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Post by Andromitus on Mar 16, 2024 13:03:07 GMT -5
What I wanna talk about is Dune
I love Dune. I love it I love it I love it — and I've loved the mystery of the sandworms for quite some time and wanted to write out my nerdy headcannon for them instead of talking about my headcannon for fascism (goddamn this is an average CoFN wall of text, Jesus).
So, the general idea of the sandworms is that they are a cannibalistic monocultural ecology. The Sandworms, in some way, subsist by eating their young, are responsible in at least one stage of their lives for providing Arrakis' oxygen, and in another stage they entrap water underground and produce spice blows. There are three known life-stages of worms: sand plankton, sandtrouts, and sandworms. Plankton are exactly like they seem, but are said to eat spice on the surface. Trouts are colonial organisms which soak up any moisture they can, encysting it in their bodies, and digging down forming these deep, fertile pockets beneath the soil — vast, living cisterns. When their waste comes into contact with water it produces a pre-spice mass, which builds and builds until exploding to the surface; upon contact with the air and sunlight, this mass becomes melange (the Spice) scattered across the Arrakeen surface. Sandtrout seem to dig through the earth, such that the Fremen protect their water supplies with "predator fish" that attack invading sandtrout. Sandtrout can also be lured by small traces of water. When they get old enough, it looks like, a sandtrout becomes a juvenile worm which eats sand plankton.
While a cool concept, there's a lot I dislike. First, how do trouts survive? Where does energy come from in these big, underground, biological cisterns literally at the "planet's bedrock"? How does energy enter this system at all, for that matter, such that the sandworms can subsist solely on the juveniles of their own species?
I wanna change it up.
Sandworms undergo various life stages, with each stage interacting with each other and producing/filling this cannibal, autochthonous ecosystem. Their environment is impacted by each stage, with their bioecology producing both the dry, arid desert they inhabit, and the spice "melange". This entire bioecology stems from worm's bi-polar sexual strategies. The worm species, from their microscopic to their macroscopic stages, are all tied together by the different sexual strategies the species undertakes, difference which is based on environmental stimulus. The deserts, the spice, and the colossal sandworms themselves all originate in this simple division into one of two sexual strategies.
Imagine an Arrakis filled with water. Deep oceans, streams, brooks, and lakes; lush with green vegetation. Now, imagine this waterworld struck by a virus.
A colony of microscopic organisms, soon to be known as sand plankton, but what we'll call "larva", find themselves on Old Arrakis. When in contact with water, larvae release chemoattractants into their environment and begin to coalesce, switching from a floral-like plankton to a more faunal-amoeba and forming an aggregate. Within the aggregate, larvae begin to push out water molecules, compacting tighter and tighter and creating an exceptionally hydrophobic interior — however, toward the exterior, the plankton "panic" and undergo cryptobiosis. The result is a hard extracellular wall made up of the cryptobiotic bodies of the external-most plankton.
This "pupa" (a sandtrout) essentially functions like a multicellular organism, with the cells inside taking on new roles. Importantly, pupae have the extraordinary ability to, like a coral, secrete a solid matrix to inhabit — a hygroscopic crystal hydrate. Hydrates are crystals that have water molecules combined as an integral part of the crystal, and hygroscopic hydrates spontaneously absorb water from their ambient environment. This hydrate matrix (called a "Mass") creates a solid base, a dry, extremophilic environment in which the "hydrophobic" (so to speak) plankton can survive, with the bonus of killing off most other microscopic life, and warding off macroscopic predators.
Worm "Pupae" can live in any extent of water, from small ponds and rivers, to oceans, slowly producing their hydrate matrices. Like little arcs, they carry their larval colonies through the harsh, hydrophilic environments they find themselves in.
When in a stable Mass, pupae begin to "gestate": their plankton increasing glucose production and conjoining as mating pairs. These pairs swap genetic material and begin to rapidly multiply. Plankton which fail to mate begin to simply continue to engorge themselves with glucose, dying in the process but becoming food for the new population. The larval colonies continue to multiply, tripling the pupa in size before bursting out of their little pupated "cocoon". Should they find more water outside, this cycle repeats. Imagine great planktonic blooms in the oceans and strange "snow" of hydrate crystals floating to the seafloor.
You might notice some similarities between worms in this microscopic stage and another organism like Dictyostelium. Dictyostelium are unicellular amoeba, that, after a shock (such as starvation), form a multicellular aggregate to essentially move elsewhere (as I understand it). Worms at this early, microscopic stage work similarly — like dictyostelium, many cells end up not passing on their genes, sacrificing themselves for the aggregate. We can think of this evolutionary sacrifice as being propagated from generation to generation as the genetic base for this behavior is carried on by the survivors.
But when, for instance in a marshy environment or simply on land, worm pupates succeed in dehydrating their environment more permanently, plankton stop forming pupae at all. They are, however, still sexually reproductive. It's just that now without that extreme stimulus that is water, no plankton has "reason", so to speak, to "sacrifice" itself and each instead begins to mature independently (or at least along different chemical impulses).
In this matrix, the mass, free-floating larvae produce a red-black, florescent oil the Fremen call the "Water of Death" (I dislike this part of herbert's lore, so I'm stripping it and re-purposing it here). This oily medium provides a space in which the larvae can best homeostasis, helping to regulate temperature and acting as a means of chemical capture, aiding processes such as nitrogen fixation. Sandplankton "oil" is, likewise, highly reactive with water. When in contact with water, it chemically reacts with two byproducts being carbon dioxide and a string of compounds that are exceptionally toxic. Carbon dioxide dissolves in the oily medium and its spread acts as a chemoattractant which draws sandworm larvae to the area where, if there is a water breach, they pupate and produce more hydrate to encyst it.
The release of this toxic compound is where the water of death get's its name. Within the mass, it serves to help sterilize the new environment apart from worms themselves; when ingested, say by a larger organism, it tastes terrible and is both painful and deadly. Sandworm larvae (plankton) love to exist in this oily medium, which helps them survive in their crystalline home with the bonus of killing almost anything else that could have survived the initial dehydration.
From here, plankton do one of two things:
In the absence of free-floating reproductive material, they will begin to sexually mature into a juvenile worm. Worm's will be discussed more below, but this is their origin: juveniles thrive in their hydrate matrix (the mass), feeding on biological matter foreign to the colony or, in its absence, worm larvae (plankton). In the process of traveling and moving about, they release sperm which saturates their environment as that aforementioned free-floating reproductive material. This material acts as a suppressant, preventing more worms from developing in one area. It's for this reason that worms have the urge to spread and travel: so as to not eat their more genetically related cousins; so as to spread their material as far as possible. For this reason, their range is almost ever-increasing. For similar reproductive impulses, they are likewise fiercely territorial and will kill any other worm they find.
In an environment saturated with reproductive material, as mentioned, worm development is suppressed. Genetic material is taken in by larvae and they begin to undergo rapid cellular division. During this, planktonic oils (the water of death) are produced in greater and greater excess, an increase which creates a bulge in the Mass that continually increases in pressure.
It is important to mention here that, at a certain temperature, plankton will "panic" and undergo cryptobiosis.
Masses, as mentioned, are made up of hygroscopic hydrates. These hydrates are exceptionally stable and remain hydrated under most Arrakeen conditions — especially as they are buried by the desert. Usually, these crystals only undergo dehydration at higher temperatures not easily reached in the ambient environment (or only reached in particular regions and microbiomes. However, at higher pressures, these crystals become unstable and more easily dehydrate. A mass will continue to expand, pressure building inside, before reaching a tipping point when the surrounding mass will begin to slowly, and then rapidly, dehydrate — the water is released from its crystals and reacts with the planktonic oil.
The result is a "pre-spice mass" — essentially a bomb.
Free water molecules released from their crystal hydrates react with the surrounding oil (the water of death), releasing carbon dioxide, planktonic toxins, and heat. However, now, at this point of high heat and pressure, the aformentioned toxins undergo a chemical transformation, becoming "pre-spice". The release of carbon dioxide causes it to dissolve and permeate the mass surrounding the pre-spice bulge, attracting plankton who will, upon coming into contact with an increase in general moisture, begin to pupate. However, as the environment is now unstable and the pupae will be unable to hydrate a crystal matrix; incapable of re-encysting the water, when the pupae burst, releasing even more plankton and planktonic oil, over and over which simply speeds up the reaction. Plankton deeper within the mass will slow multiplying and will "panic" at such a high temperature and undergo cryptobiosis.
At this stage, the pressure differential within the pre-spice mass will begin to suck the water of death from the surrounding crystal matrix, quickening the reaction.
What happens next happens over the course of only a few minutes: the resulting increase in temperature and pressure reaches a tipping point, causing even more water to be released from the surrounding crystal matrix and at ever faster rates and draining the surrounding crystalline mass of its planktonic oil. In the final remaining seconds, heat and pressure build before finally the pre-spice mass violently erupts in a "spice blow". Depending on the size of the mass, the blow forms a geyser of hot air which carries the cryptobiotic larvae (plankton) over huge distances and scatters pre-spice along the surface of Arrakis. Pre-spice, a white powder, reacts with the sunlight and oxygen to form the spice Melange — the holy hallucinogen and the only means of interstellar travel in the Known Universe.
At their current rate, adult worms cultivate huge ranges across Arrakis and so create equally humungous spice fields, leagues upon leagues that the houses and guilds of the Known Universe greedily devour.
This brings us, naturally, to the worms themselves. There is a significant difference between Nymphal (microscopic) Juvenile worms (macroscopic, maxing out at about a meter in length) and their adult counterparts (stretching into the hundreds of meters).
Worm maturation begins in the absence of free-floating genetic material. This means that, in any given viable region many worms will begin to mature. During maturation, a planktonic larva will cocoon itself once more, this time in an outer membrane of its own creation. It will then proceed to gestate, turning from a unicellular organism into a multicellular embryo. After a few days, it will burst out of its ad hoc shell and begin to hunt its competitors. At this stage, nymphal worms will engage in viscous combat in a bid for supremacy — killing each other off as genetic rivals. While still remaining somewhat plant-like, these young worms will also adopt a predatory behavior and will eat their competition, and soon after, the plankton they metamorphosed from.
Two behaviors prevent worms from eating plankton genetically similar to them. First, microscopic worms are actually rather careful predators — plankton exteriors are lined with chemical receptors that "identify" them and allow the young worms to pick out plankton most related to themself and to spare them. These receptors change over time from generation to generation, so any given colony will steadily differentiate itself from its neighbors. But, the result is a strange, juvenile environment where some plankton produce "false" receptors to essentially "hide their identity" and seek to carry on their lineage under the rulership of an enemy worm.
The nymphal stage is passed usually within a few weeks as the worm becomes a "juvenile", reaching sexual maturity. As they grow into a juvenile, though, worms "lose their taste", so to speak, and so adopt a second strategy to not eat their relatives: simply traveling as far as possible to not eat their close relatives and spread their genetics farther away.
Juvenile worms are quite unlike other organisms. As they reach this juvenile stage, worms begin to develop an internal structure rather than simple muscle and organs. Their bones grow in repeating segments and are not made of calcium, but instead are metallic. Feeding on the iron in the earth around them, juvenile worms, as they grow their skeleton, produce an iron composite-based, crystalline nano-fiber called goethite interwoven into a chitin matrix. These geothite bones are roughly the same material used in Limpet teeth — it is one of the, if not the, hardest and toughest biological materials known. The hardness of these is also why worm teeth are favored by Fremen as their crysknives. The bones account for the sandworms collossal sizes, which are also explained by the fact that worms simply never stop growing — they are biologically immortal, growing until they quite literally cannot support their own weight and either starve or their bones crack and they collapse.
One issue that comes from these bones, though, that worms struggle with is calcium deficiency. Most of the calcium in a worms' body is in its cartilage which is strengthened by calcium salts. Nevertheless, cellular malformation or starvation are challenges that old worms handle through combat, relying on their kills of other worms to supplement.
These juvenile worms are still extremophiles and a major reason for this is their incorporation of the hydrate mass they mature in into their bodies. It's through these crystals that worms passively absorb water into their bodies. As they grow, the pressure and heat of their enormous, adult forms dehydrate the hydrate-rich sands of their environment, providing another major source of water. However, water ambiantly contacting a worm's skin and flesh causes it to over-hydrate itself, irritating and damaging its organs. In this sense, worms are "allergic" to water.
Worms travel in relatively shallow sand, and their adults swim along the surface of the desert (but they usually dive deeper when they stop traveling and when "listening"). The reason is that the primary means that sandworms "swim" in sand is through sand fluidization. Sand fluidization causes sand particles to behave like a liquid, an effect produced, first, by the 'swimming' motion of the worms make as they move. Sandworms are long and engage in many rapid undulations which destabilize the sand around them and cause fluidization. By pumping air through pores running along the edges of their scales, the sandworms can further loosen the sand around them and enable swimming. Theoretically, the bubbles of oxygen in spice beds could likewise make certain sections of the desert easier to "swim" than others, but the main component for juvenile worms is this mix of undulation and gas release.
Sand swimming is further aided by the smoothness of sandworm scales, which are kept smooth by how they chip and repair overtime — their scales are exceptionally smooth on their own, maintaining a low coefficient of friction, but are only aided by the excretion of sandplankton oil that the worms ingest while swimming. This oil is the final piece of the sandworm puzzle. As juveniles consume the oil from their surrounding environment, their body must carefully avoid mixing it with any water, lest the worm literally combust. This is yet one more reason why worms are so water-phobic.
However, this feature of sandplankton oil is exploited by juvenile and adult worms:
Worms combine the oil they ingest with water to produce a steady stream of hot, high-pressure oxygen gas which they release from the pores along their body. Adult sandworms can produce an estimated 300 liters of carbon dioxide per second. While juvenile worms have to chemically release water from the crystal hydrate they consume, the heat and pressure of adult worm's own natural bodily processes and size is enough to release water from the hydrate crystals they consume, meaning they can coast along the energy stored along the surface of Arrakis by their larval cousins. The characteristic "roar" that accompanies worms is believed to be a product of this internal combustion, paired the sonic vibrations they produce at this size to further fluidize the sand around them.
These impressive numbers mean that worms need equally massive quantities of food. It's for this reason that sandworms are so viciously territorial. An adult sandworm can cultivate hectares upon hectares of sand plankton to feed on and planktonic oil to burn. At this size, they actively transform their landscape. The sand loosened by sandworm swimming and aided by spice blows are a main reason behind the monstrous desert storms that torment the Arrakeen surface.
This discussion leads us to worm psychology. Nymphal worms are extraordinarily aggressive, seeking to kill any and every worm they find to assert sexual supremacy over their territory and the larvae therein. Adult worms are no less territorial, however this picture of worm aggression does get complicated as worms age. For example, two 200 meter adult worms would seriously injure themselves — in ways that neither might be able to recover from — if fighting carelessly. There is a serious incentive, then, to assert territoriality in ways that are not a basic kill instinct.
As an aside, this territoriality is also the reason why worms are seemingly ever-present on dune. There is not a hair of unclaimed space and, for the most part, if a worm can reach an area, one already has. "Worm territory" is a way of denoting this capability. Shallower parts of the desert that have only a small amount of sand between the surface and the bedrock, can only harbor sandworms of a particular size. They are, in effect, sandworm nurseries. But the deeper the deserts (not to be confused with 'the Deep Desert', the Fremen colloquial name for the Arrakeen equator and southern hemisphere) the bigger the worms.
