Great question. So whilst haiku focuses on nature, senryu focuses on human nature, usually with a liberal sprinkling of sardonicism.
Interesting point for sure. I’d be especially interested in a Muslim/Middle-Eastern take on Dune given that draws heavily on Arabic themes for both Arrakis and Fremen.
Epp! Hope there’s not too much mess! 
Interesting take here, @Kendel, though it largely focuses on the recent film, the book(s) are brought up at various points.
https://www.middleeasteye.net/discover/dune-movie-review-arab-middle-east-stereotypes-avoided
This quote stood out as particularly note-worthy:
Herbert’s treatment of the Middle East through Dune has been extensively analysed for the past half-century. One camp regard it as an incisive criticism of western imperialism and a celebration of the resilient Middle Eastern spirit; another camp deem it as yet another stereotypical endorsement of the white saviour myth that reduces the region into a barren wasteland inhabited by uncivilised brutes.
I thought the recent film adaptation was brave in its use of persons of colour for the Fremen (particularly the recasting of Kynes as a black woman. I suspect that like the above quote, the book likely has mixed reactions from non-white western audiences, some praising its scathing take on colonialism. Others maybe see it (as the article alludes) as another SciFi story centred on a white saviour.
Thanks for the article, Liam. That was very good, and the last pans are washed and dried.
I really liked the new movie as well and just read the first 3 novels to prep for it. My daughters got me the dvd for my birthday. It’s time to watch again. Oh, and oldest got me one of the sets of graphic novels, which I need to haul out and finally read, before its my birthday again!
I saw the old movie a few times from the ‘80s, and it was fun, but lacked the gandure and lushness of this new one. Just the music is astonishing. Our local NPR (National Public Radio) station has a neat show once a week that is dedicated to music from movies (and sometimes video games). I heard some of the new Dune music before I saw the movie. It was so gorgeous, I would have caught the movie just to hear the soundtrack, even if it got terrible reviews.
I”ll see what articles I can find by authors of color about the movie and novel. I think that would be interesting to find out.
Thank you for the podcast. It was delightful. I caught you at 35:00. Did you know, when you wrote the haiku, it would all be on our minds, by the time you could tell your friends here about it?
Do you know if all of the poems are in the show notes? It’s hard to savor them well, as they go by so quickly on the air. If they are all or most all in the show notes, I think I will order them.
While I was listening, I wondered if @Klax might enjoy some of the poems (in spite of the lack of a command line option) that have such a strong sci fi connection.
Some of them were really outstanding.
Thanks so much!
Have a super weekend.
One of our elders preached this morning and began his sermon with this quote from George Matheson (from Voices of the Spirit, 1888).
I’m sure I’m not the only one whose prayers have and often do resemble this description. So often, there are simply no words, no comprehension how or what to pray. I know some of the rest of you have been there, too.
154 THE INTERCESSION OF THE SPIRIT. He interprets the groans of the heart not by its feeble capacity for expression, but by the largeness of His own love. The prayers of the Spirit are the unuttered voices of the soul. O my Father, I have moments of deep unrest —moments when I know not what to ask by reason of the very excess of my wants. I have in these hours no words for Thee, no conscious prayers for Thee. My cry seems purely worldly; I want only the wings of a dove that I may flee away. Yet all the time Thou hast accepted my unrest as a prayer. Thou hast interpreted its cry for a dove’s wings as a cry for Thee. Thou hast received the nameless longings of my heart as the intercessions of Thy Spirit. They are not yet the intercessions of my spirit; I know not what I ask. But Thou knowest what I ask, O my God. Thou knowest the name of that need which lies beneath my speechless groan. Thou knowest that nothing but the river of Thy pleasures can ever satisfy my thirsty soul. Thou knowest that because I am made in Thine image I can find rest only in what gives rest to Thee; therefore Thou hast counted my unrest unto me for righteousness, and hast called my groaning Thy Spirit’s prayer.
Brian is a fantatic (-ally painful) reality check for Christians, isn’t it. Along with the Church Lady on Saturday Night Live. Wanna know what we look like from the outside? Wanna know why people think we’re nuts? It’s not because of our superior morality or service.
I’ve been reading Katherine Hayhoe’s Saving Us, and while most of the actual environmental data is probably well know to most who hang around here, one thing she writes about that resonates with me is trying to find shared values with those with who we disagree, and use that as a foundation to build conversation and communication.
