Speaker 1: Meaning a light. Man like this man letting butterfly flapping
Speaker 1: and wing. They've down in the forest.
Speaker 2: Man, it gonna cause the tree fall, letting five thousand
Speaker 2: miles away.
Speaker 1: Man, nobody see it, nobody else see You don't need
Speaker 1: no man.
Speaker 3: Don't they like you followed another story and.
Speaker 1: You got back to that. That's the way. Man don't
Speaker 1: black to day on the Panama Man. Man, you don't
Speaker 1: don't matter.
Speaker 2: Man, I don't pay anyway. All right, this is a
Speaker 2: little different. This is a one off with Thomas talking
Speaker 2: all about Dune. The movie is the book kind of
Speaker 2: the whole I guess you could say universe. And look,
Speaker 2: we'll be back with the historical content, you know, the
Speaker 2: American history of the twentieth century. We'll get back to that, right,
Speaker 2: don't worry too much, but we need a refresher. That
Speaker 2: stuff gets grim after whatever fifteen odd episodes that we've done,
Speaker 2: and so one I thought this would be fun, a
Speaker 2: way for Thomas and I to do something more relaxing,
Speaker 2: just to hang out. But also I think that these
Speaker 2: books and these movies are important to a lot of people.
Speaker 2: I say in the episode, and I think this is true,
Speaker 2: that this is a lot of people's first real book.
Speaker 2: You know what you get as a teenager as you
Speaker 2: kind of move from kids books to something real, something
Speaker 2: for adults. And like a lot of fiction in that genre,
Speaker 2: it's easy to read, it's fun, it's exciting, but there's
Speaker 2: a lot to it deep underneath it. I think what's
Speaker 2: so captivating about Frank Herbert's work is that it is
Speaker 2: truly alien while still being human. Now, when I say alien,
Speaker 2: you know, there aren't a lot of like little Green
Speaker 2: men or anything like that. But to say, the world
Speaker 2: of Doune is one completely and totally out side of
Speaker 2: our moral horizon as classical ethics, Revenge is not a
Speaker 2: moral failing, not something that motivates a spiteful sort of Freudian,
Speaker 2: sexually obsessed villain. It's a normal part of politics of power,
Speaker 2: how men interact. This is also a political novel, very obviously.
Speaker 2: It is concerned with dynastic succession, right, the fate of
Speaker 2: an empire, even the course of that empire. And that's
Speaker 2: what makes it particularly interesting as a starting point. You
Speaker 2: see that, and you see men acting differently from how
Speaker 2: you are told they act in high school civics class.
Speaker 2: This isn't exactly schoolhouse rock, It's nature read of tooth
Speaker 2: and claw, It's nasty business, full of assassinations, double crossing.
Speaker 2: And now, don't get me wrong, this isn't the kind
Speaker 2: of overly dark fiction you'll get from something like George R. R. Martin,
Speaker 2: the idea that no one is special, everyone is just
Speaker 2: a brute with the different layers of self delusion. Paul is,
Speaker 2: our main character, is a demigod. He is more than human.
Speaker 2: He is at once a mass murderer, worse than Hitler
Speaker 2: or Stalin or Genghis Khan, and also the man to
Speaker 2: regenerate a moribund, ossified, decadent civilization, to turn it around,
Speaker 2: to bring it out of a cultural slump. These books
Speaker 2: are drenched in cyclical history, the idea that whether it's
Speaker 2: a man, a bloodline, a country, although that term sort
Speaker 2: of loses meaning, there is a rise driven by hard
Speaker 2: men and used to privation with a strong sense of
Speaker 2: in group preference, a flowering, and then an eventional decline.
Speaker 2: We see, even in this far future human nature. Herbert
Speaker 2: understood human nature and also understood human culture, how humans
Speaker 2: create culture and what makes those cultures exist throughout time.
Speaker 2: This is not the hopeful spacefaring socialism of Star Trek.
Speaker 2: It's basically the Holy Roman Empire in space. Now that's
Speaker 2: a dramatic oversimplification, but it is much more human, much
Speaker 2: more real than the kind of trash you see at
Speaker 2: the box office. And look, I realize, okay, fair enough,
Speaker 2: Denis Villeneuve did do too movies about it. They are
Speaker 2: more coming out, But you understand what I mean when
Speaker 2: I say that genuinely a fascinating universe. Primarily in this conversation,
Speaker 2: we've hit the movies, both the Villeneuve and also the
Speaker 2: David Lunch film, which is a little bit odd, but
Speaker 2: you know, I still enjoy it, as well as the
Speaker 2: kind of main books. But really, this story is fundamentally
Speaker 2: about a great man and the process by which a
Speaker 2: great man goes from being a human to something divine. Now,
Speaker 2: in this case it is literal. Of course, he gains
Speaker 2: powers past the remit of mortal man. But this is
Speaker 2: something we've seen happened throughout history. Napoleon is both a
Speaker 2: literal man his bones are somewhere, and also he's more
Speaker 2: than that. He's sort of this aggrigor, this creature created
Speaker 2: out of millions of different impressions, all blended into one
Speaker 2: Hitler is another David Irving equipped there are two Hitlers,
Speaker 2: the historical and the popular. This is something that has
Speaker 2: happened over and over and over again. The only difference
Speaker 2: here is we're watching it in real time, watching a
Speaker 2: man go from a scion of a noble house to
Speaker 2: a god emperor, the one man leading the entire human species.
Speaker 2: And that's something it's very controversial idea. It's a very,
Speaker 2: I mean to be honest, sort of an intoxicating idea,
Speaker 2: and for this reason the progressive types have always been
Speaker 2: uncomfortable with done one. It is a book about races
Speaker 2: and peoples, about civilizations. Well, it is also one where
Speaker 2: the historical process, the flow of history, providence, one might say,
Speaker 2: is very real and active. Sure are their economic concerns,
Speaker 2: Sure there are trends and forces, but there's something deeper,
Speaker 2: more atavistic, we might say, the base of events. I
Speaker 2: mentioned earlier in this monologue that this is the profoundly
Speaker 2: a liberal book. Both our heroes and villains are no
Speaker 2: slaves to progressive morality. Our main character kills in cold blood,
Speaker 2: he feels no guilt for doing so. He takes many wives,
Speaker 2: He smashes social taboos around the acceptable. I guess you
Speaker 2: could say limits of violence. Our villains are certainly worse,
Speaker 2: you know, bizarre it is, say sexual. I guess you
Speaker 2: would call them industrialist warlords. I don't know, pick your
Speaker 2: terminology there. But there is no point at which anyone
Speaker 2: in this turns to the camera and says, well, this
Speaker 2: is very wrong, or you can't do this. There's no
Speaker 2: moralizing in this at all, even in this extremely hierarchical world.
Speaker 2: There's a chapter that stands out to me. This is
Speaker 2: not something mentioned in Thomas and I's conversation, but something
Speaker 2: that I wish I had, is this idea of who
Speaker 2: is human. This is a world of eugenics, a world
Speaker 2: of genetic manipulation, and there are within the human species,
Speaker 2: or I guess you could say the human conglomerate, multiple
Speaker 2: distinct lines, human computers, prescients, people who can look into
Speaker 2: the future. And even in the noble lines, the rulers,
Speaker 2: the politicians, their succession is heavily managed by the benajesret
Speaker 2: this bizarre conglomeration of female witches in Geneticists, and there's
Speaker 2: a scene very early where Paul Treedees, the main character,
Speaker 2: is forced to go through a travail. He has to
Speaker 2: reach his hand into the gom jabbar, the box of pain,
Speaker 2: to prove if he is quote unquote human. He must
Speaker 2: voluntarily submit himself to unimaginable pain, and if he flinches,
Speaker 2: if he removes his hand, he will be killed instantly
Speaker 2: like that snuffed out. And that's its own sort of
Speaker 2: controversial idea in Doom, the idea that simply having twenty
Speaker 2: three chromosomes does not make you human, does not make
Speaker 2: you a man per se. That is something you achieve,
Speaker 2: that is a special category. Now, that's an idea you
Speaker 2: see throughout the Hermetic texts, ancient Egyptian wisdom and others.
