GEDC Session VI Observations and Questions

Observation: Leto sort of gets penetrated by Siona when she falls asleep in him for warmth. How receptive of him.

PJ B

Observation/Thoughts : I had a meditation on my 'Is there a real-world museum Fremen?' and what I came up is 'White Monkey Jobs'. That is, if you've not heard of them they're where Caucasian foreigners are hired to stand around and pretend to be a employee of the Chinese company or representative of a international company to increase the value of the Chinese company. There's a few video essays and documentaries on them. It's not the same on a lot of levels, but I think it harmonizes well on two fronts: 1) the disconnect from the original land 2) twisting of culture to new purposes. It's missing the hand off to a new future part. But that's what I got.

Clear Menser

When Duncan spat on the floor at the feet of Moneo... Right before being completely outclassed... Hasn't he hung out with enough Fremen to know spitting like that hits different on Arrakis?

Alfredo Colindres

Question: Are the Sand Worms the only truly non-terran life we have seen in the Dune books? When Leto was describing the creatures of his private desert, I realized that all of them, as well as all the creatures mentioned in previous books seem to have come from Earth just like humans. Even the six legged thorses we saw earlier in this book were just genetically altered horses. So in all these books have we only seen one life form that was not native to earth? Observation: Sort of veering from my previous question, I know the Great Convention forbids the use of atomics against anything but an "other intelligence" which I took to mean Sentient extra terrestrial life. We have never encountered said intelligence. We have had gone through nearly 4 novels taking place across thousands of worlds, thousands of years in the future, and have not encountered one intelligent extra terrestrial race. I had always thought that was contrary to the way this type of science fictin is supposed to work! And I don't feel cheated at all. It is amazing what Herbert did with nothing but human beings, a few worms, and time. Or maybe his whole point is that we can become and extra terrestrial (or post terrestrial) race ourselves.

So much to talk about. To get back to last week's observation, Leto appears to be an adept of constructivism, particularly, discovery learning, where the learner has to discover/construct knowledge by themselves. This does not work well in general, as it assumes quite a bit of general knowledge that must have been explicit taught already, and a curiosity and drive to discover/learn what is meant to be taught. For example, Siona keeps not closing her stillsuit mouth flap, Leto could remind her easily, but would rather let her die and have to breed the next one than make things move forward. In many ways, Leto reminds me of teachers and professors who have forgotten how they acquire the knowledge and can no longer explain or teach to those who do not have the necessary expertise. Would you agree? In the Hwi & Duncan chapter (and the one before), I could not help but see the Virgin Leto vs Chad Duncan meme throughout. Leto is an incel, possibly a black pilled one (or close to black pilled). On Leto being a failure of a planner/leader/just plain dumb: he took away the Bene Gesserit breeding program but couldn't in-house the Tleilaxu ghola production? So dependent on Duncan gholas but he had to outsource that for millenia? How about telling Moneo "you're the one I'd chosen to breed with Hwi, now it's too late" after-the-fact, why not tell him *before* so as to prevent the Duncan's uncontrollable sex urges from winning that race? Or did Leto actually intend for Duncan to breed and is lying to Moneo? Finally, Duncan is also a horny teenager apparently, but a homophobic one cuz *somehow* he finds girl-on-girl very objectionable instead of hot. What is wrong with him? Last observation: Duncan in a fit of unnecessary homicidal (fueled by homophobia) rage, tries to kill Moneo, gets schooled in anime fashion (not unlike the vaudeville Children of Dune ending). Moneo says it's because of breeding, but as much as genetics can help on that front a little, it mostly has to do with regular training. Did Herbert truly believe in pure hard-wired genetic determinism? His explaining away of the nurture/education side by "genetic memory" seems like a weird-ass copout. What are your thoughts?

PJ B

All observations this time : p.410-411 "It surprised him then to find a few wry smiles among the women. They all returned to their eating." Now, it's true that the Fish Speakers find this funny because they've been around the previous Duncans. That's the easy, superficial normal answer to that business. But I went down the rabbit hole of supposition a little bit, as follows: the present crop of Fish Speakers literally have Duncan's own sense of humor because the Duncans have been inter-bred back into the Fish Speaker population a bunch of times. They're one big extended family. But take it still further: There might be a number of ways they also have Farad'n's sense of humor and that comes from Tyekanik's Sardaukar or a portion of them coming to Arrakis and intermingling with the Fremen precursors of the Fish Speakers -- how many of those Sardaukar officers descend from illegitimate offspring of younger sons of previous Corrino emperors on Salusa for all those millenia? And then there's younger children of all the majordomos before Moneo. In the last section, the presence of Nyshae, the newly promoted sub-bashar with the gore on her boots, provided the clue: she has Corrino blood. So most of the book we think of the Fish Speakers as dangerous to say the wrong thing around, but here's a little modification to that where it's not 100%. p.421 "Evidence is nothing without judgments." What have we been seeing on social media the last few years when looking at politics and corporate media? A number of pundits presently examining exactly this situation where facts no longer matter to persuasion. This might not quite directly fit the reasoning in the page reference but it's closely related to it. p.423 The admonition of Mohammed and Moses: "You are servants unto -God- not servants unto servants!" I'd say how this fits the present political landscape but I also don't want to start a war in chat :) I'll leave it be. Leto hammering at Siona on the test, 3 of the better beats: 1) p.435 "You need have no faith in me whatsoever. I want you to have faith in yourself." 2) p.436 "Freedom can be a very lonely estate." 3) p.438 "And there you are wrong."