The Seeds of Redemption

Phil Winston30th of Mar 2022

Reading Time: 3 or 4 minutes

Seeds begins straight after Fragments, as the events of both books take place within around one week.

**There are perhaps some spoiler alerts here in terms of character development, so feel free to stop here if you are reading the books right now.

When Seeds opens he is exploring the question of whether or not the drones can be considered human or not. They look human, but he puts this down to anthropomorphism, or his own projection of humanity onto them. Perhaps even a longing for them to be human, even just so they could appreciate his skill at sniping them.

It quickly moves into a stage where he is forced to put his "hypothesis of humans" to the test, and when it is measured against reality it comes up short. A similar event took place in my own life, where I had a "hypothesis of women", that resulted in a certain level of promiscuity. Typical narcissist behaviour I'm sure, but the evidence in my environment did nothing to erode this viewpoint. Nightclubs are as devaluing to women as they are detrimental to your sleeping habits.

I mentioned in part one that I only lied internally. This is because I genuinely despise dishonest people. I was surrounded by it growing up, so I always wanted to avoid being like those people. Turning this scrutiny and lie detection skill inwards is what ultimately allowed me to challenge my hypothesis of women, and Steve to challenge his hypothesis of humans.

For me that was a conversation with a friend of mine in her house. I was sitting in her kitchen during a visit, and while still fully engaged in conversation with me she was flying around the place cleaning, looking after two kids (one was only around 2 months old), preparing things for me to eat, and getting dinner ready for her husband. The ultimate trad wife if you ever met one. But this was a woman with a master degree and a very successful career under her belt, so amazing to say the least.

So I sat there, watching her pottering around, and thinking to myself that my theory of women said one thing, but here we are with this example that completely contradicts it. And not just in some details, but fundamentally. Similarly, Steve experiences a similar moment where the "usefulness" of people is downgraded to a minor and inconsequential detail about them as an individual, and not the foundational basis of their value.

This is where the "hero's journey" takes its turn towards transformation, and the decision to make a sacrifice for the greater good is taken.

I won't go into detail here, you can read the book if you want that, its free after all. What I will say is that this realisation on the utility of people helped serve as an antidote to a number of things in my head. Specifically I'm referring to the narcissism, which can't stand up against the attribution of value of other people, simply as an inherent attribute.

With that as a context, it simply dissolves.