Worm's interact with the world largely through sound and sensation. Their exterior scales are smooth and oily to help reduce friction, but they also house the photosynthetic organs of worms by which they identify their depth. They can also feel the world around them with a surprising degree of precision. But for the most part, worms are sound based organisms. They can hear extraordinarily well in the sand and a great deal of worm life, apart from feeding and spreading genetic material, is simply listening and digesting. It's through this listening that worm territories are established — for the most part, it's most ideal for worms of similar size to avoid one another rather than duke it out for supremacy. Much of what they are listening for, then, is actually the size of the species' around them. Worms are fanatic killers of lifeforms of a smaller size so as to prevent the growth of smaller worms that may grow to contest their space. They are rather forward-thinking in this sense. So, worms are such a threat to humans as worms are actually hunting for small prey.
Assertions of territory by more evenly sized adult worms is done through how they move and by low toned calls identifying their location. In fact, smaller worms can 'trick' potentially bigger worms by pitching their sounds lower, to potentially ward them off by saying "I'm bigger than you."
Worms will vary in their behavior. Sometimes, they will choose to avoid a potential battle, other times they are driven to seek them out. The sheer number of worms and the carrying capacity of Arrakis essentially means that territory is always shifting. Moving out to combat an intruder means other intruders can move in to where you just left. In this eternal chess match, large adult worms will inevitably clash, but true blood-crazed fights to the death are less common that duels.
Worms have two kinds of teeth. One long and bailleen like for eating sand plankton, the other curved for dueling. Duels are mixture of stoting and actual combat, but this combat is strategic. It is always a kind of communication to see who backs down first, who can be driven off. Better to fight cautiously than to leave yourself exposed and get yourself killed. However, the drive toward mortal combat is always present, and the longer the fight, the more likely it is to attract more worms who might hope to benefit from more feeding space. The result is a frenzy in which many worms of many sizes are present. These are exceptionally violent but also complexly political as smaller (or perhaps craftier?) worms remain on the sidelines to kill off weakened victors.
This actually plays into how the Fremen interact with them. A Fremen must be wary of juvenile worms in shallower deserts, and adult worms in deeper deserts. Fremen thumpers are likewise able to be calibrated to attract or detest worms of particular sizes, and a large number of thumpers can be used to resemble a frenzy which is how Fremen can attract a multitude of worms to ride.
It is also, due to their territoriality, unusual (although not impossible) for another worm to attack while a Fremen is riding for short distances. The sound of the worm being ridden will attract a challenger; while one is not usually nearby during short distance rides, they are inevitable on longer distance rides.
Hence the development of Fremen storm whistles: sandworms react poorly to high-pitched noises. This potentially evolved as a behavior to dive during harsh storms — the voracious sand-hurricanes of dune can damage a worm's hide, or at least act as an abrasive making their movement more difficult (remember, worms need to be smooth). High-pitched noises also seem to irritate their oratory organs. Storm whistles are a Fremen tool that, when exposed to wind, let out a multi-pitched scream that causes worms to dive or otherwise move to avoid the noise. It requires careful attention of the rider, though, who must ensure that their own worm does not change course or attempt to dive itself.
Most of the time, experienced riders, and especially riding teams, can identify wormsign from atop their ride and deploy the whistles to keep control of the situation. But occasionally, a worm nearby could, in effect, ambush the riders which is extraordinarily dangerous.
There is one final point of note here is the "Water of Life". Unlike the "water of death", the "Water of Life" comes from the "bile of a juvenile sandworm," who must be drowned. The Water of Life is psychoactive, similar to Spice, but is also poisonous, similar to the water of death — it is responsible for transforming a Sayyadina into a Reverend Mother by giving her access to the combined memories of her entire (female) genetic lineage. This lineage, the Bene Gesserit believe, is accessible through her XX chromosome (such that a male would, through his XY, be able to access both male and female lineages — becoming the Kwisatz Haderach). What happens is that the bile is consumed by a Sayyadina, who, through her training, would enter into a deathlike trance, altering her metabolism to transform the poisonous bile. If she failed, she died, but if successful the substance would be regurgitated and would begin to perspire through her skin and escape as a vapor through her breathing. This converted substance would be the Water of Life which was consumed by the Fremen as a narcotic and played a role in their religious spice orgies.
Bile is not spice, it's just poison. Lacking oxygen and sunlight, what chemicals in it that do resemble pre-spice synthesize with other chemicals released by the worm as it drowns. It is chemically distinct and exceptionally deadly — men, and untrained women who drink it will die.
Only the arrival of the Bene Gesserit on Arrakis, and the steady permeation of their Reverend Mothers throughout Fremen culture, did the discovery of the water of life take place. Bene Gesserit colonial tactics involve the emotional, psycho-cultural manipulation of their subject matter and the integration of Gesserit practices with indigenous ones. On Arrakis, these missionary practices were uniquely successful, which the order attributed to the difficult conditions on the planet fostering a "common genetic trauma which encouraged messianism and soothsaying as fanatic coping mechanisms." Here, the first Gesserit reverends that managed to become Fremen Sayyadina, which at this time were a much broader class of holy women, impinged on an already existent practice of drowning a juvenile worm as a form of sacrifice. These Bene Gesserit-influenced Sayyadina were the first to learn to convert the bile into the water of life, bringing the practice of converting Sayyadina into Reverend Mothers to Arrakis. But in doing so, they caused a religious upheaval among the Fremen and triggered a shift in relationship between Fremen and Worm. The new centrality of the worm and the spice in forging a combined Fremen identity would be critical in the later evolution of the Ichwan Bedwine, thus directly leading to the unified Fremen Jihad against House Harkonnen.
As for the bile itself:
First, its name comes as a play on the much more common "water of death". Sandworm are known to "drink water of death" and so their bile would come to be associated as the poisonous water's inverse. When worms combine planktonic oil with water in order to fluidize the desert sands to "swim", the resulting toxins accumulate in their body and is slowly excreted out of the worm's body. This waste reacts with oxygen and sunlight just like pre-spice does, and just like spice, acts as a fertilizer for sandplankton.
Worm's similarly do not stop producing the water of death after metamorphosing out of their planktonic stage. Instead, similar chemicals are found in their flesh and bodily fluids — they, too, react with water and can cause muscular degeneration and water-poisoning in worms which is why worms take in water via the hydrate crystals of their pupal forms. However, when a juvenile worm is drowned, the remaining planktonic oil in its gut, as well as its bodily fluids, flesh, and organs, chemically react. The resulting heat and chemical reactions within the worm from so much water causes other bodily fluids, muscles, and organs, to break down which releases more and more chemical compounds similar to spice. From here, its body begins to break down, and the resulting substances from the drowning accumulate as a poisonous concentrate, or "bile", in the worm's gut.
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Post by Andromitus on Mar 17, 2024 12:49:47 GMT -5
I'm moving my weird lore headcanons here so buckle up —
For the most part, I actually have little to nothing to add or change to the story. I dislike Chani's concubine-status, Harah as a representation of Fremen marriage customs, I dislike that it is left a little unclear how exactly the Jihad starts at the end of The Prophet, and I dislike how the Bene Gesserit are right, in a sense, that their idea of race consciousness is embodied in the Fremen coming-together. In a sense, I actually almost prefer Villeneuve's telling, which shows Chani as rejecting Paul and her concubine status, Harah as nonexistent, and the Jihad as starting because the Great Houses reject Paul's Emperorship. This actually allows us to parallel the struggle of emperor-ship. The Padishah-Emperor Shaddam IV couldn't simply annihilate the Great Houses with his Sardaukar as they would rise up; now, Paul is faced with an uprising of the Great Houses against him, with his own "Sardaukar", the Fremen and Feydakin Death-Commandos.
Beyond this, though, the main plot beats I thoroughly enjoy. Instead, it's a lot of the background lore that irks me. In a polity whose previous incarnation tens of thousands of years prior was called "the empire of ten thousand worlds", in what universe is this possibly galactic entity having Great Houses that rule only individual planets? I get Herbert was going for an HRE kind of thing, but there's definitely a better way of going about doing it. Likewise, when your state is the only state that exists, would you even think of it as a state anymore? We have such an opportunity here for a truly "interstellar" culture, which views itself along metaphors of stars and planets, and yet we're stuck with empires, emperors, etc. No. A ten thousand year old culture spanning a galaxy does not think of itself as any sort of Imperium.
There is, simply, the Known Universe.
In this interstellar culture, metaphors and ideas of states and static structures have given way to stories of stars, of gravity, orbits, and flows. The ideological veneer of this society is one of universality — they are the Known Universe, they are all that is. In the absence of any unified state or empire, there is instead there are the aristocratic bloodlines and the associations that bind them: a messy tangle of courts, colleges, and councils; houses, alliances, mandates, guilds, and powerful personalities. What binds the Known Universe together is (the) "Madjmuar", or the assembling. It is the ad hoc organization of people into this shifting tangle. It is a process seen as inevitable:
Mankind is a constellation — the lesser in orbit around the greater.
It is a circular logic. There are those around which others can be said to orbit, there are bigger entities and smaller; the bigger simply are bigger, no further reason is necessary. One is greater because others orbit around you, you reveal your greatness through your deeds and their consequences. It is through this mentality that the forces of the Known Universe explain their own rise and fall. They present themselves through the metaphors of planets, solar systems, and nebulae — they are literal stars and constellations in the sky of humanity.
This is all wrapped up by this culture's naturalization not just of its own order, but of resistance to it. It's ruling philosophy holds that the Constellation of Man itself is formed by the natural pull, the social gravity, the Greats, whoever they may be. But their doctrine explains that, unlike planets, man is 'free', he can thus sin, he can thus resist the pull of gravity. And this, I feel, is a stroke of political genius, because it essentially molds resistance to the current social order as meaning freedom, but that this freedom is inherently sinful, but also futile. A rocket can resist gravity until its fuel runs out and inevitably crashes down to earth. Freedom is thus something done by the lesser who do not want to orbit the greater, but they resist only their own nature. This is why resistance is sin, it is sinful because it leads to harm, the breakdown of natural order, the breakdown of patronage, chaos, confusion, war is all born of freedom. It's nefarious to the extreme. All heterodoxy, all resistance to social norms, is thus all equally understood as the same thing: sin, freedom. Something which is the opposite of order; it is spontaneous and temporary, whereas social gravity is eternal, it is chaotic whereas gravity is orderly, and thus always harmful and useless.
Order, by contrast, isn't seen as a static polity like an empire, as already mentioned. There is no government or bureaucracy, or any absolute that is separate from the organic evolution of the aristocratic hierarchy who's own contractions and faults can be waived away as an outpouring of sin; thus, maladies are not the fault of the ruling system, they are always temporary and nobody but human nature is at fault.
These tangled assemblages are not always united. Instead, they are usually bitter rivals. For a time, the most powerful force had been the Azar College that monopolized the training of higher mentats, itself having evolved to something of a legal entity; but in recent millenia the bodies of power had shifted into orbit around the so-called Great Houses, unified around leadership from the planet Corrino: a man named Shaddam. Not a Padi- or Emperor, but a Shah, the Shahanshah, King of Kings: the one around which all others orbited.
He was Shaddam IV, Shahanshah, Center of the Known Universe.
This society, as should be obvious, is defined by the organization of aristocratic individuals, and its here that I'll re-introduce Dune's complicated relationship with technology. The dusk of the Empire of Ten Thousand Worlds (or simply "the Ten Thousand") and the dawn of the Known Universe was a bloody event known as the Butlerian Crusade. The crusade was a result of a human rebellion or war against thinking machines, computers of any kind. Its result was the scattering, the break-up of human civilization built prior to that point and the temporary end or slow-down of interstellar travel.
But this Crusade is not as clean as it makes itself out to be. The even itself was incited by a growing class of augmented humans. The growing dusk of the Ten Thousand saw the first autogenous human augmentation in the form of early mentats. Mentats are human supercomputers — through special training and meditative practices, they are capable of stimulating neuron growth in their minds, unlocking superhuman computational abilities. At the time of the Ten Thousand, we are far from what Mentats will become, but this promising subgroup of human self-modifiers would begin to transform into a wealth of schools and training centers attempting to further modify and advance humanity on the front of biology. It was the continued development of artificial intelligence that set these early augmented in luddite opposition to it, and it was the bio-political element — the use of machines to control human populations — which they exploited to whip human populations across the Ten Thousand into a frenzy against any and all thinking machines. But this was not, as much as history labels it to be, a war against all machines. In reality, the Crusade was largely handled by thinking machines — rather than one singular artificial intelligence hellbent on destroying humanity, the Ten Thousand was a period which saw a wealth of computer intelligences such that there was no one singular "enemy". Any individual rogue intelligence could be countered with a new friendly one, so to speak. The difference was a difference between augmented and as of yet unaugmented human beings. It was not a war of man against machine, but a war of man against man.
Augmented humanity was the embryonic stage of a technological revolution — two techniques had begun to proliferate throughout human cultures. One, digital and run through thinking machines; the other, analogue, run through augmented humans. It was this tension which catalyzed the Crusade, and this tension which saw the destruction of thinking machines everywhere. So it came to be written:
"Man is the creation of God, and glimpsing God, man has learned to think. The creations of god are organic. The creations of man are artificial — the artificial cannot glimpse God. The artificial cannot think. No machine may think."
The crusade started on a single world, burning bright like a star, before exploding in every direction like a wave across the Ten Thousand Worlds. Mankind was scattered, isolated. Without thinking machines their new societies based around the rebellious augmented were incapable of guiding spaceships through the void between stars at any pace faster than light. It is unclear how long the crusade and the isolation lasted, but the pressure to stitch humanity back together drove the further augmentation of humanity. Various methods were attempted but they were at best only capable of short distance travel — the use of psychoactive chemicals to further augment human capabilities became widespread, but their usefulness for guiding space travel through the void was slim.
This new, augmented society saw a technological revolution surrounding analogue devices. The technology found in the Dune universe is based around what we might characterize as a distinction between analogue rather than digital, technology. In rejecting 'thinking machines', the people of Dune's Known Universe rejected the basic idea of digital computing or hardware that might run their technology. Instead, they rely on advanced analogue devices. Each function a device is meant to take on entails an entirely novel part specifically for that purpose. This gives Dune its characteristic "bulky" or "bulbous" feel with regards to its technology. This technological hurdle for uniqueness would be overcome through miniaturization, but technology would avoid singular standardization for another reason: the aristocracy.
Lacking even basic digital computing, the computational element of this advanced technology was a human one. It is human electrical signals which literally are inserted into the equation to make a piece of technology "work". It was augmented humans, one's who went through the brutal training to modify their bodies and minds, who established this. Deep meditation and control over their internal physio-chemical properties has allowed augmented humans to stimulate neural growth in their hands, or to grow clusters of neurons across their bodies. These can output small electrical signals that their technology relies on to work. They have literally integrated themselves bio-electrically with the technology around them.
A duke's son turns on and off the lights in a room by pressing his thumb to a panel and willing electrical signals to pass from the neuron clusters in the tips of his fingers, to the complex web of machinery embedded within the walls around him. He controls the temperature, humidity, and even movement of the wind by pulsing patches of sensitive skin around his body detected by delicate sensors in the space around him and keeping the room directly to his liking.
Take a device like the shield. Shields redefined combat in the future — making lasguns impractical and disabling any object moving too quickly. While this did spur on the development of bullets and missiles meant to "burrow" through a shield, these are difficult to aim and a slight mishap in trajectory can cause them to bounce, uselessly, off of their targets. It was also the changing face of war — from total war to aristocratic war — that further encouraged the evolution of hand-to-hand combat, alongside the use of maces, swords, and spears. The internal components of a shield, as they are based around analogue designs, lacking a computer are unified by its wearer. A wearer must, in a way, "feel" the shield wrap around their body, relying on their patches of neurally-dense skin as anchors. The device generates it, but it is the human mind which activates it, and the human body that controls it.