Speaker 2: They would have said, you know, there's only a certain
Speaker 2: amount of people that are insult which you know, as
Speaker 2: a Christian I don't believe literally, But the idea that
Speaker 2: most many are in PCs are animals. This is an
Speaker 2: idea you see in Do Now. You can take it
Speaker 2: or leave it. But that's credibly provocative idea, just one
Speaker 2: of many contained in this book. Now Paul, of course
Speaker 2: he's able to do it. He's able to resist his
Speaker 2: animal instincts, to slave it to his will. And through
Speaker 2: this iron will we see him become not simply human
Speaker 2: but more than human, two separate instances in the first
Speaker 2: book at least, where he goes through this death and
Speaker 2: rebirth to become something more so. Look, there are shades
Speaker 2: of Joseph Campbell in this there are shades of the
Speaker 2: hero with a Thousand payss, but Paula Tredes doune to
Speaker 2: tell the place to start at the end. I recommend
Speaker 2: this book one to anyone. If you hadn't read it,
Speaker 2: you should watch the movies. They're good as well. The
Speaker 2: books are really something special. I like the Expanded Universe
Speaker 2: as well. Dune Messiah weird, weird book, but worth your time.
Speaker 2: Some more great intrigue. But I think primarily if this
Speaker 2: is something you enjoy, look out for those young men
Speaker 2: who are capable of grappling with complicated ideas, who're capable
Speaker 2: of interacting with something challenging. And this is a sugar pill, right,
Speaker 2: It's not too bad. It's a ramp. You know, you're
Speaker 2: not jumping straight into Heidegger at sixteen, but it'll get
Speaker 2: you there. It'll get you thinking outside of simply the
Speaker 2: sort of swashbuckling Ya novels, although now I say it
Speaker 2: Ya novels are probably much more than just adventure stories.
Speaker 2: They're pretty sinister conversation for another day, of course. But yeah,
Speaker 2: I can't recommend this enough, So without further ado, let
Speaker 2: me welcome Thomas seven seven seven talk about Dune. But
Speaker 2: before we get into that, I should have done this before,
Speaker 2: I said, without further ado. But you know what, you
Speaker 2: guys know by now, these monologues are not always perfectly scripted.
Speaker 2: Let me list out our sponsors so you can find
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Speaker 2: knows his stuff. He's offering a great product, the kind
Speaker 2: of programming the support you need to meet your physical
Speaker 2: fitness goals, and also look man like he's been supporting
Speaker 2: me for years now, which probably says more about his
Speaker 2: wisdom than my podcasting, but check it out anyway, here's Thomas.
Speaker 2: All right, Thomas, welcome back to the jay Bird and
Speaker 2: show how you doing man.
Speaker 1: I'm doing well, Man. Thanks for a hosting me. Always
Speaker 1: a pleasure.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm glad to have you back on where you know, honestly,
Speaker 2: you and I have done enough shows on crime that
Speaker 2: I probably should start numbering them like seasons. And point
Speaker 2: is we're talking about something different. You know, he gets
Speaker 2: a little bit depressing just talking about people getting hacked up,
Speaker 2: even if it is interesting in the context of kind
Speaker 2: of twentieth century sociology. So we're going to the movies, right,
Speaker 2: We're talking about Dune, and Dune is really impactful on
Speaker 2: a lot of guys. I think for many people it
Speaker 2: functions as the bridge between reading books for children and
Speaker 2: books for adults. A lot of kids get it in
Speaker 2: that kind of you know, twelve to sixteen age range.
Speaker 2: You know they're reading they're obviously interesting ideas, and normally
Speaker 2: some older man in your life hands you a dog
Speaker 2: eared copy of doing so what happened to me, it's
Speaker 2: what happened to a lot of other people. And Dune
Speaker 2: is incredibly fascinating for a number of reasons. One, it's
Speaker 2: sci fi, it's readable, it's something you can hand to
Speaker 2: a child. There's a lot of depth to it. And
Speaker 2: in much the same way that gene Wolf or other
Speaker 2: kind of science fiction writers that I particularly enjoy, this
Speaker 2: isn't the kind of serialized space adventures. This is a
Speaker 2: profoundly different, sort of illiberal far future. This is not
Speaker 2: Star Trek. It's sort of the Mayor of Engians in space,
Speaker 2: if you will, the Holy Roman Empire. And look, there's
Speaker 2: been a number of films recently we're going to talk
Speaker 2: about that that I think both Thomas and I have
Speaker 2: different takes on than the one you will get normally
Speaker 2: on kind of right wing Twitter. But without further ado commas,
Speaker 2: i'll kick it over to you.
Speaker 3: Yeah, Dune's fascinating, and yeah, I think one of the
Speaker 3: reasons science fiction is important is a genre, and it
Speaker 3: had an outsized cultural significance during the Cold War for
Speaker 3: avariety of reasons. But yeah, it's always been sort of
Speaker 3: a natural format for political theory and a way to
Speaker 3: discuss high politics and in counterfactual terms within a relatable narrative.
Speaker 3: And yeah, that's what turned me on to Doune. I mean,
Speaker 3: to your point, My uncle Gabriel, he was a really
Speaker 3: interesting guy. He was a Spaniard, but he converted to
Speaker 3: a reform church when he married my aunt and he
Speaker 3: became a way preacher and he loved done so when
Speaker 3: I was about eleven years old, Yeah, he turned me
Speaker 3: on to Doune. And he's like, this is an important book,
Speaker 3: you know. And Dune is difficult to categorize because it's
Speaker 3: really neither soft nor hard science fiction. It's it's sort
Speaker 3: of categorically discreete and but it's it's not the stuff
Speaker 3: of fantasy. I mean, I realized it's hallucinogenic oddness and stuff.
Speaker 3: But I got I got a deeper perspective on Herbert
Speaker 3: when I read his when I read his material outside
Speaker 3: of outside of the universe, stuff like the Santa Roga Barrier,
Speaker 3: and he wrote another book where this virus breaks out
Speaker 3: where all women become sterile, and uh, basically things go
Speaker 3: to hell because there's it's it's very different than Children
Speaker 3: of Men. But I I speculate that the lots are
Speaker 3: children of men who was familiar with this book. This
Speaker 3: book came out in like late fifty or something. Okay,
Speaker 3: it was like a novel. But you know, symbolic psychology,
Speaker 3: deep historicism, the architecture of religious belief and historical memory.
Speaker 3: You know, that's that that's weighty stuff and and some
Speaker 3: to somebody like me, I mean, if you're if you're
Speaker 3: a political theory guy, and your primary sources that you
Speaker 3: put a premium on in terms of deciphering this kind
Speaker 3: of phenomenon, it's kind of deep historical phenomenon.
Speaker 1: Is continental philosophy.
Speaker 3: Obviously, you're gonna find Dune more relatable and persuasive than
Speaker 3: somebody who doesn't. What's interesting is Dune was low and
Speaker 3: considered not filmable. And you know there's that documentary that
Speaker 3: a lot of a lot of film people would kind
Speaker 3: of art house people like Jodorowski's Dune. You know Alejandu
Speaker 3: Jodorowski uses art house director and he had this crazy
Speaker 3: vision for Doune. He wanted hr Geiger to design the
Speaker 3: set pieces, and there's concept art. There's like a Coby
Speaker 3: table book, a concept art of Geiger's designs. Which is
Speaker 3: really interesting though he interpassed the har Conan's It's it's
Speaker 3: like halfway between some sort of baroque decadence and like
Speaker 3: Xeno more of body hoards. It's interesting stuff. I don't know,
Speaker 3: I don't know if it would have worked in a
Speaker 3: nineteen seventies film. But jod Rowski also wanted he wanted
Speaker 3: Salvador Dolly to play a emperor shot him in the
Speaker 3: fourth and Dolly Dolly wanted something like one hundred thousand
Speaker 3: dollars for like five minutes of screen time, which it'd
Speaker 3: be like, which would be like a million dollars today,
Speaker 3: you know, uh, but uh, you know this this they
Speaker 3: became more and more nutty in terms of you know,
Speaker 3: not just budgetary outlegs, but totally out of control concepts
Speaker 3: that probably wouldn't be filmable and things. And it probably
Speaker 3: even if Joey Rowski had an unlimited budget, even if
Speaker 3: he had all of all of his uh desires met
Speaker 3: for you know, casting everything else, it probably would have
Speaker 3: ended up being like looking like the Zaradas or something.
Speaker 1: So it's probably good it him made. But uh, you.
