The very physical movements that, at an earlier time, would have constituted a brave act of counting coups are now a somewhat pathetic expression of nostalgia.This line from Charles Taylor's Radical Hope reminds me of an aspect of the Sci-Fi novel "God-Emperor of Dune", where the ultra-long-lived cult object-slash-dictator of the Galaxy attempts to preserve the severe desert culture where he came to power, even though the first success of his ruler-ship was turning that desert planet into a temperate earth-like one.
This scheme results in the unimpressive "museum Fremen", who seem to recite lines from a standardized book of Fremen Culture as the communitarian cultural system which was based on strict water conservation is made more and more meaningless when even in the most desert-ish desert, it rains sporadically.
It's interesting that Herbert has his God-Emperor ignore this aspect of change, when the same character has mutated the Fremen's messianism into a religion that can command brainwashed-dogmatic style loyalty on skillions of other non-desert planets with different cultures... Ah well, you can't have everything.
Anyone else up for a seminar: religious themes in contemporary sci fi? hehehe.
That's about all I have, no real conclusions just a parallel example. I hope someone else in this class digs Dune. :)
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