Wield Desert Power
A Response to Luke Burgis' "The Three Cities and the New Fremen"
I am sure there is a German word that precisely indicates “that thrill of recognition experienced upon reading another person’s precise articulation of an idea you have struggled to put into words.” Whatever that feeling is named, I experienced it on reading Luke Burgis’ masterful pair of essays for Wired magazine (The Three-City Problem of Modern Life) and his own Substack (The Three Cities and the New Fremen). The old salon skill of literary and intellectual response, building upon another’s ideas, is a bit of a lost art in our present turbo-emotional media purgatory. In an effort to build this skill for myself, I feel compelled to somehow add to this conversation. I must stress that I am not sharing here anything that Mr. Burgis is unaware of, nor even much that he doesn’t expressly mention in his own work. We are just doing what we always do here: writing into the void to see who has ears to listen.
To briefly summarize, Burgis lays out a worldview framework to overlay our present moment, broadly sorting people according to their main pole of philosophical allegiance: Jerusalem (pure religious establishment), Athens (pure scientific establishment) and Silicon Valley (pure techno-utilitarian establishment). I will not be able to distill the power of his work into this paragraph, so by all means read both essays if you haven’t. But the main facet I want to interact with is the thought technology he creates, the New Fremen: castoffs of all three cities who can learn how to navigate the treacherous wastes between.
Burgis draws the Fremen reference from Frank Herbert’s magisterial science fiction work Dune, which will end up being featured in one of our Selections soon enough I’m sure. It is in my opinion one of the most important works of religious fiction ever written. In it Herbert depicts a world of ceaseless strife and political chaos, of “plans within plans within plans.” The maelstrom touches down on one world, where the native Fremen have developed a peculiar power unknown to the warring factions who dismiss them as backward primitives. The Fremen have been forged by generations of isolation and suffering into something unique. They have proven able to survive unimaginably harsh conditions, and to thrive in them. They have gained what Herbert’s characters call “desert power.”
God created Arrakis to train the faithful. ~ Frank Herbert, Dune
Desert power is that personal reserve of hardiness and depth that can only be built by long seasons of life’s abrasion and punishment. It is found in the self-possession of the one who has seen their beliefs and hopes weighed in the scales of unblinking reality. It is not only the gnarled flesh of the anchorite, but the confident step of the sojourner who can walk through the city and yet remain free. For the Fremen, desert power was the creation of a home in the midst of impossibility. They could see the traps that lured other civilizations and denied themselves the things that brought ruinous softness. They became people of unplumbed resources, deceptively resilient. They defied the logical planning and brute force of their enemies because chaotic centuries cut off from these luxuries had taught them to rely on subtler senses. Deserts are a constant physical reminder, through immensity and utter uncaring sterility, that human life is a weak and passing vapor. An environment this brutal slowly obliterates the meaningless and the unnecessary, leaving dead pretensions to be scoured away like the ruin of Ozymandias’ statue. Such places demand strength and foresight beyond human ability. They are places of spiritual sharpening, where we forsake the heaped detritus of the city and remember our true condition. Those who survive return changed.
John the Baptist had Desert Power. "He was in the wilderness,” eating locusts and honey, learning the voice of the Lord and disciplining his body to obey, until the day God sent him to the Jordan. What could you do to threaten a man like that? What hardship could possibly deter him, what luxury could possibly tempt him? John was a master of the wilderness, not just physically, but spiritually as well. People who intentionally deny themselves…build true strength. ~ Tyler Warner, Struggle and Surrender
This vision for desert power is the only thing I feel I can add to Burgis’ excellent prescription for our times. He is careful to note that mere retreat from the Three Cities is not enough to guarantee the avoidance of their peculiar destructive tendencies. But I find in the Fremen an additional compelling model, not just for survival through chaos, but seeing through chaos to a bright future. The Fremen both absorb and utilize the tools and ways of their enemies. But they also synthesize their own peculiar culture, vision and path that exists independently of any other, a path they walk whether at home in the wasteland or treading the streets of civilization. Crucially, Herbert presents the Fremen as the only people in his milieu with complete religious commitment. They pursue this path independently of the major Cities that they interact with; I suppose the Harkonnens could represent Silicon Valley’s brute utilitarianism, the Atreides the shrewdness of Athens, and the Bene Gesserit the mythical tradition of Jerusalem. But not even the religious establishment expect that the prophecies will really come true. While everyone else savages one another in power games, Fremen society pursues a completely asymmetric goal: they are working in faith to turn the desert into paradise.
