A Tale of Two Parables:
The Good Earth, and Cloud Atlas
A. Kent Van Cleave, Jr., Ph.D.
Overview. This essay examines some themes in two literary works written more than 80 years apart, then relates these themes to the present socio-politico-economic context.
The Good Earth is a Pulitzer prize winning novel by Pearl Buck (1931), and was made into a movie released in 1937. Although there is not a happy ending for Wang Lung, there is an excellent object lesson near the beginning of the movie.
We begin on Wang Lung's wedding day. He rises early, bathes, then goes on foot to pick up his bride to be. Upon picking her up, returning home, he buys some peaches. He shares them with her, and eats one himself, with obvious gusto. Then he throws the pit on the road. His bride to be picks up the pit. When he berates her for this, she replies, "A tree will grow." In the movie, Lung prospers for a time because of the mindfulness of his wife, before falling prey to his own lack of mindfulness.
In the novel and movie Cloud Atlas, Sonmi-451 is a fabricant, a human cloned for slave labor. Her life is completely programmed, and every day follows the same pattern as every other day. She awakes early, spends a very long work day as a server in a restaurant, then goes to bed. There is no personal life, and there are no thoughts of civil rights or liberties. After twelve years of service, the collar all fabricants wear is removed, and the fabricants are told that they are going off to paradise. But, unknown to fabricants, they are killed, and their protein recycled to be fed to other fabricants.
Another fabricant exposes her to the idea of rebellion, before being killed for rebelling. Sonmi rebels against bad treatment from a customer, and is scheduled to be excised. She is rescued from excision by a leader in a rebel group, which seeks an end to this sort of slavery. She joins the rebel movement, and broadcasts a manifesto of her own composition. During the broadcast, the rebels are overrun and she is first captured, then executed. But her example starts a movement in society which ultimately overthrows the politico-economic system employing fabricants.
So how do these two parables come together in today's political and socioeconomic scene? What lesson can we learn from their juxtaposition?
Wang Lung has been very effectively programmed by his collectivist society into an automaton. He blindly plays a role designed for him by society, never questioning anything. Like Lung, Sonmi-451 has been programmed, but more so, to the extent that having a personal life is not even a consideration.
So, how do we bring these two parables to bear, simultaneously, on our socio-politico-economic situation? What lessons can we derive?
The central theme from the Good Earth that I find most relevant is automaticity. Lung is programmed to accept things as they are, and to not question them. Even when his wife demonstrates a questioning mindfulness, he neither takes notice nor modifies his own mindset.
There are two themes in Cloud Atlas that are relevant to the present moment. The first is predacity - the ubiquitous human trait that leads some humans to prey on others. This theme is in full view throughout the six stories interwoven in the movie.
This is parable to today because the environment in which we live is predatory. The economic elite prey on We the People, and manipulate / buy the government so it enforces their system of predation. Observe the decline of the middle class over the last 40 years as evidence of this.
The second theme is awakening. Each of the six protagonists in Cloud Atlas has an awakening, by means of which she or he is able to transcend the present situation in some manner, though not always in the happy ending fashion one might sentimentally prefer.
Pulling all of this together starts with a description / analysis of our socio-politico-economic system. We live in a society which actively programs us, though the degree to which the people around us become conditioned to unquestioning acceptance of their roles is little less consistent than in rural China in the 1020's, or in Sonmi-451's dystopian Neo Seoul. We are programmed to be, in George Carlin's words, " obedient workers, people just smart enough to run the machines and just dumb enough to passively accept their situation." We also are programmed towards a materialistic orientation - we should crave and buy things we want but do not need in order for us to become debt slaves. Some observers call people who have fallen into that unawareness "sheeple."
This programming drives the less critical into a life in which we buy things on credit, then are forced to work extra hard in order to service the debt. Locked into that system, we will work for less compensation than we need in order to have savings and get ahead. For a plurality of people, we get by and get by until we reach old age, worn out and with little to show for it. And the corporate owners have profited off of our entire work life, while returning only just enough to keep us in the system.
Unfortunately, some people fall into the bottom of the socioeconomic pool and become disenfranchised. At this bottom, predation remains present, but it is much more exploitative than for the more fortunate conscripts who are hanging on as debt slaves. There are two bottoms to the pool.
The most evident bottom is characterized by rent-to-own stores, payday loan and title loan offices, and pawn shops. The degree of predation there is severe; it is legalized usury. This bottom resembles in some ways an ant lion cone. Once an ant falls into the cone of the ant lion, it struggles valiantly for a time, but its own struggles further destabilize the cone, until the ant lion submerges the ant with a couple of well-placed volleys of sand, then devours the ant.
As people fall deeper into that predation, their sense of hope vanishes, and along with it their ability to function effectively. Often, they are drawn into drugs, and when they are, almost inevitably they are incarcerated for an unreasonable time.
Incarceration is the second bottom, and, like those La Brea mastodons, it is virtually impossible to escape that bottom. Increasingly, prisons are being operated by for-profit corporations. Like most corporations, the operators' first concern is shareholders. They use the incarcerated as slave labor, turning a tidy profit off of the misery of the downfallen, and justifying their actions as sound business practice. With just five percent of the world's population, the US incarcerates 25% of all who are incarcerated in the world.
