Ranting to /dev/null

Herbert and the art of ruling

A few weeks ago I reread Frank Herbert's brilliant Dune, one of the greatest hard science fiction novels ever, with a world at least as detailed and interesting as anything Tolkien conceived. I had previously started in on Dune: Messiah, but decided it was really dumb and quit about two thirds of the way through.

Well, after reading Dune again, I decided it was time to read the rest of the series. So I muscled my way through Messiah - which I still think is pretty bad - and have now finished God Emperor of Dune. What follows are my thoughts, which use the Dune Chronicles as a launching point into political theory.

Dune is, as I mentioned, one of the greatest works of science fiction ever to be written. Herbert takes notice of culture, religion, politics, geography, ecology, economics, and technology in a manner which has rarely - if ever - been matched in genre fiction. There is a movie associated with the book, directed by David Lynch. The first time I saw it I though that it was a massive betrayal of Herbert's vision. It is really different.

Then I learned that Herbert was integral in the film's creation and personally oversaw most of the changes. So the differences were obviously something he wanted. Now, reading the rest of the books, I have come to believe that this isn't because he simply had a different intent in Dune than I had previously been aware, but that some time after publishing Dune he realized he had a project in mind and simply used the world he had created in Dune to tell it. The crux of this project is present, though latent, in Dune, and can be found in the following aphorism: “A world is supported by four things: the learning of the wise, the justice of the great, the prayers of the righteous, and the valor of the brave. But all these are as nothing without a ruler that knows the art of ruling.” Herbert sets out over the next several thousand pages of the Dune Chronicles to examine and explore the nature of this most essential and chimerical art.

The underlying concern and motivation behind the actions and decisions of the main characters – when they are at their best anyway, for all are subject to passions which can lead to failings of virtue – is a fear that civilization will fly apart into a barbarism from which humanity will never recover. Paul Atreides in Dune sees and fears his own success, knowing that it will produce a bloody jihad, as his legions are released upon an unsuspecting universe. He turns out to be right, and in the next dozen years, billions of people fall before the Fremen. As the series progresses, the Atreides become concerned with the survival of the human race itself, as they fight against forces of humanity which threaten to end every human life. Essentially, Herbert seems to be preoccupied with the question of why humanity does not destroy itself, because it seems to be ready ot do so at the drop of a hat.

I consider Messiah to be a rather unfortunate inclusion in this spectrum, as it is, as far as I can tell, only necessary to set up the following volumes. I'd recommend you skip it except that essential plot points are contained therein. The real action begins with Children of Dune. Herbert begins to play with themes that are timeless in their character, and essential to any long-term political perspective.

Allow me to provide a few key quotes, mostly from God Emperor of Dune, to provide background for this assertion.

"All rebels are closet aristocrats."

"The art of government requires that you never give up the initiative to radical elements... Radicals are only to be feared when you try to suppress them. You must demonstrate that you will use the best of what they have to offer."

"There has never been a truly selfless rebel, just hypocrites - conscious hypocrites, unconscious hypocrites, it's all the same."

"Scratch a conservative and you find someone who prefers the past over any future. Scratch a liberal and find a closet aristocrat. It's true! Liberal governments always develop into aristocracies. The bureaucracies betray the true intent of the people who form such governments. Right from the first, the little people who formed the governments which promised to equalize the social burdens found themselves suddenly in the hands of bureaucratic aristocracies."

"What you cannot control, you harness."

“The pattern of monarchies and similar systems has a message of value for all political forms… Governments of any kind could profit from this message. Governments can be useful to the governed only so long as inherent tendencies toward tyranny are restrained. Monarchies have some good features beyond their star qualities. They can reduce the size and parasitic nature of the management bureaucracy. They can make speedy decisions when necessary. They fit an ancient human demand for a parental (tribal/feudal) hierarchy where every person knows his place. It is valuable to know your place, even if that place is temporary. It is galling to be held in place against your will.”

"The difference between a good administrator and a bad administrator is about five heartbeats. Good administrators make immediate decisions [that] can usually be made to work. A bad administrator, on the other hand, diddles around, asks for committees, for research and reports. Eventually, he acts in ways which create serious problems... A bad administrator is more concerned with the reports than decisions. He wants the hard record which he can display as an excuse for his errors. [Good administrators] depend on verbal orders. They never lie about what they've done if their verbal orders cause problems, and they surround themselves with people who act wisely on the basis of verbal orders."

"The problem of leadership is inevitably: Who will play God?"

This last, especially, is the crux of Herbert’s political thought. The major conceit of the latter half of the Dune Chronicle is that one man accepts a hideous transformation of his own body – which grants him a lifespan measured in millennia – and combines that with the conscious presence of all of his ancestors in his mind (yes, weird, but you have to read the books for that to make sense) to take the throne of an Empire that will last for generations upon generations. In short, we have an immensely physical powerful being that is immune to poison, disease, and almost impervious to all forms of trauma, that carries with it the wisdom and knowledge of thousands upon thousands of historical figures both great and small. Oh, and he is also prescient, able to look into the future as well as the past. And this person takes power. Hence the title God Emperor of Dune.

This sounds like the platform for utopia to finally be realized. The quotes above expose the essential weaknesses of both authoritarian governments – generally conservative and traditional – and representative governments – generally liberal and progressive. Authoritarian governments are gifted by their ability to make powerful decisions quickly and efficiently. But they are given to stagnation, oppression, and live essentially in the past. Conservative governments are ultimately incapable of adjusting to the progress of history. A good example of this from our history would be the Islamic Caliphate. It just couldn’t adjust rapidly enough to keep pace with Europe. Furthermore, though authoritarian governments may refrain from oppressing their people for a generation or two – at the very longest – the presence of power concentrated in the hands of a few inevitably leads to tyrrany. Representative governments are benefited by their promise of liberty, a keener sense of personal justice and equality, and are, for a time at least, resistant to the oppression of the disadvantaged by the advantaged. But all rebels – and liberals are at their core rebels of some sort – are closet aristocrats and hypocrites. No one’s motives are entirely pure. And when the few people who manage to take on the system succeed in their endeavor, they find that they become the system, and the rest of us find that the old rallying cry that those in power should not have it was really a backhanded way of saying that the agitators are the ones that should have it.