Or take Ornithopters. To control these, pilots pulse signals from their hands through delicate control panels on their seats They reach their minds out into the black only to hear confirmation of their success by the activation of the wings and engines of the device. They "tense" their mind and the machine responds in a strange, one way command pilots call a "leap of faith". This is not unlike the great Star Ships of the Known Universe — here, teams of Mentats manage ever piece of the ship, from internal life support to engine control.
The Constellation of Man is a constellation through the practice and entity of Madjmuar, "assembly". This assembly takes the form of a kind of patronage system. Herbert had the right idea in fashioning the Imperium out to be like the feudal HRE, but his scale was much too small.
Here, the Great Houses directly own many fief-worlds, but also are bound together through a patronage system — here, a person, group, or organization can adopt the patronage of a higher power, becoming their client. The patronage receives access to something from their client, and in return, provides protection, legal representation, access to the goods and services of other clients under their patron, etc. The product are huge, overlapping webs of patron-client relations binding together superclusters we call Houses. It's only in this sense that we can start to grasp a group like the Atreides, or contrastingly, the Harkonnen.
House Atreides is based on the Planet Caladan, but they directly own a total of 12 worlds constituting the Atreides' "Jewels". While a small number, the Atreides make up for this with a simply massive patronage system. Thousands upon thousands of worlds, hundreds of houses themselves multi-planetory, hell, whole star systems, guilds, councils, and alliances find themselves currently as Atreidean clientele. Of the Shuraye, the assembling of the Great Houses, an eight are Atreides clients, and a quarter are outspoken allies. The Atreides, at the start of Dune, are the most powerful House next to House Corrino and House Harkonnen.
Patronage networks also function economically. In this system, supply and demand are communicated via patronage agreements. In this sense, these agreements aren’t just a form of military protection racket, they are the means in which goods and labor are moved throughout the known universe. Territory is held heterogeneously; one city could receive most of their grain through House Atreides, while the lords of the planet himself is a client of House Azaal. In this light, the fact that House Atreides controls an odd 12 planets is very significant; they control 12 planets homogeneously.
But this leaves the marketplace to be a space of awkward tension: namely that the money-commodity "concludes" a relationship rather than setting up a repeating client-patron agreement. Patronages are, so to speak, atemporal — they exist until they are consciously ended; whereas sales are temporal, the relation "ends" when the sale is concluded and no permanent, binding link is formed. This isn’t to say though, that markets don’t exist in the Known Universe; they’re simply culturally awkward. When the entire social hierarchy forms and operates through systems of patronage and mutual (oftentimes familial) relationships, to the point that bodies like the Madjmuar cannot exist without them, the market, where no patron relations form is a culturally confusing space.
And it’s here where we find House Harkonnen is powerful for a totally different reason: the Harkonnens have a comparatively small list of clients and they aren't seeking to expand it. Instead, the Harkonnens are marketeers. They buy and sell without establishing patron-client bonds, and importantly, they sell spice. As the owners of Arrakis, they have a front row seat in spice extraction and sale. In a sense, they have sacrificed their ability to engage in aristocratic patronage to instead cultivate market power through the spice trade. They may be small, controlling only the Giedi star system and Arrakis, but they own outposts and stations throughout Known Universe, with Harkonnen agents in every major star system managing the flow of Harkonnen Spice.
But the Harkonnen's are only in this position by grace of Shaddam IV — House Corrino is the house of the Shahanshah and rules in yet a third way. Their power is not by unifying people into a grand party, or by monopolizing the free market; instead, as the current center of the universe, Corrino maintains power by dividing people and balancing opposing interests. The Shahanshah's power comes from his ability to balance the concert of powers in the universe — so long as they remain both balanced yet oppositional, he can maintain his own position as the center that provides that balance and stability. The houses and assemblages of the known universe exist in an arrangement where their laws are binding and enforced by the Shahanshah, as are their own personal claims to power. Corrino is a kind of political insurance; yet it also works to undermine the Shuraye by ensuring that no single power can unify the Known Universe against it. Shaddam II chose house Harkonnen to manage Arrakis as he knew that this marketeering house, otherwise separated from the practice of patronage and so despised by and isolated from the other houses, would be both incentivized by control over Arrakis to continue market practices and so alienate itself further from the other houses, jealous of its wealth and spice. Thus the delicate balancing keeping House Corrino aloft would be maintained.
The Shuraye is not like a parliament in which each Great House has a seat. Rather, the Great Houses getting together is the act and creation of a Shuraye. The houses come together to, like parties in a parliament, form a government literally. In this government, this assembling of the houses, the absence of any family means the government is no longer in existence as the Shuraye has no reality without being constituted by the Great Houses, all of them.
This actually makes a lot of sense by the logic of the book universe, where the Imperium allows for war between its members. The Constellation of Man clarifies this by establishing the Shuraye as providing one of many outlets for expressing political interests. There can be many possible constellations of houses, from harmonious assemblies to wars of assassins, such that the given political order is dynamic.
What's important is that the Shuraye, as a particular political activity, dissolves because of the aristocracy but also reforms because of it. The patronage system gives quite a bit of power to the lesser houses, because patronage factions are overlapping. The Atreides are not dicators of their faction, they are simply the dominant voice, a voice enmeshed with other voices. This means that wars between houses are more renegotiations of the political order than a contestation of it. War strengthens the overarching feudal system as wars are started and ended by the various universal actors being pulled along the fault lines of overlapping patronages. The Shuraye also acts as a space for neutral parties to act as arbitrators. Equally is this body necessary for legitimacy. Without it the Shah is no Shahanshah, as he has no Shahs over which he is Shah (yet another instance where the ruling philosophy relies on circularity and self-evidence; one is great because they are followed, they are followed because they are great).
This political legitimacy, this seal of approval, which the Shuraye provides is likewise necessary for the what are called Mandates. Rather than ministries or companies in which houses have shares, the Constellation of Mankind establishes Mandates, organizations which perform specific tasks such as organizing spice distribution. CHOAM would be one such mandate; these mandates don't function without a Shuraye, and their entanglement with the great houses is but one other enmeshing through which wars can be ended and a government reconstituted.
Alongside the occasional dissolution of the Shuraye are the much greater Recirculation, which happen from time to time. Named after how the Constellation of Mankind seems to "re-arrange", to order itself around new "orbits", a recirculation occurs when the system as a whole shatters just a little bit, such as when the family currently holding the position of Shahanshah is contested or when Great Houses spiral into more bitter fighting that leaves many of them destroyed or significantly weakened. These occur rarely but their effects are huge.
I feel Vladimir Harkonnen should be one to fear a recirculation. If Leto is ruled by the past, and Paul is haunted by the future, I feel the Baron Harkonnen should be obsessed with the present. He already in the book has a motif of misjudging the Fremen, assuming a population of thousands as opposed to the millions actually right beneath him; I think this should be expanded into a wider knowledge that something is happening. He knows a recirculation is going to occur soon, but his focus is on the Constellation of Mankind and its affairs, never on anything beyond it. He is thus the perfect example of someone who cannot imagine a world outside of the one they're living in — how fitting, the great capitalist is the one infected by capitalist realism.
As I mentioned Atreides controls, homogeneously, 12 worlds. This is the hallmark of a Great House. Unlike most other (Lesser) Houses, those Atreidean worlds are under the direct and absolute rule of the Atreides Duke. Resources imported to them are provided by the Dukedom's clientele, not by other patrons. Local power is held by Atreides governors, not local, independent lords. There are, so to speak, no free cities or stations in any Atreides star systems. These are Atreides worlds: quite literally, only the Atreides are present on them. It's this homogeneity that sets Great Houses apart from Lesser Houses — they are great as they have these client, and not patron, based planets. This provides them a degree of political independence. They have an unprecedented degree of power on these planetary strongholds, which they can shape as they please and on which they can foster an unmediated power base.
It's this unique material base, I feel, that is a key part in producing the diversity of ruling strategies among the Great Houses. Let's continue with the Atreides as an example:
Their ruling structure in the book is one of political myth making. Their security on these worlds stems from the myths that the Atreides spin — myths of bravura, of martial prowess, of chivalry. If a Lannister always pays his debts, an Atreides never breaks an oath. This myth-making is wielded to engage fanatics among their ranks.
I mentioned above how technology is shaped by the culture of its new, aristocratic users. Here, Atreides technology resembles animal and plant life. It is part of an enduring myth that they are present and have always been present, that they exist harmoniously with the worlds they rule over. Atreides architecture would, like Incan architecture, be built into the natural landscape; Atreides buildings are made of great stone blocks, resembling temples built into the rock and artificially "aged" with sprays of acid and planted moss. Simultaneously "ancient" and titanic, they manage to impose themself on an environment and exist seemingly unseen in the background. This goes for everything Atreides: Starship stations are hidden beneath lakes, fortresses disguised as mountains. All of this stems from a ruling philosophy of mythic proportion — the Atreides are the landscape itself, the natural rulers of the worlds they oversee. They are the cultivators who provide their subjects with garden worlds and wealth as dutiful patrons.
But so too are these ducal aristocrats permanently mistrustful. Their status in the spotlight embroils them in a ceaseless war of assassins with their rivals like House Harkonnen. And so with their constant propagandizing and myth making, the Atreides are truly a military culture. They are the warrior house both in chivalric story and in real military necessity. The War House Atreides — their governors are generals, their staff are elite fighters.
This philosophy stems from, and structures, the ruling system of the family Atreides itself:
In Dune, century long lifespans for rulers is the norm. In fact, a man really lives only until he is killed or his mind "snaps" (which occurs around the 5 hundred year mark). Imagine generations upon generations living and dying under a single, seemingly eternal ruler (and so imagine the chaos a regime change might cause in terms of popular legitimacy). This insane problem of legacy is directly integrated into Atreides family life.
They maintain a diarchic ruling structure in which a Duke is the primary leader and face of the family but who is primed by a Grand Duke — the current Duke's senior — who holds an advisory position for the acting Duke. A Duke becomes a Grand Duke either on an existing Grand Duke's death, on his own reach of the age of 250, or, in an emergency, after a Prince comes of age. This transition also inaugurates a na-Duke into a Duke — the na-Duke is one of usually several prospects chosen by the acting Duke on council by his Grand Duke. The entire process is meant to steadily introduce the public to their leaders cohesively and smoothly, like an ever-replacing row of shark's teeth. The existence of the position of Grand Duke is meant to seamlessly link the transfer of power and acts as a stabilizing presence, taking a backseat in political affairs but still remaining to defend a new Duke from potential enemies and to provide educational aid as the new Duke establishes themself, constructing, or rather continuing, the dynasty's legacy. The age limit to dukedom ensures a fresh heir takes the throne such that no single Duke becomes too attached to his position and endanger the system of ducal replacement. In fact, while not common, occasionally the Atreides will find themself in the interesting position of have a Duke guided by two Grand Dukes at once.
The emphasis here, though, is that no system is truly perfect, and a small upset can shatter a delicate system.
That Leto's father died suddenly in a bull fight meant that he never ascended to the rank of Grand Duke. His own Grand Duke had died, and during the process in which the Old Duke would have chosen a new Duke from among his prospective na-Dukes, he, too, died in the bull fighting ring. The Old Duke's hunger for legacy, heightened by his father's death, killed him quite painfully. Whomever among the Atreides the Old Duke had established as his potential na-Dukes were suddenly cut out of the picture as, in this emergency situation, power fell to Leto as his first born. Leto was among the na-Duke prospects, but lacking a Duke or Grand Duke, power automatically fell to him in a system of emergency primogeniture. It was Leto who then established himself in a very awkward transition of power, leaving his family fragmented, his realm shaken, and his inherited political faction underdeveloped and weakened.
The bravura that defined the Old Duke haunts Duke Leto, who must always live up to his father's shadow.
This notion of smooth transitions also identifies how the Atreides rule their 12 planets. A ruling Duke has his capitol on the planet Caladan, yes, but would move this station among the other eleven worlds of the Atreidean Realm; the youngest member would have joined perhaps only 200 years ago and still the integration process very important. The Old Duke's made this new world his capitol, returning to Caladan only briefly, all in order to firmly establish it as an Atreides (and Atreides only) planet.
But a Houses' power comes not from their direct holdings, but rather their network of clientele. The Atreides would head a major patronal network accounting for thousands on thousands of worlds, trillions of lives, hence expanding on the novel's reasoning for the plot against them by the Shahanshah: their growing voice in the Shuraye.
And a growing voice it was. The Atreides empire is built by their legacy and mythos, their refusal to break an oath. It was the Old Duke which took the Atreides faction and cultivated it, nurtured it, grew it to such titanic proportions as we see by the time of the Novel. He had to, so as to assert the myths he was set up by his father to construct — he had to, just as he had to bullfight. The Old Duke's premature death in a bullfight would thrust Duke Leto into an awkward position of lacking the bravura and legacy of his father, of inheriting a vast and complex empire that he did not have the time to properly integrate.
These two factors would explain why Duke Leto would move all of his holdings to Arrakis, and why he couldn't refuse to not take the planet when it was offered by Shaddam IV. The patronage system would provide political representation and economic integration to the lower houses that Atreides didn't directly control; to refuse this public gift is simply something the Duke couldn't do, because the enrichment of his clientele was required for him to maintain the vast inter-galactic realm he inherited from his father. So we find ourselves with the Duke's in-book character: a man haunted by the past and, like Paul, controlled by his social environment; a man driven to establish his own legacy and secure a suddenly unstable Atreidean political faction. And like with his father, his craving for legacy (his means of legitimacy) would get him killed.
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Post by Andromitus on Mar 18, 2024 10:31:12 GMT -5
Aww yea, its Fremen time—
There's actually quite a lot I like about Villeneuve's telling of the story — it A) introduces interesting dynamics into Fremen culture such as a difference between North and South, which further allows us to expand upon the colonial relationship that Paul and Jessica have to them (that the construction of a Fremen identity, a "race consciousness" is something that those two accomplish and construct, something imposed upon the Fremen) and B) highlights the cultural difference between Fremen and Imperium; for the Fremen, they lack the same patriarchal culture as the wider Imperium, and so the notion that Chani would accept "concubineship" is wholly absurd to her, Paul has betrayed her wholesale (which allows us to further map out the pain Paul experiences as his friends become followers; his love leaves him as he engages in "higher marital activities" — just as he destroys the Fremen through imposing his "race consciousness" on them, so too do the Fremen destroy him by transforming him from Paul into Muad'dib). The Fremen are the foil, culturally speaking, for the rest of the Constellation of Man. Not least because what could be counted as "leaders" among the various Fremen tribes are women!
Actually, the gender relations of the Fremen are a actually a bit confusing.
The wikipedia claims that Fremen communities are patriarchal, led by a male Naib chosen through the Tahaddi al-Burha, the test to the limit or mortal combat. But while we do see Naib like Stilgar, it is not clear that Stilgar is in his position by any quality of his masculinity or patriarchal status.
For example:
We can take two women as examples: Chani and Harah. My issue is that both Chani and Harah seem to be capable of engaging in the Tahaddi challenge.
On the one hand, Chani is a fighter in Stilgar's troop and is a Sayyadina, a holy woman. Stilgar, as a Naib, is held to the same Amtal Rule (the rule to test to the limit) as Chani. So a woman like Chani should be able to challenge and fight under the Tahaddi by that rule. In fact, she does engage in the challenge this when combatting would-be challengers to Paul, fighting (and killing men) in his stead while he meditated. Chani is a Sayyadina, admittedly, which might make it so that she cannot challenge Stilgar for leadership, but not all women are Sayyadina, and all women seem to be able to challenge others to the Tahaddi.
