Conversation between Chris Collins and Eric Benét exploring how Dune influenced Benét’s questioning of religion and authority. Benét recounts becoming skeptical of exclusive religious claims in adolescence, links Dune’s Bene Gesserit and engineered prophecies to how religions can be used to control people, and both speakers share childhood anecdotes about religious instruction and its emotional effects.
Chapters
This time on books that changed my life. What is, what is Dune saying about religion?
That is the other thing about this story that at that particular time in my life resonated so powerful, powerfully with me. Because when I was probably before 15, when I was like 13, I started questioning the exclusivity of the religion that I was brought up in. Not so much the exclusivity, but you know, we're taught, as with most religions, like, okay, this stuff we're telling you right now, this is the truth. Those other religions, they're not the truth. So believe in this truth if you want to get to that place. And so I think that when I was 13, 14 is when I started to question the validity of that line of thinking. And then discovering Dune and realizing how religion was used.
To lay the foundation for a control that was going to come later in time. The other thing about the book is there are so many layers and so many subsects of cultures and groups and religions and beliefs. And it's so incredibly layered, which was attractive to me at 16 years old. But anyway, the Bene Gesserits, way back when that whole thinking machine jihad happened and the humans won. Thousands of years before this, or maybe hundreds, I'm not sure, a sect of, almost like nuns, a sisterhood. And they were called the Bene Gesserit. So the Bene Gesserit's decided that they were going to start this program to try to breed the perfect being, knowing that it would take hundreds and hundreds of years. But they started this program of selective breeding with this person and that person, hoping to eventually come to this person that would be a savior of an and inevitable destruction of the world. What they did was they started to plant seeds of prophecy throughout the universe of one day this will come. And they created this religion. And it was just fascinating to me how people from hundreds or thousands of years ago could tell a story so that people hundreds of years later would follow certain stories that to keep them docile. And that was very fascinating to me.
When I was a kid, I had these two neighbors that I would play with all the time. Caesar and Abel were their name. And I remember my mom said, you got to pray for them because you're going to go to hell. And I was like, no, they're not. They're Catholic. They believe in Jesus. And she's like, no, that's the wrong Jesus. And I was like, that doesn't make any sense.
How old were you?
I'm guessing 10.
Yeah, and that's, that's.
But I was very upset because I didn't want them. I didn't want my friends to go to hell forever.
I know.
And couldn't pray hard enough.
And when you're 10, if your parents say something, then it's true.
But it didn't make any sense.
But it. But it made no sense, man.
Like, and I would ask them and be like, you believe in Jesus, right? Like, have you given your heart to Jesus? And be like, yeah, but it's just a different monetary system is all it was. They went through the priest. We had an offering trait. Like, it was just different.
But then to your story, how sad is it if one of your friend across the street, he believed in Krishna and be like, oh, that's what I mean. Yeah, I can't mess with you then, bro.
You at least believe the world. And they're pretty. They're pretty sure that their thing is the thing.
They're not pretty sure. They're willing to. Like a lot of people here willing to die for the fact that my thing is the right thing. No, your thing is a lie.
It takes a lot of confidence to look somebody in the eye and say your thing's wrong. And I know my thing's right, right? And I have, like, I've never met my thing.
The whole thing.
When you are 15 years old and you're asking yourself those kinds of questions.
Well, that's where my. That's where my mistrust of authority started was in religion, buddy. And then just also how the adults would tell you to do one thing and then they did something else right in your face. They were all having affairs and doing stuff, but you had to wait till you were married and like, it just. None of it, none of it. If you were okay at math, it didn't work, right. It just didn't make any sense.
Yeah, the hip hop, do as I.
Say, not as I do all that. I'm like, no, I don't like that.
All that. I remember being like. I remember having these coles, these coals, waking up from these dreams when I was like maybe 5 or 6 years old. And I would have this recurring dream of me being in a burning lake of fire.
You know, because you taught that, yo, if you don't do this, that and the other, then you know, when you die, you know you're gonna burn forever. And that's some serious trauma for a kid.