Speaker 3: Know, obviously Lynch, David Lynch's Dune is uh, what was
Speaker 3: the you know, until twenty twenty one.
Speaker 1: I mean, that was the big adaptation.
Speaker 3: The Sci Fi Channel made these kinds of cut rate
Speaker 3: TV movie versions which were hokey. But thenice thing about
Speaker 3: Lynch's Dune and I I sent you on T. Graham
Speaker 3: the the cover art from the from House Harconin by
Speaker 3: Brian Herbert.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and.
Speaker 3: If you look at that, those are that those are
Speaker 3: one hundred percent Lynch Dune optics, and that that that
Speaker 3: book was released, or the payback version least was released
Speaker 3: in the two thousands, you know. And interestingly Herbert died
Speaker 3: shortly after Lynch Dune was released, and he had mixed
Speaker 3: feelings about it. But something Frank Herbert said immediately after
Speaker 3: the screening was that the optics we were perfect, you know,
Speaker 3: and even to this day, like, don't get me wrong,
Speaker 3: I think I think Villa in the view Dune is
Speaker 3: incredibly well made, and I think the optics are great.
Speaker 3: But when I think of the hard Coneans, I think
Speaker 3: of him as being, you know, wearing like leather greatcoats
Speaker 3: and heaving like red hair, and you know, kind of
Speaker 3: that anemic look about him.
Speaker 2: Well, the the modern films aesthetically I think are very strong.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: And one of the things that Dune does well, and
Speaker 2: in both both major adaptations we see the same thing
Speaker 2: is that every faction feels extremely different. It feels as
Speaker 2: if you were getting a small exposure to a fully
Speaker 2: developed high culture that almost exists as both a cast
Speaker 2: and also as a sort of a race almost. So
Speaker 2: obviously you have the great houses. One of the things,
Speaker 2: and this is a fun parallel to your own sci
Speaker 2: fi Thomas, is that this is.
Speaker 3: A world of.
Speaker 2: Eugenics, both genetic engineering and also highly managed succession planning.
Speaker 2: That all of these houses, right, the sort of ruling
Speaker 2: noble houses, as well as the different social stations, the
Speaker 2: different guilds, the different kind of I guess you would.
Speaker 2: I guess guilds is probably the best term. You know,
Speaker 2: you have you know, the ben taps, right, the sort
Speaker 2: of human calculators, and they not only physically look very different,
Speaker 2: but they dress in a certain way. These sort of
Speaker 2: tech monks, right, human you know, computation devices, something as
Speaker 2: an archetype that would be pulled into you know, things
Speaker 2: like Warhammer forty thousand as well as others, and then
Speaker 2: you compare them to you know, the asthetics of you know,
Speaker 2: even down to the you know, the Benny jesuit, these
Speaker 2: sort of female coven genetic witches, right, and obviously each
Speaker 2: one of those, particularly in Villainouves Dude, is it's a
Speaker 2: very maximalist look as far as character design. They're dressed
Speaker 2: extremely elaborately, but they're also clearly representative of different cultures.
Speaker 2: And sorry, we'll get back to Lynch's Dune, but I
Speaker 2: do think it's interesting that Villeneuve's Dune is sort of
Speaker 2: minimalist when it comes to the look of the technology
Speaker 2: and the setting. Obviously they're they're beautiful vistas, but it's
Speaker 2: it's relatively sparse, and the character design and the costuming
Speaker 2: is turned up to twelve right, incredibly over the top,
Speaker 2: And I think that that visually works just for readability,
Speaker 2: right because almost at a single screenshot you can see
Speaker 2: one who is important and where they're from. But to
Speaker 2: your point, Lynch is done, it's probably more is more
Speaker 2: authentic to Herbert. So anyway, sorry, brief aside there, I'll
Speaker 2: throw it back to you, Thomas.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, no, no, sorry, yeah.
Speaker 3: And also one of the things, uh, if you don't
Speaker 3: know if he's doing, really puts you in universe and
Speaker 3: even subtle details, you know. The for example, the reason
Speaker 3: why the reason why the lines are at armies, the
Speaker 3: you know, they're uh they utilize range opters instead of
Speaker 3: something like an osprey or a low altitude like ground
Speaker 3: assault jet or something. It's because like the Holtzman shield technology,
Speaker 3: you can't have jetwash or something, you know, like you
Speaker 3: need you need a self contained propulsion system that's not
Speaker 3: going to disturb the shield technology that's by these orent opters,
Speaker 3: you know, and uh, it's uh, well and honestly.
Speaker 2: That shield sorry, but this is stuff I nerd out about.
Speaker 2: That shield technology is such a simple explanation, you know.
Speaker 2: So for those who aren't massive sci fi nerds, we
Speaker 2: find out very early that personal shielding as a technology
Speaker 2: that exists in this universe. The problem being directed energy weapons,
Speaker 2: which are used particularly in kind of you know, orbital
Speaker 2: to ground level combat. Well, they interact with a shield,
Speaker 2: creates a sort of feedback loop, blowing up both devices
Speaker 2: sort of a nuclear explosion.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it creates basically aition weapon. Yeah.
Speaker 2: So obviously, well, if shielding is relatively cheap and available
Speaker 2: to everyone, you don't want to just start blasting because
Speaker 2: both of you will blow up. Well we sort of
Speaker 2: return to swords and shields, So we have this kind
Speaker 2: of return to hand to hand combat, which is a
Speaker 2: major feature of this over other sci fi.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and for and that's what forces uh, not just
Speaker 3: the you know, the the precepts of the Balerian Jahad
Speaker 3: and the ban on thinking machines, but also the fact
Speaker 3: that technological parody neutralizing you know, war like advantages in
Speaker 3: military technology and thus bringing back into relevance, you know,
Speaker 3: previous iterations of of weapons tech. And that happens within
Speaker 3: strategic paradigms, you know, the whole the Revolution of Military Affairs,
Speaker 3: for example, and there's a fascinating book forgive the brief
Speaker 3: tangent that RHS. Stolfie wrote with this former Wehrmacht uh
Speaker 3: Genola Luytenan called NATO Wonder Attack. And you know, once
Speaker 3: truthtrategic parody set in and in terms of strategic nuclear forces,
Speaker 3: suddenly conventional combined arms became primary again.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 3: So the Revolution of Military Affairs and the period from
Speaker 3: you know, the last couple of years of the Carter administration,
Speaker 3: it's particularly through Reagan's first term there developed this uh
Speaker 3: conventional arms race. We NATO and warsaw packed, you know, which,
Speaker 3: which is fascinating because nobody saw that coming.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 3: So this isn't just a way to insinuate cool sword
Speaker 3: fighting into you know, the the duniversus is a phenomenon
Speaker 3: that actually happens.
Speaker 2: And to that point, the idea of both a but
Speaker 2: Larry and Jihat which for those it's not explicitly spelled
Speaker 2: out in the first Dune book, it's built out in
Speaker 2: his later work, but effectively, the reason that this society
Speaker 2: uses human genetic engineering in places where we currently use
Speaker 2: digital technology is that there is sort of a a
Speaker 2: Judgment Day esque situation that humans created AI, it became sentient,
Speaker 2: self sufficient, and there is a great war. Another point
Speaker 2: that comes up is that while not tightly is controlled
Speaker 2: as artificial intelligence, nuclear weapons or atomics are also highly controlled.
Speaker 2: This becomes a plot point in the kind of second
Speaker 2: half of the book. But every noble house has the
Speaker 2: family Jewels, which are megaton level hydrogen warheads, and because
Speaker 2: this sort of galactic empire is incredibly dispersed, there are dozens,
Speaker 2: if not hundreds, of these rival noble houses. The threat
Speaker 2: is always and this is what happens to you know,
Speaker 2: Paul's home is that a sort of loose confederation will
Speaker 2: be well, you know, will come into existence to chop off,
Speaker 2: you know, the tallest tulip right to go after someone
Speaker 2: who is advancing too quickly or seen to be a threat.
