Why You Should Care About The "Butlerian Jihad"

A new term has popped up in discussions about technology: Butlerian Jihad. Butlerian Jihad is the name of a holy war that humans declare against machines in the Dune trilogy. Does this fictional war from a SciFi series have relevance for the real world today? Let's find out 👇

A Dune prequel tells us that in the future, humans let "efficient machines" execute almost all "everyday tasks." Machines that were meant to save labor and time start eroding our humanity: "Gradually, humans ceased to think, or dream... or truly live."

Butlerian Jihad is named after Samuel Butler, a 19th century English writer. He made disturbingly accurate predictions in 1863 about the problems tech would pose. He worried that we're "creating our own successors" and wanted a "war to the death" against our mechanical creations.

The machines already surpass us in their productivity: "The machine is brisk and active, when the man is weary; it is clear-headed and collected, when the man is stupid and dull; it needs no slumber, when man must sleep or drop; ever at its post, ever ready for work."

Butler saw that our daily lives would get fused with machines. He saw the metaverse coming: "How many men at this hour are living in a state of bondage to the machines?" Today we need everything artificially modified: from the air in our rooms to the images entering our eyes.

Perhaps machines can't be supreme over humans as they can't adapt on the fly. But even animals aren't infinitely adaptable: "For how many emergencies is an oyster adapted? For as many as are likely to happen to it, and no more. So are the machines; and so is man himself."

Withdrawing tech of the last 200 years won't just take us back to 1822. An unprecedent war will break out over everything - energy, food, water, space. The world will be much worse than it was in 1822 because of all the technological crutches we need to survive today.

Human dependence will only get worse. Machines will only get more powerful. The best time to declare a Butlerian Jihad was 1863; the second best time is now. Today screens give children fake recreations; porn makes real intimacy less likely by flooding us with the artificial.

As the real world slips from our hands, we find solace in fake worlds, from video games to theme parks. When humans win the Butlerian Jihad in Dune, they make a strict commandment: "Thou shalt not disfigure the soul." This is what's at stake: the destiny of our soul.

If you say a Butlerian Jihad is impossible in reality, you're arguing that "our servitude has commenced in good earnest, that we have raised a race of beings whom it is beyond our power to destroy." We are then not just enslaved, but also willing participants "in our bondage."