Fear is the Little Death That Brings Obliteration
Dune, Moloch and how to float above the storm...
In the first of Denis Villenuve’s Dune movies, there’s a pivotal scene where Paul (the protagonist) and his mother, Jessica, attempt to evade the evil, Moloch-fuelled Harkonens1 in an ornithopter (one of those dragonfly-looking helicopter things). 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, things look rather dire for Paul and Jessica.
As they enter the unknown chaos that awaits them, Jessica recites the famous litany against fear, from Frank Herbert’s novels, as she attempts to summon all of her Bene Geserit strength and training:
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.
After losing the Harkonens in the storm, Paul is left fighting for control of the craft. But 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, eventually realising that his only option is surrender. He lets go and closes his eyes, pushing the control away.
The swirling winds force the thopter upwards, towards the calmer and clearer precipice of the storm, where the turbulence eases and the light seeps back in through the cracks in the chaos, and from this elevated vantage point, Paul once again takes the reigns and guides them back down to solid ground.
It feels like we’re all caught in a similar bind today, flying blind through the sandstorm of modernity. Everything’s moving so fast. We’re disorientated and fighting for control over forces that transcend us, that we struggle to understand or accept.
For better or worse, this is our reality. Our technology is advancing past our maturity. Our knowledge is overtaking our wisdom. As we fight for control, we pit ourselves against all others doing the same, failing to realise that we’re all stuck in the same storm… Fear.
In Dune, the sandstorm symbolises fear on such a grand scale. When Paul and Jessica confront it, it passes over and through them, enveloping them completely, and only once they surrender to it and allow it to pass does it fade. On the other side, only they remain.
Fear is everywhere—it’s both the sandstorm itself and the “Harkonens” forcing us into it—and the more we fight for control over fear, the more we’re sucked into its void, never to see the natural light of day again. Our only option is to face this fear daily. We must confront reality head-on, moving closer towards it and not away into the whirling, disorientating depths of delusion.
This runs counter to a lot of what culture sells us. You’ll have seen those adverts for the new smartphones with cameras that can change people’s facial expressions and remove trampolines from photos of you dunking a basketball. In this struggle for control and our refusal to let go, we’ve arrived at creating false realities for ourselves. We’re so terrified of having nature’s hand on the wheel that we’ve decided lying to ourselves en masse (and even promoting it as exciting and enhancing) is preferable.
It’s like we’ve only remembered the first part of Herbert’s litany. I must not fear. But a life spent escaping fear is a life spent on the run from reality; a life spent escaping life itself. And that’s no life at all. Yet, it’s the one we’re making for ourselves.
Only when we can let go and push the control away can we be released from our fear. Freed from what once weighed us down, we move upwards, ascending above the storm, where the skies clear and the light returns and with it our agency. We may not have total control. We’re still moved by forces more powerful than us. But, at least now we can see where we’re going and intentionally influence our path.
Fear lurks in every shadow but if we permit it, it will pass. And then only we will remain.
The Harkonens in Dune are a brilliant embodiment of Moloch. Their home world, Giedi Prime, is an industrial wasteland and the sole motivation of the Harkonens 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!)