Harah is the wife of Jamis. After Paul's Amtal fight with Jamis, Paul is given Jamis' Yali — his personal quarters — and is given responsibility over both Harah and Jamis' children. Now, as a brief aside, it is important that Jamis' children are not made "bastards" or destitute, but are full fledged responsibilities, if not blood children, of Paul (which is unusual for an extreme patriarchy). Beyond that, Paul then must choose between making Harah his wife or servant. Now, the Amtal rule does seem to still apply even for Harah. Stilgar warns her not to "challenge him" (Paul), noting his skill in combat, which makes me believe that she could challenge him in a fight to the death. Yet, on the other hand, Harah is Jamis' wife and is essentially slotted into the position of subservient wife or servant of Paul after he bests Jamis. But does this mean that she would be fighting to resist her subservience? So would the same fate fall to Chani should she marry Paul?
"'They deny us the Hajj!' — 'Who dares deny a Fremen the right to walk or ride where he chooses!'" Does this not apply to Harah? Who dares deny her right! Jamis, Stilgar, and Paul apparently.
One more thing that is strange and interesting, though, is that Chani and Paul form a "mating pair" and have a kid. But Chani is not married to Paul as so I would assume would not be bound in the same way Harah is, such that she could invoke a duel to gain her freedom! So what the hell is going on with Harah? So what we are left with is a situation in which Herbert has allowed women to engage in the same Tahaddi al-Burhan as men, but relegate them to the position of either Sayyadina or wife, even though Fremen can form mating pairs that don't lead to marriage (and so wifely subservience). This is made all the more confusing by the existence of the Sayyadina and the reverend mothers. What amounts to a political structure of the Fremen beyond the Naib appears to come in the form of the Sayyadina. Only women can become Sayyadina, only Women have access to this immense political and religious power. However, I don't actually believe it is ever explicitly stated that women cannot be Naib. So where does this status of wives as property come from? Why would a woman ever become a wife if she can just join a mating pair?
What further complicates this view is that Fremen understandings of property are not based around matrilineal or patrilineal lines. When a person dies, their water (the property of the tribe) is given back to the tribe; all of their personal belongings are divided between their troop and then the Sietch, and their living quarters and privileges (like "Coffee Service") is given away (such as to the person who bested the deceased in Amtal combat). But this means that key ways that patriarchal power is established, patrilineality, simply does not exist among the Fremen. Likewise, this communality makes Harah's worry that she might face abandonment from Paul, who could kick her out of her home, very strange, too. Does she have no social relations to rely on outside of her husband? Even though anyone of any gender has access to the tribes material wealth in some way? How is she dependent on her husband for anything? Does this heavily communal tribe only provide its members water, but not food or housing?
I will also note that it is not plausible to think that Fremen men are any stronger than their women in any way that could afford a systemic edge such that women on average would not be Naib — Fremen women kill Sardaukar after all. Men are often on average "stronger" physically than women but this doesn't necessarily translate to martial prowess, not when everyone is afforded a crysknife and given "how to mercilessly kill the enemy"-training from birth. That a man might have more muscle mass is not a guarantee of his combat superiority.
Taken all together (Naib do not seem to necessarily be men, women can engage in all the activities men can, women can perform the Tahaddi challenge, women do not need to marry, women are supported communally) men do not seem to clearly have much systemic social power at all in Fremen society, so that seemingly patriarchal descriptions of Fremen culture are very strange on Herbert's part. In fact, what positions of systemic power do exist are afforded exclusively to women.
It just does not make sense that a wife would be the property of a husband in Fremen culture, not when women can, and most likely do, regularly slay men and women in ritual combat — would she not take the slain's husband as property? But I find the notion too interesting to avoid.
Herbert portrays the transfer of wives through combat as equivalent to the same process of how property is transferred. When Jamis is killed, his personal belongings are divided amongst the troop; his Yali (his personal quarters), his privileges (his coffee service), his wife, and his children are made Pauls. Paul also adopts a permanent responsibility in some form for those children. Likewise, if one can form a mating pair and not marry, why would a woman ever marry at all?
There is a tension in this scene, when Paul takes Harah as a servant, between the idea that Paul has a responsibility to Harah and Paul has some degree of ownership over Harah. I want to lean into the former.
No Fremen can be owned, no woman in Fremen society can be taken against her will — and women in Fremen society are always armed.
In day to day Fremen life, sex plays a very minimal role. Women take on the role of Sayyadina in troops and sietches, and can be elevated to the role of Reverend Mothers; but beyond this, sexual difference as a form of identity only snaps into existence within the context of a mating pair and the bearing of a child (but this difference is not maintained as parents, only in the act of procreation).
Relations between Fremen people and relations between Fremen and "property" (which is always inanimate) are of chief concern here.
Property for a Fremen comes in the form of holdable objects, objects of personal use, i.e., personal property. One has access to spaces (like their Yali) or privileges (like the Coffee Service), but objects largely thought of as beyond personal use and survival, such as factory equipment or the factory itself, land, and especially water, belong to the tribe. Upon one's death, one's personal belongings and privileges are given to their troop or Sietch companions or the one who bested them in the Tahaddi al-Burhan; their water is taken back by the tribe.
Relations between Fremen people outside of a religious context are relations of responsibility. When Paul slew Jamis, he took on a responsibility toward the wellbeing of his wife that lasts a year; should Harah have slain Paul, she would have taken on the same responsibility to his mating pair, Chani. Paul likewise took on a parental responsibility toward Jamis' two children — this in particular is a permanent responsibility and attests to the web of responsibilities within a tribe, especially surrounding children. It should already give us quite a glimpse into Fremen culture as one rooted in communality and webs of responsibility. Much of fremen culture has to do with maintaining these webs — for example, Paul is made to call himself a "friend of Jamis" after having killed him, and to say what Jamis gave to him as a friend, before taking Jamis' belongings.
The fierce equality and communality, plus the sense of striking independence, all paired with equally fierce martial hierarchy, I think can be married as equal parts of Fremen culture: embodied within the social differences Fremen undergo between life in the Sietch and Desert.
We already know a little bit about Fremen desert life. Fremen are organized into troops — warbands — and do Fremen things like tend to their plants and terraforming efforts, riding worms, harvesting spice, and raiding the god-forsaken outworlders. But what about life in the Sietch? This is where I want to depart starkly from Herbert. The Fremen, as a culture, have two completely different social practices, Sietch-life and Troop-life. The troops are martial hierarchies, based around a war-leader called a Naib determined by the Amtal rule; the Naib's word is command, and to reject that command is to declare a fight to the death. By contrast, Sietches are egalitarian communes; no Fremen may command another in a Sietch.
Every Fremen is afforded a Yali. Yali, as a space one inhabits, are tied to the webs of responsibility I had mentioned earlier. Paul, as having bested Jamis in combat, took his Yali — this is expected of those who win in the Tahaddi challenge. They are meant to take on the responsibilities of the bested and mend relations with those close to them. As besting Jamis according to the Amtal rule, Paul adopts all of his responsibilities and it is expected that he goes to live with the family of the one he slew. It is a practice of restorative justice — Paul must reckon with those close to the one he killed and must do his part to repair the damage he's dealt to the tribe. One of Paul's responsibilities to Harah, then, is this restorative justice — he must reckon with her and repair a damaged relationship. He must, as he did at Jamis' funeral, show that he is a "Friend of Jamis".
All the necessities of life are likewise afforded by normal Sietch practices. One is afforded a set amount of water that they need to survive. If one has a personal object in need of repair, they need only loudly announce that it is in a state of disrepair and it will be taken and managed (however, for specialized, non-necessary objects, like musical instruments, one has to ask a specialist to repair it directly — but the request cannot necessarily be "denied"). If they are sick, they are taken to the Sayyadina for care. People likewise cook and eat communally. This communal feasting is exceptionally important — everyone sits together on cushions along the ground, everyone eats either their fill or their portion (depending on food availability), and everyone cleans and maintains all objects relating to food. At some point, everyone will cook.
This centering of need is the main avenue by which "things happen" in a Tribe. Without the ability to command, Fremen cannot practice either autocratic leadership or democratic rule. It means that, in the Sietch, there are no Tahaddi challenges if someone refuses an order. Instead, within the Sietch, if you want someone to do something, you must convince them as an equal. No word is binding, and anyone can revoke their agreement at any time. It is through need that things are done, not command, consensus, or majority vote. An idea to do something is asserted, and people freely associate to satisfy that need or want. The needs of the tribe define their associated activities; for example, the structuring of the Sietch is fluid, rhizomatic even. When one goes on campaign and returns, whole walls and buildings may have been moved.
To fulfill needs and wants, Fremen form working groups which respond dynamically to the demand and supply of the tribe — there is, so to speak, a direct connection between demand and its satisfaction in the form of Fremen free-association. It is for this reason that communal spaces like feasting halls exist: they are spaces where demand can be articulated and a plan can emerge to solve it. It's through working groups that food is collected, water traps are built and maintained, spaces are cleaned, weapons are produced, waste is managed, etc.
What this focus on consent and need means is that, in the desert, challenges are faced by Tahaddi al-Burhan — in the sietch, challenges are faced by debate.
The Fremen are not short with one another. They have a rich oral tradition and a powerful oratory one. You must be capable of convincing someone of something and in so doing, convince them to do something you want. But you do so with the knowledge that they can cease at any time — your agreements are not binding. So, each time Stilgar wishes to go back out on Campaign, what is called a "raising of the knives", he must convince the Fremen of Sietch Tabr to join him. Once out on campaign, they assert their leadership through the threat of death, but inside the Sietch, they must convince others to join them and to accept their leadership. To leave on campaign is a big ask, it means one must abandon the fierce independence afforded to them by the communality of the Sietch. It makes sense, then, that one would expect to be convinced to follow someone else in a binding fashion.
But equally, upon return to a Sietch, this means that the troop undergoes a "laying of the knives" in which the Naib is no longer able to command.
An interesting consequence of this is that Fremen view parenting as a relationship of responsibility, not command. As children do not leave the Sietches unless they have to, they are raised under this communal environment and are raised independent. A Fremen child may leave their Yali to live with someone else; I will also mention that the Yali are not private spaces where abuse can fester — anyone can interject on the affairs of others — but neither are the Fremen devoid of any privacy at all.
But can one enter the Yali of another and not leave when commanded to? This brings us to questions of violence and disagreement.
In the desert, people submit to the Amtal rule. The rule is summarized as: "To know a thing well, know its limits. Only when pushed beyond its tolerances will true nature be seen." This rule is one under which something is tested to determine its limits or defects, often to destruction. Amtal expresses the limit, and so it is at this limit that a Naib can be asserted and their rule accepted by Fremen on campaign. It is also this limit which is challenged in a Tahaddi al-Burha.
In a sense, the "Amtal" is the rule of the desert — to be in the desert is to constantly be tested to one's limit. A misstep could attract a worm and bring death. In the absence of the communal safety of the Sietch, the Fremen are literally one with the desert. The desert works according to the Amtal, and the Fremen of the desert do, too. But I don't believe this is simply a matter of 'we do as the desert does'. Metaphors and social relations are best seen dialectically, and all that. Instead, I believe this understanding of the Amtal has more to do with how the Fremen govern violence in their culture, rather than simply being reducible to how they understand the harshness of the desert.
In the sietch, life is communal and people are independent; they cannot be commanded. But in the desert, Fremen culture becomes staggeringly autocratic, based around a hierarchy of Naib, Sayyadina, and Reverend Mothers. When on campaign, the dictates of a Naib are absolute. What they command must be followed.
But these hierarchies are also, evidently, mediated through the wider notion of Amtal. In a sense, it is the Amtal rule that sets the precedent of the Naib. The Naib is the limit of the troop — they are the strongest, the most survivable, the one who can best endure the tests of the desert. It makes sense then, that it is by the Amtal that Fremen invoke a Tahaddi challenge. This challenge is invoked when one wishes to challenge the leadership of another, and is automatically invoked when one refuses an order given to them. A Naib is asserted within a Sietch and must convince others to join them on a campaign — it is often for this reason that it is only under dire circumstances are Naib's challenged. One must have an impressive resume for others to follow, which is one way of ensuring that not just anyone can be a Naib. But, the Tahaddi is often invoked when one proves that they have failed as a leader, either by giving poor commands or by not giving the right ones. Failure to give an order, to meet the expectations of one's troop, can cause disgruntled members to invoke the challenge to change leadership.
The Tahaddi challenge works by invocation. If one invokes it (or refuses a command, which is considered an invocation) the challenged can either draw their Crysknife, and the duel begins, or they can reject the challenge. Denial is a particular action within this economy of mortal combat: when one rejects an invocation, they are essentially asking their challenger to revoke their challenge. Anyone can intervene to reject a challenge, even if they are not the challenged themself (as evident when Stilgar tried to get Jamis to back down from challenging Jessica, and Paul by extension); however, as Jamis showed, if the challenge is not revoked, the duel begins. There can be no yielding, one fights to the death.
I had mentioned how life in a Sietch is not democratic. There are no elections, no votes to decide on what to do, no binding agreements or laws — it is solely around the Naib that a sense of democracy arises in Fremen culture. A democracy not of ballots but of knives, a democracy of death — the Tahaddi al-Burhan. If one refuses an order or demands a regime change, one invokes the Tahaddi and either revokes it (in which case one has effectively "voted down" a decision by the Naib) or kills the current Naib and replaces them (in which case one has in a sense voted "no confidence" or voted the Naib out).
Now, the Naib cannot command anything — a Naib cannot demand to sleep with whom they like or demand one slay their brother. In these cases, there are a variety of rules articulated by the Reverend Mothers that state what a Naib cannot do. But these almost always have to do with the rights of Fremen as Fremen. The role of these rules is to maintain the cohesion of a Troop, if everything a Naib commanded lead to a Tahaddi challenge, troops would kill each other before killing the enemy. What this means, though, is that Reverend Mother's rulings do not largely protect people outside of a given tribe.
Inter-tribal relations are governed by a string of social taboos and codes of conduct meant to enable diplomacy rather than constant warfare. If a Reverend Mother were to demand her ruling be followed by troops from two sietches over who have their own Reverend Mother, it would be a declaration of intertribal war. This means that the dictates of Reverend Mothers to the conduct of their Naib are ensconsed within a wider social fabric governing the relationships between tribes. This fabric is the Ichwan Bedwine, the "brotherhood" or "commonwealth" of all the Sietches. The Bedwine is the common identity of the Fremen — an outgrowth of their resistance against the Harkonnen oppressors.
So we are brought to Crysknives. Crysknives are ubiquitous in Fremen culture and as such are governed by harsh rules. Other weapons, as evident by Stilgar taking Paul's Maula Pistol, I would argue are best understood as not personal property. They are tribal property, and so are managed by a troop similarly to how a working group manages a plastic factory. But Crysknives are practically the physical soul of a person, their fighting spirit manifest in a blade (a Maker's tooth, at that!). The rules that govern these knives are twofold:
A crysknife cannot be drawn in the presence of someone not in one's own tribe. If this happens, that person must be killed by it or cleansed in a special ritual performed by a Sayyadina.
A crysknife drawn in the presence of tribe members cannot be sheathed unbloodied. If one draws their weapon without intent to use it, they must cut their own wrist so as to sheath the weapon.