Herbert knows these things. Herbert knows that even the best governments decay, crumble, and are replaced by new, improved versions that aren’t actually any different. What do we need, asks Herbert, for a good society, having tried just about everything times without number? So humanity having failed at everything else, Herbert tries to see what happens when we have a god rule over us, or as close to that as we can get and still look to someone who once was entirely human. Thus we get Leto Atreides II, the God Emperor. He is as close to omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent, and immortal as one can get without actually being such and remaining mortal. The ultimate benign dictator who can rule for generations.

Herbert makes this being the ruler of an intergalactic civilization for thousands of years. This is the ultimate benign dictatorship, which has been viewed as the supreme governmental model by political scientists and philosophers throughout history. We are given Leto’s Peace, the enforced tranquility that overtakes humanity under his rule. Herbert sees the long, deep desire in the human heart for peace. And Herbert realizes through his fiction that even this, the ultimate political solution, described by Herbert as in spookily eschatological terms as the Golden Path, will not work. The following is a discussion between Leto II and an advisor, emphasis mine:

Leto: “Peace encourages aggression.”
Duncan: “And you say that your Golden Path…”
“Is not precisely peace. It is tranquility, a fertile ground for the growth of rigid classes and many other forms of aggression."
“You talk riddles!”
“I talk accumulated observations which tell me that the peaceful posture is the posture of the defeated. It is the posture of the victim. Victims invite aggression.”
“Your damned enforced tranquility! What good does it do?”
“If there is no enemy, one must be invented. The military force which is denied an external target always turns against its own people.”
“What's your game?”
“I modify the human desire for war.”
“People don't want war!”
“They want chaos. War is the most readily available form of chaos.”
“I don't believe any of this! You're playing some dangerous game of your own.”
“Very dangerous. I address ancient wellsprings of human behavior to redirect them. The danger is that I could suppress the forces of human survival. But I assure you that my Golden Path endures.”
“You haven't suppressed antagonism!”
“I dissipate energies in one place and point them toward another place. What you cannot control, you harness.”

Herbert concludes that we need a god to rule over us, for only a god can meddle in the human heart. Yet Herbert concludes, using Leto II as a mouthpiece, that even this is not sufficient. “They say they seek security and quiet, the condition they call peace. Even as they speak, they create the seeds of turmoil and violence. If they find their quiet security they squirm in it. How boring they find it. Look at them now. Look at what they do while I record these words. Hah! I give them enduring eons of enforced tranquility which plods on and on despite their every effort to escape into chaos. Believe me, the memory of Leto's Peace shall abide with them forever. They will seek their quiet security thereafter only with extreme caution and steadfast preparation.”

It seems to me that Herbert has realized two fundamental truths about human society. First, there is deep within the heart of every man the desire for rest. But secondly, there also resides deep within each heart something which makes that rest impossible, and which causes us to revolt against it in this age. Something is just not right.

For me, reading these books solidifies these things in my mind as well as reminding me of two other things. We wait for a Kingdom that is just beyond sight not built with human hands, and that attempts to create or establish that Kingdom in the realm of sight are destructive to those who remain under the sun. Those who think that if utopia is within our grasp need to be opposed rigorously. These ideas are growing increasingly important to me, as the political process in this country continues to decay, and as the faceless Enemy who seeks only chaos and destruction has assumed a form more dangerous than any we have yet faced.

The knowledge that politics is ultimately not the answer gives me a pretty detached/relaxed perspective on politics. Not only is the question of Red vs. Blue fairly trivial (and to be honest, the difference between the DNC and GOP is minimal at best: do you want the puppet on the left or puppet on the right?), but the question of representative vs. authoritarian governments is also largely moot. Neither is going to completely work. Neither contains the seeds of utopia. Neither is morally superior, and the longer I think about it, both seem equally amoral. Governments are not inherently moral or immoral, but amoral, and their moral status depends entirely on their actions.

This may sound like fatalism and/or defeatism, but it isn’t. The understanding and acceptance that all political systems are eventually doomed is not cause for despair, but grounds for exceptional flexibility. As representation is no more likely than dictatorship to usher in the final rest, neither seems to me to be morally superior, let alone necessary. The question becomes one of expediency and preference for one’s family and descendents. You can’t come up with the government that will save the world. It’s already as saved as political systems are going to make it. The final answer lies in the next age, and will not be present until law is written in flesh instead of stone. You can, however, support a government that can make life better for you and your family. This may sound selfish, but it isn’t any more selfish than any other perspective, it’s just more honest. Herbert was right about that. You are going to be selfish in your politics regardless of your persuasion. The only question is whether or not you are going to be honest and productive in your selfishness. This gives a remarkably free hand in political matters and reduces irresolvable philosophical problems to the level of the empirical, always a good move. Is monarchy morally superior to democracy? The question does not admit an answer. Is dictatorship better for business than monarchy? Ah, but now we have something to talk about.

So don’t worry about how these things go. Iraq isn’t very significant long term, and neither is the result or lack thereof of this year’s election cycle. The beast from the sea and beast on the land are constantly blaspheming and waging war against the saints, but we know their end, and it has nothing to do with politics. Maranatha.

Posted by ryan at June 16, 2004 04:02 PM | TrackBack