Fear is the Little Death That Brings Obliteration
How Dune teaches us to float above the storm
I must not fear.
Fear is the mind-killer.
Fear is the little death that brings total obliteration.
I will face my fear.
I will permit it to pass over me and through me.
And when it has gone past, I will turn the inner eye to see its path.
Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain.
The infamous Litany Against Fear from Frank Herbert’s classic novel, Dune, is a litany spoken by several prominent characters to help focus and calm their minds in times of peril.
In the first of Denis Villenuve’s film adaptations, the protagonist, Paul and his mother, Jessica are on the run from the “bad-guy” Harkonens1 in an aircraft. The Harkonens, in hot pursuit, force the two to remain on course, towards a giant oncoming sandstorm with winds of several hundred kilometres an hour. As they enter the unknown chaos that awaits them, Jessica recites the litany.
After losing their pursuers in the storm, Paul is left fighting for control of the craft. The winds are too strong. The sand cuts through the metal like shards of supersonic glass. He struggles and fails to bend the situation to his will. He realises that his only option is surrender. So, he lets go and closes his eyes, pushing the control away.
The swirling winds force the craft upwards towards the calmer and clearer precipice of the storm. The turbulence eases and light seeps back in through the cracks in the chaos. From this elevated vantage point Paul retakes the reigns and guides them back down to solid ground.
I feel a lot of us are caught in a similar bind today, flying blind through the sandstorm of modernity. Everything’s moving so damn fast. It’s disorientating and can leave us fighting for control over forces that transcend us, that we struggle to fully grasp or accept.
For better or worse though, this is the state of our present predicament. As our technology advances past our maturity and our knowledge runs laps around our wisdom, as we fight for control and pit ourselves (willingly or not) against all others doing the same, we overlook the reality that we’re all whirling around in the same storm… Fear.
The sandstorm Paul and Jessica confront symbolises visceral fear on a grand physical scale. When they face it, it passes over them and through them, enveloping them completely, and only once they surrender to it and accept it, allowing it to pass, does it finally fade. On the other side, only they remain.
Fear is everywhere. It’s both the storm itself and the “Harkonens” forcing us into it. The more we fight the fear, the more we vye for control over it, the more we get sucked into its void. We must instead face our fear daily. We must not die the little death that comes from denying what reality lays in front of us.
In the era of A.I. and algorithms many of us now curate false realities for ourselves. Our cameras edit the memories we capture. Our newsfeeds keep us in bubbles of biased information. In the fight for control we cut ourselves off from the natural world. It’s like we’ve become so terrified of letting go that bullshitting ourselves en masse has become the only option.
When we don’t permit our fear to pass over and through us it gets stuck, seeping out through rage or escapism — fight or flight. Only once we can do what Paul did and push our need to control away can we be released from our fear.
Freed from what once weighed us down, we can ascend upwards, where the skies clear and the light returns and with it our agency. We lose the illusion of total control. We accept the gravity of forces more powerful than us just as we accept the ground on our feet. But now, at least, we can see where we’re moving and influence our path with clearer intention. We can float above the storm.
The Harkonens in Dune are a brilliant embodiment of Moloch. Their home world, Giedi Prime, is an industrial wasteland and their sole motivation appears to be power, acquired through the control and ever-increasing production of Spice (the most important substance in the Dune universe, with psychedelic qualities essential to interstellar travel — long story!).