Your comment above, @Kendel , is generally true, but if we do as Penner urged and seek to value others as God sees them, not as adversaries to be corrected, perhaps we can find the common ground, and not be seen as such nuts. It is a constant battle to do so, it seems.
Absolutely, Phil. I see those critical parodies as painful mirrors for myself. They force me to evaluate myself, my motives, my actions, the incongruities of my words and my actions…my hubris. I guess it’s a kind of productive humiliation. It’s a lot harder to maintain a position on my high horse this way and easier to look around and think, “Yeah. If these folks can tolerate to work with me, they are more than good enough for me to work with.”
Another good one from Cultish.
Montell treads lightly with religions and makes some very helpful distinctions here between religions and cults. I think her point about being able to leave “sacred time” or not is important. And while Christians may have a broader view of the use of “religious language” and “sacred time” in our lives, we can recognize the difference between our work lives and church experience.
By that point, I would have become so absorbed in Scientology’s doctrine that I would not even be able to communicate with anyone outside the church. “I don’t know if you’ve ever listened to a conversation between two high-ranking Scientologists,” Steven Hassan, our ex-Moonie psychologist, told me, “but you won’t understand anything they’re talking about.” Because with Scientology, as with all cultish religions, language is the beginning and end of everything. In a sense, it’s God itself.
This is the power of religious language: Whether it’s biblical words we’ve grown up with and know so well we never consider anything different (God, commandment, sin), or alternative phrases from a newer movement (audit, PC, Bridge to Total Freedom), religious speech packs a unique punch. Remember the theory of linguistic performativity, the one about how language doesn’t just reflect reality, it actively creates reality? Religious language, some scholars say, is the single most intensely performative kind of speech there is. “Much religious language ‘performs’ rather than ‘informs,’ (rousing us) to act out the best or the worst of our human nature,” wrote Gary Eberle in his book Dangerous Words .
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Think of all the performative verbs that come up in religious scenarios: bless, curse, believe, confess, forgive, vow, pray. These words trigger significant, consequential changes in a way that nonreligious language just doesn’t. The phrase “In the name of God” can allow a speaker to wed, divorce, even banish someone in a way that “In the name of Kylie Jenner” cannot (unless you truly do worship at the altar of Kylie Jenner, believing she has sole jurisdiction over your life and afterlife, in which case, I stand corrected, and I wish I’d interviewed you for this book). You could very well say “In the name of God” (and certainly “In the name of Kylie Jenner”) in a nonreligious way. Scriptural phrases pervade our daily secular lives—just think of Bible-themed slang like #blessed. But these expressions assume a special, supernatural force when stated in a religious context, because the speaker is invoking what they believe to be the ultimate authority to imbue their declaration with meaning.
In order to keep the tremendous power of religious language healthy and ethical, it must be confined to a limited “ritual time.” This refers to a metaphorical domain in which using Biblical words like “covenant” or Tibetan chants suddenly seems completely appropriate. To enter ritual time, some symbolic action typically must take place, like singing a song, lighting a candle, or clipping on your SoulCycle shoes (really). Rituals like these signal that we’re separating this religious thing we’re doing from the rest of our daily life. And there’s often an action at the end, too (blow out the candle, repeat “namaste,” unclip the shoes) to get us out of ritual time and back to everyday reality. There’s a reason the word “sacred” literally means “set aside.”
But an oppressive group doesn’t let you leave ritual time. There is no separation, no going back to a reality where you have to get along with people who might not share your beliefs, where you understand that performing a mantra or citing the Ten Commandments in the middle of lunch would be a violation of the unspoken rules for how to be.
From Cultish: the Language of Fanaticism by Amanda Montell, Part 3: Even you can Learn to Speak in Tongues, Sections ii and iii, Bookshare edition 38%-40%. (bolding by Kendel)
Very interesting. So by that definition one might say Mother Teresa created a cultish domain where she was in charge. Not to a degree that no good could come of it but there is a driven quality to it which doesn’t brook any accommodation of human wholeness. What are known as intentional communities might slide in a cultish direction if there is no demarcation of ritual time. But I don’t have any experience with those so perhaps they start with greater accommodation of human expression than I am imagining. Sometimes I think an obsession with social justice which never rests and allows no moment for enjoyment or personal satisfaction so long as one person anywhere in the world is starving or being brutalized by an oppressive dictator has become cultish. A cultishly inclined mindset might be removed from its original context but find expression in new settings.
Good point about MT and SJ.
