Dune, and religion

I am rereading Dune, in light of my general personal crisis of feeling out of control about the world around me being too far lost to have hope of my making a difference.

I’m trying to figure out why the story makes me feel so good and in essence, it is this idea that it presents that no matter how appallingly corrupt and I’m just the world becomes along the way, freedom and justice can eventually prevail, and with long steady work, sometimes in secret, there is hope for a spark of good to be carried forward through humanity to one day create a better world. The idea that today our suffering is great, but there is some imaginable pathway to a happier ending.

I’ve realized that I love this kind of story and would love to get myself to believe in it. So I started thinking of other examples. The first that came to mind was Asimov’s Foundation series, and of course Star Trek. And then I realized, this is also the dominant mythos of apocalyptic Christianity. Evangelical “end times” doctrine essentially posits that the world is going to keep getting worse, humanity both more corrupt and more centralized, and that it will progress to increasingly astonishing levels until one day altogether coming to an and. This isn’t something to mourn, though; they are happy about it, because it comes with the idea that something much better, something perfect and just, will come after.

Interestingly, doomsday Christians don’t expect democracy to be a part of the better world. The form of government of Heaven and the New Earth is a top down benevolent dictatorship. God is in charge of everything, and nothing is allowed to happen that he doesn’t approve of. The central activity of existence is all centered around him, with “glorifying him” being the core mission of this life and the next. It gets kind of darker too, in that it’s not enough for god to command absolute obedience, those who disobey are put to use “showing his glory” in their perpetual suffering as well. This is the “better world” that Christians want, a world of unified purpose and everything directed toward a single central authority.

Anyway, it’s kind of interesting to realize that science fiction literature essentially echoes broad themes of religious mythology, presenting a substitute outside of the old power structure for stories of hope.