My first engagement with Frank Herbert’s Dune, encompassing the original trilogy, came in college. I received it as a union of Star Wars with Azimov’s Foundation trilogy.

I returned to the series after a spiritual awakening in my forties. In the interim, Harbert had added an introduction that described the experiences that stimulated the work. That testimony made clear that he was a student of human potential. The original trilogy had been supplemented by three more books that culminated with the efforts of the Shai-Hulud god-emperor, Leto, to evolve personalities whose behavior escaped prophetic vision.

What disturbed me, in that second exposure, was the consistent dependence upon violence as a tool for stimulating human growth. While I had, throughout my adult life, enjoyed science fiction as a framework for speculative social philosophy, the genre’s celebration of violence eventually drove me back toward religious myth.

The association of violence with messianic expectations is found also in the Bible. Jesus’ followers hoped that he would organize a rebellion and seize earthly power. Instead, Jesus proved the impotence of violence, rising from the dead. This seems to me a valuable moral parable. Confronting the calamities we are generating with our technology, I began to explore the principles involved. On my New Physics page here, you will find the conclusions regarding harmonization of spirituality with physics.

The scientific community refuses to engage even at this primitive level, so I have not continued to memorialize my thoughts. Most recently, I have been thinking about the problem of consciousness and time. As the mechanism clarified, my mind became crowded with echoes from Shamballism, Islamic natural philosophy, and Abrahamic apocalyptic writings.

With the release of Dune 2, all these threads coalesced as a compulsion to see the movie. Herbert, as a student of human potential, had defined a messianic parable that upheld violence as an essential element. The movie expresses that magnificently, both at the personal and social levels.

I was repelled.

Fortunately, I can testify that reality is designed to frustrate this path towards messianic realization. Jesus is the model to emulate. The paths followed by Paul Atreides, the Bene Gesserit, and the Shapeshifters (in the second trilogy) are impotent. Reality at the deepest levels only opens itself to those that renounce violence for mercy and love.