The author doesn’t see this as a single determining factor and discusses elsewhere that this kindnof permanent state of ritual time is used as a means of control. So in and of itself, the separatedness or constant focus on a task are not enough to define a cult, but potential features.
Makes you think. In Christianity, at least the variety I profess, we tend to encourage people to not separate life into sacred and secular, but rather to make sure that you are not a “Sunday Christian” and leave it behind on Monday. Perhaps we are cultish. I resonate also with the exclusive language aspect, as the “church words” we use sometimes are meaningless to those outside the church, and is something I think we should work to avoid.
Mine, too, Phil, but there is a difference, too in how we treat our time at church and our time outside it. Maybe sacred and the application of the sacred to the rest of our lives?
The Pharisees were basically accusing them of harvesting on the Sabbath, which indeed was against the law. It was legit to pick a snack from another’s field while walking by/through it,¹ just not to load a bushel while you were at it. Neither Jesus nor the disciples had sinned in the incident.
¹ (An echo ; - )…
I’ll let someone else do the footwork in finding and citing the book, chapter, and verse for that event, as well as the Pharisee’s objection.
News flash: even the sacred which Christians endorse is mediated by human opinion. I know Christians believe historical miracles lift Christianity beyond the need for any human mediation but the belief in that miraculous historicity is itself transmitted parent to child, community to individual or apologist to fresh meat. Nothing wrong with holding such beliefs but I wonder if that entails the necessary belief that no other human tradition includes a sacred dimension or that before the events of the Bible no human regarded anything as sacred or, if they thought they did, they were simply in error. That seems like a difficult position to hold and certainly an uncharitable one.
But I too will just state my opinion and and move on.
There is the complicated Book that people can read for themselves that communicates a few things that may be taken as history without the need for other individuals passing anything down. (And it depends if the meat is kosher. ; - )
Same as you I’m betting.
More seriously, the thought that the Christian sacred is Yahweh endorsed (possibly enforced) is itself a thing that the humans known as Christians believe. My only point is that while every tradition is entitled to hold to their own conception of the sacred, no one has a valid argument which every reasonable human will be obliged to acknowledge why theirs alone is the only correct view.
More from Cultish: The Language of Fanaticism
Recently I read the Westminster Confession of Faith and the Shorter Catechism, and we are reading them as a family now, in preparation for considering joining a Presbyterian church. For all the similarities between standard religions and cults, there are some significant differences highlighted by the WCF and other doctrinal statements from churches I’ve been a part of. The authors of the WCF attempted to provide a clear, exhaustive statement of what such churches believe and hold to. Some parts are hard to understand and rely on technical theological language, but it is not “secret.” It can be found in any theological dictionary. Discussions of the hard parts can be found widely as well. There is no use of “loaded language and euphemisms” that are "purposefully amorphous to mask off-putting specifics about their ideology (and leave space for that ideology to change). It’s precise, often far more unyielding than I like. “Take it or leave it, or live with the challenge of being here and thinking differently. This is what we believe and how we do things.”
Techniques like us-versus-them labels, loaded language, and thought-terminating clichés are absolutely crucial in getting people from open, community-minded folks to victims of cultish violence; but importantly, they do not “brainwash” them—at least not in the way we’re taught to think about brainwashing.
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[R]esearch consistently shows that “even if you’ve got a gun to your head, people can resist if they want to.” That quote comes from our British sociologist Eileen Barker, who’s been analyzing cult membership for the past half century… …But instead, what she found was this: Out of 1,016 study subjects who’d been involved with the Moonies, 90 percent of those who’d been interested enough to attend one of the workshops where this so-called brainwashing occurred decided that the whole thing wasn’t really their cup of tea and quickly ended their Moonie career s. They couldn’t be converted. Of the remaining 10 percent who joined, half left on their own steam within a couple of years.
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[I]t’s not desperation or mental illness that consistently suckers people into exploitative groups—instead, it’s an overabundance of optimism. It’s not untrue that cultish environments can appeal to individuals facing emotional turmoil. Love-bombing will feel especially good to those weathering stressful life transitions. But the attraction is often more complex than ego or desperation, having more to do with a person’s stake in the promises they were originally told.