Of course, some people manage to fall through to a third economic bottom, characterized by complete disenfranchisement. Consigned to the rubbish heap of humanity by an uncaring government and economic elite, they are the chronically homeless. They question little, and serve as omnipresent reminders to the sheeple of what can happen to them if they do not work hard enough.
The ruling class maintain the predation at sufficient levels to drive people to the bottom, and they do it on purpose. If people are pressed hard enough, occasionally one will get a gun or a knife and go on a very public rampage, killing and maiming a number of fellow oppressed. Then the government, responding to their shadowy dictates, can step in and clamp down on what liberties and freedom the sheeple have. They can force us to submit to invasive searches in order to enter public buildings or to board airplanes.
They tell us it is to keep us safe, and the majority of the oppressed bleat, "Yes. Keep us safe! Keep us safe!" This takes our focus off of the predation to which we are continually exposed, and puts it onto a seemingly existential threat, the threat that some imaginary terrorist might kill oneself. By this means, our programming is deepened and reinforced.
Almost everyone agrees that the sort of economic predation that occurs in the first bottom of the pool is immoral. Periodically, someone tries to enact legislation to put an end to it, but inevitably the economic elite spread enough money around amongst the governmental operatives to push aside such initiatives. So the loan sharkery continues.
Similarly, there are many who oppose privatized prisons and the exploitation of inmates. But again the economic elite spread enough money around amongst the governmental operatives to buy their support for the status quo.
In addition, they have programmed the sheeple to block the exit of the incarcerated from the exploitation. The formerly incarcerated are labeled as deviants, and they are discriminated against for employment, housing, and social services. Almost inevitably, they wind up incarcerated once again.
Not all fall into the bottom of the pool. The children of the remaining middle class and of the affluent class are given a safety net by their parents. They are far less likely to fall into the bottom of the socioeconomic pool and remain there, like some mastodon in the La Brea tar pits. But for many of these fortunate ones, there is a price; they must accept that unfair economic paradigm, and then transition into the role of exploiter.
Today, there is increasing awareness of how badly the general population is being exploited. Awakened to the realities of the system, aided by social media, they are in the beginning stages of a movement to reform our government, and with it and through it the exploitation by the economic elite. Many of these newly awakened flocked to Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren in the present presidential race, others to Trump, others to Stein.
The Democratic Party succeeded in stopping that movement on the left by rigging the nomination process so that Clinton would win. She almost certainly will not further the movement. The Republican Party succeeded in stopping the movement on the right by co-opting it. They ran one of the economic elite for candidacy, and Trump skillfully convinced the right disaffected that he opposes the exploitative system. From the evidence of his own economic practices, he appears extremely unlikely to support any sort of meaningful reform.
The disaffected outnumber the sheeple who follow party lines and ideologies. The disaffected are divided, however, by the very political ideologies created by the ruling class to divide them - concepts of liberal vs. conservative, left and right. The only way anyone is going to be able to bring those disparate factions together for effective political action is to change the political conversation. And that is what we must do, while employing to the fullest extent the power of the social media.
The political conversation must focus first on what the diverse factions of disaffected agree on. Most of the disaffected, right and left, understand that the system is designed to prey on them, and they want the system reformed. That is what we must focus on first.
With the point of agreement identified, and serving as a rallying point, the movement must engage in a multifaceted conversation, call it a multilog if you will, reflecting its diversity, on how to actually carry out that reform. It is a tall order, one most difficult of attainment. And it is one which will face considerable and well funded opposition. As Machiavelli stated in his book, the Prince, published in 1531:
"…it ought to be remembered that there is nothing more difficult to take in hand, more perilous to conduct, or more uncertain in its success, than to take the lead in the introduction of a new order of things, because the innovator has for enemies all those who have done well under the old conditions, and lukewarm defenders in those who may do well under the new. This coolness arises partly from fear of the opponents, who have the laws on their side, and partly from the incredulity of men, who do not readily believe in new things until they have had a long experience of them. Thus it happens that whenever those who are hostile have the opportunity to attack they do it like partisans, whilst the others defend lukewarmly..."
Wang Lung never wakes up. He goes through his life a slave to his ego, a slave to his materialistic existence. In the process, he treats his wife very badly, and makes her miserable, too. Only on his death bed does he realize her value to him. But you can wake up. There are many voices calling upon you to do so. And if you do not, you will remain part of the problem, rather than the solution.
Sonmi-451 does awaken. When she learns that fabricants are killed and then fed back to other fabricants, she decrees that "the machine" must be destroyed. She is notable in that she is willing to sacrifice her own life in order to awaken others. Almost Jesus-like, she dies not for the sins of others, but for their unawareness.
Who is to say whether those in the movement today will be called upon to die? Perhaps a middle way can be found, wherein we may engage in true reform and nobody dies. Suffice to say that those who are the prey in this labyrinthine system already are consigned to a living death.