If it wasn't obvious, the Fremen are not "one people". There is a notion of the Ichwan Bedwine, but this is one expression of many cultural expressions. There are many tribes, many sietches and communities, many fronts in their many holy wars against their Harkonnen occupiers. In fact, it is this diversity within the Ichwan Bedwine that I want to highlight further: there are two takes on Crysknives, one curved and the other straight — I think this is easily accounted for by admitting that worm's have many different teeth in their mouths, with varying roles. Northern tribes prefer the straight, sifting teeth for eating sand plankton whereas southern tribes prefer the curved, fighting teeth for combating other worms.
With weapons like crysknives as ubiquitous as they are, the existence of strict rules that govern their use (on threat of self-harm) is only natural. If you have to either kill or purify an outsider that sees a weapon everyone in your culture has, and you have to cut yourself before sheathing the weapon, that means that there are clear disincentives to drawing that weapon in the first place and preferring other diplomatic options.
I would imagine a whole vocabulary of shame sprouting up around those who fail to observe the proper rites of Crysknives — a mountain of slurs, shunning, and other social leveling mechanisms for those who wield their weapons carelessly.
I believe this does well to highlight how different desert-life is from sietch.
When in a Sietch, one cannot dictate to another and one would not challenge them to a duel for failure to do so. Instead, as evidence by the rules surrounding Crysknives, violence is something one can do at any time in a Sietch, insofar as there is no command that would stop you. It's just that one does not escape from the web of responsibilities when they unsheathe their blade. If you attempt to fight another, they, their friends, and those who agree with them, will leap to their defense. You may attempt to slay another, but you then have to deal with the consequences. You are not invoking a Tahaddi by drawing your blade in a Sietch, you are simply trying to stab someone. What matters in the Sietch is not any abstract command to not kill, but rather an understanding of the consequences of one's actions.
Insults in a Sietch, then, are governed (or perhaps better: "structured") around the consequences of one's actions and a myriad of restorative practices. One I can immediately think of, though, might be humor. Humor is a common leveling practice and a way to ease tensions. In fact, I imagine a scene in which members of Stilgar's troops joke about him to his face and he responds by laughing, Paul remarking that he laughs as his father laughed.
To return to where I started this section: To enter another's Yali and not leave when they ask for privacy is an insult, and so there are many avenues of escalation and restoration that the Fremen can employ to alleviate the problem.
The Fremen are divided into different tribes are a major medium through which those links of responsibility are structured.
Tribes are not identical with Sietches. For much of their history, the Fremen themselves were actually not always sedentary. Not all Fremen kept a Yali in a sietch and either regularly migrated between Sietches, or lived as desert nomads. It was only within the past century or so, with the arrival of house Harkonnen on Arrakis, that the sustained "pacification" efforts and later genocide against the Fremen that much, but not all, of Fremen culture has retreated within their Sietches.
Tribes operate similar to families and, like families, are embodied in ties of responsibility. The word "tribe" and "family" in this context identify what ties of responsibility one is referring to. For someone to be "foreign", of a "different tribe", establishes that one has no ties to them.
Examples of a tie are the tie set up between Paul and Harah, that Paul has a tie of responsibility to the children and mate of someone he has killed in ritual combat. Similarly, it is the responsibility of a tribe to provide for its members needs — namely water, but also food and care (medical, yes, but also emotional and religious). The water one carries in their suits and their flesh is the property of the tribe, and it is the responsibility of the tribe members to care for it well in their use, just as it is the responsibility of the whole tribe to procure and safeguard it. The same goes for food, for safety, and for medical, emotional, and religious needs.
Tribe, further, are not the same as Sietches. Multiple tribes can come to inhabit the same Sietch, but this relationship is unstable and often collapses into one moving away, both fusing, or one being absorbed by the other. Alternatively, a single tribe can stretch over many Sietches. The major tribes all have a Reverend Mother, although some smaller tribes only have local Sayyadina; but this is a model, not a rule. Sietch Tabr, for example, is inhabited by the Tabr tribe who have a Reverend Mother, even though they are relatively small and only inhabit one Sietch. It's for this reason that the rules Reverend Mothers set for Naib beneath them are local to tribes, for one Reverend Mother to define the rules of a foreign Naib would be a complete overreach, an act of war.
Beyond this material dimension, a "tribe" operates similar to a family and are represented in a title. Fremen are each given many names by which to identify themselves: a public names (Muad'dib/Paul-Muad'dib, Chani, Stilgar), intimate names (Usul, Sihaya, and Tuan // Sahkan), Family names (Atreides, Kynes); similarly, the tribe also offers one a name. Within one's tribe, one is often referred to simply by either their family name or their public name, depending on context; between tribes, one is referred to solely by their public name, but can announce their tribal name similarly to a surname. Finally, there is one's intimate name. This is a name one gives other's access to at one's own discretion. It is a right they can remove any time and represents a degree of closeness with that person. For example, members of Stilgar's troop refer to Paul as his intimate name, Usul, which is characteristic of people who are, or have spent time, on campaign together.
Intimate names are given by someone close to another while public names are chosen by a person, while family and tribal names are simply adopted by a person upon their birth and identify solely what ties and responsibilities they have. We see this in the text as Stilgar chooses Pauls intimate name after getting to know him, but theoretically, Paul could have refused the name and sought to receive one from someone else. Importantly, an intimate name is not like a first name — when one reveals their intimate name, it is the only name one is known by for that person to whom it was revealed. Chani, for example, is not "Sihaya Kynes", she is Chani Kynes and Sihaya.
In fact, this bleeds into Fremen pronoun usage. Fremen language is tied to their history. Frank Herbert's cultural worldbuilding is essentially that as humanity left earth, various groups began to interact and fuse in unique ways leading to groups like the Zensunni wanderers who would find their way, slowly, to Arrakis and become the Fremen. While heavily arabic-influenced, I am going to set Fremen pronouns as much similar to japanese pronouns. Fremen pronouns are means of identifying one's spatial and social relationship to the speaker. They mark (voluntarily and obligatorily) for various categories, namely location (e.g., present/absent), distance (e.g., near/far), time (e.g., now, in the far past). Social relation categories are always obligatory and mark clusivity (e.g., you and me, us but not you), relation (e.g., family, tribal, foreign), danger (e.g., friendly/hostile), age, and status (e.g., superior, inferior, unmarked). Fremen pronouns are further restricted by situation type, these being publicity (e.g., we are speaking in public/private) and medium (e.g. we are speaking, we are writing, I am giving a speech, etc.). "Status" is particularly interesting as it is culturally difficult to describe; marking someone as superior or inferior identifies oneself as either a Naib or a Reverend Mother, not marking for status is what everyone one else does but is considered a mark in and of itself (i.e., omission, not identifying hierarchy, is not seen as the absence of identification but an assertion of equality). For example, referring to someone as wali, identifies them as present, friendly, young and equal member of my tribe, and is spoken in public.
(This is off topic, but it helps to also note that Fremen verbs do not largely conjugate, but do take on semi-obligate suffixation for evidentiality — these are not grammatically obligate, in that it is not grammatically incorrect to omit an evidential suffix, it's just that, like with omitting one's status from pronominal declension, this is an assertive semantic stance; one is taken to be deliberately obfuscating their evidence for a statement.)
This is relevant to Fremen intimate names as the pronouns one uses for oneself announces for one's interlocutor what name to call you by. In this sense, an enraged child can demand their parents call them by their public name simply by shifting what personal pronouns they are using.
Public names are often characterized by those from the wider Constellation of Manking as "war names". We see this in Villeneuve's films. But this is accurate only insofar as those of the wider Known Universe only interact with the Fremen on the opposing side of the Fremen Jihad. They see them as "war names" because those are the only names shared (with the knowledge that each Fremen has a private name) and exist within a context of war. Public names are often transformed into war chants — for example, "Muad'dib" becomes a war cry for many Fremen, and the same treatment is given to various names of rapport.
Speaking of Fremen language:
The Fremen language is a linguistic continuum with some pretty crazy cultural features that influence the spoken language. Two are notable in particular: "story registers" and "campaign speak".
War talking is a practice that evolved from Fremen taboo practices. One of the reasons a Fremen troop will lay out that they were a friend of the deceased ("I was a friend of Jamis") is to settle the angry spirit of the deceased who, if not appeased, could come to become a Djinn. Saying the name of a djinn attracts it — spiritually speaking, improperly engaging with the sacred world is like pounding one's fist repeatedly into the desert. It brings destruction.
However, these practices to avoid profanity in some form exist because, naturally, they not always been observed. The desert nights are marked by the whispers of angry spirits, spirits of people, of animals, of the desert itself. This has led to a practice of Taboo, where, if it is believed a spirit of the deceased is still restless, one takes steps to avoid drawing its attention as well as practices such as mourning to put it back to rest. These steps of Taboo involve barring the use of taboo words from one's vocabulary, and modifying words that sound even tangentially similar. The name Jamis, or even similar names and everyday words with the consonant structure "JMS", can be temporarily or permanently barred from the vocabulary. Taboo applies not just to angry spirits of the dead, but all manner of words that could bring bad luck, poor omens, or other forms of misfortune. A key aspect of Fremen relgious practice, reading the "signs", is to identify what is taboo and what is permitted at any given point.
The arrival of the Harkonnen roughly 80 years before the first book of Dune is set caused a radical shift in Fremen life that was qualitatively different from their resistance to their prior occupiers. The Harkonnens radically increased spice extraction and their attempts to "pacify" the Fremen shifted to a genocidal ambition. Fremen society, already hardened by the cruel harshness of Arrakeen life, and of years prior to that point of both extra-planetary resistance and inter-tribal war, have put up a solid front against Harkonnen attempts to dispel them. Nevertheless, they have been shaped, radically by this new enemy.
In one sense there is the shifting of the military landscape into a unified Fremen holy war against all outworlder presence on the desert planet. In another sense, it was the further combination of military life and civil — one aspect of this being "Campaign Speak" or the Fremen War Language. The war language works like taboo but sped up. When on campaign, a troop will continuously bar particular words out of vocabulary, or radically alter them. Essentially, they have learned to speak in a shifting code. Playful songs, or even day to day activities, mark when words are dropped or changed, or whole lexical sets switching (like the words associated with tents and camping switching with words associating with moisture collecting). The same goes for grammatical particles — unlike normal taboo practices among the Fremen, campaign speaking involves consciously switching the roles grammatical particles play, or simply omitting them from speech altogether. The language relies on both intensive training and the dynamics of troop-life, featuring many Fremen close together and in constant contact and inter-play — different troops conjoining, for example, often involves a practice of dialectical leveling as either conforms to the war language of the other.
The process of progressively transforming one's own language through taboo is accentuated by variations in spoken "story registers" or "cultural syntax".
The Fremen are a people with a rich oral tradition and a part of this tradition are a set of recurring archetypes or archetypal-families whose inclusion within a story involves a change in spoken register. For example, characters in Fremen myths filling the archetype of the "crow", a crafty, intelligent trickster, speak in an SOV word order with direct objects always after indirect objects — "they like this speak, when, for example, of a ball a boy throwing". Our real culture in real life has done something similar: Yoda. This would be the equivalent of Yoda talking the way he does, not because it's a quirk of his character, but because it is a necessary characterization of the archetype he fills. Normal Fremen speech is SVO, for example, but when speaking "mouse" it switches to OVS.
Imagine if it was perfectly acceptable to speak like Yoda, and doing so carried cultural value and contextual information. What's more, Fremen, like English, does not have much in the way of noun case. Instead, the particular 'voice' or 'register' one is speaking in is marked through pronoun declension alongside key words and phrases. By the time the story is taking place, A few of these key words have already become so archaic as to lose their meaning outside of simply marking which voice one is speaking in, steadily reducing them to a grammatical particle marking for syntactic structure.
Fremen oral practices, which feature many of such archetypal speech patterns — such as the crow, the mouse, and the worm — as such has a wide variety of unique "oral styles" which have since spread beyond their traditional role in characters' speech. The practice would have first begun to be done via narration, as an orator would, when narrating, speak to his audience in VSO word order and switching the normal locations of locative, dative, and accusative information, literally speaking in the archetypal voice of the "Spirit", similar to how Greek myths begin with an appeal to "the Muse". From there, registry came to be a recurring feature of various oral practices, featuring in speeches, religious ceremonies, and with each advancement, the practice would spread into daily life. There are roughly 6 "story registers" at play in average Fremen life, but oral tellers and Fremen literati engage in far more.
Unsurprisingly, this practice has likewise found an incarnation in Fremen campaign speak. Here, a Naib will "set" the manner of speaking by choosing a registry but what particular voice will be deliberately obfuscated by the practices of militant lexical taboo.
The Fremen are engaged in a sustained Jihad against their Harkonnen invaders. Where historically there were many tribal fronts, many individual holy wars, such that it would have been accurate to describe the Fremen as resisting their oppressors universally, over the last 80 years these various individual wars have been woven together into a ever-tightening fabric — an Ichwan Bedwine, a brotherhood or commonwealth of all Fremen. The various tribes and communities have been slowly stitched into this assemblage, mediated through a federating of the various Reverend Mothers and a coordination of the many fighting Naib. Beyond the Amtal rule, a key part of this Ichwan Bedwine is a new "common tie" transcending tribal boundaries, a tie expressed through the saying: "Found among dunes, I will care for you." Given the general absence of any tie at all between tribes, the establishment not only of a single tie of responsibility, but also one that centers care for the other, is exceptionally radical.
The arrival of the Mahdi, Paul-Muad'dib, really only comes at the tail-end of a slow unification facilitated through countless Fremen Reverend Mothers, as well as outworlders like the Kynes family. By the time Paul arrived, he did so at a time when the Fremen were already clambering for a central, prophetic leader, a time when they had begun to look for signs of a Lisan al-Gaib, a voice from the outer worlds, who would become the Mahdi and lead them to paradise. The signs all pointed to his coming, all he had to do was show up.
It's in this way that the Fremen came to shape Paul — the story that Frank Herbert spells out is one big warning about leadership.
What I've wanted to do with my changes to the lore is, in my own way, highlight those warnings. Duke Leto Atreides is a propagandist obsessed with the past, with legacy and valor; it is his constant looking backwards to his father and the responsibilities thrust upon him by history that Leto meets his end. Baron Vladimir Harkonnen is a ruthless, panem et circenses capitalist obsessed with his understanding of the present; he clearly sees all the shifting tides of power, the threat of the Emperor and his weaknesses, the system of patronage and markets — no one understands and manipulates the system better than he. But he cannot see beyond the system, he cannot see the threat the Fremen pose, a threat he and his system created; he knows a great change is coming but cannot see that it is coming from beyond the system, negating the system. Finally, there is Paul, who can do nothing but stare in horror toward a future he cannot avoid. Paul is free of the haunting past and is thrust beyond the present of the system in which he was born, he is given prescience and a clear vision of the future but this does not make him free. Paul, from his position, shapes the Fremen he comes to rule, but insodoing they come to shape him. He is transformed from Paul Atreides to Muad'dib, the Mahdi, the Lisan al-Gaib to lead the Fremen to paradise.
It pays to return, briefly, to Sietch life, focusing not on the social component, but rather the physical.
Fremen Sietches are the main sources of their resistance. They are focal points where resources are gathered and also the points of production where the Fremen synthesize much of the material they use to make weapons, tools, and other hardware. Two main points of technology here are compactor hardware and water-management wares. Importantly, though, Fremen technology is tied to their social and religious life, forming an ecology of mechanisms tied to Fremen water, Fremen food, and daily Fremen life.
