Resisting the Cult of Personality
Plus some recent reads and thoughts
Saturday, July 20th, 2024 was the day Octavia Butler’s Parable of the Sower began - the date of the first diary entry of protagonist, Lauren Olamina. If you haven’t read the book, this won’t mean much to you. If you have, and are familiar with just how eerily prescient so much of it was, then this date might hold a lot of meaning. Author Roz Dineen writes in this article on LitHub:
“I have had several encounters recently with people who have been inspired by the date to read Parable of the Sower for the first time, and they have each been unusually shaken by it. Parable is certainly prescient. The issues that seem to have caused the breakdown of society in the world of the book—climate warming, scarcer natural resources, violence, extreme poverty, regressive labor laws—feel only more likely to crumble us every day. New readers are often caught breathless when they read about a presidential candidate (a zealot) running on the pledge to “make America great again” in Butler’s sequel to Parable of the Sower, Parable of the Talents which was published in 1995.”
On the 21st, Pres. Biden withdrew his bid for reelection (just hours after a full moon, no less), and as of now, it seems Kamala Harris is the presumptive nominee.
I don’t have much to say about any of this, except to beg people to resist the urge to participate in the cult of personality thing we love to do with politicians. Do I slightly prefer Harris to Biden, and am I happy about this turn of events? Sure. Will I be engaging in the woman-power-savior-of-democracy demagoguery that is already underway? Nope. First off, she’s a prosecutor. She’s a cop in lawyer’s clothes whose record includes ruining the lives of countless Black people in California. She’s not gonna get a pass on that just because she’s a Black woman and not Joe Biden. And keep an eye out for how the prosecutor vs. convicted felon narrative will get played constantly; cheap political theater obscuring the cruel realities of our justice system. But also, the party of “law and order” running a felon and the party of “justice and equity” running a Black cop… this country has truly become a satire of itself.
My days of obsessing over and celebritizing politicians have ended. I will never again feel about a politician the way I felt about Obama in 2008 or Bernie in 2016. Not because I was right to feel so excited about them back then and nobody has measured up since. But because I’ve finally learned that nothing good comes of the cult of personality. Just because a politician might be progressive, doesn’t mean their cult followers aren’t as ridiculous as these cult followers:
Do people in other countries do this? Do they turn their politicians into celebrities and brands, with political party members scrambling to be the president of their fan clubs? I’m sort of asking seriously… I don’t know whether it’s a uniquely American problem, or just a human problem that we want so desperately for someone to save us.
So, I suppose, back to the argument I made a couple weeks ago - let’s stop giving these people so much power. They have a job to do. They work for us. We don’t need to fangirl over them any more than we do over the plumber fixing our leaky toilet (and frankly, the plumber is probably more deserving of our admiration). So let’s just keep that in mind when we’re tempted to engage in savior worship.
And let’s take a page out of Octavia Butler’s book and think more about how we save ourselves, since, you know, we’re now living in the Parables.
I want to share a couple recents reads that have been sitting with me. The first is a piece from writer Raechel Anne Jolie. It’s mostly a book review of Miranda July’s All Fours, which I have not yet read, but is very buzzy right now, especially amongst middle-aged women. Jolie’s essay both echoed, and prompted, feelings and thoughts I’ve had recently about aging in a female body, becoming more invisible to society (both the pains and the joys of that), and just generally reflecting on the choices we make that shape the lives we have. To be honest, July’s book is probably not normally one I’d seek out, but I’ve been feeling my middle-aged lady-ness as of late, and Jolie’s essay got me more intrigued to read it. Any elder-millennial/baby Gen-X femme folks out there want to read it with me??
The second piece is from Margaret Killjoy (getting back to fangirling, I’ll admit I’ve been fangirling over her this year). Her piece “Will I See This Orchard Grow? or: the non-futility of every action” really struck a chord. It’s mostly behind a paywall, so if you aren’t a paid subscriber and you want a gift subscription, let me know. I think I’ve got a couple to hand out.
She uses a quote that’s a favorite in anarchist circles to frame the essay: “Even if the world was to end tomorrow I would still plant a tree today.” I mean, right up my alley!
She says:
“In essence, we are asked (by our anarchism, or by our faith, as if those are always distinct ideas) to continue to do the work we know that must be done even as the end of our lives, or the end of all things, is upon us.”
It is easy, in our world of urgency and immediate gratification, to want to see the fruits of your labor right away. But it’s important to remember that our little, human timescales are the blink of an eye, and our struggles occur over centuries, or longer. The work is not me saving the world, it’s simply me picking up the torch and carrying it during the time I have here.
I’m resisting the urge to quote a bunch more of her essay here, but trust me, if you need a good reason to plant trees and think beyond election cycles, it’s worth a read.
I’ll leave you with my native rain garden, which you may recall I planted about 6 weeks ago. It’s filling in nicely. You can see lots of coreopsis, nodding onion, cardinal flower, monkey flower, milkweed, and a handful of other things. The pollinators love it, and so do I.
