How Octavia E. Butler Predicted 2025
—and What We Can Learn from Her
Patti Perret, photograph of Octavia E. Butler seated by her bookcase, 1986. [courtesy of The Huntington Library, Art Collections, and Botanical Gardens, © Patti Perret]
It’s 2024, and environmental crises, epidemics, and rising unemployment dominate the U.S. Amid the turmoil, populist and neo-fascist Texas Senator Andrew Steele Jarret promises to “Make America great again.” His followers use fear and violence, targeting anyone who doesn’t conform to their rigid vision of Christian values.
"He wants to take us all back to some magical time when everyone believed in the same God, worshiped him in the same way, and understood that their safety in the universe depended on the same religious rituals and stomping anyone who was different. There was never such a time in this country.” Parable of the Talents
This is the premise of Octavia E. Butler’s Parable of the Sower and Parable of the Talents. These novels, written 30 years ago, are eerily prescient today. For over 20 years, I’ve turned to Butler’s work to better understand human resilience.
Octavia Estelle Butler, born in 1947 and raised in Southern California by her mother and grandmother, wrote with a keen and unparalleled insight into society. As a working-class Black woman who faced discrimination, she broke barriers to become the first published Black female science-fiction writer. Butler carved a space in a genre historically dominated by white men and reshaped it as the mother of Afrofuturism. Her stories define worlds beyond our imagination while addressing the human condition through themes of identity, power, kinship, and survival.
As we stand on the brink of 2025, Butler’s wisdom offers us a roadmap. Her work provides timeless tools for resilience, adaptation, and transformation—insights that are invaluable for individuals and teams alike as we navigate the challenges of an uncertain future.
Five Guiding Principles for Liberatory Survivorship
Butler’s protagonists are not superheroes—they are ordinary people from the most marginalized communities. They survive and thrive despite systemic oppression, becoming symbols of transformation. Over the past few months, I’ve revisited The Parables Series, Kindred, and the Xenogenesis series (my personal favorite), pulling out the lessons they hold for surviving and thriving in volatile times. Below, I share the five guiding principles that drive Butler’s work:
Practice Situational Awareness: Marginalized people often excel at noticing power dynamics. Our survival depends on it. Butler’s characters navigate an ever-changing reality by embodying this more meaningfully, using their full range of senses—sight, smell, hearing, instinct, and emotional responses to read their context accurately.
For Leaders and Teams: Cultivate an acute awareness of your environment by listening more frequently to the community and partners. Pay attention to shifts in power, culture, and context. Track your emotional responses to situations and notice what arises for you. Learn from non-human kin and their ability to experience the world through a broader range of senses. Expanding perception leads to better decision-making and stronger adaptability.
Embrace Adaptation: One of Butler’s central teachings is encapsulated in the phrase “God is Change.” Her characters recognize that clinging to an idealized past is futile; instead, they accept change not only as constant, but understand that change will come faster and faster. They develop the skills to shape their future.
"She learned to keep her sanity by accepting things as she found them, adapting herself to new circumstances by putting aside the old ones, whose memories might overwhelm her."
— Dawn (Xenogenesis, #1)For Leaders and Teams: In uncertain times, rigidity is a liability. Acknowledge and track new patterns, so that your responses are precise and relevant to the context. For example, track communication patterns in your team. Are the right people talking and moving your strategies forward? Do new structures need to be established to meet the needs of the context? Build systems for regular reflection and pattern recognition—whether through data, feedback, or intuition. This proactive approach allows you to anticipate shifts and act with agility, facing uncertainty powerfully.
Nurture Self-Connection and Compassion: Volatile times challenge us to confront unique ethical dilemmas with no clear answers. Butler’s characters grapple with contradictions, making imperfect choices while staying connected to their humanity.
For Individuals and Teams: Recognize that no roadmap exists for navigating unprecedented challenges. Be honest about internal conflicts, both personally and as a team. I have seen many organizations suffer from an expectation that a nonprofit or foundation will respond how everyone wants in a tense situation, yet within the team, there is not full agreement about what the “right” thing to do is. Provide honest and compassionate spaces for dialogue while acknowledging that a perfect answer does not exist. Make space to reflect on your decisions and learn from mistakes and wins.
Foster Strong Connections: While Butler’s characters endure subjugation while resisting all temptation to become the oppressor. Her books remind us that we are descendants of people’ who drew strength from their connections with others and the Earth to expand their networks of interdependence.
“Only in partnership can we thrive, grow, Change. Only in partnership can we live.”
-Earthseed: The Books of the Living
For Leaders and Teams: Chaos and fear breed inaction or isolation. Build systems of interdependence that support collective resilience. Foster relationships with colleagues, communities, and the natural world. Draw on ancestral wisdom and cultural practices to root your work in values that sustain life.
Radically Imagine: Embedded in all of Octavia Butler’s works is a call to radically imagine—a reminder that shaping the future requires more than just endurance; it demands active engagement with our dreams and desires for something better. Her stories challenge us to step beyond the limitations of the present to define a future rooted in deeper connections to ourselves, others, and the natural environment.
"We can, each of us, do the impossible as long as we can convince ourselves that it has been done before."
— Earthseed: The Books of the Living
For Leaders and Teams: Commit to visionary thinking as an integral part of your work and leadership. Make intentional space to dream—whether about your organization's future, your team's trajectory, or even the priorities for your week. Create environments where questioning norms and imagining new possibilities are celebrated. By practicing acts of liberation in our everyday lives, we take tangible steps toward making that envisioned future a reality.
Applying Butler’s Wisdom
Butler’s stories offer more than warnings—they offer hope. They teach us that survival isn’t just about enduring hardship; it’s about cultivating empathy, embracing change, and fostering connection. As we step into 2025, let us carry these lessons with us, using them to imagine and build a future rooted in justice and care.
What lessons from Butler’s work resonate most with you? How can your organization or team apply these principles to navigate uncertainty and thrive? We have so many more ideas about how to apply these concepts; contact us to explore how you can bring them to your leadership or organization
Image Description(s):
Above the blog text, there is a black and white image of Octavia E. Butler sitting by her bookcase. She is looking at the camera with a slight grin. Butler is wearing a light shirt and earrings.