Dune's Oneness
What is Dune? A recollection of the human heart and its frailties. A story that exposes the weakness of the individual and the danger of the masses. A book, a series, two films, and a wish to show the realist side of our history told backwards and into the future. I would like, however, to explore something else about this already well-examined saga. The oneness it proposes and our grave, albeit, unlikely path towards it.
Herbert was a realist who used epic storytelling to explore the dangers of messianism in his time. A child of the long twentieth century, he had the influx of WWII and Totalitarianism to serve as the canvas for the exploration of idolatry, religion, and the way the future is a mirror to our past. As was it shall be, he seems to tell us, since religion, more than secularism and reason, overtake all institutions. A holy massacre is but the beginning of a perfected one-nation galaxy, where a single tribe and its pre-modern likeness reigns. When all creatures of humanity are alike, when they share beliefs, especially the intangible mythos that can whisper of the future, then a peace will settle. Or so they say.
Alas, the great massacres to lead us there are reminiscent of our past. A time when every warlord was a priest and every priest a foreteller, vying for the oneness in their peoples that could finally bring peace. In the end, even the most adamant warrior spoke for the subtle intricacies of their religious interests. This is what, Herbert tells us, will be our future. Even out there, in space or upon a ship of science-parts and reason, religion will usurp our spirituality and lead us into the desires of the One Tribe. Guided by great purpose and thereby the messianic single-minded leadership so devastating in the likes of Putin today, we will be united only by our tribal sense of pre-modern likeness. Instinctively, he tells us, we will strive for such comfort and deem the sacrifice of others an easy and most worthy step. This is the danger that Dune speaks of, to think in oneness. One leader, one people, one culture, one belief, one purpose.
The multiplicity of choices, the great ocean of possibilities in which our human mind swims, becomes limited. The sea is made a river and it flows in one direction. Try as we must, the flow carries us, guide us and takes us down, and always down. And here I disagree with Herbert, genius as he is. 
Some believe, and therefore explain, that science takes from religion in its discourse and purpose. They say that science, especially science fiction, is religious in its language, in its design, and most of all, in its ultimate conclusions. Dune explores this, and Herbert might seem to agree, that scientific discovery follows a religious vein of wonder. That despite its merits, science functions on the whims of a sense of spiritual desire inherent to our being. Because of this, ultimately, the greatest achievements of science are but means for better, truer, achievements of the religious kind to take effect.
But science does not take from religion neither in form or purpose. Religion takes from science. It is, if anything, the history of our failed sciences, compiled in magnificent books and tales, stories like any other but that tried, sincerely, to find the meaning of things. Its scientific basis is what makes religion so dear to our hearts, so useful in the absence of answers. For the primitive mind it was a key to unlock the secrets of the world. And the world, vast as it is, remains mostly unexplained. This makes our minds, in the shadow of all doubts, still entirely primitive. Primordial, I would say. And so it remains. The ever receding god of the gaps is the comfort we have for the time between ignorance and discovery. And so I believe Frank Herbert's Dune presents us with a vision of a future too much like our past. And so, in my opinion, he errs.
The future science creates is akin to the future religion made for us. For, if religion is the first of our sciences, the compilation of our failures in a slow process of improvement, then all we can expect is that, as this science once dubbed religion continues to guide us.
With every question answered, the religious explanation humbly moves back into the realm of myth, of error, and of mankind's humble stumblings. Whether believers are angered or not at science does not matter in the long run. The beauty of the mind is its adaptability. Science, the true purpose of religion, takes precedent because it work beyond human ego. With it we shall reach new heights of human kindness, communion, and transcendence. Not in the sight of mythical propositions such as heaven or the afterlife, Nirvana or the enlightenment, things we instinctively long for, but somewhere else. Here, in this world and this world only.
Dune tells us that religion will unify us and bring peace after a great genocide of peoples and cultures. After the great Oneness is achieved. I say religion will remain as long as there are questions in the universe and it will survive by the side, and thanks to, the efforts of its greatest of friends, its brother, and second face, Science. For if anything allows for the survival of many religions, rather than just one, is science and its multiplicity of approaches to the search for truth. Herbert's Dune proposes a world united and therefore lost. I see the bond between our human natures: One our desire to dream and do it so vastly and beautifully, we try for the heights of gods and heavens. Two, our ever present longing to know and reveal, and discover through or naturally given talent for science. To find, more than anything, the truth.
Together these two powers be bear will reveal the world, one keeping us warm in the cold, while the other guides us through the darkness.