Earth seed is just as bad as Christian America (it’s just newer)
One thing I’ve noticed in discourse on Earthseed as a religion/philosophy is that people either present it as silly/repacked humanism or innovativ/praiseworthy. I can’t help but see it as equally dangerous as CA as presented in the book. (Edit: I do not think the version we saw in Parables was equally bad as CA as it was, but I think it is already on the path to recreate that evil in the near future).
At its core earthseed is relational, community oriented, and designed to uplift the downtrodden.… but at its core so is Christianity (the teachings of Jesus). The harm of Christianity is its application. And even in Acorn the application had worrying politics.
- Lauren believes in community ownership and an almost socialist distribution of produced wealth… for believers in earthseed. She welcomes non-believers in but they don’t get community share in wealth until they become believers.
- She limits who can present challenging religious speech during gatherings. For example, she lets Marcus present earlier than he should have because she was hoping he’d fail and give up. She later comments that she was lenient on him and she would have never “allowed” another preacher to speak so often at gatherings. so she limits speakers and moderates idea presented (almost unconsciously)
- she eventually turns earthseeds fortunes around and they become a wealthy political faction held together by her personality. But what happens when she is gone? Or in communities that she started but doesn’t monitor?
christians have teachings warning them against power grabs and political bad actors…and still Christian America is not a far cry off from where we are. So what will happen to a religion like earthseed? It was proven susceptible to political bad actors with the aircraft name. it’s only a matter of time before earthseed constructs its own second class citizens to abuse.