Choose Your Leaders…

“Choose your leaders

with wisdom and forethought.

To be led by a coward

is to be controlled

by all that the coward fears.

To be led by a fool

is to be led

by the opportunists

who control the fool.

To be led by a thief

is to offer up

your most precious treasures

to be stolen.

To be led by a liar

is to ask

to be told lies.

To be led by a tyrant

is to sell yourself

and those you love

into slavery.”

I got turned onto Octavia Butler recently by a friend (late to the party, I know), and started with the Parable of the Sower audiobook (available free on spotify if you have premium). I made it to Chapter 7 before the I got the urge to start looking up more about her and her work, starting with this interview from 2005. In it, she reads an excerpt from the follow up book, Parable of the Talents, which I’ve copied above. Keeping in mind that she wrote these books in the 90s, it’s eerie to see how close we are getting to the dystopian future that she envisioned being possible (the stories take place in the 2020s).

I try to keep a positive outlook in the face of increasingly dark horizons looming ahead, and mostly succeed, but confess to giving into despair on occasion too. Hopefully as I continue down this rabbit hole I’ll find some light in the darkness of her work, and add it to the hodgepodge of literature that has collectively informed my perspective over time.