This notion of an ecology is meant to beckon the relationship Fremen have with their environmental ecology, yes, but also to emphasize that Fremen interact with their technology the same way the aristocrats and trained mentats of the Constellation of Man do — pulsing electrical signals from their bodies into machines to cause it to react. However, where this technology forms the basis of mentat-culture and the aristocratic hierarchy that structures the Constellation of Man, it is a commonality among the Fremen, featuring in everything from their clothing to specialized tools. One reason is that Fremen technology emphasizes the communality of its users, and so is much more open-source. It reacts not only to the neurons of its users, but to many of their physiological outputs such as the tensing of muscles and changes in body temperature. Their control over their technology is, in effect, different than the universe at large, yet also similar.
This is to emphasize that technology alone is not what determines human practice, practice also determines technology. The Constellation's technology is defined by its neurological link and the physiological changes that come with that, and so they do not bother developing that technology for broader use. Instead, the more aristocrats could cluster neurons in their fingers and skin, the more sensitive their technology became, making it even more difficult for the average person to use. The Fremen, by contrast, democratized their technology in accordance with the character of Sietch-life. More people needed access, and so technology became more accessible.
We can take compactors as one example:
Compactors, namely sand and stone compactors, are two primary means by which Fremen interact with their environment. Sand compactors vibrate sand at particular intensities to cause it to fluidize or otherwise interact in particular ways. It's how Fremen quickly bury themselves under the sand, and how they can emerge from deeper sands to the surface. These work by tensing one's muscles and by "feeling out with their hand". When one concentrates on their hand, the handle of the device can feel the electrical signals within the hand and react accordingly. "Calibration" is done over time such that one's own technology reacts best to their own personal inputs or can be "reset" when given away. Fremen interactions with their activity, then, become almost a kind of muscle memory.
Stone compactors work similarly and are how Sietches are mined. There are a whole family of machines under the "stone compactor" label, but they work, also through vibration, to either disintegrate stone, or reintegrate it from stone dust allowing Sietches to be quickly mined out and reformed as necessary.
Another example comes in the form of stillsuits and jubba cloaks. Stillsuits are exactly as they are described — in fact, apart from the body motions which pump water, all of the water distillation is done through membranes synthesized in Sietches. Jubba cloaks are much more interest. These are made of bodily-reactive fibres which react, not just to wearer input, but the world around them. They can be set to reflect or admit radiant heat, and their fibers can "tense" so as to retain heat in cold Arrakeen nights. They are cut in a way to allow for a variety of wearable styles. What's more, key support fibers can be pulled to convert the cloak into a hammock for sleeping, or can tense into something more of a wire to spring into a tent-shape, meaning a Fremen need only carry the moisture-membrane of a still-tent and set it up inside of a Jubba tent.
Fremen technology is all about practicality, with much of it being synthesized within Sietches. The Fremen lack more complex materials that outworld forces have access to, unless the are able to scavenge them from downed enemy craft, and so all that they have are things they can make themselves through mining or through harnessing biological processes. Much of their materials also can come from worms. Worm bones and scales have a variety of uses in the Fremen industrial economy.
I want to talk briefly about Fremen religion.
We might characterize Fremen religion and philosophy as having two aspects: Amtal (the "test") and Faith (the "will"). On the one hand, the Fremen submit their religion to the Amtal, the test of its limits. Equally, though, in an almost Kierkegaardian-sense, the Fremen will of faith answers questions not as to what one believes, but how it is to be believed. The will (Faith) differentiates itself from knowledge that can be held in indifference; the Amtal (test) discovers what is to be believed and its usefulness. There are, so to speak, different kinds of beliefs and so different ways in which those beliefs are vindicated.
The faith is a "will", it is the visceral — the Amtal is the test, it is the intellectual. But this is a false divide. Both are held as a single epistemic practice and in pointing to them as two separate features of Fremen belief, we separate them only in the process of investigating them. This whole section is not fact, but an object of comparison. I bring this point up because I want to emphasize how my describing the Fremen is done through the perspective of someone like the Princess Irulan — understanding my role as a worldbuilder is understanding my role as both the colonial anthropologist of the wider Constellation of Man, and my role as an inventor of Fremen voices to speak for themselves. That's right baby, using Dune to articulate anti-colonial theory and dense Wittgensteinian philosophy — hell yea, worldbuilding that has consequences.
As a result, a Fremen has no issue in simultaneously demanding that Paul-Muad'dib who is Usul show he is the Mahdi, the Lisan al-Gaib, by testing him according to various Amtal tests (testing his usefulness) and accepting that Usul is the Mahdi by seeing how he conforms to the holy signs; they have no contradiction in believing in the existence of God, of a material world that communicates visceral, sacred knowledge if one only knows and feels the signs, and the use of empirical methods to understand natural phenomenon. (my role as a worldbuilder writing the story would be to show this).
What matters is how one believes, that one does not have belief through knowledge held in indifference, alongside what one believes, that one's beliefs are sustainable through testing their limits. It is for this reason that we can clearly say that the Fremen do not simply accept nonsense or irrationality or blind faith. Fremen philosophy appears usually in the form of psalms, aphorisms, sayings, and song. Psalms, aphorisms, and religious sayings that get you killed, for instance, do not pass the Amtal. One has simply many epistemic modes that they can engage in, such that one does not "disprove" God by invoking various empirical beliefs. One phenomenon can "show" many things. In trying to use that phenomenon to disprove God, for example, for the Fremen one has committed a category error. The same event can show two different things depending on how one looks at it — Fremen philosophy is a matter of understanding how one believes. It is 'epistemologically' complex.
The campaign in the desert is conceptually related both to the Fremen Hajj and the Wanderings (when Fremen wandered the galaxy, oppressed and hunted, before settling on Arrakis) — it is by no means identical, but the notion of wandering in the desert, taking on visceral hardships, gives way to their notion of opening oneself to experientially understand the mystical and absolute, not to identify (what), but understand (how). One is tested to one's limits, and one's limits are then passed. The passing of the limit in this sense does not mean death. Instead, it means that one is forced to accept truths beyond what they are used to accepting, truths which stem from a totally different epistemic outlook. The 'epistemic shift' or 'epistemic complexity' are what define Fremen philosophy.
This focus on 'the signs' or 'omens' shouldn't be understated. Fremen religion is 'ominous' and works to understand the visceral, sacred truths of reality as they reveal themselves in Fremen practices and daily life. It's through the signs that Fremen came to pick out Paul among the Atreides and first label him as the Lisan al-Gaib, and it would be through Paul's journey, becoming first Usul, the base of the pillar, and then Muad'dib, the mouse, that they came to recognize him as the Mahdi. In this sense, Fremen beliefs rely on the embodiment of their more abstract concepts in life. In a sense, prophetic figures like Sayyadina or the Mahdi, or even in a certain sense Shai-Hulud, are further embodiments of this broader set of abstract theological belief — it is through the visceral, the sacred material, that these ideas come to be both embodied and intelligible to the Ichwan Bedwine.
I will also note that the visceral, the sacred, and the material are all one concept for the Fremen. They accept, without any internal contradiction, that there can be both sand and the visceral experience of sand pelting one's face. That is, a single thing can have many different modes of disclosure — there is one mode, the simply view of sand, and another mode, the experience of feeling hot sand engulf one's skin as you plunge your hand into the dunes.
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Post by Andromitus on Mar 21, 2024 14:13:43 GMT -5
"Those who can destroy a thing, control the thing."
In Frank Herbert's Dune, Paul-Muad'dib threatens the Emperor, the Spacing Guild, and all the Great Houses with starvation and the disintegration of universal society. His threat was to pour the Water of Life, the psychoactive and highly toxic substance produced by drowning Juvenile Worms in water, into a pre-spice mass triggering a chemical reaction he calls the "Water of Death", which would spread from one mass to the next, ending all spice production on Arrakis forever. In Villeneuve's Dune: Part Two, Muad'dib upon besting the Emperor's champion warns that he will use the Atreides nuclear stockpile to bomb the spice fields, killing the worms and ceasing spice production should the Universe not yield — nevertheless, the Great Houses call his bluff and he tells Stilgar to "lead them to paradise", beginning the holy war against the Great Houses that will lead to the deaths of billions.
Both of these endings have problems:
First, in Villeneuve's story, the Great Houses call Muad'dib's bluff seemingly for no reason — and Muad'dib does not bomb the spice fields. Think of it this way: the Houses are called by the Harkonnen's, and admittedly disliked house, on the grounds that the Sardaukar are invading the desert planet; this is the House's greatest fear, but when they arrive, they find that the death of a very popular duke (Leto) was staged by the Emperor, Leto's Son rules Arrakis, has liquidated the Harkonnen elite, beaten the Emperor and ascended to the throne in rightful combat, all while taking the Spice fields directly. This is a very strange series of events for all of the houses to suddenly turn on Paul. The difficulty is that Paul's ascendency is both so sudden and so victorious that he completely upsets the universal balance that the Houses maintained under the previous Padishah-Emperor — but at the same time, Paul just knocked out two wildly unpopular players from the Landsraad entirely and is himself the sympathetic son of an extremely popular Great House. The situation calls for perhaps a bit more nuance.
Second, in Herbert's story, Paul presents the idea of a Water of Death that occurs when the bile of a drowned worm, the psycho-mutagenic Water of Life is mixed with a pre-spice mass. The "Water of Death", appearing seemingly from nowhere, has the power to kill all little makers and end spice production on Arrakis forever. No mention is given as to how the Jihad starts, solely that it does as the Fedaykin expand the Battle of Arrakis across the universe, continuing to fight off the Corrino and perhaps some Harkonnen remnants, as well as any other "heretics". Here, Paul's bluff is aimed, not at the Padishah-Emperor himself, but rather at the semi-prescient guild navigators, whose ability to see into the future is limited. While able to see Paul's hand, and put together the validity of the consequences of his proposed actions, they're vision is unclear and they are unable to see if he will actually do it or not.
Of the two, at least Villeneuve's sets up how Paul comes to threaten spice production, but I like Herbert's because it actually centers the spice cycle and sandworm's ecology, and how Paul, as a ruler of Arrakis, can intervene in it ecologically. But an issue here is that it is entirely unclear what knowledge the Spacing Guild reasonably has on the Spice Cycle such that this threat would even make sense. Villeneuve's is more practical in this sense — everyone knows Paul has the Atreides atomic stockpile and can reasonably infer that glassing the spice fields will irreparably damage spice production.
Arrakeen planetary ecology is complex because Herbert never made up his mind as to how long ago this happened. It's not my interest to set up a rigid timeline, but adding in some causal steps is at least necessary here. So, the players are the First Wave of Planetologist who set up an unspecified number of ecological testing stations across the planet. These stations were at the forefront of a plan to terraform the planet; their plan and its relationship with the Fremen is unknown. However, it is known that these plans to terraform the planet ceased almost immediately after the discovery of the spice Melange and with it, the birth of the first Spacing Guild Navigators who could now reliably transport people across stellar and galactic distances unhampered.
One solution I put forward here is the notion that, following the Butlerian Crusade and the establishment of a feudal-analogue interstellar society, attempts to stitch the universe back together occurred slowly. There was, however, a common notion by the main "Crusader States" hoping to spread of a reunified humanity, of a new colonial age of expansion and development. I could imagine that under this cultural idea, the first ecological outposts on a newly "discovered" Arrakis would sell to the indigenous Fremen the idea a green paradise — although the extent to which the Fremen actually factored into the paradise to come is questionable.
The planetary ecologists were the first to fully survey the entire planet from orbit in the crusader age. Much of their early work was divided between studying the geology, geography, and atmosphere of the planet and studying the strange biology of the sandworms. Speculations of a microscopic food source the worms must filter-feed predicted the existence of sand plankton before they were themselves found — but after their discovery, analysis of a strange, brown dust accumulating in huge pockets and fields across the planet's surface began to lead to interesting results. The locals called this dust "Melange", but the rest of the universe would come to know it as the spice.
This early Constellation of Mankind, though, struggled to come up with an adequate solution to reliable, faster-than-light travel. Once, computers had done this but after the destruction of the thinking-machines, it feel to human beings. But this proved unimaginably difficult.
More often than not, short distances were traversed through relativistic jumps, with spacecraft reaching as close as a massed object could to the speed of light. Longer distances were more treacherous. No matter what this new society of self-augmenting humans tried, no configuration or stretching of their biological capacities seemed able to reliably control and track the vast complexities of "folding space" that made long-distance faster-than-light travel possible. The technology existed, but it was finnicky and dangerous. So for the most part, society was held together through faster-than-light communication. It was simply easier to flight small beams of light at one another through folded space, than massive objects like space ships and terraforming equipment.
It would be for this reason that the first Heighliners were constructed. These titanic ships evolved out of the relativistic arc ships of the era — the idea was for the Heighliner to successfully fold space and enable safe passage for other vessels to go through. See, it was possible for humans to fold space themselves, only it was very difficult. Just as seen in Villeneuve's interpretation, thousands of ships on one end of the tubular vessel would traverse through the space folded in-between and arrive safely at their destination — traveling "without moving". Nevertheless, these ships were heady at best. As human beings were its operating procedure, thousands on thousands of people had to engage in a delicate psychological concert to manage all of a ship's systems, the actual mechanical act of folding space, and the construction of a proper path from point A to B.
The coordination of so many people, with only hairs-breadth room for error, was exceptionally difficult and prone to failure. Likewise, folding space is not as simply as opening a portal — one has to not only modify spacetime, the ships traveling through transformed the equations necessary to keep space in its ideal state for transport. Especially long vessels would have different equations needed to calculate the stability of folded spacetime from bow to stern. A ship going through was like dropping a brick on a grandfather clock. So the actual act of traveling through a Heighliner was done through standardized "lining vessels" with required masses and limited size. Try squeezing a city through a small canal. It was a tangle of problem only compounded by the human factor: Their ability to keep space open strained their human navigators to their breaking point, and should one falter, the delicate balancing-act tying thousands of human minds together within the vessel would collapse in a cascade of failures. The strain or the collapse could harm or kill humans involved, and the loss of even one higher-ranking navigator meant a decade of intensive training gone to waste.
Then the Arrakeen planetologists discovered the Spice. Five years later, the first "Spacing Navigator" folded spacetime individually. It was astonishing, she was able to fully identify every variable, every spaciotemporal distortion, every gravitational wave, and communicate it efficiently to her team. What once took tens of thousands was reduced overnight to a single person. What's more, it was reliable, repeatable, and safe.
After the spice was found, the ecology stations were abandoned and planetology on Arrakis ceased — the dream of a green paradise dying with it. What followed weren't more scientists, but, rather, soldiers — and then spice harvesters.
The city of Raquis (Herbert calls this Arrakeen, I think that's a little on the nose), later renamed Onn, was built at the northern pole of Arrakis and it would be from there that spice harvesters would dance with the equatorial storms to capture as much accumulated spice as they could before either fleeing a worm, a storm, or fremen attack. See, with the discovery of spice, ignoring the Fremen, no-one wanted the deserts to go away. Nobody wanted Arrakis to change. All that mattered was the spice, all that mattered was that the silo's were filled and quota's were met.
Fremen tribes local to the northern pole, in retaliation to the Raquis settlement and the aggressive expansion of outworlder military power, destroying what ecological facilities still existed as well as starting an active guerrilla movement to expel the star-devils. After this, Further Arrakeen planetology was made difficult by the outright resistance of the natives. But it would actually be a mixture of Fremen resistance and aristocratic meddling that put the final nails in the coffin of the first planetologist societies on the desert planet — and with them, access to the secret of spice production.
