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Isn't there something in the first book about how the Guild encourages each planet to specialize in a single export for ease of shipping, creating planetary mono-cultures? I don't personally think that's how economics (or genetic diversity for that matter) works, but if Herbert established that as part of the setting then, yeah, I could see Paul presciently seeing a future where things continue as they are and everyone is incentivized to stagnate into uniformity. Does make me wonder how much space travel an average galactic citizen might encounter. I know there's a bit in the books where Leto sends Gurney to try and negotiate with the spice harvesters to stay on for an extended contract and keep them on Arrakis a little longer, so there's some mobility of labor between planets, but I'm not sure if that's due to the unique nature of Arrakis and the spice mining industry.
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Apr 22, 2024 20:27
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| # ¿ May 18, 2024 19:24 |
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I used to think it was a plot hole, but now I think it's really Peak Dune to think about how Yueh's conditioning failed. First, there's the Bene Gesserit theory, meaning it was a situation where multiple factions have so many plans and schemes they end up tripping over each other. But in canon, everything's already kind of falling apart and has been coasting on reputation for thousands of years: the Sardaukar aren't half of what they're cracked up to be, the Emperor playing power games in CHOAM to snip a rising challenger ends up collapsing the whole system, the Guild is letting the Fremen become an existential threat because they're getting bribes, everyone constantly assumes the fundamentals will keep going, even as they undermine them ruthlessly. Then you've got the fact that the Baron himself doesn't seem to actually understand how he did it, since Yueh betrays the Atreides and then catches the Baron off guard when he nearly kills him too—my read from the books is that he betrayed the Atreides to kill the Baron. It's all a total clusterfuck of people messing with things they don't understand as well as they think they do and getting bit in the rear end for it. And finally, the core theme of the Dune novels nobody wants to acknowledge is cheesy bullshit about love. Jessica breaks from the Bene Gesserit's explicit orders because she loves Leto too much to deny him a son; Yueh breaks Suk conditioning because he loves his wife more than ten thousand years of honed psychological conditioning can defeat. It's that combination of smart and dumb that just makes Dune work.
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Apr 24, 2024 20:53
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