physical relocation or pervasion of ideas.
The latter is often amended by the group seeking to start over in another area that is uninhabited. This fresh start in a remote location, whether it be in space, underwater, or otherwise, allows for the group to not only establish its new way of life, but also creates a physical barrier from those who may disrupt this lifestyle.
As for lack of problems being a necessity for a Utopian society, and its resulting lack of excitement, perhaps it is a more forgiving and accepting person that is necessary instead. Problems will occur regardless of where people by virtue of the fact that people are there. Despite this, people manage to maintain close relationships with those they care most about. If groups of like-minded people were to band together, a small-scale utopia could exist. Granted, I strongly doubt that most people would ever be accepting enough for this scenario to work, but I hope there are enough to form such a society before America reaches a dystopian phase.
I agree with what everyone has been saying. I don’t think Utopias could ever work on a large scale. Based on human nature, we are all too different, with too many conflicting opinions to be able to live in complete peace. And like what was said, that would just be plain boring if we were able to do that. Who wants everyone to have the same feelings on topics as they do? We might want everyone to agree with us, but at the same time, we enjoy the time spent trying to convince others that our opinions are right. There is a chance a utopia could work on a very small scale. But that wouldn’t really do anything in terms of the big picture of the world. One small utopia doesn’t fix a world full of conflict and violence.