My Earthseed Community
In Octavia Butler’s Parable of the Sower, the main character Lauren creates a religion called Earthseed. At the end of the novel, she establishes the very first Earthseed community with her band of travellers, and she calls it Acorn. While this story is set in an apocalyptic future, we are now only 2 years away from the year the novel starts, 2024, and I think an Earthseed community would be extremely helpful in this day and age. If I were to start an Earthseed community, I would focus on creating a shelter from food insecurity and houselessness, two unreasonably prevalent problems in American society today. A verse from “Earthseed: Book of the Living” that I would mostly base my efforts around would be number 24: “Kindness eases Change”. In my community, anyone could join if they would like, and we would embrace kindness and find a way to help and/or rehab anyone who might have dangerous tendencies. We would have a background check system and low-intensity psychological evaluation for everyone, and there would be therapists, rehab centers, etc. in order to help people heal from their traumas and become fulfilled members of our little society.
I would like to establish this community in West Virginia, where there’s room and resources for a farm and comfortable community, pretty good weather all year except for dead of winter and summer, it’s close to several major cities where there are large houseless populations (DC, Philly, Baltimore, even New York). Once we have enough members, I would like to organize a kind of direct democracy, similar to that of Switzerland, in order to make decisions about life at the compound. Everyone would have a say on every decision, and the government (known as the Federal Council in Switzerland) would be elected by the people every four years, and share the duty of “head of state”, and they would rotate every year who takes on the role of “president” if representation is needed at any point. This decision is influenced by verse 15:
“All struggles
Are essentially
power struggles.
Who will rule,
Who will lead,
Who will define,
refine,
confine,
design,
Who will dominate.
All struggles
Are essentially power struggles,
And most are no more intellectual
than two rams
knocking their heads together”
This verse reflects the idea that no one should dominate in an Earthseed community, because that only leads to resentment and comparison, taking away from any real problems that may arise.
My community would survive because it would be pretty much self-sustaining. Some future technology would be needed to make this a reality energy-wise. While this is possible today, it would be quite expensive to have all the commodities necessary in my earthseed community via clean energy. We would use future versions of solar, wind, hydro, and geothermal energy to power our needs and our connections to the outside world. Aside form power, the community would also be self-sustaining food-wise, but there would also be deliveries of packaged food because honestly, who wants to go without Oreos when that’s not necessary? In order to obtain outside products, we would need a way of making money. We could do that by making goods like all-natural cleaning supplies, ethically sourced clothing, art, even selling excess produce form our farms. My earthseed community would help to build the future because it would set an example for what a community can be, from environmentalism to its leadership model. It would also hopefully lead the way for more communities like it, all working together to end houselessness and food insecurity.
