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Finished reading...
Dec. 31st, 2019 06:46 am... Octavia Butler's The Parable of the Talents, the sequel to The Parable of the Sower. And I think I have a better idea of what the quasi-religious-leader protagonist is getting at. Her religion is a (not necessarily unique) solution to a set of equations or imperatives or syllogisms or something:
Humanity should survive.
For humanity to survive, it needs dreams and a future bigger than "survive".
(Similarly, for any individual to survive, that individual needs dreams and a future bigger than "survive".)
Space colonization is a big enough, expensive enough dream that the protagonist won't live to see it happen, and that's a feature, not a bug. It's also romantic enough to stir the imagination.
Space colonization will never be profitable, so we can't rely on the profit motive to do it; we need something irrational like a religion.
I think this book touched me more than Kindred because of my own history with religion. I imagine the following dialogue (which does not appear in the book) between two of the characters:
"I had to think of the child's best interest."
"You've got a lot of damn gall deciding on your own that it's in her best interest not to know her mother."
"You've got a lot of damn gall deciding on your own that it's in her best interest not to know God."
Neither of these people is objectively wrong. Indeed, both of them are self-evidently right in their respective frames of reference, and in that frame of reference the other is deluded by superstition and blinded by power. One could say that the "mother" relationship is objectively demonstrable, while the existence of "God" isn't, but to somebody to whom the existence and properties of "God" are self-evident, that argument makes as much sense as "my hovercraft is full of eels".
Humanity should survive.
For humanity to survive, it needs dreams and a future bigger than "survive".
(Similarly, for any individual to survive, that individual needs dreams and a future bigger than "survive".)
Space colonization is a big enough, expensive enough dream that the protagonist won't live to see it happen, and that's a feature, not a bug. It's also romantic enough to stir the imagination.
Space colonization will never be profitable, so we can't rely on the profit motive to do it; we need something irrational like a religion.
I think this book touched me more than Kindred because of my own history with religion. I imagine the following dialogue (which does not appear in the book) between two of the characters:
"I had to think of the child's best interest."
"You've got a lot of damn gall deciding on your own that it's in her best interest not to know her mother."
"You've got a lot of damn gall deciding on your own that it's in her best interest not to know God."
Neither of these people is objectively wrong. Indeed, both of them are self-evidently right in their respective frames of reference, and in that frame of reference the other is deluded by superstition and blinded by power. One could say that the "mother" relationship is objectively demonstrable, while the existence of "God" isn't, but to somebody to whom the existence and properties of "God" are self-evident, that argument makes as much sense as "my hovercraft is full of eels".
