Dune: Messiah and the collapse of the West

** WARNING SPOILERS **

Why Dune? Why now? Does the Dune movie fit the zeitgeist? Why will Villeneuve finish the trinity of films with Dune: Messiah? It is after all, almost completely action free, and would probably make a boring film.

Dune Messiah was published either in 1969 (serialised) or 1975 (as a book). This is some years after the publication of the original 'Dune' novel in 1965. By 1976 the hippie revolution had been in full swing. Woodstock had become a meme. The time to 'turn on, tune in and drop out' had long past. A product of its time, Dune: Messiah is about getting high.

In Dune, drugs are the be all and end all. Space travel cannot happen unless the navigators are high on Spice and so, having reached a …erm… 'higher consciousness', can manage the calculations required for space travel. Drugs are also essential for the powers of the Bene Gesserit order and of course particularly potent drugs, called 'the water of life' enable the prophetic powers of Lady Jessica, Paul, his sister Alia and his new-born son, Leto. It seems just like Woodstock. But in space.

These high people, i.e. junkies, preside over what Herbert calls 'a religion'. Importantly for the plot, this moves people to something called 'jihad'. This jihad is a war that wreaks havoc across the empire, but it doesn't seem to correspond to the Islamic understanding of jihad. Rather it's something that people just can't stop themselves from doing. We never truly discover why people do this jihad. Is it for riches? Fame? Salvation? A place in heaven? Enlightenment? It's unclear. We are encouraged to accept this it is something that stupid people do because 'religion'. Herbert doesn't unpick this and so the characters' motivations are incoherent and the plot doesn't make sense.

Aside from 'jihad', Herbert uses other Islamic terms like 'hajj', although once again, it's not clear why people would go on his hajj. Another is one of the names of Paul, Muad'ib which sounds like 'Mahdi'. Another is Lisan al-Gaib, which might mean 'the voice of God', but could equally refer to the Persian poet Hafiz.

Judaism is given a nod with Hebrew term Kwisatz Haderach^1^. But there are no real other Jewish concepts apart from the title of the book. For Christianity, other than the term 'Messiah', there is only the reference to something called the 'Orange Catholic Bible'. We never find out what this bible is - it's certainly not the one agreed upon by the the Council of Carthage in 397 A.D. - but Herbert is obviously suggesting that the Northern Irish Orange Order and Roman Catholicism are going to kiss and make up somehow.

This creates one big incoherent mess of a religion, but it doesn't matter that it doesn't make sense because, in the Herbert worldview, religion is just superstition for stupid people who can be manipulated by the inane mutterings of junkies.

We only see briefly how this incoherent religion might work when Alia gives an audience in 'her temple'. At this point, we are teased with the idea that Alia is a goddess - who else would have a temple? But Herbert never makes it clear that that is what she is. Do people make sacrifices to her? Burn a little incense? It doesn't seem so. There are many instances in history that Herbert could of drawn on for his god-humans, the Egyptians and Romans for example, but Herbert does not so deign. Religion, you see, doesn't need a rationale, it is stupid superstition for stupid people.

We never understand why the supplicants (evidently stupid people) come to Alia, does some drug-induced gobbledegook really satisfy them? Couldn't they just take the drugs themselves?

Contrast this to when a mortal normally approaches a pagan temple; the mortal would normally bring an offering, a sacrifice, and ask the god for favour. We don't see this with Alia, she is more like the Delphic oracle, but without Apollo.

Eventually, Paul, the junkie god/emperor/sage loses his eyesight because of a weapon or something, but is able to move around with ease because he is still tripping and continually dropping spice/acid/DMT in the hope that the trip will get better. He eventually wanders off into the desert alone. Good riddance.

Herbert suggests that because of the machinations of the Bene Gesserit, the Great Houses, the guildsmen, Bene Tleilax, the CHOGM company and so on, the future is difficult to foresee and so you need drugs (cool, man) to understand it. Yet, Herbert explains these things in the text, which we, the sober (I hope) readers can make sense of, which gives the lie to the idea that Paul needs to continually drop acid to make sense of the world and plot future courses of action.

Hence, a main theme of the book falls apart on its own terms, but might have some appeal to hippies in 1969, which plonks this book right in that boomer-tastic era: "Drugs are cool, man".

Which brings us back to the question: Why Dune? Why now?

In Herbert's universe religion is a man-made thing created by an elite, in this case mostly the Bene Gesserit order, to be used as a tool. On Arrakis, the preliminary work of the Bene Gesserit is hijacked by Paul's mother, Lady Jessica, and later Paul and Alia for their own purposes. Paul realises that once he does this the religion will become unstoppable and billions will die in the war that he will inevitably unleash.

With this, Herbert, born 8th October 1920, puts himself squarely in the range of acceptable opinions of post-WWII science fiction along with the likes of Asimov. Whereas Asimov's psychohistory, as set out in the Foundation novels, is a way of precisely predicting the future, Herbert's view is that the machinations of the elite are likely to lead to uncontrolable consequences. We see this in the first book, when the powers of both the Mentat, Thufir Hawat, and the Bene Gesserit, Lady Jessica, fail to uncover the plot against House Areides. Another example is that, the plot by House Harkonnen and the Emperor fail to eliminate House Atreides as a threat.

Similarly, just as such plotting doesn't come to fruition as intended, so, in Herbert's view, religion, which is created by humans for political reasons can run out of control. This a common modernist trope, which sits badly with the need for psychedelics. You can either rationally control religion, or you can be a junkie with half-baked visions. Which way, Frank Herbert? Herbert never comes down on the one side or the other.

For someone who has been seduced by the boomer-tastic smoke of Woodstock, perhaps this gets a pass. For everyone else, it makes no sense.

The discounting of the supernatural, shows that Herbert is very much a creature of the post-war world; he's materialist and rationalist. But he also wants to do drugs because 'it's cool, man, higher consciousness, man'.

Neither pseudo-hyper-rationalism, nor drug-induced visions provide a way out for Herbert's characters. They cannot reach towards transcendence, neither through reason (the Greeks/St. Thomas Aquinas), nor mysticism {the Oracle/St. John of the Cross). Herbert has no understanding of religion whether pagan or Christian; it is surprising that someone born in 1920, appears to have had no catechism, and has not even done the reading to draw on pagan sources. Perhaps Herbert thought there was no point; religion is for superstitious fools.

In Herbert's world, there is no place for redemption and there is no place for the transforming power of divine Grace. In Herbert's world, where religion is a creation of secret cabals, there is no way for the characters to escape their descent arcs; obsessed by their own power, they are pushed towards evil.

This then, is why Herbert is fêted by the "science fiction" community: it's fundamentally anti-Christian. The dark message of Dune: Messiah is that a degenerate and intoxicated elite can manipulate the masses by the creation of myths and lies. This message justifies a world where belief systems can be moulded for the exercise of power; it justifies the world as it currently is.

Without the sublime, there is no redemption. This is the path politicians have set us on and is why Herbert is lauded. This is why Dune: Messiah foretells the destruction of the West whose fate is to die in the desert, blind, intoxicated and alone.

Kyrie eleison.

1https://www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/culture/38051/will-denis-villeneuves-dune-live-up-to-frank-herberts-novel