Speaker 2: And in fact, the emperor in and of himself doesn't
Speaker 2: necessarily have absolute power, but he can form a large
Speaker 2: alliance of homes to go after someone causing problems. And
Speaker 2: particularly the taboo around using nuclear weapons is exactly that
Speaker 2: you may be able to use nuclear weapons to win
Speaker 2: the day. But much like you know, the kind of
Speaker 2: Cold war, once you've taken once you've taken that onto
Speaker 2: the field of play, well, all of a sudden, every
Speaker 2: other faction has an interest in destroying you. And it
Speaker 2: is interesting to and this is what makes the political
Speaker 2: drama so fascinating is that this is not at all
Speaker 2: a party system. It is incredibly dispersed political network of
Speaker 2: the most ruthless killers in the world, all continually backing,
Speaker 2: you know, backing one horse and then betraying him at
Speaker 2: the last minute.
Speaker 1: Anyway, Yeah, exactly, and.
Speaker 3: The obviously a primary concern to Herbert, I mean, this
Speaker 3: comes to in all of his work product, not just
Speaker 3: Dune is Uh, you know, there's i you know, technology
Speaker 3: uh generally emerges in terms of punctuity equilibrium, but uh,
Speaker 3: you know, any new technology that's transformative and character there's
Speaker 3: secondary effects to that, you know, and an ancillary technologies,
Speaker 3: and over time it tends to stunt human potential. I
Speaker 3: mean you're seeing that now, you know. I mean, even
Speaker 3: in ways that are comparatively prosaic. You know, people complain
Speaker 3: about you know, reduced attention spans and diminished command of
Speaker 3: language and ability to comprehend language and things, you know,
Speaker 3: and that that doesn't mean I mean all technology is
Speaker 3: both a benefit and a hazard actually potentially that that
Speaker 3: doesn't mean technology is bad. But you know, this, this
Speaker 3: is a real phenomenon. And Herbert Herbert was a very
Speaker 3: heterodox thinker. You know, people people's supervisial reading people like
Speaker 3: Herbert was some really really religious guy. He wasn't He
Speaker 3: had an interest in philology and Astoricism. He had a
Speaker 3: lot of respect for Roman Catholicism, he had a lot
Speaker 3: of respect for Islam. He had a lot of respect
Speaker 3: for Zen Buddhism and things. But he had, uh, he
Speaker 3: considered these things from a perspective of you know, intellectual detachment,
Speaker 3: and he viewed these things as essential the human development,
Speaker 3: not just moral and social learning, but he thought that
Speaker 3: you know, the world's great religions curated a you know,
Speaker 3: contemplative institutions and things which in turn, you know, advanced
Speaker 3: the the races of man, you know. And I think
Speaker 3: that's an arguable and uh, you know, I one of
Speaker 3: the uh, one of the things, uh that I think
Speaker 3: is most notable about done is that there's not really
Speaker 3: good guys and bad guys. There are Conans are grotesque,
Speaker 3: particularly to people like us, you know, uh, late modern Westerners,
Speaker 3: but uh, you know, the the the atreadees aren't. Aren't
Speaker 3: some uh you know, it's not like they're moral exemplars
Speaker 3: or something. Yeah, I mean there's that there are a
Speaker 3: lot more attraction than the hard conans, But you've got
Speaker 3: to look at things in terms of deep historical phenomenon
Speaker 3: and development they're in and the atreadees represent. They're like
Speaker 3: the vanguards of tradition, you know, and and and the
Speaker 3: ethos of planet Keltons.
Speaker 1: Let nothing change.
Speaker 3: There are Conans represent unrestrained, dynamic violence, and that cannibalizes
Speaker 3: itself and it perverts, uh that it perverts the culture
Speaker 3: bearing element and it makes them sadistic. And that's I
Speaker 3: mean that, that's that's a fact that can't be denied.
Speaker 3: You need both in uh manageable doses in order for
Speaker 3: there to be meaningful development within the the political and
Speaker 3: social and cultural organism. And you know, I think I'm
Speaker 3: curious as to how villain the view is gonna treat.
Speaker 3: See I'm in the minority. I think God Emperor a
Speaker 3: Dune is literally a brilliant work, and it puts some
Speaker 3: people off because it's so strange and so hallucinogenic, and
Speaker 3: a lot of it's this kind of exposition where it's
Speaker 3: Herbert talking through uh Lito the Second, the God Emperor worm.
Speaker 3: But you know, it's profound and like when he's talking
Speaker 3: to those who don't know, and it got in for
Speaker 3: a Dune three thousand, five hundred years after the events
Speaker 3: of of you know, the first three Dune books. Lito
Speaker 3: the Second does this immortal human sandworm hybrid and using
Speaker 3: his prescience, he's put humanity on the golden path to
Speaker 3: guarantee its survival. But the cost of that is creating
Speaker 3: a totally stagnant society, like for example, one of the
Speaker 3: things Leto's done. He's outlawed the professional soldiery. The only
Speaker 3: people under arms are these are these female constabularies called
Speaker 3: the fish whisperers, who are these kinds of they're they're
Speaker 3: almost kind of like this religious order. And so when
Speaker 3: the dunkan Idaho Golla, you know, brought back to life
Speaker 3: endless lye over and over again. When he arrives in
Speaker 3: this world ledal build, he's like, how can you have
Speaker 3: women soldiers? And he says, well, precisely because like of
Speaker 3: outlawed war and like women are the guardians of life,
Speaker 3: you know. And he's like, look, he's like, you know,
Speaker 3: if you have a male army in absence of in
Speaker 3: absence of war, they'll create one. There's an inherent predation there,
Speaker 3: which is necessary, but it can also be self defeating,
Speaker 3: you know. So people superficially read it to some feminist
Speaker 3: work when really it's the opposite, because Leto's whole point
Speaker 3: is uh, you know. And then Leedo he sets the
Speaker 3: stage for his own demise because he realizes that you know,
Speaker 3: they're there, that that that humanity will continue to stagnate
Speaker 3: and perpetuity. And he doesn't allow some the sort of
Speaker 3: dynamic uh and punctuated, you know, and radical changes to
Speaker 3: emerge and this kind of agonistic pluralism and struggle to
Speaker 3: re emerge, you know. So it's it's heavy stuff.
Speaker 1: And I.
Speaker 3: My one critique of I wasn't jumping around a bit,
Speaker 3: but this is a very large subject. My one critique
Speaker 3: of l in the view is done, is that so
Speaker 3: far he hasn't addressed the Spacing Guild like you see them. Yeah,
Speaker 3: in the one scene when you know, the when the
Speaker 3: Emperor gives the chartered uh harvest milange from Iracus to
Speaker 3: the a Tredees, you know, you see them, and obviously
Speaker 3: they're in the process of mutation.
Speaker 1: That's why they hide their faces. And uh.
Speaker 3: The mythology in Universe is that no nobody outside the
Speaker 3: Guild like lays eyes on a fully mutated guild navigator
Speaker 3: because for those who don't know, the reason why the
Speaker 3: Spacing Guild is a monopoly is because space travels facilitated
Speaker 3: technologically by the by the Holtzman drive and the Holtzman effect.
Speaker 3: It essentially allows uh, it allows uh uh the creation
Speaker 3: of an artificial wormhole. But the problem is that, uh,
Speaker 3: it's incredibly dangerous to navigate those you know, mass interstellar
Speaker 3: distances instantaneously. So guild navigators, they consume absolutely massive doses
Speaker 3: of spice, ultimately find themselves immersed in tanks full of
Speaker 3: spice gas in addition to consuming it orally, and that
Speaker 3: causes these kinds of horrific mutations, you know that ultimately
Speaker 3: it they come to look almost like like a fish
Speaker 3: or something. They lose their humanity literally in the service
Speaker 3: of in the service of of you know, facilitating interstellar travel.
Speaker 3: But the reason why this is necessary is because they
Speaker 3: cultivate a highly a highly sensitive prescience so they can
Speaker 3: predict what routes will be safe, so that you know,
Speaker 3: the ships won't you know, uh, crash into an astronomical
Speaker 3: body or otherwise you know, not reach their destination owing
Speaker 3: to navigational errors and a million other possible you know,
Speaker 3: variables that could lead to destruction of the vessel. But
Speaker 3: they're a huge that's a huge aspect in universe of
Speaker 3: the entire story and framing device and everything else. Because
Speaker 3: this is what that's the reason why the spice is
Speaker 3: the most precious commodity because it without it, there there
Speaker 3: is no there is no interstellar travel. You want to
Speaker 3: be clear, that there's space travel isn't carried out by
Speaker 3: conventional propulsion or even by a warp drive as we
Speaker 3: think of it. You know, it's uh they travel instantaneously
Speaker 3: by folding space, you know, and that's why that's what's
Speaker 3: facilitated uh Man's diaspora throughout the universe. So I'm curious
Speaker 3: the early sort of teaser stuff about the about the
Speaker 3: third Dune film, sy Tale is a is a main
Speaker 3: character in it, so obviously, you know, drawing on Doing
Speaker 3: Messiah that deals with the conspiracy against Paul Matt Deeb
Speaker 3: and Doing Messiah is actually my favorite of the Dune books.
