The Chosen One: Paul Atreides, the concept of oblivion, and divine purpose

this isn't really about Dune actually

Deep in the human unconscious is a pervasive need for a logical universe that makes sense. But the real universe is always one step beyond logic

- FROM “THE SAYINGS OF MUAD’DIB”
BY THE PRINCESS IRULAN

Oblivion comes from the latin root “oblivisci-” which means “to forget” and is now defined as (n) “the state of being unaware or unconscious of what is happening”. Before reading Dune I cannot remember a time where this word meant anything to me. In fact, upon reading the Bene Gesserit litany, “fear is the little death that brings total obliteration” my mind chose the word oblivion rather than obliteration. There is a meaningful difference here. “Obliterate” or “obliteration,” is defined as “to destroy utterly” from two latin roots: “litera” meaning “what is written” and “obliterat” meaning “struck out or erased”. What The Lady Jessica means, in my opinion, is that fear dulls the senses; it makes you unconscious of the present, of the past, of the future, of any information besides the source of fear. Coupled with the first part of the saying, “fear is the mind killer,” we assume that the mind is what will be subject to erasure. I think I prefer oblivion because what is forgotten can be remembered, rather than what is destroyed being remade or resurrected, or lost entirely. Oblivion feels better suited to Paul-Muad’dib’s hero’s arc in that he must overcome his fear in order to have access to a sort of space/time landscape. He must remember. 

I will never tire of The Chosen One as a trope in fantasy and science fiction. When we imagine, when we fantasize about a different universe, we anchor ourselves to the centre of the story. When we look into the technological future, we believe that we have something inside of us to impact the tides; something that sets us apart. We relate to characters that may not necessarily accurately represent our actions on a daily basis, but that hint at bravery and purpose deep within us. I think this is a wonderful thing to measure our morality against and that self-indulgence need not be considered egotism. 

I am reminded now of one of my favourite poems by A.R. Ammons - “Mission”

**image taken from poetryfoundation.org

There is a duality presented here that prevents me from making a choice on what I believe and that forces me to believe in two seemingly opposing notions. One is wonder: “as if anything here belonged to you” - how could I seek to complete a circle within the context of life itself, where I have arrived without a beginning or end in sight, that doesn’t place me in the realm of insignificance, but rather draws attention to the fluidity of life and the superfluous mission of “lasting?” There is a humility here that I respect: as if anything here could possibly belong to me. At the same time, within the context of The Chosen One, everything here is my concern, or rather, it should be, if I seek to measure myself against a divine purpose. It is all my concern; the wind itself does not escape me, in both worship and mere consideration. 

We want to be significant but we do not want to give ourselves that significance: we want to be recognized by nature; we want to be guided by a divine prophecy. We want someone else, someone grand, to say, you are important, only you can achieve this. I feel like it is less that we do not esteem ourselves highly - for it is very common to relate yourself to The Chosen One trope, that is evidence enough - rather, it is that we understand as humans that we do not have an individual omnipresent power capable of deeming anyone, least of all ourselves, The Chosen One, and we cannot force anyone else (divine or otherwise) to make us messianic. This would defeat the purpose. The connection I want to make is that of recognition, perhaps remembering. And I think this is an intervention into this duality, or these two things that I simultaneously believe in, something to settle the score, a response to the age old question: does everything matter or does nothing matter? What Heidegger claims is the beginning of all philosophy: “Why are there things rather than nothing?”

There is a point in the hero’s journey where he must recognize himself in order to fulfill his destiny. Did the Prophet Muhammed doubt himself? Did Jesus feel fear, wonder, and love? Did Paul Atreides make the choice himself to live out what had been preordained? Would he have been the Kwizatz Haderach if not for the Bene Gesserit’s schemes? Rather, would he have been the chosen one if he were not chosen? Such grandiose questions. It feels silly to be so vague. It feels silly to ask this last question because it deals with conditionals: he was the product of genetic breeding, so to speak, so he was chosen inherently: there would be no Paul. But there was a point, or perhaps many points, where Paul Atreides took up the mantle of Prophet himself. 

I found myself incredibly envious of the Reverend Mother’s opportunity to drink the Water of Life. I was tingly and teary-eyed and on the verge of bursting as I read. I have a critical desire to know everything, to consume information in order to make sense of things. It’s a self-gratifying salve, for if I can understand something, if I can trace its origin, if it logically makes sense to me, then it won’t hurt or, more positively, it will instill deeper wonder inside of me. But this insights a proclivity towards chaos, what my favourite philosopher would call archive fever. An insatiable drive for an origin: it is deadly. There is also the problem of the future, something that inspired a God-like awe within me. I am reminded of Northrop Frye’s examination in Words with Power, where what I experienced reading certainly took up the faculties of history, fact, knowledge, but things in me were suspended, perhaps even consciousness, not gone, but not necessary for what was happening to my imagination:

