The Brilliant, Inspiring Vision of Octavia Butler

Learning From A Prophet

Two books have returned to my nightstand, The Parable of the Sower and the Parable of the Talents by Octavia Butler. Butler was a literary prophet—one of those rare minds who could see through the illusions of stability, democracy, and progress, down to the root systems of power and survival.

Long before today’s unraveling—before the rise of Christian Nationalism, before climate disaster became undeniable, before billionaires openly plotted to privatize governance—Butler was mapping our trajectory in Parable of the Sower and Parable of the Talents. She saw that the modern political paradigm, with its faith in institutions designed to preserve order rather than justice, would not hold under the pressures of climate catastrophe, economic inequality, and creeping authoritarianism. She warned us that when social contracts break, new ideologies emerge—not just fascism, but the possibility of something radically different, something that could offer humanity a way forward.

Butler’s vision wasn’t just about collapse. It was about adaptation. In a world that punishes those who believe in inevitability, Butler offered Earthseed—a philosophy rooted in change, in the understanding that survival requires movement, resilience, and the ability to shape the future rather than be shaped by it. She knew that the old world would not save us, that power would never concede without being forced, and that democracy, if it was to survive, could not be a static institution but an evolving practice, grounded in communities that truly understood their own interdependence. In her work, she didn’t just predict our present; she laid out the tools for building a new future. The question now is whether we will have the courage to use them.

In Parable of the Sower, Butler introduces us to a near-future America ravaged by climate change, economic collapse, and social upheaval. The protagonist, Lauren Olamina, is a teenage girl with hyper-empathy—a condition that causes her to physically feel the pain of others. As her walled community is destroyed, she is forced to journey north, surviving in a violent, fractured society while developing Earthseed, a new spiritual philosophy based on the idea that "God is Change." This philosophy envisions a future where humanity’s destiny is to take root among the stars.

Parable of the Talents picks up where Parable of the Sower leaves off, showing the further rise of authoritarianism, the suppression of Earthseed, and the violent forces that attempt to crush Lauren’s vision of a better future.

The Parable of the Sower: A Parable for the Age of Crisis

1. Authoritarianism and the Erosion of Democracy
   Christian Nationalists and right-wing authoritarians are moving fast to consolidate power, stripping away voting rights, gutting government accountability, and reshaping institutions in their image. Meanwhile, too many of those who could resist are burying their "talents"—their time, resources, and influence—out of fear or complacency. They’re waiting for someone else to act, hoping the storm will pass if they keep their heads down. But authoritarianism, like the master in the parable, will return, and those who failed to act will be left with nothing.

2. Climate Change: The Consequence of Delay
   The climate crisis is unfolding in real time. We already see the floods, the wildfires, the food shortages, and the mass displacements. Scientists and frontline communities have been sounding the alarm for decades, yet world leaders—and too many everyday people—have treated the crisis like that third servant, burying responsibility instead of investing in solutions.

3. Christian Nationalism: A Perverted Gospel
   There’s a bitter irony in the fact that Christian Nationalists—those pushing for authoritarian theocracy in the U.S.—love to cite this parable as a justification for their prosperity gospel nonsense, twisting it into a justification for hoarding wealth and power. But the true message of the parable is the opposite. The servant who did nothing was the one condemned. The lesson is that faith requires action. And in this moment, action means fighting for a just and livable world, not retreating into fear or self-preservation.

What This Means for Us Now

We are living in an era of rapid, radical change. The institutions that once protected democracy are crumbling under the weight of corruption and corporate capture. The natural world is turning against us after centuries of extraction and abuse. Christian Nationalists are laying the groundwork for a future in which only those who conform to their rigid, authoritarian vision of the world will have rights, freedoms, or even survival.

The question is: what are we doing with the time, power, and resources we have? Are we investing in collective liberation? Are we resisting the forces of destruction and building something better? Or are we burying our heads in the sand, hoping to be spared?

The parable tells us what happens to those who waste what they’ve been given. We don’t get to sit this one out. The cost of inaction is everything.

The Parable of the Talents: A Warning for Our Time

If there’s one thing the Parable of the Talents teaches us, it’s that passivity in the face of crisis is complicity. That lesson is as urgent now as ever. In this biblical parable, a master entrusts his servants with different amounts of wealth ("talents") before leaving on a journey. Two of them invest and multiply what they were given, while the third buries his out of fear. When the master returns, he rewards the first two and punishes the third, calling him "wicked and lazy" for failing to act.

For those of us fighting authoritarianism, the collapse of democracy, and the catastrophic reality of climate change, this story isn’t just about money—it’s about responsibility. It’s a warning against hoarding safety and privilege while the world burns, against the instinct to retreat in fear when what’s required is courage and investment in the future.