Speaker 3: But it's the most controversial, you know, it's the shortest, interestingly,
Speaker 3: and it, i mean, the whole thing is controversy on
Speaker 3: people view it as a downer because the fate of
Speaker 3: Paul at the end. But there's a dialogue between Paul
Speaker 3: and Stilgar where Wadie notes that his jihad has led
Speaker 3: to the massacre of sixty one billion human beings across
Speaker 3: the known universe, which makes him the greatest mass murderer
Speaker 3: of all time, you know, And he makes the point
Speaker 3: that Genghis Khan and Adolf Hitler were viewed as you know,
Speaker 3: incorrectly viewed as these horrible beastial figures in history, when
Speaker 3: in reality they were simply astride the historical process. And
Speaker 3: you know, the death resultant from or assigned.
Speaker 1: To their.
Speaker 3: Their warlordship, rightly or wrongly, you know, in terms of
Speaker 3: the culpability that accruise they're in, like Wade was killed,
Speaker 3: you know, xy mentally more human beings than all of
Speaker 3: these previous warlords combined. So, I mean, it's heavy stuff
Speaker 3: and it uh, but I so I'm curious as to
Speaker 3: how that's going to be addressed well and or if
Speaker 3: villain ne view is gonna take certain aspects and then
Speaker 3: otherwise otherwise, uh, you know, redact uh the source material
Speaker 3: in favor of.
Speaker 1: Of a prestige of other things. And yeah, that's so
Speaker 1: now go ahead of Sorry.
Speaker 2: So this is and I love this film. Probably the
Speaker 2: best aesthetics in all of Lynch's Dune is in the
Speaker 2: audience with the navigator, right, yeah, for those listening to
Speaker 2: the audio, and you see this sort of mutated sort
Speaker 2: of larval fish person in this kind of trolley full
Speaker 2: of gas, you know, rolled in and what really sets
Speaker 2: off the plot of Dune is exactly this sort of
Speaker 2: court intrigue where milane, the spice that allows prescians, that
Speaker 2: allows you know, its user to peer into the future
Speaker 2: to sort of sift through possible realities, is only produced
Speaker 2: on one planet, the planet Aracus aka Do, and so
Speaker 2: control of this planet is sort of a white elephant.
Speaker 2: On one hand, you know, it's an incredible amount of resources,
Speaker 2: you will become very rich, but also it's a very
Speaker 2: precarious spot. And this transition is what allows the emperor
Speaker 2: his sort of elite startocar like I guess you would
Speaker 2: call it like death squads along with the hearken and
Speaker 2: to stamp out right the Atreades line. And in the
Speaker 2: sort of bigger picture, the reason is that there have
Speaker 2: been thousands upon thousands of years of benejeserit genetic manipulation
Speaker 2: to bring about a sort of god king, a Messiah.
Speaker 2: And the idea is to combine the talents of a
Speaker 2: benajeserit they have certain psychic abilities with other things to
Speaker 2: create sort of the perfect female Benajeserit. However, the process
Speaker 2: has been messed up for a variety of reasons. You know,
Speaker 2: a love child is born is Paul and effectively, well,
Speaker 2: we'd have the right genes, but they're in a man.
Speaker 2: This is a problem, right, something needs to be done,
Speaker 2: and so for that and other reasons, right, the Tredees
Speaker 2: have to go. But Paul, having these latent abilities, is
Speaker 2: able to sort of combine the abilities of a navigator pressions,
Speaker 2: the ability to see into the future, with this sort
Speaker 2: of bena jeserit we would basically call it mind control. Right,
Speaker 2: So this is why he is this sort of god
Speaker 2: king figure. And in the later books, particularly Dune Messiah,
Speaker 2: you know, you see him now he is truly and
Speaker 2: totally shed his humanity, at least in large mans. He
Speaker 2: has become this sort of eggrigor god king, which is
Speaker 2: very much the drama of the first book. You see
Speaker 2: Paul sort of die multiple times first, you know, after
Speaker 2: the coup, when he you know, becomes a Fremen, which
Speaker 2: is sort of you can imagine it this kind of
Speaker 2: like they're like a combination of like Old Testament Jews,
Speaker 2: the Muja Hadeen, the Druze and I gues see there's
Speaker 2: like a smattering of like alloy white in there. It's
Speaker 2: sort of a pastiche of you know, Middle Eastern raiders.
Speaker 2: But when he joins them, and this is a motif
Speaker 2: echoed again, he's sort of he's forced to fight a
Speaker 2: duel to the death with you know, one of these
Speaker 2: raiders to sort of secure his plates. And we see
Speaker 2: several things there. One after he you know, he kills
Speaker 2: this man. He is rich, he's dying as Paul. He
Speaker 2: is really no longer the boy heir to this this
Speaker 2: I guess great house. He becomes a man, he becomes
Speaker 2: a warrior. But also we see a couple interesting bits
Speaker 2: of characterization there. One, Uh, this is not and when
Speaker 2: I said it's illiberal, I genuinely mean that the world
Speaker 2: of Doune has a completely different set of values than we,
Speaker 2: as late moderns, would consider appropriate. So for instance, after
Speaker 2: he kills this guy, he just takes his wife. That's
Speaker 2: what happens, right, you you just get that after you
Speaker 2: kill him, she's not particularly torn up about it, right.
Speaker 3: Even like even in the later books, Uh, even dooma side. Yeah,
Speaker 3: he like doesn't have sex with the urban. Basically she's like,
Speaker 3: she like won't go away because he's like whoa, yeah,
Speaker 3: you like won me sorry?
Speaker 1: Because he gives her stuff to do.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, exactly right, it's very much the kind of
Speaker 2: like courtisans and court marriages you see in you know,
Speaker 2: our own history. But through that process, right, he becomes
Speaker 2: one of these Fremen, one of these warriors. And then
Speaker 2: this is the platform off of which he is able
Speaker 2: to make a run at the imperial throne, draw first
Speaker 2: the hearkenin and then the emperor himself to Aracus. To
Speaker 2: done by disrupting the production of this most valuable resource,
Speaker 2: which you know, given current things in the strait of hormones,
Speaker 2: sort of ironic, right, if you control the energy transportation resource,
Speaker 2: the whole world just stops working. But he becomes the
Speaker 2: more deep, the messiah of this race of Fremen. And
Speaker 2: one of the interesting dynamics, and this has played out
Speaker 2: particularly in the second Villeneuve film, is that is up
Speaker 2: for debate if this prophecy is real or if it
Speaker 2: is synthetic, if it was deliberately injected as a way
Speaker 2: to control this population, or is Paul actually a god?
Speaker 2: Is he actually this sort of transcendent figure, you know,
Speaker 2: ready to remake the the course of human history. And
Speaker 2: so he is able to become this sort of god king,
Speaker 2: resistance leader, and at the very end the climactic moment
Speaker 2: where you know, he uses atomics, he uses the Fremen
Speaker 2: to sort of bring the emperor to his knees and
Speaker 2: marry in another kind of court marriage to the imperial line.
Speaker 2: He has to fight another duel against the sort of
Speaker 2: scion of the hearken and line, you know, his opposite
Speaker 2: kind of genetic not twin, but genetic rival, right, the
Speaker 2: other man who could step into his role. And what's
Speaker 2: so great about this scene in the Villeneuve movie and
Speaker 2: also in the book, is that we see yet another death,
Speaker 2: the death of Paul as a human being, where he's
Speaker 2: forced in order to win, to sort of take a
Speaker 2: nearly mortal blow and then you know, is able to
Speaker 2: you know, to kill this rival fate Raltha become the
Speaker 2: new emperor. So much of the drama of Doone, especially
Speaker 2: the first book, is there are sort of three different polls.
