Comment by api

It was a clever device to have a universe where high fantasy tropes can be freely mixed with advanced nigh-magical space flight and other sci-fi tropes, and is one of the things that makes Dune badass. (Heard it described once as "the Foundation trilogy for people who like metal.")

But history has already shown us that manipulation of belief and religion is a more effective and cheaper means of control than technocratic methods. A giant technocratic surveillance dystopia is possible, but it costs a lot more than old fashioned dogmatism with enforcement through herd behavior.

So we smashed religion, a kind of anti-Butlerian Jihad we call the Enlightenment, but the human lust for power and control just followed us into the machine age. If we smash the machines, we'll just end up back where we were. It will follow us there too.

Of course you could say this was one of the sub-themes of Dune, since (reading comprehension test!) Paul is not a hero. He's a religious manipulator, though a bit of a tragic villain in the sense that he feels dragged into it by fate.

IRL I don't think humanity will ever escape this cycle until we can define what freedom even means and reduce it to first principles. Does having thinking machines do my thinking for me increase or decrease my freedom? Does having a religious orthodoxy make my life choices for me increase or decrease my freedom? What's the third alternative, and do we really need to smash either religion or technology to get it?