A framework for predicting the future
Words of solace from the late, great Octavia Butler
Hi folks,
Welcome to a special Monday edition of Real Self-Care.
I’m not sure if I’m being fatalistic, or if it’s because I’m a reader of the authoritarian scholar , or if it’s hormones, or what.
But, man, things are feeling bleak over here.
In a telling marker of my mental state, over the holiday break I re-read the Parable of the Sower series by Octavia Butler. For those who are unfamiliar with her work, Butler is a Hugo and Nebula award winning sci-fi writer whose work illustrates the themes of power, gender, trauma, climate disaster, and social upheavals.
I was craving Butler’s world because it feels like things are getting even more apocalyptic than usual.
I’m worried about bird flu. I have several patients with terrible long COVID after months of unexplained neurological symptoms. Over the holidays, three of my patients had small kids hospitalized with RSV. Oh, and since I re-read the Parable series, a woman was set on fire in the NYC subway, we sustained a terrorist attack in New Orleans, and someone blew up a cyber-truck in front of Trump Tower.
cool cool cool.
It’s a feat for me to hold the part of my myself that is a psychiatrist, and who is tasked with making space for the fear, uncertainties, and insecurities of my patients; while also being a human being myself with many of the same fears, uncertainties, and insecurities.
I write so that I can find space for my humanity.
Years ago, when I first found Octavia Butler, I came across the 2000 essay she wrote for Essence Magazine — “A Few Words for Predicting the Future.” It featured an exchange between Butler and a young reader:
“SO DO YOU REALLY believe that in the future we’re going to have the kind of trouble you write about in your books?” a student asked me as I was signing books after a talk. The young man was referring to the troubles I’d described in Parable of the Sower and Parable of the Talents, novels that take place in a near future of increasing drug addiction and illiteracy, marked by the popularity of prisons and the unpopularity of public schools, the vast and growing gap between the rich and everyone else, and the whole nasty family of problems brought on by global warming.
“I didn’t make up the problems,” I pointed out. ‘All I did was look around at the problems we’re neglecting now and give them about 30 years to grow into full-fledged disasters.’
“Okay,” the young man challenged. “So what’s the answer?”
“There isn’t one,” I told him.
“No answer? You mean we’re just doomed?” He smiled as though he thought this might be a joke.
“No,” I said. “I mean there’s no single answer that will solve all of our future problems. There’s no magic bullet. Instead there are thousands of answers–at least. You can be one of them if you choose to be.”
Butler goes on to offer a few rules for predicting the future:
Respective the law of consequences
Be aware of your perspectives.
Learn from the past
Count on surprises
Butler’s fictional world is one of senseless violence and huge income inequality. The costs of food and water have become exponential. People only have each other. And, like in most dystopian universes, climate disaster and authoritarian rulers play a significant role.
In her answer to her young reader, Butler is saying: I cannot predict the future any better than you can. What I can do is look at the past and follow the breadcrumbs of what’s going on in the present. Butler does not believe that all of what she writes will come true. When referencing the importance of perspective, Butler is acknowledging that what’s to come probably won’t be as devastating (to everyone) as the world she creates. She is saying, I am a Black woman; my ancestors know the unique cruelty human beings are capable of inflicting on one another. There will be a large swath of Americans who experience the future as an utter dystopia, like the one’s Butler describes in her books (and, for that matter, who already are.) Butler is saying, no I don’t have one answer for you — I have many, many answers for you. Possibilities. And, it’s up to each of us what we decide with that potential.
This is our plight, now, as we walk into 2025. There will be so much to distract us. There will be reasons to lose ourselves. Resistance and resilience mean that we keep coming back to ourselves and to our people. That is all there is.
xo,
Pooja
For tips on keeping your sanity as we head toward Inauguration Day:
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📲 For more on getting through January, check out You Don’t Have to be Someone New from the archives.