Speaker 2: There is Paul, paul A Tredes, right, the son of
Speaker 2: this family. Then there is the modeep right, the it's
Speaker 2: not the grasshopper mouse but something quite close to that,
Speaker 2: you know, his sort of war name in this tribe.
Speaker 2: And when he dies and is reborn again, he is
Speaker 2: the god emperor right. He is both a literal, physical
Speaker 2: human man, but he is broken free of temporality. He
Speaker 2: has the ability to see, you know, reality laid out
Speaker 2: in front of him, and he becomes the figurehead of
Speaker 2: this galactic jihad with a body count you know, deep
Speaker 2: into the billions. And so it's no shock that our
Speaker 2: guys like this book a lot, right wingers, because you're
Speaker 2: seeing the great Man, the transcendent mate, and this is
Speaker 2: a man who is above normal morality. But also it's
Speaker 2: kind of understandable why the progressive liberal types have always
Speaker 2: been uncomfortable with this book, because it is about a
Speaker 2: man who is greater than everyone else, and not in
Speaker 2: the kind of like Superman way, but he is a
Speaker 2: demi god, right, He has become more than simply his
Speaker 2: biological frame. And this isn't the kind of trends and
Speaker 2: forces version of human history. It is human will becoming
Speaker 2: almost divine.
Speaker 1: We'll kick it back to you, Thomas. Yeah, no, that's
Speaker 1: a good summary. Also to.
Speaker 3: The core aspect of Herbert's ethics is that people must
Speaker 3: Life has no point if people don't immerse themselves in
Speaker 3: and live for the historical process. That that's what everybody
Speaker 3: does within the Dune Universe. Yeah, that's actually is a
Speaker 3: great book called the Dune Encyclopedia. It's it's almost six
Speaker 3: hundred page is it's exhaustive, It's you can find a
Speaker 3: copy online for free, but a print edition is ridiculously
Speaker 3: overpriced and hard to find. But just to give you
Speaker 3: an idea of how deep the the sort of in
Speaker 3: universe law and world building was and is, this is
Speaker 3: a literal encyclopedia of alphabetically organized of every aspect and
Speaker 3: every character that you know features in the in the books.
Speaker 3: And but yeah, the the reason why, I mean people too,
Speaker 3: if you're coming from a capital L liberal perspective, you know,
Speaker 3: that of kind of whiggish history, or you know, if
Speaker 3: you're just somebody who's you know, kind of a accepts
Speaker 3: you know, the sort of like a world society nullody
Speaker 3: in lieu of you know, historical engagement. Somebody like Herbert
Speaker 3: Is is not speaking the same language conceptually as you are.
Speaker 3: And beyond that, the entire the entire raise on detra
Speaker 3: of you know, the the established regimesince nineteen thirty three
Speaker 3: has been a literally end history and eradicate man's ability
Speaker 3: to live historically or curate a historical memory. And that's
Speaker 3: a monstrous enterprise for all kinds of reasons. But it
Speaker 3: also it just creates a pointless society, you know. And
Speaker 3: that's these kinds of things where paramount concerned the Herbert
Speaker 3: above and beyond the questions he raised about technology and
Speaker 3: the effect that had on human excellence, and you know,
Speaker 3: and and and empathy and other things. But you know,
Speaker 3: the whole the key takeaway, you know, if and then
Speaker 3: really just somewhat reductionist is you know, Herbert wants his
Speaker 3: readers to take their life seriously, and you know, the
Speaker 3: key aspects of a human being to Herbert are things
Speaker 3: that attach historically, which obviously involves you know, familial lineage
Speaker 3: and confessional heritage and ethnos and other things. You know,
Speaker 3: that doesn't mean you should idolatrously worship your race or something.
Speaker 3: Herbert wasn't saying that, but you know, once you remove
Speaker 3: yourself from that, or allow yourself to be removed, or
Speaker 3: if you're forcibly shorn of these things, you know you
Speaker 3: not only are you is a kind of you know,
Speaker 3: social and spiritual violence against the person, rendering them complete
Speaker 3: and you know, maimed in some basic way, but also
Speaker 3: you know, people under such conditions really can't assert themselves.
Speaker 3: There's a in a Dune and God Emperor Dune Leto
Speaker 3: takes uh you know, because he's because he's been alive
Speaker 3: for thousands of years, gets to find a ways to
Speaker 3: entertain himself, and because he has a god like intellect
Speaker 3: taken access his ancestral memories and live through the experiences
Speaker 3: of his ancestors and stuff. But sometimes he'll simply just
Speaker 3: look around and like watch people and compare them to
Speaker 3: like people of the past. So like, you know, thirty
Speaker 3: five hundred years subsequent from the events of Dune, you
Speaker 3: notices some guy who's one of stillgars distant uh uh
Speaker 3: you know, descendants, and the guy's just like a total mope,
Speaker 3: you know, and in leto count of place. You know,
Speaker 3: it's amazing how like to him, you know, several hundred
Speaker 3: years is you know, like the blink of an eye.
Speaker 3: You know, he's like in such a short time, you know,
Speaker 3: this this this here lineage can just like deteriorate into
Speaker 3: in the into nothingness, you know.
Speaker 1: And and and.
Speaker 3: It's like this man's ancestors were or some of the
Speaker 3: greatest warriors in the universe, but this guy's just the slub,
Speaker 3: you know. And I mean obviously the obviously the obcurated
Speaker 3: those conditions to a share of humanity survival. But he realizes, well,
Speaker 3: the cost of that was this abject mediocrity, you know, uh,
Speaker 3: which of course is again why he engineers his own
Speaker 3: demise to you know, bring back uh, the the capability
Speaker 3: for continued human evolution and the perfection of the of
Speaker 3: the uh of the human being and in in biological
Speaker 3: and physiological as well as intellectual and and and and
Speaker 3: spiritual terms. But yeah, this is the kind of stuff
Speaker 3: that this is the kind of stuff that puts uh
Speaker 3: that that's at odds with.
Speaker 1: H regime idiology.
Speaker 3: I'm not gonna go as far as the odds with
Speaker 3: the zeitgeist, because the zeitgeist is contra regime values these days,
Speaker 3: it really is. I mean, that's why that's why there's
Speaker 3: a market for something like Doune and and especially the
Speaker 3: the aspects of it that are emphasized and the villain
Speaker 3: of view Dune, the like the Lynch Nune version. I mean,
Speaker 3: obviously just by virtual of the subject matter, there's there
Speaker 3: gonna be a doing rendition that is spundidly apolitical or
Speaker 3: doesn't raise deep questions of identity and you know, the
Speaker 3: theological contemplation and and things like that. But the emphasies
Speaker 3: of of of the David Lynch Dune are a lot
Speaker 3: different than the current iteration, you know.
Speaker 1: Uh, And there's a kind of a.
Speaker 3: Really the the sort of I mean, I mean even
Speaker 3: Lynch emphasized the body horror aspects and things good. I mean, uh,
Speaker 3: because that's something that he did and he was very
Speaker 3: you know, a very visual filmmaker. But uh, the there
Speaker 3: wasn't the same uh emphasis on on these aspects that
Speaker 3: we're talking about, you know. And uh that's why the
Speaker 3: the fram and feature obviously in uh in in Lynch Dune,
Speaker 3: but they're they're really kind of in the background. They're
Speaker 3: almost like part of the landscape. I like, the romance
Speaker 3: between Col maclachlin and Sean Young had real chemistry on screen,
Speaker 3: unlike that awful mononym goblin who the New Ones. But uh,
Speaker 3: but you know, other than but you know that that's
Speaker 3: sort of a conventional romance between a man and a
Speaker 3: woman in an eighties movie. They don't they don't get
Speaker 3: deep into the frem and uh way of life and stuff,
Speaker 3: and you know, they they don't get into the I don't.
Speaker 3: I think that there's one time in the Lynch movie
Speaker 3: that they say the words you had, you know, and
Speaker 3: that's it. So it's yeah, very much a period piece,
Speaker 3: when every movie is a period piece to some degree.
Speaker 2: But it uh, you know, well, this is The Fremen
Speaker 2: are particularly interesting because you talk about that idea of
Speaker 2: separation from from culture, and the Fremen, particularly the sort
Speaker 2: of wild Fremen, those that live in these sort of
Speaker 2: underground sort of pueblo cities, have been existing in this
Speaker 2: sort of thousand year version of you know, Moses's forty
Speaker 2: year journey through the wilderness, sustained by this promise that
Speaker 2: a messiah will come to bring water back to Doom.
