"Dune" Predicted a War Against Technology

Is the Butlerian Jihad in our future?

Dune, Frank Herbert's classic sci-fi novel, is familiar to mainstream audiences primarily through its film and TV adaptations.

The main idea is brilliantly simple: space-faring aristocratic houses engage in political intrigue and clandestine warfare over a desert planet called Dune, which is the only known source of Spice, a substance that makes space travel possible.

What many viewers don't realize is that Frank Herbert - writing in 1965 - intended Dune as a metaphor for the Earth-bound struggle over oil in the Middle East.

Of course, once you see it, you can't unsee it: the arid landscape of Arrakis (the native name for the planet Dune) is sparsely populated by fiercely independent natives, and repeatedly invaded by foreigners who seek to exploit its resources to fuel their military expansion.

Herbert was very knowledgeable about world culture; he used European mythological references and names for the Great Houses that battle over Dune, and extensively employed Arabic words for the language of the Fremen, the indigenous people of Arrakis. Indeed, in the books, the Fremen battle against foreign oppression is referred to repeatedly as "jihad" - holy war.

But, in addition to the war for Arrakis, there is a jihad in Dune that has been left out of the film adaptations: the "Butlerian Jihad," or Great Revolt against technology.

The Butlerian Jihad

According to Herbert’s original novels (Dune was followed by seven sequels), humankind developed sophisticated technology, including conscious robots and intelligent computers, but these "machines-that-think" elevated themselves to the status of gods, and began to be worshipped by people. In response, a rebellious movement of humans rose up against the machines, ultimately eliminating all computerized technology from the known universe.

The film adaptations have largely ignored this, as they are full of computer screens, holograms, and other technology that would have been anathema to the Butlerians. In the Dune books, there are spaceships, vehicles, and a plethora of weapons, but these are all more or less analog-electronic (e.g. the multi-winged "ornithopter" aircraft) or psi-powered (Spacing Guild pilots use Spice to allow their minds to "fold space," letting them move giant ships vast distances between planets).

Herbert published Dune six years before the first microprocessor was released, and in his view, the line between acceptable and unacceptable technology seems to be drawn at the level of the integrated circuit. Dune has some fairly advanced machines (including personal force-fields) but data processing capability is forbidden to machines. Instead, Mentats - human computers - are trained from birth to use their brains for information storage and complex mathematics.

The fact that Herbert was concerned about artificial intelligence in 1965 is not altogether surprising (this was the era of Star Trek, as well as Isaac Asimov and other legendary science fiction authors), but it's notable that he seems to have named the Butlerian Jihad after Luddite author Samuel Butler, who wrote a remarkably far-sighted novel called Erewhon in 1872.

Yesterday's Comedy Is Tomorrow's Tragedy

Erewhon (an anagram of "nowhere") is a satire set in a fictional nation where norms are the opposite of what was expected at the time. Sickness is punished, crime is treated as an illness, universities teach students how to say nothing, and mechanical progress is forbidden.

It's worth noting that 19th century satire is uncomfortably close to today's reality, but that's a topic for another day. Returning to the subject at hand, the reason, according to Butler, that Erewhon banned machines was the concern that they would gradually and imperceptibly evolve to become the rulers of men.

"The power of custom is enormous, and so gradual will be the change, that man's sense of what is due to himself will be at no time rudely shocked; our bondage will steal upon us noiselessly and by imperceptible approaches; nor will there ever be such a clashing of desires between man and the machines as will lead to an encounter between them."

In the book, Butler explains this concept at length. Essentially, he believed that the risk lay in machines that could make other machines. In his view, this would create the capability for machines to evolve into complex, self-replicating devices that would inevitably take over human society. Keep in mind, he was writing this before the invention of the telephone, light bulb, or combustion engine.

Ultimately, the people of Erewhon decided that this risk was too great, and destroyed every machine using technology developed more recently than the year 1600.

Herbert, writing almost a century after Butler, seems to have seen that Erewhon’s fear - absurd to most readers in an era when state of the art communication still used Morse code - was not quite so ridiculous after all.

Although most writers of his era (Asimov, Bradbury, Clarke, Heinlen, et al.) were dreaming of the glories of positronic brains and space marines, Herbert was thinking a step ahead: past the time when machines would be of service, to a time when they would seek to become masters.

It's Not Fiction Anymore

Although we have not yet reached the technological singularity predicted by Vernon Vinge and Stephen Hawking, it is no exaggeration to say that machines are the object of devout worship (indeed, as observed by Neil Gaiman in "American Gods," they are the recipients of human sacrifice on a scale unimaginable by the Aztecs). And, although machines themselves are not demanding our subservience, our ruling class seems very interested in using machines to ensure their dominion over us.

Whether it's the World Economic Forum putting “Human Enhancement” on their agenda, or Elon Musk’s Neuralink company working on “a fully implantable, cosmetically invisible brain-computer interface,” it’s becoming increasingly clear that transhumanism - the merging of humans with machines - is a big priority for global influencers.

In theory, electronic augmentation could lead to greater health and achievement. In practice, it opens the door to constant surveillance and absolute control of every person by whatever entity is in charge of the technology.

In retrospect, Butler's concern that technology would, bit by bit, evolve to take over our lives was prescient. How much time and attention does each of us lavish on our machines each day? And how much more terrifying would it be if we didn't even have the option of putting them down, or leaving them in another room?

If the WEF and other organizations advocating for transhumanism continue to push an agenda that involves welding our bodies and brains to circuitry under their control, the day may not be too far in the future when we will need to heed the warnings of Butler and Herbert.

Yesterday, the Butlerian Jihad was fantasy. Tomorrow, it may be necessary.