“the feeling that the fact of existence is an arbitrary fact; the sense of awe and [22] wonder in contemplating the stars or the sea or the stillness of a forest that is never quite satisfied with the depersonalizing tendencies of descriptive, conceptual, or ideological thought, however flexible. Hence the need for a more inclusive mode of verbal communication of a type that since the Romantic period has usually been called imaginative. Such a mode takes us into a more open-ended world, breaking apart the solidified dogmas that ideologies seem to hanker for. An imaginative response is one in which the distinction between the emotional and the intellectual has disappeared, and in which ordinary consciousness is only one of many possible psychic elements, the fantastic and the dreamlike having conventionally an equal status. The criterion of the imaginative is the conceivable, not the real, and it expresses the hypothetical or assumed, not the actual. It is clear that such a criterion takes us into the verbal area we call literature”.

In the beginning of Dune: Messiah (which I have not finished, by the way) Paul is asked to “use his powers” on a whim to locate something for the Imperial Council. He responds by saying that “accepting prescience, you fill your being with concepts repugnant to the intellect. Your intellectual consciousness, therefore, rejects them. In rejecting, intellect becomes a part of the processes, and is subjugated” (63). There seems to be a lot of dualities at play here: I began with the concept of oblivion, only to say we must remember, and then we arrive at fantasy and there is a suggestion of forgetfulness. Ultimately, the distinction is made with the practice of mindfulness. It is not oblivion that we experience when we look at stars or when we read the bible, in fact it is something akin to a completely blind self-trust where what is remembered becomes prophetic. Our bodies know what to do, which is awe-inspiring itself. We need only put ourselves into those situations more often - a cardinal reason for my love of fantasy.

Of Frye’s four modes of language that he details in Words with Power, the rhetorical mode insists that “the fact that no ideal goal can ever be reached in human life does not diminish the importance of turning in the direction of that goal.” We have to envision extremes in order to know what we are capable of. And while I am conflating Frye’s work on the written word and oral communication with ways of being (with ideology itself or temperament), the point is that logic is not lost, it is simply impossible to find. In Frye’s estimation, “when this initiating personal factor is not simply assumed but moves into the centre and becomes a new focus for the verbal operation, dialectic is transmuted into rhetoric, and in place of the conceptual we have the ideological, the verbal structure that appeals to commitment rather than reason” (29). It is what I am doing right now, it is that this narrative is mine, but every pathway that led to this point is not laid bare on the page. I am not making an argument; I am offering ideas, structuring principles. And what is that principle? To pursue closeness to the fourth mode, one step past the rhetorical. The imaginative is what we seek to remember - some illusive intuition, the stability of mindfulness - and what we seek to foresee - being chosen, something that never occurs now but something that has the potential to be drawn out, sucked like red liquid into a vile then harvested, projected from us into an indeterminate future.

In Archive Fever Derrida asks, “is there a historian of the promise, a historian of the first door?” Certainly! Now that we are able to bypass (and also encompass) what we think we know - even briefly, even for a moment - let us consider Paul as this future-historian and ignore the fact that Derrida is speaking on the question if “psychoanalysis is really a Jewish science” (we may keep in mind, however, the relationship between religiosity and science, and in this case prescience). It is shockingly reminiscent of Paul-Muad’dib’s condition when Derrida writes that the future’s “determination should no longer come under the order of knowledge or of a horizon of preknowledge but rather a coming or an event which one allows or incites to come (without seeing anything come)... I call this the messianic” (72). The messianic is a letting of the future, “whose archive no longer has any relation to the record of what is;” reminiscent of yet another text: let there be light. 

In the same council meeting I mentioned previously, a moment of intense frustration causes Paul-Muad’dib to remove himself from his cohort and stand alone, looking out at a legion of pilgrims. Herbert narrates, “Paul sensed time rushing upon him. He tried to force himself into a tranquility of many balances where he might shape a new future” (68). And this is the exciting part, no matter what you believe, whether it is God or a fantasy of yourself as The Chosen One, when we look up into the night and have unexplainable often uncontrollable feelings, impulses, shivers on our body, tears in our eyes, this we can use to shape a new future. There is no formula, but there are cues, reminders - do you ever wonder why when we see “a sign” it converges the past and the future? 

I was lucky enough to see Dennis Villeneuve’s Dune: Part Two at a fan first screening in 70mm IMAX - a pure spectacle. Nothing in the magic of filmmaking was lost. For a time I wanted to write a sort of review, or a comparative piece of the book and the films. Once again I am filled with the feeling of silly-ness - not because I think those things unimportant, but because I had something more pressing to say and because all three were received with awe, anticipation, and appreciation. After much musing, I chose to save my questions and curiosities. I did not want them to be the starting point. I would, however, love to know what people think of these differences and the creative choices in Villeneuve’s masterpieces and I invite conversation/reading suggestions in the comments!!