This was in part also due to the difficulty in studying the planet and understanding the spice cycle itself. It was believed that somehow the Sandplankton were linked to spice cycle, but when tests were made, only the poisonous water of death was confirmed scientifically. What trace amounts of pre-spice were created in a laboratory setting were overlooked as, at lower temperatures, it reverts back into the water of death. Another hypothesis was that the worm was somehow connected to the spice, but the worm's were an even bigger mystery. Much like the mystery surrounding eels and their life cycle on earth, sandworms were not understood as an adult stage of the sand plankton. Juvenile worms were only a prediction, as it was unknown where one would even be found in the desert, and expeditions faced attack by both Fremen and adult Worm. It was hypothesized that they were perhaps to be encountered in the southern hemisphere, but planetary aircraft seemed largely unable to penetrate the equatorial storms in the low-atmosphere. Conditions in the south were likewise believed to be so extreme that, even if worms and sand plankton did exist, which was doubtful, human ecologists most certainly couldn't.
But the real reason why the secret of the spice cycle was never truly found was that it was simply made impossible to find by the people looking for it. See, everyone in the universe wanted the answer to the question of where spice came from — everyone but the first lords to "rule" Arrakis. It benefited everyone to generalize and understand spice production, but it benefited the particular owner of Arrakis more to keep it a secret. As such, the first lords to rule the planet became unfathomably powerful in their monopolizing of spice extraction and sale. This monopoly was short-lived, though, and after several wars and a whole recirculation, the acting Lord of Arrakis, would be agreed to simply facilitate spice production. Officially, spice harvesting would be performed by the CHOAM, a mandate owned collectively by the Shuraye. But still the monopoly was still held.
Spice research was hampered in every way it could. Decades of research time was, when not outright sabotaged, simply wasted chasing red herons. Nevertheless, through CHOAM, the wider Constellation of Man again demanded research into the spice increase, but the planetary lords dragged their feet or simply assassinated who those interested parties sent to study the planet.
Pardot Kynes was the compromise.
Pardot was an old-school Planetologist, elevated to the position of "Royal Planetary Ecologist" by the Corrino Shahanshahs.
He was unlike previous ecologists, inasmuch as he was particularly eccentric and that he actually sought to engage with the Fremen as a people. Pardot was one of the first officials of the wider Constellation of Mankind to actually establish personal relations with the Fremen, to and became "welcome in both Sietch and Village." But what made him even more unique was that, unlike previous royal ecologists, he did not meet a "freak accident" in the deep desert. Instead, he appeased his royal overseers by simply not having many interesting findings. He actually kept his position more by being a diplomat than an ecologist, brokering brief-lived treaties between the Fremen and CHOAM, while also providing fascinating geographic discoveries such as ideal locations to hunt for spice patches.
It would also be from Pardot that the myth of southern inhospitality would be further perpetuated. The wresting of spice production from the lords of Arrakis allowed for the increasingly independent Spacing Guild, through Pardot as a mediator, to establish their own relations with the Fremen. Beyond spinning the lies himself, Pardot and the Fremen negotiated a secret treaty with the Guild in which the Guild — in exchange for spice harvested by the Fremen — would persistently confirm that the south was uninhabitable, that no life signs were detected there, and that no satellites would be wasted being put in orbit above a wasteland. The planetary lords themselves would be more than happy to listen — by the time those lords were Harkonnen and Atreides, the lie was so engrained in the mentality of colonial rule on Arrakis that it went completely unquestioned.
This background allows us to establish that, to the wider Constellation of Mankind, little is understood about the spice cycle. Technical experts understand it as tied to the sand plankton and the "unique bioecological conditions of the desert planet", but beyond this (what is essentially shrugging their shoulders), the cycle is not understood at all. Spice has also yet to be successfully synthesized artificially. The only people, apart from the Fremen and the Kynes family, to grasp the secret of the spice cycle, are the Spacing Guild, who know it has to do something with the planktonic and their even less understood "pupal forms". They understand that without the desert, without the Arrakeen environment as it is, no spice production could occur.
With this in mind, the actual threat that Paul makes to the Shahanshah, the navigators and mentats, the Bene Gesserit and Great Houses, takes this into account.
Paul is now in a position to threaten to slow spice production with Atreides atomics — but more importantly, these atomics can now threaten the other houses. The only thing hampering that would be the refusal of the Spacing Guild allow those missiles to fly through folded space to reach their targets.
So Paul's threat to slow spice production is to catch their attention, and to then stitch together a peculiar vision of the damage his terraforming efforts would do. It's true that, left unchecked, such a green paradise would fall to the little makers once again. So the entire plan hinges on the steady cultivation of paradise on Arrakis by the Fremen, and its maintenance over time. But the Navigators lack this information. They can only see of the future what they know of the present and past — Paul has a monopoly on information regarding the present, and so is able to prevent the Navigators from calling his bluff. He will, that is to say, bring a green paradise to Arrakis — but this will not destroy all spice production forever. Instead, the remaining deserts, the Sareer, would remain as reservations for spice production and the training of Fedaykin — as "only the Deep Deserts remain for the maker and his spice".
But with the guild at heel, the threat of an atomic response lowers significantly. The Guild wouldn't dare allow an atomic attack on Arrakis, as such an event would, too, slow or even destroy spice production. The fate of the Guild is here: they would be splintered — the majority of their Spacing navigators would be taken by Muad'dib, reliant on him to fuel their spice addiction and playing the role of his personal navigators in return. Those that resist and join the Great Houses would face an ever-dwindling spice supply before being summarily snuffed out.
This leads us to slight changes in how the Fremen Mahdi's Jihad plays out.
So we set the scene again: the Great Houses arrive above Arrakis responding to a call sent by Vladimir Harkonnen; they arrive expecting the Emperor and his Sardaukar to be attacking, trying to seize control of Arrakis directly. Perhaps the Emperor is seeking to assert dominance given Harkonnen difficulties in asserting control over Spice production, or perhaps he is simply tired of dealing with his audacious pups. Nevertheless, when they arrive, the Baron Harkonnen is dead, Paul Atreides — son of the wildly popular Leto Atreides — is alive and has just beaten na-Baron Feyd-Rautha in rightful kanly, thus granting him the golden-lion throne of the Shahanshah. Even more, he now seems to be asserting total control over spice production on Arrakis himself, claiming the power to destroy it if they do not comply, before granting ownership of the whole mandate CHOAM to Gurney Halleck.
The Great Houses thus find themselves in a precarious position. This new Shahanshah needs allies, and can, with the Fremen on his side, guarantee them a permanent supply of spice. But he likewise has the power to slow or end it on a whim, a threat the Spacing Guild itself has taken seriously enough to bend the knee. Such a sudden and violent destruction of the established political balancing act has consequences such that while some of the former allies of the Atreides will side with them at first, they will at all times be looking to undermine the new Shah's position. But this does not last. The fighting started on Arrakis would continue as Fremen warriors rage against the remnants of House Corrino and House Harkonnen — it would be to fight them that the Jihad would spill from Arrakis to the wider reaches of the Known Universe. Even though Shaddam IV was himself captured, the splintered remnants of his house would carry on the struggle. They would attempt to breach Arrakeen control over spice production, but, simply put, they would not be able to best the acumen of the Fremen or the tactics of their prescient leader. There here comes a tipping point, when the first "heretics" are turned on by the Fremen. The tenuous peace under Muad'dib would not last past this betrayal and the remaining Great Houses would join in the fight against him, hoping to undermine any new Fremen Spice Monopoly and the power of this Prophet-Shah. But with each battle, the war would get progressively more dire as every attempt to wrest spice production from Muad'dib is beaten back. It doesn't, in the end, even matter how many worlds the Fremen take — the war is one of resources, and as the resistance's spice supplies dwindle, Muad'dib's victory is ever more assured.
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Post by Andromitus on Mar 22, 2024 10:06:57 GMT -5
There is this beautiful idea in Dune that everyone is wrong.
The Bene Gesserit are wrong regarding Paul and their ability to control the Kwisatz Haderach; the Atreides are wrong that Yueh's Suk School psychological conditioning makes him unbreakable and so he could never betray the family; the Harkonnen are wrong that there are only a few thousand Fremen; and so on and so on. Likewise, each faction and person has a particular worldview that turns out to be faulty: the Atreides' loyalty and legacy get them killed; the Harkonnen cannot wipe out the Fremen; the Emperor is brought down by his own meddling; even the Mentats' calculations cannot discern real and phantom data and the Spacing Navigators do not have clear prescience.
But so far as I can tell, one idea explaining everything in Dune holds true: Race Consciousness and Bloodline.
For some reason, the notion that the Bene Gesserit worldview, that there is a human racial consciousness which, as a primal urge, seeks genetic diversity — that there is genetic memory that influences human actions — that one's genetic lineage is accessible through their chromosomes; for some reason all of these explanations seem to be accurate at explaining the events of Dune. As far as I can tell these are Bene Gesserit explanations but are taken by the novel as largely correct. I feel that this is limiting and that a deeper and more complex view can be brought out in unshackling the story from this base and emphasizing that these ideas are simply what the Bene Gesserit believe to be the case.
So in this new reading, Fremen ideals and Bene Gesserit ideas are equally valid interpretations of events — likewise, the ideology of the present embodied by my modified Baron Harkonnen is also a valid interpretation. Each are valid up until they fail: up until the "recirculation" is a Jihad he created by oppressing and unifying the Fremen which annihilates the Constellation of Mankind; up until the Mahdi entrenches the holy people in a forever-war and the land of peace and paradise never arises; up until Alia becomes the next Kwisatz Haderach.
The story of Dune should be the steady marching on of events indifferent to the explanations of those caught up in it; indifferent as it runs parallel, and as perpendicular.
The Bene Gesserit are the genetic archivists of the Constellation of Mankind. It is there belief that each human being carries the culmination of their genetic memory, and so there is, to the whole of humanity, a common "race consciousness" which guides the actions of the human race. The consciousness reveals itself through the urges and acts of human beings.
As Bene Gesserit, women are trained to tap into their genetic lineage and in doing so (both the process of preparation and the period of reverendom that follows) unlock a vast number of abilities. Women of the order are capable of reading the physiology and psychology of whoever they interact with, understanding how to pitch their voice to assert dominance and command that pierces the mind of their interlocutor and breaks their will. Upon becoming Reverend Mothers and unlocking their genetic memory, they not only gain a supreme awareness of their present and past, but they develop a kind of telepathy. Reverend Mothers, with full knowledge of half of their genetic lineage, have a certain degree of understanding of the past and present of their sisters. By using these as starting points they can, from there, identify the thought-patterns of their sisters given sufficient knowledge of their sisters' presents. They can identify what their sisters' thoughts ought to be, given this calculus, and 9/10 they are eerily correct.
When attempting to train a man to engage in their practices, however, the man always dies. The order's explanation is that, while women can easily access their genetic memory through their two X chromosomes, they are thereby locked out of the Y, the male heritage. A man on the other hand must struggle to grasp both lineages. Grasping the female is easier for women because they have two of the same chromosome, whereas men only have one of either and so must find it more difficult to grasp either and end up dying in the process. The purpose of the Bene Gesserit, then, was to breed a male by arranging marriages between the many lineages of the Constellation of Mankind. Perhaps this male was to have Klinefelter syndrome, with XXY chromosomes he would find it easier to access the female lineage and then, as a man, "cross over" into the male. Or simply perhaps there was a necessary genetic component that would allow a man to overcome the difficulty of accessing a single of either chromosomal lineage.
But this is just another way that the order has come to explain the situation. It could also, as I have hinted, be said that the continued absence of thinking machines and digital technology is tied to the material structuring of human relations. Human society in the Constellation of Mankind is centered around mentats, human supercomputers, and a particular integration of human beings with machines such that, just like the corporate colonization of a wild west internet in which data may once have been free, digital technology is socially threatening to the real material practices of the people who would otherwise be capable of re-inventing a thinking machine. In a similar sense, we could say that it was through the power of the many sovereigns of the Constellation that thinking machines have remained outlawed. Or we could say that it was the divine awareness of humanity, or the power that religion wields, and so on and so forth.
One excellent example is the tension in explaining the rise of Muad'dib, better known as Paul Atreides. Though the Fremen call him Mahdi, the one who sees the way and can foresee the "coming and going", the Bene Gesserit call him the Kwisatz Haderach, the one who can accurately predict the future with perfect knowledge of the past and so can guide humanity into a better present.
It is their belief that, through their breeding, they were able to construct a lineage that produces a male, meaning one with XY chromosomes, who through their chromosomal lineage would be able to access the combined genetic memory of the female (X) and the male (Y) half of the human species. For countless generations the Bene Gesserit have identified themselves through their two X chromosomes, and have thus far struggled to produce a male able to engage in Bene Gesserit practices of genetic exploration and live. The Kwisatz Haderach is supposed to be the product of the order's eugenics, a male capable of surviving the ordeal.
But as he becomes what the order calls a Kwisatz Haderach, Paul makes his own discovery. He sees within himself and within his whole genetic lineage the two forces guiding human actions, a giving force and taking. For a man, exploring the taking force comes most easily and vice versa for a woman. But for a man to step into the giving force, what the Bene Gesserit ask of him, is overwhelming. It was only Paul who managed to do it, and he did so by becoming something other than a man. As we will then proceed to see, a woman can, too, become something other than a woman when Alia steps forward as the next Kwisatz Haderach.
With her, the entire Bene Gesserit worldview is shattered. No Bene Gesserit woman could reach after the male lineage of her genetic past, as through her own identity as a woman, a femininity understood only via an immutable characteristic such as her two X chromosomes that she cannot shake or get free of, she could never allow herself to take that first the psychological step to become other than a woman, a psychological step which was needed to guide the physiological transformation that is undertaken when an acolyte becomes a Reverend Mother. But Alia, training with Paul, had no such reservations and was able to step beyond her limits and arrive on the other side with full access to her entire genetic lineage regardless of gendered division.
Paul has perfect prediction of the past available to him through previous human experiences. But this is not the whole past, only perhaps a human past. And it is a past and present which Paul sees with human eyes and human thoughts. He sees in himself two forces, giving and taking, and he sees himself transcending his limitations as a man and adopting the giving force. But is his knowledge any more "true" than that of the Bene Gesserit?
I want to talk briefly about Fremen religion.
We might characterize Fremen religion and philosophy as having two aspects: Amtal (the "test") and Faith (the "will"). On the one hand, the Fremen submit their religion to the Amtal, the test of its limits. Equally, though, in an almost Kierkegaardian-sense, the Fremen Faith or "Will" demands that questions be answered not simply as to what one believes, but how it is to be believed. The will (Faith) differentiates itself from knowledge that can be held in indifference, it is passional; the Amtal (test) discovers what is to be believed and its usefulness, is rational. But this isn't truly a division in Fremen belief. Both are held as a single epistemic practice and in pointing to them as two separate features of Fremen belief, we separate them only in the process of investigating them. I bring this point up because I want to emphasize how my describing the Fremen is done through the perspective of someone like the Princess Irulan — understanding my role as a worldbuilder is understanding my role as both the colonial anthropologist of the wider Constellation of Man, and my role as an inventor of Fremen voices to speak for themselves. That's right baby, using Dune to articulate anti-colonial theory and dense Wittgensteinian philosophy — hell yea, worldbuilding that has consequences.
A Fremen has no issue in simultaneously demanding that Paul-Muad'dib who is Usul show he is the Mahdi, the Lisan al-Gaib, by testing him according to various Amtal tests (testing his usefulness) and accepting that Usul is the Mahdi by seeing how he conforms to the holy signs; they have no contradiction in believing in the existence of God, of a material world that communicates visceral, sacred knowledge if one only knows and feels the signs, and the use of empirical methods to understand natural phenomenon (my role as a worldbuilder writing the story would be to show this). What matters is how one believes, that one does not have belief through knowledge held in indifference, alongside what one believes, that one's beliefs are sustainable through testing their limits. Fremen Religion is 'epistemologically complex'.
