GEDC V Questions and Observations

This was my original 1st observation but somehow Patreon lost it when i added the others: OBSERVATION p.311 "What good are police and prisons when the breaking of a law is not a sin?" If you don't viscerally feel in your gut that an act is wrong in essence then why is it officially a crime? We are in that phase right now in the U.S. , with so many laws that some contradict each other. The part of the legal system dealing with classical crimes such as murder, where the law is almost the the same as English Common Law 500 years ago, is pretty solid but the farther you get from what Alan Watts called the game of billiards, the farther you get from Newtonian mechanics, you start getting into abstractions like insider trading or computer-copyright violations. And then the culture is getting more secular by the minute. Those fights are going on right now in the Supreme Court, etc. So like two things going on, the subject matter is getting to be less about physical things and our connection to classic morals that used to come from religion feels also like it's decreasing. So Leto is kind of intimating that when morals and law are divorced the police and the individual are just two competing criminal enterprises and not really evil, but at best neutral where it's your word against theirs. But it's an even-handed discussion because Leto is on one hand proud of his creation but also kind of lets Duncan know he's ok to be creeped out by it. It's interesting Frank usually calls out the merging of religion and government as a negative in terms of a power-grab motive, but here he seems to be saying that there should at least be some morals in law instead of something sterile. This was originally more carefully written but Patreon lost that copy somehow.

Also one more quick one: What is Malky's origins again? I've forgotten Malky's background, where we first learned of him and what his whole deal is? :)

Cazzamatazz

Question: do you feel like Leto has genuine empathy or love for anyone around him? He seems a bit detached from everyone, he observes Duncan, Anteac, Siona and Moneo like experiments... Even his love for Hwi feels possessive and more about holding onto his own human sensations/ emotions rather than knowing anything of depth about her... While it's cute to see him long for love and emotional connection - it doesn't quite feel like it's a real true connection. I get the feeling his alienation is too far gone now and he's really not going to be able to connect with people for long now!

Cazzamatazz

p.379 Leto observes that Moneo controls himself - compare the observation by Duncan to Alia about Stilgar in Children of Dune about 'knowing the length of his teeth'. Both Moneo and Stilgar being married to duty.

p. 333 the statement about the difference between a good administrator and a bad one being about 5 heartbeats actually traveled a bunch outside the main Dune books as just a favorite thing Frank liked to spread around, I think it's in "The Book of Frank Herbert" and also maybe in one or two of the interviews Frank did. The statement about relying on verbal orders makes me think about a biography of George S. Patton though maybe that's also more just the training everyone got in the same era as he did, at Leavenworth (around 1926)

Question: Leto loved that massacre a bit, didn’t he? Just a little? I imagine the water agony must be awful, and the loss of life. But it had to be interesting and heart racing. Observation/Question: Back in a previous Dune Club I drew the parallel between Fremen and Contemporary American Rednecks (in terms of connection to the land, quickness of honor reflexes, etc…) But I wonder if there’s a Contemporary Museum Redneck? Like, separated from the continuity where they grew and thrived? BTW, I don’t know what my obsession with Rednecks is, but Thomas Sowell has a great bit of history essay where it overlaps with Black culture. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Rednecks_and_White_Liberals Question: Is this book preachier than the previous three? It seems a little more talking-head to action ratio of 4:1. No real data though.

Clear Menser

I added a bunch more observations while you were talking, on the fly: (the first (pretty lengthy) observation got stuck way at the bottom of the list because Patreon lost it and I had to reenter it) p. 316 One of my favorite zingers in this section is "You always know the creative because it is revealed openly. Concealment betrays the existence of another force entirely." Even the short things -between- the longer discussions are great in this part of the book. A second one p. 332 "always recognize the accuracy of folk wisdom."

Question: If you had to be one of the following characters in this book would it be Siona, Hwi, Duncan or Leto? I'd choose Duncan. The book would be a lot different if I were him. I'd be like "do your thing Leto, I'm gonna chill over here with the Fish Speakers"

Question 1: Was the bombing retailation for the Tleilaxu flogging? It did seem to come a bit out of no where Question 2: I was trying to look up how Gurney Halleck died and I kinda remember Stilgar killing him in Children but maybe I'm misremembering?

eneve

Observation: On the positive, Herbert said ACAB in so may ways early on in this week's reading, and fancied himself a prison abolitionist, also quite relevant to today where more people are aware of copaganda and how unjust and a tool of the corrupt state both cops and prisons are. Observation 2: for a 3500 year old being, Leto is still nothing but an impotent horny and stubborn teenager. You'd figure after all this time his preoccupations would be vastly different. But we got two consecutive sentences to link Idaho sperm and swallowing. Questions: It's been a thousand years since Leto got a bride, so he's done it before. What's so special about Hwi? What was so special about the previous bride? Or is Leto just turning senile and reverting to a horny teenager phase he never got? Extra question: for all his wanting to be surprised and his fascination with breeding, why didn't Leto experiment more with the randomness of evolution and genetics? Why go single-mindedly for ham-fisted selective breeding and cloning Idaho for his ancient sperm?

PJ B