Speaker 2: This is a desert planet. Water is an extremely tight resource.
Speaker 2: The Fremen are jealous about guarding this. For instance, after
Speaker 2: after killing his first Fremen, they suckle the water out
Speaker 2: of the spot right is returned to the collective because
Speaker 2: it would be wasteful to let it see back into
Speaker 2: the desert. But after paul A sents right after he
Speaker 2: becomes this godlike figure, and the Fremen pour over the galaxy. Well, effectively,
Speaker 2: the Fremen go to seat, they are no longer desert warriors.
Speaker 2: In the same way, and in the plot of Doune Messiah,
Speaker 2: we see this conspiracy against Paul. This has a lot
Speaker 2: to do with who will be his heir, you know,
Speaker 2: will he father a child with you know, the the
Speaker 2: or the princess that he has married for political reasons,
Speaker 2: or with his sort of I guess you would say soulmate,
Speaker 2: who is a you know, a Fremen. And many of
Speaker 2: the conspirators are Tremen, are former warriors who are now
Speaker 2: living in air conditioned departments, effectively, you know, who have
Speaker 2: who have gotten everything, They've gotten the water, they have
Speaker 2: access to great riches. Yeah, and yet they were empty, Yes, exactly,
Speaker 2: And that's that's very much the language used to describe it.
Speaker 2: You know, it is exactly that, right, And I think
Speaker 2: that's a really fascinating aspect because we see exactly that
Speaker 2: this kind of like hyper kind of like Asibia infused culture, right,
Speaker 2: a strong in group, out group, a strong understanding of
Speaker 2: how we are to act, taken out of context and
Speaker 2: almost instantly reduced to it, as the Internet would say,
Speaker 2: kind of goy cattle, right, These kind of you know.
Speaker 3: Part in Messiah when when Paul when he meets up
Speaker 3: with the freeman who's dying of the splitting sickness, where
Speaker 3: he's the one who was the dwarf that was h
Speaker 3: this uh, that's that was this like biological artificial being
Speaker 3: created by the bennetto Islas. But the freeman is telling him,
Speaker 3: you know, he's like, yeah, he's like, I fought near Jahad,
Speaker 3: you know, and he said, we landed on this world,
Speaker 3: and after we killed everybody, he said, I saw an
Speaker 3: ocean and he said I couldn't. He said it was
Speaker 3: salt water, but I gulped it down anyway and made
Speaker 3: myself sick and then I vomited. But he said I
Speaker 3: couldn't conceptualize an ocean. He said, you know, before I
Speaker 3: left iraq Is, I could imagine a stream or even
Speaker 3: maybe a small lake, but you know, and then he
Speaker 3: said everything changed when you know, we looked around the battlefield,
Speaker 3: you know, and we saw all these bodies that you know,
Speaker 3: of our enemies we'd vanquished. And he said, then I
Speaker 3: saw I saw freeman like frolicking around in an ocean,
Speaker 3: you know. And he at that point, the Freemen conceptual
Speaker 3: arise and ceased to exist. And then when Paul at
Speaker 3: the start of Messiah, he's taken to walking around our
Speaker 3: a keen dressed as a you know, in in a
Speaker 3: still suit with a face mask on, so that he
Speaker 3: can observe sort of the common people and understand what's
Speaker 3: going on up being recognized as as Paul maud dee Ben.
Speaker 3: He sees these freemen families, and a lot of them
Speaker 3: are still harvesting moisture, even though that's totally pointless because
Speaker 3: you know, Oras has been terriformed and now there's there's
Speaker 3: lakes with fish in them and things, you know, and
Speaker 3: that that's profound too, because they're you know, and again,
Speaker 3: Herbert wasn't some Ted Kazinski type guy who's like, we
Speaker 3: gotta we've we've got to eradicate all convenience to is
Speaker 3: to return some authentic way of life.
Speaker 1: But that sort of.
Speaker 3: A change that punctuated, you know, it's not as if
Speaker 3: the freemen over you know, five hundred years slowly, you know,
Speaker 3: terror formed to the planet and then you know, dozens
Speaker 3: of generations later, you know, they had a potable water
Speaker 3: source that was reliably, reliably replenished literally overnight, they they
Speaker 3: went from you know, desperate survival conditions where water was
Speaker 3: so scarce that you know, it stood in for wealth
Speaker 3: of every sort. And you know, to your point when
Speaker 3: when somebody would die, they'd immediately extract their moisture, you know,
Speaker 3: quite literally within uh you know, days and weeks and
Speaker 3: months that that was all over, you know, and and
Speaker 3: conditions can't adjust.
Speaker 1: You know, it's like if you're.
Speaker 3: It's uh, it's like it's like that scene and I
Speaker 3: really like to from Apocalypto, you know, like we've talked
Speaker 3: about and you know when the uh, I guess they're
Speaker 3: probably probably Aztecs, you know, the Aztec warriors are chasing
Speaker 3: jaguar paw, but then when they see the Conquiso's arriving,
Speaker 3: they just stop because they you know, they the world's ending.
Speaker 1: You know. It'd be like.
Speaker 3: If there's a if there's an event that totally shatters
Speaker 3: the extant conceptual horizon, cultures can't come back from that
Speaker 3: that they can survive in some fela heene form or
Speaker 3: some of them can even adapt, you know, and and
Speaker 3: sustain some kind of communal life that partakes of the
Speaker 3: historical process and engagement they're in. But what existed before
Speaker 3: is finished, you know. Uh, I mean that's that's sort
Speaker 3: of the ongoing ad to be the commons because within
Speaker 3: the historical process, you know, uh, there there is the
Speaker 3: only creation is creative destruction. You know, there's there's ways
Speaker 3: to mitigate that, and that's the responsible thing to do,
Speaker 3: but there's there's no way to avoid it, you know,
Speaker 3: nor would that even be desirable, you know. I mean
Speaker 3: it's like let nothing change. I mean that that's part
Speaker 3: of Herbert's point also, I mean that that's just as destructive,
Speaker 3: you know.
Speaker 2: Well, and that's the sort of interesting thing about it.
Speaker 2: Is the world we come into and Dune has existed
Speaker 2: in a certain degree of stasis, right. These social structures
Speaker 2: are ancient. Benny Jzert in particular, has thousands of years
Speaker 2: of history and will certainly there have been dynastics, struggles,
Speaker 2: there have been you know, houses in the ascendant, houses
Speaker 2: in the decline. There is a feeling that the system
Speaker 2: is moribund, you know, it is sort of is no
Speaker 2: longer vital. It is sort of crashing under its own weight.
Speaker 2: And that is what makes you know, Paul and his
Speaker 2: jihad necessary and interesting. Is it is the sort of
Speaker 2: like cleansing fire which can produce new growth again. And look,
Speaker 2: some of that, I guess you could say some of
Speaker 2: that ossification is deliberate and natural, particularly as regards technical matters,
Speaker 2: that's tightly controlled. But like the human spirit, if I
Speaker 2: can speak so kind of poetically or so flippantly, right, like,
Speaker 2: does not abide stasis in that way, you know, it dies,
Speaker 2: And that's the sort of high drama of it. You know,
Speaker 2: we are watching something being reborn in the same way
Speaker 2: that Paul himself is sort of forced to be killed
Speaker 2: and reborn multiple times. Other things that I think are
Speaker 2: worth mentioning. We the Dark of Doune is sort of captivating,
Speaker 2: Like it's a it's a really little moment, but very
Speaker 2: early in the book, Paul survives sort of this an
Speaker 2: assassination attempt, right, an insect size drone equipped with poison
Speaker 2: is sent to kill him. And I'm so glad they
Speaker 2: brought this into the Villaineuve uh movie, because it's a
Speaker 2: it's a it's a minor paragraph where after you know
Speaker 2: Paul has managed to you know, escape this sort of
Speaker 2: assassination attempt, they tear down the whole place and they
Speaker 2: find a member of you know, the hearkening secret service
Speaker 2: who's bricked himself into a wall and killed himself right
Speaker 2: his He was on a one way human suicide mission
Speaker 2: to kill Paul, and he just lived in a wall
Speaker 2: for months on end, you know, waiting for his opportunity.
