Abomination
Posted: 11 Jun 2021 12:21
I was watching one of the super-extended-fan edit-mega edition versions of Lynch's Dune the other night with my wife (essentially a primer for what came before, so that she'll know the legacy Villeneuve is following up on), and the part came up with Alia in front of the Emperor and Mohiam, in which she's called an abomination. As it happens we're also in the middle of reading Children of Dune together, where the issue of abomination comes up quite a lot. The only explanation given by the BG seems to be that they have 'experience' with abomination, and that no one ever comes back from it. It seems to be very bad, but otherwise we don't get much of an explanation of why it is so bad, and what exactly it is. Why can a persona/memory from the past take you over? What does it even mean to say that it "wants to" do so?
So something occurred to me this time around watching the film. Maybe 'abomination' is an almost meta-term for any time someone is guided principally by what came before, rather than what is happening in the present and what needs to happen going forward. I wonder whether FH isn't saying something to the effect that anyone can end up driven by forces from before, and that this is equivalent to death in essence. Whether it's memories of who you used to be, things you've done, or even the legacy of those who came before you, it seems to me that being ruled by the past is anathema to FH and the Dune series. This can be tradition for traditions' sake (at the expense of the present), feeling compelled to repeat bad behavior because of patterns from before, being stuck feeling guilty about the past, or any number of crutches that prevent fully living in the present and planning for the future. It seems to me that the Butlerian Jihad itself is a form of escaping from the past - stopping a previously programmed system from ruling you in the present. And the same goes for entrenched bureaucracy, such as we see in Messiah, which is in a way similar to having machines do your thinking for you. So maybe abomination is just like that - almost like letting previous programming think for you. Maybe the similarity to giving your mind over to machines is why the BG are so up in arms about abomination. And maybe since they see the past better than anyone they're most prone to be trapped by it. Some people are prone to say, for instance, that we have to atone for the atrocities of our ancestors. But imagine if you could actually live the experiences of both them and their victims; the atoning would be all you do in life. I think FH is saying that there is just no room for this, and that allowing the dead to inhabit the will of the living is always dangerous at best.
The theme seems to come up in CoD, that abomination is sort of like a living death (I think), since the dead are in charge of your body and mind. And I suspect the message therein is that any form at all of refusing to think for yourself is part of the same department, whether that's machines, bureaucracies, past habits, or anything else preventing serious thought being given to how to live in the now, and how to plan for the future.
Thoughts?
So something occurred to me this time around watching the film. Maybe 'abomination' is an almost meta-term for any time someone is guided principally by what came before, rather than what is happening in the present and what needs to happen going forward. I wonder whether FH isn't saying something to the effect that anyone can end up driven by forces from before, and that this is equivalent to death in essence. Whether it's memories of who you used to be, things you've done, or even the legacy of those who came before you, it seems to me that being ruled by the past is anathema to FH and the Dune series. This can be tradition for traditions' sake (at the expense of the present), feeling compelled to repeat bad behavior because of patterns from before, being stuck feeling guilty about the past, or any number of crutches that prevent fully living in the present and planning for the future. It seems to me that the Butlerian Jihad itself is a form of escaping from the past - stopping a previously programmed system from ruling you in the present. And the same goes for entrenched bureaucracy, such as we see in Messiah, which is in a way similar to having machines do your thinking for you. So maybe abomination is just like that - almost like letting previous programming think for you. Maybe the similarity to giving your mind over to machines is why the BG are so up in arms about abomination. And maybe since they see the past better than anyone they're most prone to be trapped by it. Some people are prone to say, for instance, that we have to atone for the atrocities of our ancestors. But imagine if you could actually live the experiences of both them and their victims; the atoning would be all you do in life. I think FH is saying that there is just no room for this, and that allowing the dead to inhabit the will of the living is always dangerous at best.
The theme seems to come up in CoD, that abomination is sort of like a living death (I think), since the dead are in charge of your body and mind. And I suspect the message therein is that any form at all of refusing to think for yourself is part of the same department, whether that's machines, bureaucracies, past habits, or anything else preventing serious thought being given to how to live in the now, and how to plan for the future.
Thoughts?