There are many degrees of sight and many degrees of blindness. What senses do we lack that we cannot see another world all around us? ~ Frank Herbert, Dune Messiah
The emerging world of web3 technology gives us a perfect example scenario to test our theories. Each of Burgis’ Three Cities have failed in some way to engage meaningfully (or in Silicon Valley’s case, wisely) with this groundbreaking opportunity. This is most easy to see now, in times of difficulty, when the vibes are off and the liquidity dries up. The easy narratives of each City allow them to dismiss, suppress or harness the revolution as it suits them. Gradually, the Fremen will appear out of the desert. They accept the technology of the City not as a bauble or a tool of advancement within the City, but as a weapon. Carrying such weapons back out into the sea of dunes, they live in service to an unseen Kingdom waging an unseen war. In order to be free to pursue such a life, you have to be prepared for derision. The Cities do not take well to impossible visions. They will mock you until they understand that you are serious and possess the capability to deny their temptations. Then they will declare you outlaw and hunt you.
The failure of the Cities to understand web3 stems from the exact phenomenon Burgis identifies: each failing to account for their own massive blind spots. Silicon Valley cannot comprehend that people are corrupt in nature, and therefore can be expected to act selfishly and amorally as a rule. Jerusalem seems bent on putting each new century back in a box where it cannot harm the quest for past habits and superficial trappings. And Athens is terrified of anything it cannot control and monitor. Each City brings a constant obsession with recreating skeuomorphic copies of its own understanding and tradition into the new technological realm. Fremen have survived long enough to know that you cannot change the past or control the future. But if you listen long enough outside the walls, sometimes you are gifted with prophetic vision. Fremen technology will be uniquely tailored to strange ends with the benefit of long experience the Cities will never attain. Adapting to the natural forces and human tendencies at work, it will leverage everything available towards the single minded goal of thriving in the desert until the desert becomes a sea.
The Fremen were supreme in that quality the ancients called “spannungsbogen” -- which is the self-imposed delay between desire for a thing and the act of reaching out to grasp that thing. ~ Frank Herbert, Dune
If you are wondering “but how will we get the City to recognize our autonomy” or “when do we know that it’s safe to come back home,” then perhaps you’ve not yet embraced the way of the desert, friend. Burgis wisely forsees “…the ancient questions are reemerging due to the unsettling nature of technological change. We are being forced to confront these timeless, existential questions by developments that cause conflict between the three cities.” The Cities will end up (or rather, endlessly continue) warring with each other, and the middle ground will not be open to us. We either join them, or embrace the pilgrim way. Spiritual premonition is the unseen sense that most now lack. As usual, I am not speaking metaphorically. We cannot simply learn to flee danger, we must master our desires. The Fremen are not people in a desert environment, they are people of the desert even as they walk among dwellings of others. At all times their mentality, drives, appearance, customs and goals are not simply opposed to those they encounter, but rather completely separate and alienated from them. They are incalculable and mysterious precisely because their reactions and motivations are submitted to a terribly singular plan of life. And therefore life and death are their servants.
And the satraps, the prefects, the governors, and the king's counselors gathered together and saw that the fire had not had any power over the bodies of those men. The hair of their heads was not singed, their cloaks were not harmed, and no smell of fire had come upon them. Nebuchadnezzar answered and said, "Blessed be the God of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, who has sent his angel and delivered his servants, who trusted in him, and set aside the king's command, and yielded up their bodies rather than serve and worship any god except their own God.
Daniel 3:27-28 We are not going back to softer times, or kinder places. We walk with broken step the desert path. We will learn to hear the voice of God. The rocks and caves will be our home and from them we will gather strength. Let the city-dwellers scoff, grown soft from seasons of congenial semi-life. Content to live entire lives without being understood or perhaps even seen, we serve a purpose beyond ourselves. We would venture into the deeps so that we may return with eyes ablaze. In the desert, we pass beyond the materialistic veil the Cities attempt to draw over the world and reenter the true realm. There, spiritual reality becomes clear as crystal to the soul, admitting of no civilized compromise or uneasy ecumenism. Truth is a knife that carves away our bargains with unreality. Sojourn with us as we embark on pilgrimage to an unseen City. We will give you a desert name, and a terrible purpose. All that is required is your willingness to die.
WGMI 😎
'I am sure there is a German word that precisely indicates “that thrill of recognition experienced upon reading another person’s precise articulation of an idea you have struggled to put into words.” '
In English this is called "the spark of recognition."
Wow! I was wondering if you have ever explored Judaism seriously ?