Speaker 2: And uh yeah, I just love that sort of like
Speaker 2: the disregard for human life in this It almost reminds
Speaker 2: me of the kind of like tales of like Persian
Speaker 2: decadence or Chinese emperors, you know, where everything is done
Speaker 2: by human power and so most people are nothing more
Speaker 2: than kind of you know, biological machines. It's very, very
Speaker 2: different from most other science fiction or fantasy settings, and
Speaker 2: I think part of what makes it so captivating.
Speaker 3: No, yeah, and that's a real I mean, look, I'm
Speaker 3: I'm I'm the opposite one of these historical writers who
Speaker 3: pretend is like the the Middle Ages or some horrible
Speaker 3: epoch of ignorance and depravity. I think the Middle Ages.
Speaker 3: I mean that that's that's the seed of you know,
Speaker 3: our racist development. But there is absent, absent a highly
Speaker 3: developed ethical understanding and a you know, and and a
Speaker 3: curated moral condition. You know, a cast system leads to
Speaker 3: real brutality.
Speaker 1: And I the.
Speaker 3: Scene in in the in in in the the view
Speaker 3: dune where.
Speaker 1: Rabon, you know.
Speaker 3: He's he's he's he's enraged because, uh the fremen hit
Speaker 3: the spice deepot and wiped out the crop or the harvest.
Speaker 3: So uh he gets on this assault shopper because he's like,
Speaker 3: you know, I'm I'm gonna lead the assault myself, and
Speaker 3: uh he's got the copilot scanning resigns the life. And
Speaker 3: then when he was the signal, Rabon just casually like
Speaker 3: breaks his neck because he's mad and he has just
Speaker 3: got to like shake it off somehow, so he just
Speaker 3: like murders the guy.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 3: I mean that that kind of stuff really happened, man,
Speaker 3: I mean, if you were serving on, if you were
Speaker 3: you know, uh, if you if you were some lowly servant,
Speaker 3: you know, in the court of the great con and
Speaker 3: he was he was having a bad day and he
Speaker 3: had to get his anger off somehow, like he might
Speaker 3: cut your fucking heart up, you know.
Speaker 2: Well, I mean, and this is actually something that the
Speaker 2: the aesthetics of, particularly the second Dude film I think
Speaker 2: does well is the the look of the Hearken in Okay, sure,
Speaker 2: maybe it's not accurate to the book but it's a
Speaker 2: really cool look. Oh yeah, sort of you know, monochromatic,
Speaker 2: kind of like BDSM techno horror like fade. Rautha is
Speaker 2: flanked constantly by these sort of uh, you know, bald
Speaker 2: leather clad courtisans, and you know, we see him gauging
Speaker 2: a like very savage torture basically just as a way
Speaker 2: to get his rocks off, and it it does a
Speaker 2: really good job of making him both an extremely villainous
Speaker 2: character and also, to be honest, setting the sort of
Speaker 2: setting the scenery, because there really is no mercy in Dune,
Speaker 2: you know, there's no sense that, oh you know, if
Speaker 2: you kill your enemy, you become just as bad as them.
Speaker 2: The kind of Captain planet bullshit you see in a
Speaker 2: lot of a lot of you know fiction, because yeah,
Speaker 2: sure the Harkenans are vile, you know, they are this
Speaker 2: kind of you know, degraded house. One of the most
Speaker 2: famous scenes, of course, is the repeated kind of trips
Speaker 2: to the coliseum you know, where you see you know,
Speaker 2: uh a treadees prisoners being killed for sport you know,
Speaker 2: or or you know, fader out the kind of adopting
Speaker 2: you know, this kind of ritualized combat and you both
Speaker 2: see obviously the the murder of I guess, the ritual
Speaker 2: killing of the captured prisoners, but also the sort of
Speaker 2: like ring ring masters, you know, the guys that you
Speaker 2: know controlling the beasts or the men in Villeneuve's Dune,
Speaker 2: are these sort of like insane again like BDSM, like
Speaker 2: leather gladiators, you know, with these like extremely almost sort
Speaker 2: of medieval looking, you know, hoods and head dresses, all
Speaker 2: very ritualized.
Speaker 3: And yeah, because the Harconin, uh, the harconin totem is
Speaker 3: is a is a bull like harconin uh house harconin there. Yeah,
Speaker 3: and uh, the Harko language is a pastiche of Finnish,
Speaker 3: Russian and another Slavic language. Is because it becomes clear
Speaker 3: and the Deep Dune War that the Harconin's were a
Speaker 3: finoslavc house back on Earth, and I think heart like,
Speaker 3: if there's any finished speaks on deck, I believe hark
Speaker 3: Harko means bull. So the yeah, I the way I
Speaker 3: interpret it is like, yeah, the the Colisseum wranglers, they
Speaker 3: they're supposed to look like bulls.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and the I like the scene.
Speaker 3: It's it's not canonical the books, but uh, where the
Speaker 3: Reverend Mother, she's getting audience with the Emperor, and they're
Speaker 3: just like there's this disgusting human spider, which presumably har
Speaker 3: Conins are sick assholes. They either like tore a couple
Speaker 3: of people apart and then like sewed them back together,
Speaker 3: or they they wanted some like s and m like
Speaker 3: pervy spidery human sex sleeves that Bennett's Uie likes and
Speaker 3: mated for him and Davries the twisted ment. It like
Speaker 3: the Reverend Mother's like, look, that fucking thing needs to go,
Speaker 3: and he's like what.
Speaker 1: It is?
Speaker 3: He was like, look, man, I'm not gonna have a
Speaker 3: conversation with your like leather spider like like like fucking
Speaker 3: sex thing here.
Speaker 2: Like yeah, well, Thomas, this has been a ton of
Speaker 2: oodd A great palette cleanser. I don't know if it's
Speaker 2: less dark than you know, the Zebra murders or anything
Speaker 2: like that, Like when you really get into dude, you know,
Speaker 2: it's a it's a bloody dark kind of Hobbsy and
Speaker 2: Tail highly recommend it. I mean, look like I assume
Speaker 2: almost everyone has read it. It's pretty common. But if
Speaker 2: there is that kind of uh, you know, precocious teenager
Speaker 2: in your life. Uh Dunes, great place to start. The
Speaker 2: movies are good. I like Doune Messiah quite a bit.
Speaker 2: Maybe don't give that one to a twelve year old
Speaker 2: because it's a little weird. There's a whole bunch of
Speaker 2: kind of bizarre sex stuff in it. Still really good,
Speaker 2: just maybe not family friendly, but yeah, highly recommend it.
Speaker 2: The Lynch film is flawed. It's still very good, but
Speaker 2: not nearly as watchable. You know, It's something that myself
Speaker 2: and many others like, but it doesn't have the same
Speaker 2: mass appeal right for good or ill on that front.
Speaker 2: So definitely those are the recommendations Thomas. You've mentioned, of
Speaker 2: course the encyclopedia. But as we close this out, man,
Speaker 2: obviously people can check out your stuff on substack. You've
Speaker 2: been putting up for free a lot of mind phaser.
Speaker 2: You and Pete were talking not too long ago about
Speaker 2: how long Season three has been, and I kind of
Speaker 2: just forgotten about it. You have a lot of recordings
Speaker 2: up for free on your YouTube as well as your
Speaker 2: paid stuff on substack. You and Pete have done a
Speaker 2: great sort of mini series on Quison right talking about Vietnam.
Speaker 2: Recommend that and then your new book should be dropping
Speaker 2: soon at Antelope Pill. Is that correct?
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, thanks for the club man, Yeah, when yeah,
Speaker 3: though there should be very soon. There should be like
Speaker 3: a formal data nowze when it'll drop. Yeah, thanks for
Speaker 3: the profs and the Cason series. Man, I's like some
Speaker 3: pride in that. Nick got a lot of praise. So yeah,
Speaker 3: thank you, buddy.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I've enjoyed it a lot. Pete has become a
Speaker 2: great repository of long form historical content. The series you
Speaker 2: guys have done have been great. He's been doing a
Speaker 2: comprehensive series with Jay Bird and alumni George Bagbee going
Speaker 2: over the kind of Antebellum American history. It's at part
Speaker 2: thirteen or fourteen. Check that out as well as Thomas's
Speaker 2: stuff and every went home, Keep your height up, good night.
Speaker 2: One of
Speaker 1: What Gay