The Lie of Great Destinies

There are dozens of explanations of Frank Herbert’s Dune series of novels on places like YouTube. I won’t recommend any in particular; if it matters to you, it’s worth some time exploring it on your own. The only reason I bothered was because I was once deeply enamored with that sort of epic science fiction, and have read several different series of that sort. The written Dune saga isn’t really as deep as it appears, but it’s a whale of a lot deeper than the crap coming out of Hollywood.

Herbert was a big thinker and published a couple other series of that sort, each one sticking to a continuous backstory of the universe. He first came to my attention when I read The Dosadi Experiment, set in one of those other universes. Then I discovered the Dune story. I confess I didn’t read all six of Herbert’s Dune series. On the one hand, I suppose I learned all I was going to and lost interest. My own ideas outran the story, which was getting tattered and thin for me. On the other hand, Herbert was getting downright preposterous with characters and devices that seemed to stretch just a little too far without any justification.

There were other authors and some with even better storytelling, but during my military sojourn in Europe, where I got deeply involved in volunteer ministry, I lost all interest in such entertainment. It was there I learned an ultimate truth that changed my whole outlook. I’ll admit my mind contains its own fantasy engine, something that generates fiction non-stop, most of which never sees the light of day. It’s part of how I explore my own character; it’s how I inspect my convictions. Indeed, it’s how I became awakened to my convictions.

It works like this: Let’s take a look at reality in general as we have experienced it so far. Now, let’s tweak something just a little, but keep it generally plausible. Then let’s run my alter-ego character through the scenario of this alternative universe. How would I respond to various things that I encounter? What would be the life purpose of this character, according to my own convictions?

As a child, this fantasy engine produced predictable results based on the literature to which I had been exposed. As I got older, the fantasies were shaped by my voracious appetite for science fiction and fantasy books and magazines. My tastes drifted and narrowed as I got a better idea of what felt comfortable for me. But I kept reading that stuff into my first round of military service. A very bad assignment in Germany with serious trouble at home caused that mission to abort, and I left the military early. During that time, I got much more involved in ministry. Then I decided my mission required another plunge into the military, and I went back to Europe again. This time I was far better prepared for the ugliness of our human existence. I stopped reading science fiction and fantasy.

It wasn’t a conscious decision. It was conviction. Everything I could find was based on the assumption of how important human destiny was in the universe. That’s a false assumption. That period of my life, including two stints in the military, taught me one very important lesson: This world is a big lie. Humanity is of no real importance in itself. It’s not that the fiction was so terribly improbable, because a lot of it does reflect quite realistically how humans would act under the different circumstances. Rather, the premise that it matters is what I found so uncomfortable against my convictions.

Yes, human ambitions are quite entertaining at times. However, they are also the epitome of tragedy, because they assume that humans and their dreams are significant. They are not. My internal fantasy engine tells radically different stories these days, because my convictions call for a radically different set of assumptions. Every once in a while, that internal noise might produce something worth sharing. I am by no means a master storyteller, but the real issue is that telling the moral truth has a very small market. Still, don’t be surprised if I drop some more fiction in the future to help dispel the false assumptions.