Curated Quote: Frank Herbert
“Without change, something sleeps inside us, and seldom awakes. The sleeper must awaken.”
-Frank Herbert [American science-fiction author, 1920-1986}
In my last post, I raved about Dune 2, a film masterpiece. To stay with that theme, this Curated Quote is from the author of all the original Dune novels, Frank Herbert. The book that is the best-selling science fiction book of all time has been converted into the best science fiction film of all time.
“The Dune saga, set in the distant future and taking place over millennia, explores complex themes, such as the long-term survival of the human species, human evolution, planetary science and ecology, and the intersection of religion, politics, economics, sex, and power in a future where humanity has long since developed interstellar travel and colonized many thousands of worlds”. Wikipedia
The bold is my emphasis on conveying why Dune is so relevant to this newsletter. As a recent Curated Quote from R. Buckminster Fuller stated:
“Whether it is to be Utopia or Oblivion will be a touch-and-go relay race right up to the final moment…. Humanity is in a final exam as to whether or not it qualifies for continuance in the Universe”
I believe that humanity has entered a historic transit and that we are at or slightly passed a fork in the road. Our current trajectory is towards a 100 - 200 year future. 100 years at the outside for the collapse of civilization as we know it, and a possible massive extinction - if not complete- in 200 years. These are the currently in place time-lines relative to how poorly and slowly humanity is facing the climate crisis. Without question,
The alternative to this 100-200 trajectory is 100,000 to 200,000 years.
Which would you choose for the next several generations?
If you consider that life expectancy is such that those children under the age of 10 could well live to the year 2100, what would you want for your grandchildren or children?
This is the “Long-Future” thinking that humanity must embrace unless we want civilization to collapse and your great-great-grandchildren to face a violent death. The context for this is that the average mammalian species live for a million years. The mouse, the rat, the racoon, the deer, the gopher, all might survive as a species for a million years. Humanity has been around for some 150-350,000 years, depending on how you measure it, so we should have, perhaps, another few hundred thousand years ahead of us if we are as smart as raccoons, deer, and gophers. I think we are.
This fork in the road now means that humanity must have a seat at the table for the unborn. We will soon be making decisions - or going too slowly and postponing them- that will be unprecedented decisions for unborn generations. I have said that the major issues we need to face - energy, consumption, reliance on GDP, - necessitate our allowing a seat at the table for at least 50 generations of the unborn.
This is a new place for our species. We usually make forward-thinking decisions based on the three to four-generations currently alive.
Herbert’s quote - and vision-reflects two things of relevance:
-the fact that massive change is being thrust upon humanity right now in the 2020s, so most of us are “awakening” from the legacy reality or dreams from the 20th century [this waking up seems to be causing a lot of pain and disorientation, naturally]
-the multi-generational planning set forth in the first Dune trilogy. The Bene Gesserit had been planning over 900 generations to create “the One” and the Arakis evolutionary climate scientist had a several hundred generations plan to move from a desert planet to a green one [this was much more pronounced in the books than the films]
Change and Awakening
There is a widely held view today that we have entered a “dark” reality, where things seem to be speeding towards some political, geo-political, technological, moral, and environmental collapse. Humans seem to not like change so when massive change is felt, we humans go negative. Massive change leads many to experience disorientation as the known moorings are lost. The part of the quote The sleeper must awaken means that humanity is the sleeper and humanity must awaken from the dream/nightmare.
Hundred Generation Planning
The centuries-long evolution to get to “the One” or to “a green planet” is one of the attractions of the Dune books and films. Again, as I wrote in the prior column about Dune 2, this saga is not about some day in the future when some slimy and aggressive aliens battle humanity. representing an absurdly narrow view of what aliens might be. It is about evolution.
What is the title of this newsletter? Evolutionshift.
Humanity will experience a deeply significant shift in its evolutionary journey over the next few decades. More on that will be in future columns.
Back to the great Frank Herbert.
A full length documentary on the life of Frank Herbert
For fellow Dune nerds