The Machine Crusade - Entry #3

Well, it has been a while.  I guess even though I don't actually give exams that I would categorize as midterms, I am still quite bogged down with work this time of the year!!  Reading more than a couple of Dune pages before falling asleep is all I have been able to accomplish these past couple of weeks.

But I do have a few things to say.  Curiously enough, when I wrote the title for today's blog, it really hit me how the background of this story is about using religion as a weapon.  "Jihad" and "Crusade" should have made this quite obvious and maybe it was to you, but it really is just hitting me ... like a brick.

However, the first quote I wanted to share was this chapter starter:

For all their computerized precisions, thinking machines can be confused in many different ways.

-- PRIMERO VORIAN ATREIDES, Evermind Nevermore

(The Machine Crusade, p. 168)

Since I deal in technology so much at work AND I also teach it, I try to communicate to my colleagues and students how true this statement is.  No matter how smart that computer seems to be, the human operator is much more capable.  The computer is exceedingly capable at precise computations and sequences of computations and can even go through an iterative process that appears like "learning".  But the process is more like trial and error than anything else.  As a college professor, I encourage students to only resort to trial and error when critical thinking has not produced results.  Additionally, although computers might readily identify an error, it cannot explain why the error exists, what caused the error.  So believe me ... Primero Akins ... YOU ARE MORE POWERFUL THAN THE MACHINE YOU USE!

Second quote I wanted to share today was a thought from Erasmus in a discussion with Omnius.  The end result of this discussion, many years later, will be the development of Mentats ... but that is another story.  So here is what Erasmus thought:

Lack of opportunities did not necessarily make an individual stupid, but only shifted his intelligence to a form suited to survival rather than creativity. (The Machine Crusade, p. 185)

Quite simply, this gets at the heart of being a community college professor.  I take this very personally.  I truly believe that given the opportunities, our students can do anything.  Sometimes it is really hard to overcome the years without opportunity, and Erasmus admits to this too.  The earlier the intervention, the better.  But every day when I go to work, I believe in the opportunities we offer and the tremendous impact it often has on the lives of our students.

The Machine Crusade - Entry #2

Recently in this blog, I brought up the question of what makes us human and connected with this, I touched on religion.  I never felt like I got a strong sense of how religion fit in to the 15,000 year landscape of human history addressed by these 16 Dune books but I am starting to form some ideas about it now.

First, I would like to define religion as I had once done in a "Religions of the Eastern World" course back in 1981 when I was a junior at Lafayette College.  The working definition we used in the course was that religion's purpose was to supply answers to the fundamental questions of why we are here, what is our purpose, and what happens after we die.  By this definition, just because a religion might tell you how to live, what to do and not to do, that does not make it a religion.  During this course I came to the conclusion that Judaism, my "religion", was primarily a way of life and not a religion as it really did little to answer these fundamental questions.  But I digress.

On p. 103 of The Machine Crusade, we find Omnius and Erasmus discussing religion.  Erasmus explains to Omnius the following:

From what I have observed, I would conclude that humans are either agnostics or outright atheists, unless they are exposed to extreme pain or stress.  Such attitudes go in cycles through their history, ebbing and flowing like a great tide of human affairs.  Religious belief is on the upswing now, with the Jihad as a catalyst.  (The Machine Crusade, p. 103)

And then a couple of pages later, there is this chapter starter quote:

Unfortunately, some wars are won by the side that is the most fanatical in a religious sense. The victorious leaders harness the holy energy of collective insanity.

--COGITOR KYWNA, The Art of Aggression

(The Machine Crusade, p. 106)

That is when it dawned on me.  Religion is key to the story.  It is a key weapon.  The Herberts don't talk about how religion may answer those central human questions.  They talk about fanatical religious paths and leaders using religion as a tool of war.  That is exactly why Omnius wanted to understand it better as it was being successfully used against the Synchronized Worlds.  And Iblis Gingo spent considerable energy to figure out how to fan the flames of religious fanaticism to feed the Jihad.

Since I really enjoy learning about and discussing all religions, it always had disappointed me that the Dune story had so little for me to contemplate in this area.  But I now have a different perspective to consider.  I have not studied fanatical religions but I see more and more of it in our own society and it worries me.  I don't think further insight from Dune is going to give me less to worry about.

The Machine Crusade - Entry #1

I am more than 70 pages in to The Machine Crusade and nothing to comment on yet.  So why am I posting?  It has been awhile since I read this book but two of you (my blog readers) read it recently and had commented that it wasn't as good as the other prequel books.  I didn't remember that being the case.  I remember that it was important to read to follow the story that climaxes in The Battle of Corrin.  But I didn't recall it being slow or weak.

But now that I am blogging this experience of reading all these books, I couldn't help but notice that I had gotten more than 70 pages in and did not have a single thing to talk about.  Hmmm.

Well ... back to reading ... maybe I will find the need to post on something on the very next page ...