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Cultish leaders all rely on the power of confirmation bias by presenting a one-sided version of information that supports their ideology and that their followers actively want to hear; after that, confirmation bias does the work for them. Enhanced by peer pressure, it becomes all the harder to resist. Confirmation bias also explains why cultish leaders’ rhetoric is so vague—the loaded language and euphemisms are made purposefully amorphous to mask off-putting specifics about their ideology (and to leave space for that ideology to change). Meanwhile, followers project whatever they want onto the language. (For instance, whenever Jones used the phrase “White Night,” followers like Laura interpreted it how they wished, neglecting the possibility of more violent implications.) For most people, the fallout of confirmation bias isn’t Jonestown-level urgent, but it’s not the woefully naive or desperate among us who get that far. In many cases, it’s the extraordinarily idealistic.
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So while power abuse can look like poisoned punch and purple shrouds, the linchpin is what it sounds like. If a form of language cues you to have an instant emotional response while also halting you from asking further questions, or makes you feel “chosen” just for showing up, or allows you to morally divorce yourself from some one-dimensionally inferior other, it’s language worth challenging. The labels and euphemisms probably won’t kill you, but if you’re after more than just basic survival, surely the most fulfilling life is the one you narrate yourself.“Our inner guidance is the best possible navigation any of us has,” Frank Lyford told me. This doesn’t mean we can’t look outward (or upward) for help through the chaos. “But to me,” he continued, “a good coach is one who does not guide, but shines light on a person’s deepest desires and blocks.” Not a guide, not a prophet, not a guru telling you just what to say. But a candle in the dimly lit library of existence. The only dictionary you need is already open.
– Cultish by Amanda Montell, Part 2: Congratulations—You Have Been Chosen to Join the Next Evolutionary Level Above Human. Section V, 30%-34% Bookshare edition in Calibre. (Hightlights by Kendel)
Why employ moderation; drink (read) from the fire hose. I started listening to Esau McCaulley’s Reading While Black: African American Biblical Interpretation as an Exercise in Hope the other day. It’s going to be great. Well, it already is.
When I walked into my first Bible class, I unknowingly entered the hundred years’ war between white evangelicals and white mainline Protestants. My professors displayed sympathy for the latter. Their goal was to rid their students of the white fundamentalism that they believed was the cause of every ill that beset the South. A better South was the progressive South of the white mainline church. It seems that in their minds, a progressive South was only possible when we rejected the centrality of the Bible for something more fundamental , namely the white mainline Protestant consensus on politics, economics, and religion. I got the feeling that they believed that “the older stories” and “the older gods” were profitable as tales to spur reflection, but could not compete with the new insights bequeathed to us by the latest declarations of Western intellectuals. In this story, Black students do not really enter in as actors . We are acted upon, our suffering functioning as examples of the evils of white fundamentalism.
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But there is a second testimony possibly more important than the first. That is the testimony of Black Christians who saw in that same Bible the basis for their dignity and hope in a culture that often denied them both. In my professor’s attempt to take the Bible away from the fundamentalists, he also robbed the Black Christian of the rock on which they stood.
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My professor’s victory felt too much like my mother’s defeat. She had always told me that the racists were the poor interpreters and that we were reading correctly when we saw in biblical texts describing the worth of all people an affirmation of Black dignity. This entire debate had been crafted and carried on without any regard for the Black testimony. I was a casualty of someone else’s war.
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The other solution on offer at my university was the evangelical world that my professors and others told me to avoid…Eventually I started to notice a few things. While I was at home with much of the theology in evangelicalism, there were real disconnects. First, there was the portrayal of the Black church in these circles. I was told that the social gospel had corrupted Black Christianity.
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To me, it was a sign of privilege to imprison Paul and Jesus in the first century. For Paul, his Scriptures (the Old Testament) were a fire that leaped the gap and spoke a word to his ethnically mixed churches about the nature of their life together. What an audacious thought! The Black pastors I knew had the same audacity to think that texts of the New Testament spoke directly to the issues facing Black Christians. They were part of a long history of Black interpreters who felt the same. Therefore, while I appreciated the doctrinal emphasis on Scripture within evangelicalism, I needed more to feel whole and complete as a Christian.
Reading While Black: African American Biblical Interpretation as an Exercise in Hope, Esau McCaulley. Chapter 1 “The South Got Somethin’ to Say,” Bookshare edition in Calibre, 5%-7%. (Bolded by Kendel)
I wish there were a greater diversity of thinkers hanging around here. For all our areas of disagreement, we maintain way too many shared assumptions.
“Let your conversation be always full of grace, seasoned with salt, so that you may know how to answer everyone.” -Colossians 4:6
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