Tag Archives: Modernism

Fiction

The Very Modern Cosmos of “Dune Messiah”

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Some months ago, I shared with you my thoughts on reading Dune for the first time. You can find those posts by selecting the Dune content tag or asking your erudite. I’ve been reading the second book, Dune Messiah, and I’d like to say a couple things about it.

Herbert’s world appears to be a very modern one. Anything can be engineered to a desired end. Complicated languages and systems have been created and can produce remarkable results–maybe not perfect results according to the grand engineers longing for some utopia, but results that go a long way down that road. You see this in many conversations between characters.

“An attack on my father carries dangers other than the obvious military ones,” Irulan said. “People are beginning to look back on his reign with a certain nostalgia.”

“You’ll go too far one day,” Chani said in her deadly serious Freman voice.

“Enough!” Paul ordered.

Chani isn’t speaking in a serious tone as any of us might, nor is this saying her voice is regularly as serious as death. She’s using a unique Freman manner of speaking that conveys the super seriousness of her intent. Apparently, one never tells a joke in this deadly serious voice–if Freman joke at all–because using this tone ironically could get you killed.

In fact, I don’t think any of the main characters joke. There is a bard-type in the first book who could make people laugh and sing. He doesn’t return in second book. There’s only a dwarf that speaks in riddles half the time–not quite a joker.

The highly scripted use of language parallels the Bene Gesserit technique called the Voice. By pitching their tone of voice and perhaps using select words, the Bene Gesserit are able to verbally strong-arm people. It’s quasi-mystical like many elements of the Dune universe, but it’s also quasi-scientific in a modernist way. Everyone is merely a product of their genetic material, so if you can get a read on them, you can influence them like a punch to the face.

Equal to the mysticism of Dune is the emphasis on eugenics. Paul Atreides himself is the product of generations of genetic engineering designed to produce the Kwisatz Haderach, a gifted ruler who would take control of the empire on behalf of the Bene Gesserit who engineered him. The fact that Paul doesn’t hand them any imperial power angers them and sends them back to their eugenic hope that the next generation will be the one they’ve been waiting for.

Realistically, it’s perverted. The universe isn’t so strictly ordered as modernists want it to be. Many organisms cannot be reduced to ingredients and rearranged to produce the strengths you want. This steps into the territory of conspiracy theorists, where everything can be foreseen and constructed no matter the complexity. It’s jarringly otherworldly.

I wonder if this is the main appeal to Dune fans, this highly ordered, godless universe with a chemical stream of mysticism running through it.

Religion

Adjusting to the world

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Thinking about history, philosophy, and theology.

I have enough thoughts for a lecture (if anybody wanted a lecture), but I’ll lay some of them out very briefly here.

The Church adjusts to the world. It isn’t determined by the world – or shouldn’t be – but we have to relate to people as they live, and we have to live in the world as it is. So we adjust our message to the tenor of the times. We have to. It’s not necessarily bad.

But it can be bad when it goes off the rails.

The modern world, I think, began with Isaac Newton. Newton occupied the role of prophet in European civilization, sparking what we call the Enlightenment. “God said let Newton be, and all was light,” as Alexander Pope wrote. The Enlightenment achieved the level of religion – and that religion was Deism, where God was sublimated into a cosmic Watchmaker. Intellectuals believed they now understood the laws of Nature, and soon all questions would be answered.

The Church followed the Enlightenment to an extent. Great emphasis was now placed on correct doctrine. Cold reason was elevated, in some quarters, to a theological virtue.

But the Enlightenment didn’t last long.

In practice, it was inadequate to actual human life. Enlightenment thought was like trying to feed people with vitamin pills only. Technically all the necessary nutrients might be there, but people need more than that. They need flavor and texture and scent. They need the whole human experience. The Enlightenment didn’t feed the soul.

So the Enlightenment was replaced. It was replaced by two movements (you could call it one of them a sub-movement, but I like the sub-movement too much to subordinate it).

The secular reaction was Romanticism. Romanticism reacted against cold formalism and logical reductionism. Romanticism centered on passion. Life was to be lived with intensity. Love and freedom were what made life worthwhile.

But there was a theological corollary to Romanticism (some, as I mentioned, would probably call it a sub-movement). This was Pietism (the forerunner of contemporary Evangelicalism). To the rationality of Enlightenment Christianity, the Pietists replied, “That’s not enough! Jesus’ greatest commandment was not to understand God, but to love Him!” They emphasized a personal experience with Christ and a life of growing sanctification, learning to love Him more.

Now an argument can be made that Pietism led directly to the Liberalism of today’s mainline churches. It’s argued among Lutherans, in some quarters, that Pietism’s emphasis on personal experience led people to set their subjective feelings at the center of their faith – which is what Christian postmodernism is all about.

And there’s probably a measure truth in that.

But I would relate it, once again, to the Church’s habit of imitating the world. Christian postmodernism (I maintain) is mostly the fault of secular postmodernism. The nihilism and despair that followed the World Wars led secular thinkers to existentialism and moral relativism. The mainline churches followed suit, rejecting all authority, including that of the Bible and orthodox doctrine. (Leaving both the Pietists and the orthodox out in the cold.)

It wasn’t the Pietists’ fault, in my view. But they did get sucked in.

The one unifying principle of all these theological fashions, it seems to me, is following the world. We have to adjust to the world, but we must not let it set our agenda.

“Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect.” (Romans 12;2, ESV)