Parable of the Sower (1993). It is the first novel in Octavia Butler’s unfinished Earthseed series and sets the stage for the dystopian world explored further in Parable of the Talents (1998).

The Parable of the Talents: A Call to Action in the Face of Authoritarianism, Climate Collapse, and Christian Nationalism

There’s a reason why parables survive across generations—they tell us something fundamental about human nature, about the choices we face, and about the consequences of those choices. The Parable of the Talents is one of those stories, and in this moment, with authoritarianism on the rise, democracy in decline, and climate collapse accelerating, its lessons have never been more urgent.

The Story

In this parable, a master leaves town and entrusts his three servants with his wealth—five talents to one, two to another, and one to the last—telling them to put it to use while he’s away. When he returns, he finds that the first two have doubled what they were given. But the third servant, out of fear, buried his talent in the ground, refusing to risk it.

The master rewards the first two and condemns the third, calling him wicked and lazy. He takes away the little the third servant had and gives it to the one who was most productive, declaring: "To those who use well what they are given, even more will be given. But from those who do nothing, even what little they have will be taken away."

At its core, this is a parable about responsibility. It’s about understanding that the time we are given, the resources we have, and the power we hold—whether great or small—are not ours to hoard. They are ours to use in service of something greater. And right now, that greater thing is the fight for a just, livable, and democratic future.

A Parable for Our Moment

1. The Fight Against Authoritarianism

Right now, democracy is under siege—not just in the U.S., but across the world. Trump and his allies, backed by billionaires like Elon Musk, are gutting public institutions, consolidating wealth, and turning the government into a machine for the ultra-rich. Christian Nationalists are working overtime to replace democracy with a theocracy that serves their rigid, authoritarian vision.

And too many people who see the danger are doing what that third servant did—burying their power in fear, in despair, in the hope that if they just lay low, they will be spared.

But authoritarianism doesn’t spare anyone. It feeds on passivity. The longer people wait, the stronger it gets. The master in the parable wasn’t cruel for expecting his servants to act—he understood that what goes unused is wasted. If we refuse to fight for democracy now, it will be taken from us, the fight for freedom will level up, and we may be lifetimes from reclaiming the democratic possibilities of the 20th and early 21st centuries.

2. Climate Collapse: The Reckoning for Delay

The climate crisis is here. The disasters scientists warned us about decades ago—heatwaves, fires, floods, food shortages—aren’t future threats anymore. They’re happening right now. And yet, fossil fuel corporations, bought-off politicians, and too many everyday people are still acting like we have all the time in the world.

The third servant buried his talent, thinking that by doing nothing, he would at least be safe. But his inaction was a choice—and it led to his ruin. That’s what we’re seeing with the climate crisis. Every year that we delay, every year that politicians and corporations stall, makes the collapse more severe. Those who refuse to act could lose everything.

The only path forward is investment—not in fossil fuels, not in false hope, but in radical action to shift how we produce energy, how we consume, and how we build communities that can survive what’s coming. If we fail, it won’t be because we didn’t have solutions. It will be because too many of us refused to use what we had.

3. Christian Nationalism and the Hoarding of Power

Here’s the irony—Christian Nationalists love this parable. They use it to justify their wealth, to claim that those who succeed do so because God favors them. They twist it into a capitalist fairy tale about the righteous rich and the lazy poor.

But they are the third servant. They hoard power instead of using it to serve humanity. They hide behind fear, turning their faith into a weapon to control others rather than a force for liberation. They bury their responsibility to care for their neighbors in the ground and call it virtue.

The truth is that faith, like democracy, like the planet, is only worth something when it is actively used for good. And Christian Nationalism is about hoarding—not just wealth, but control. It’s a movement obsessed with shutting people out, keeping power in the hands of a select few, and suppressing anything that threatens its dominance.

Which means it’s not just wrong. It’s doomed. It will collapse under its own weight. The only question is how much harm it will cause before it falls.

What This Means for Us

We are all holding something of value in our hands—our time, our voice, our influence, our ability to organize. The question is what are we doing with it?

The Parable of the Talents is a warning: use what you have, or lose it.

• If you have wealth, invest in the fight for democracy.

• If you have time, volunteer, organize, take action.

• If you have a platform, use it to educate, mobilize, and push for justice.

• If you have influence in your community, fight to make it a place where people can thrive, not just survive.

The worst thing we can do is nothing. The moment is now. The fight is here. The only question is—will we invest in the future, or will we bury our heads in the sand and let it be taken from us?