The Answer?

I don't know if anyone else enjoyed that class as much as I did, but considering the number of people who have already given reflective posts, I'd say that it at least interested people.

Okay, Dune. Messiah... Only problem is, we're thinking of this all wrong, and so we're sort of half-right on the whole thing. As I said in class, I have a very limited knowledge of Islamic Second Coming myth, so I really can't speak as an authority on this. However, what I have learned is that the Mahdi (literally: "The Guided One") is not the messiah. He is referred to a Hadrat, literally "Great Presence."

As with any religious figure, not all Muslims agree on the nature or even existence of the Mahdi. I think, though, that I've found a pretty mainstream belief and summarized it here. First, the Islamic belief is that Jesus was not killed, but ascended to heaven alive and became a Muslim. My understanding of what I've read is that the Mahdi will begin a series of wars all over earth to fight the False Messiah, "al-Masīh ad-Dajjāl." In the midst of this, Jesus, the messiah, will come back down to Earth to slay the Anti-Christ. The Jews and Christians will convert to Islam and Jesus will reign over a peaceful, utopian Earth for 40 years. He will then die and be buried beside Muhammad.

So I get out of this that the Mahdi is, indeed, just a guided "seed" to cause the actual messiah's return to Earth. Also, messiahs can die; they just have to do it according to prophesy. I don't know if this is the definitive answer, but I'm almost certain that Herbert was aware of all this when he was writing Dune.

Prof. PTJ touched upon a great point, one that a friend of mine mentioned to me when I first read Dune about ten years ago. As a Judeo-Christian-influenced society, we're expecting a Jesus story when we start talking about religious figures who lead their people out of oppression and to the promised land. Herbert was aware of this expectation and so he wrote an Islamic-based story. This is a brilliant move - it makes the story seem a little exotic, but also familiar. Sociologists have shown that people tend to like things that are slightly exotic, but also familiar.

In other news, perhaps I was a bit harsh on Weber. Our discussion pulled out the good points from his lecture. I still think that the bloody thing was too damn long, though. In my initial post, and once in class, I noted what I perceived to be a realpolitik bent to Weber's argument. Perhaps I should have left it as what I first called it in my blog post, "For the Love of God, Please, and I Can't Emphasize This Enough, Understand the Difference Between Theory and Practice." The term realpolitik is too Machiavellian for what I actually took Weber to mean; it just happens to be more concise than "For the Love of God, Please, and I Can't Emphasize This Enough, Understand the Difference Between Theory and Practice."

Finally, a reflection on the class itself. As I said earlier, I really enjoyed our session, especially the first part. I thought that we had a great conversation going. As Prof. PTJ said, the Pro/Con list itself wasn't the point, nor was finding an answer, really. It was a (highly effective, in my opinion) tool to get us talking about what a messiah actually is, how the book addresses it, and, to bring it back to social science, how societies believe in messiahs. Jonestown, for example. And then, in The Fifth Element, we'll see a savior who no one even knows we need.

I'm skeptical about the court reporter concept we're going to be experimenting with. My personal concern is that I won't be able to do it very well - the only classes I've ever taken notes in are math classes. My mind works more like our discussion did - stream of consciousness style and filled with random pop culture references. My overall concern is that whoever is reporting will be taken out of the discussion. That's one of the reasons why I half-jokingly suggested a transcription. Since I don't do it, I forgot that people follow some sociological variant of quantum theory and act differently when they're monitored. Then again, our discussions center more on the Heisenberg Principle: the more you know about the conversation, the less sure you are about where it's going, and vice-versa.

This is the power of the course, I think. We're actually going somewhere, instead of most classes where you go along a set path to find an answer that people already know, then put a bow on it and take a regurgitation test. Almost any time a class discussion ends in an answer, I'm disappointed. Yesterday's class, by contrast, left me invigorated enough to write an absurdly long reflection. I didn't write it yesterday because I didn't want it to be too long, in fact.

As a rule, I hate postmodernism. I can't stand postmodern architecture or philosophy - I see it exactly as Nietzsche would, I think - it's the road that brings us to the Last Man. Overall, postmodernism is nihilistic and worse, a conversation killer. Not every argument should end with "Well, that's just your opinion," like much postmodernist thought dictates. There are answers to things. Not all things, but some. There are correct and incorrect value judgments; they are not all solely matters of opinion. I'd go so far as to say that postmodernism is causing the increasing rates of depression among all age groups, especially the younger ones.

This class, though, is a perfect example of the good parts of postmodernism. We mentioned going off on tangents in class, to which Prof. PTJ (and maybe Dirk Gently) responded that nothing is actually a tangent. Our class is a great example of that omnipresent characteristic of postmodern art: pastiche. It's what makes (some of) us like Family Guy, its constant references that contain both respect and irreverence. In much of postmodern art, it is the fusion of "high" and "low" culture - some of that architecture I hate is a perfect example. One architect recently featured in the New York Times is building a housing development based on slums, even - merger of "high" and "low," considering how expensive these places will be. Pre-ripped jeans? I see it as an extension of the same concept. I always imagine some starving child in China ripping every pair of jeans that comes past him, crying, "But why? Why do the Americans want holes in their jeans? They let the cold in! Oh, so cold. So... so cold."

But I digress (anyone get the wheat reference from my substantive post yet?). Here we have a great merger of "high" and "low." Science fiction, though it has come a long way from pulp magazines, is still widely considered as "low culture." Social science is "high culture." We merge the two and find that sci-fi can tell us more about social science than can social scientists. So it's only natural that we end up talking about the Comfy Chair or any number of pieces of pop culture. They all contain some understanding of the problem we're looking at. Even the Family Guy cutaways.