There are, so to speak, different kinds of beliefs and so different ways in which those beliefs are vindicated. No singular method is the way. One has simply many epistemic modes that they can engage in, such that one does not "disprove" God by invoking any given empirical statement or logical proof. In trying to use a phenomenon or proof to disprove God to a Fremen, for example, one has committed a category error. The existence of God or the divine is not proven nor disproven by empirical science, or by logical argument — these elaborate different categories of knowledge than the kinds of knowledge that pertain to God. But we can clearly say that the Fremen do not simply accept nonsense or irrationality or blind faith. For example: Fremen philosophy appears usually in the form of psalms, aphorisms, sayings, and song — psalms, aphorisms, and religious sayings that get you killed, for instance, do not pass the Amtal. Fremen can easily identify many calculable or "rational" beliefs, 1+1=2, Arrakis orbits around the sun, and etc.; but they can also identify "non-rational" "extra-rational", i.e., "faithful" and "non-indifferent", beliefs and hold these beliefs just as firmly.
Particularly as it relates to the divine, the 'how' is tied to that Fremen notion of an experiential sacred, of "non-indifferent" believing.
Their focus on 'the signs' or 'omens' shouldn't be understated. Fremen religion is 'ominous' and it is through "the signs" that it works to understand the visceral, sacred truths of reality as they reveal themselves in Fremen practices and daily life. It's through the signs that Fremen came to pick out Paul among the Atreides and first label him as the Lisan al-Gaib, and it would be through Paul's journey, becoming first Usul, the base of the pillar, and then Muad'dib, the mouse, that they came to recognize him as the Mahdi. In this sense, Fremen beliefs rely on the embodiment or composition of their more abstract concepts in life. In a sense, prophetic figures like Sayyadina or the Mahdi, or even in a certain sense Shai-Hulud, are further compositions of this broader set of abstract theological ideas — it is through the visceral, the sacred material, that these ideas come to be both embodied and intelligible.
The visceral, the sacred, and the material are all one concept for the Fremen. They accept that there can be both an indifferent acknowledgement of sand and a calculated empirical theory of dune dynamics, as well as the visceral experience of sand pelting one's face. That is, a single thing can have many different modes of disclosure — there is one mode, the simply view of sand, and another mode, the experience of feeling hot sand engulf one's skin as you plunge your hand into the dunes. There is one mode of knowing, calculus, and there is another mode of knowing, experience.
There are many Fremen religious practices, a notable one being the desert campaigns.
The campaign in the desert is more than just a military excursion. It is genealogically (in a conceptual sense) related both to the Senzunni Hajj and the Wanderings (when the Senzunni wandered the galaxy, oppressed and tormented, before settling on Arrakis and evolving into the Fremen). It is by no means identical, but the notion of wandering in the desert, taking on visceral hardships, traveling in a holy pilgrimage, all lead to the Fremen notion of opening oneself to experience, and so understand and read, the mystical and divine: the Fremen Jihad.
This is a jihad in the fullest sense, yes a military struggle against the Harkonnen, but also a struggle against nature, against oneself, against "the limit" (Amtal). Perhaps also struggle in a sense maybe more akin to Judaism though, i.e., an "argument with God" which does not have some nebulous, western secularism at the end but rather is the means by which one crosses the limit.
The passing of the limit in this sense does not mean death. Instead, it means that one is forced to accept truths beyond what they are used to accepting, truths which stem from a totally different epistemic outlook than the calculus of rationally held beliefs. One can gaze indifferently at the sand or one can burn one's skin against the hot dunes. One can simply rest easy, identifying and naming phenomena one after the other, or one can follow the intensity of experience unmediated by that calculus. Believe or do not believe, you will not find a proof for it. Allow experience to come surging in, or do not, but the limit is the point at which you choose, when you are forced to either falter, or accept the intensity and the emotional. It is at the limit when the patently ridiculous is realizable in its full, overwhelming intensity. It is on the other side of the limit when one accepts belief on wholly different epistemic grounds to those of beliefs held in general indifference.
Jihad is the Fremen way to pass the limit of indifferent calculus that mediates your relationship with it — only after passing it may one follows and experience the signs and omens, the visceral sacred. The Fremen, in this sense, center the divine as a qualia, and differentiate engaging with the qualitative sacred and the calculus of indifferent beliefs. It is an 'epistemic' shift, one must pass through one's internal limits ("I could never believe such a thing") and encounter beliefs one cannot hold "indifferently" ("I believe and start from belief in its inescapable intensity"). One must cultivate an experiential relationship with divinity unmediated by calculated beliefs, i.e., explanatory beliefs held in emotional indifference, simple calculi. One is tested to one's limits, and one's limits are then passed.
The struggle with their limit is something each Fremen does throughout their life, it is what defines lived experience. To live is to struggle. But if the average Fremen must struggle against so much, imagine the struggles of a Mahdi.
The Mahdi has, as the hymns proclaim, the power of foresight. The Mahdi is the one who knows the way, who can understand divinity in its fullness.
While no Fremen themself would probably articulate it in this way, Fremen philosophy centers the divine, as mentioned, as separate from the logical proofs and empirical observations of other kinds of belief. But this does not mean it is "unknowable" or "unreachable". Only that the ways of knowing and reaching are different than rational calculus which seeks to explain phenomena one after the next. Fremen philosophy is phenomenological, seeking to engage with the phenomenal world from the grounds of the visceral sacred; and because Fremen religion does not exclude the material and phenomenal, and instead ensconces it within the sacred and divine, Fremen philosophy is poised to understand the material world very uniquely.
God in Fremen religion and philosophy is the "All". It is the great infinite, containing infinite attributes with infinite expressions. These expressions are a finite causal chain, with one finite cause and effect leading to the next, but being inextricably linked to the wider whole. God is the whole, is self-contained and substantiates existence, and existence expresses or composites God. In this sense, Fremen philosophy has no "atomic" particulars. Every instance of reality is indivisible from that wider reality, and that wider reality is made up of an infinity of instances. An "instance" itself is, simply put, causality. A singular cause and effect is an "instance" or "individual". Here, any list of single causes and effects constitutes a "thing", such that there are simultaneously any number of things and also no things, as everything is ensconced within an infinite causal chain.
As an example, there is the aphorism of the father and the daughter: A father loves his child so much, that he and the beloved child are, as it were, one and the same; in this, he is correct, as because they are engaged together in mutually-forming causal relationships, they are one individual. They are engaged in the same causes and effects, and in doing so, are the same singular thing. But this singularity, importantly for Fremen philosophy, is not just an indifferently calculated ontological category. It is experiential, the incalculable qualia or divine essence of love, that has been "expressed" or "composited", and in every avenue that this particular causal link is ensconced within wider reality, so it is an instance of the whole of God.
In this sense, the Fremen do not philosophically differentiate between particular individuals and infinite essences. The "essence" of love is expressed or composited in the loving of the child, the child being beloved, and the loving of the father, himself beloved. The act of loving is simultaneously there and also linked within an infinitely wider causal chain such that it is never solely itself, divided from the wider world. It is an un-isolated instance of the infinite divine. Fremen philosophy, then, accepts a fluidity between finite and infinite. Finite instances composite the infinite (because a single causal set builds into an infinite causal chain) and yet at the same time the infinite emanates individual instances (because an infinite causality expresses many particular causes and effects).
In fact, this circularity (…the finite instance that composites the infinite divine which expresses the particular instance that…) is necessary to the epistemic complexity of Fremen religion. To "believe in God" one must necessarily start from God, just as to engage in and validate reason one must start from reason. The "starting point" of knowledge is always, in a sense, arbitrary and is so instead tied to the limit, to the question of how one is to believe rather than simply what.
This also actually represents a tension in their culture. On the one hand, the many causal relations which make an 'individual' establish the existence of tribes, but also establishes a composite unity of all of the tribes which is denied in tribal conflict and warfare.
And here comes in the Mahdi. The person of the Mahdi is one who culminates the agency of divinity in the world. He is a composite of the infinite who will guide the Fremen people along the way, who will show them through his person unmediated divinity. One does this by revealing in themself the infinite divinity, identifiable via the signs. But a Mahdi must themself also be able to "see", they do genuinely tell the future. Fremen philosophy believes this to be done via struggle.
We are all one, in a certain sense, and so we all have access to the divine even if we are not aware of it. The divine entails both knowledge and blindness, as it is "all". Knowledge, or understanding, is experienced, like the lifting of veils. With the lifting of each veil we become more conscious of the divine. In this life, however, all veils cannot be lifted because we would become overwhelmed. Usually. But the Mahdi can lift all of the vails and remain undisturbed. The Mahdi cannot be overwhelmed.
The 'epistemic shift' or 'epistemic complexity' are what define Fremen philosophy.
The story of the experiences of the Fremen is a story about their religious and philosophical outlook. It would be wrong to characterize the Fremen as either superstitious or easily swayed and blindly following the Lisan al-Gaib. At every point in the story, the Mahdi is being tested, even when expressing viable signs of his status as the Mahdi. But the rise of the Mahdi, the prophet of the Fremen, entails the death of Paul Atreides and the rebirth of Muad'dib. Unfortunately, though, this is not a one-way death. Dune is a story criticizing leaders; it criticizes the propagandists, the capitalists, and most of all, the zealots. It is unquestionable that the Jihad which Paul unleashes on the galaxy is a horrible fate. Paul himself loses everything, he loses his friends as they become followers, he loses himself, and, in my own telling, he loses Chani. But what I would want to emphasize in my own telling is that it's not just the leaders that fail, but the people beneath them.
The Fremen lose under their Lisan al-Gaib, too.
It is the duty of the Mahdi to bring to Arrakis a green paradise where no-one will want for water. Where green, lush things will grow over every surface and only the deepest desert will be there for the makers and their spice. The Mahdi will come, and bring with them a great "laying of the knives" where no Fremen child will again be raised with war in their hearts, where no one will again have to bear the mantel of Naib. The borders of the Sietches will extend beyond the rocks beneath which they hide, the barriers between tribes will overlap and each will be beholden to all as sibling, as in one Ichwan Bedwine. That is the "prophecy", what the Fremen call "the way" along which the Mahdi will lead them.
And just as the Way foretold, just as the signs identified, the Mahdi did come as a Lisan al-Gaib, a voice from the outer world. And this voice decreed that he will lead them to paradise, that they all would change the face of Arrakis. And this voice, to seize the Spice and Arrakeen independence, declared a Jihad against the universe.
Now, as Muad'dib grows older and the voice of his younger sister Alia grows stronger, the Fremen are embroiled in a forever-war across the Universe. The Naib must continue to be chosen, Fremen must continuously submit themselves to commands and go off to fight and die among the stars. They slaughter in the billions, annihilating any spice reserves they find among the countless masses of heretics and enforcing a universal monopoly, which means even on their slowly-terraformed homeworld, they must forever procure spice for exportation, to keep the spacing navigators — once organized into an independent "guild" not the personal subjects of Muad'dib — in-line. Day to day life of the Fremen is permanently embroiled within an ever-encroaching theo-military hierarchy, which is responsible for supplying troops to the frontlines, as well as occupying the planets they take and the terraforming processes they are engaged with on Arrakis and elsewhere. Where they occupy, they live as Umayyadesque colonists, held away in fortresses that are "Sietch" in name only.
It would only be under the rulership of Alia that the cracks would begin to show. Under Muad'dib, the Fremen were content to follow the will of the Mahdi even if resentment and reservation was already starting to boil. But under Alia, the situation would reach a breaking point. Paul's blinding and his travel into the desert would allow him to establish Alia as the next Kwisatz Haderach as well as his Khalifa. But even with an established and supported Khalifa, the Fremen will demand a "laying of the knives", will outcry that their Sietches across the universe have been encroached upon by the rulership of Naib who seem to never stow their blades, and will rage that their homeworld, while water trickles across its surface, is still governed and terraformed by command. Arrakis itself will be called the Great Sietch, and it is the highest sin that authority dare attempt to enter it.
Fremen unity is held together by the spice consciousness, by a sense of intuitive togetherness brought about by the spice and its limited granting prescience and genetic vision. It will be through this unity that the Fremen raged across the stars and that their fanaticism toward Muad'dib would pierce so deeply into their psychology — and it will be through this unity that the Fremen rule over the Known Universe will begin to falter.
As the Mahdi, Muad'dib had a certain degree of leeway. He was able to avoid presenting himself as a special kind of Naib by proving that no Fremen could best him in debate or in a Tahaddi al-Burhan. Alia would struggle similarly, following from the established order she was a Khalifa of the Mahdi, a follower of, or "one who comes after", the one who leads to paradise, who knows 'the way'. But this is puts her in a position of cultural tension — she is not a Naib, as following the Mahdi she has not challenged the Fremen in-common, but it was already established that the Mahdi need to challenge. But it is also a point of cultural confusion whether the Mahdi is equivalent to a Naib — did Paul issue commands? Or were his statements simply so necessarily true that nobody would question or refuse to follow him? As the one who guides the way to paradise, is everywhere he went a Sietch? Such that what looked like people following his orders were simply being convinced to do as he said in rightful debate — but after all, who could debate the Mahdi, so who would refuse to follow he who guides the way!
So what is Alia, exactly? Is she a religious figure such as a Reverend Mother? Is she a Naib? is she equivalent to the Mahdi or, having lead the Fremen to a paradise on Arrakis, does Alia as Khalifa have some other role to play?
This brings us to the status of Alia as established in a very re-written Messiah. The first three parts of Dune are largely unchanged in my reading apart, at least regarding the main beats. Certain small details are changed, like the Baron Harkonnen not killing Yueh and having his features as a ruthless capitalist accentuated, or dedicating a few chapters to exploring this new Fremen culture in Muad'dib. But for the most part, the three books — renamed to Arrakis, Muad'dib, and Jihad — have the same main plot beats. The ending scene is altered — Chani refuses to be a concubine, Alia plays more prominantly, how Paul seizes Arrakis and declares the Jihad is slightly different, etc. — but the main points
In all, my changes are more my way of accentuating features of the text that I find most evocative in it, usually and hopefully without working to undermine any other features as a consequence. For example, reinterpreting the third book as itself a Jihad, even though the Fremen Jihad doesn't start until the literal last sentence of the book, I would do in order center the other ideas of Jihad existent in Fremen culture. The third section is Paul's Jihad against his fate, against himself, against his context and beliefs, and his arrival on the other side as the Mahdi is a consequence. Or in other cases, the first book I would call Arrakis as the novel as a whole is named Dune.
It's after this that I would put an interlude containing several short stories, such as the story of Liet and Pardot Kynes in the appendix. Perhaps I would add in a few short stories here, such as Duke Leto's rise to power and the death of his father. I would also, with this, significantly change the role Irulan plays as a chronicler — her writings feature as Epigrams heading each chapter and I think they oftentimes just reiterate what happened in the previous chapter, so I think it would be interesting to have her be a voice to the perspectives of the wider universe, or stating her own experiences as the wife of Muad'dib — in a way, she would be a way to introduce the reader both to Fremen culture and the culture of the rest of the Constellation of mankind. On that note, I would also
Dune's chapters are split into subchapters, and I'd say once or twice a chapter, and never consecutively, I would intersplice brief quotes from the Furqan (Herbert calls this the Orange Catholic Bible) in between these subchapters. For example, the first chapter would feature both "Mankind is a Constellation, the lesser in orbit around the greater." after the first subchapter, and "No machine may think" in the subchapter before Paul first uses a personal shield. Later books, such as in Muad'dib would also feature common Fremen sayings as well as passages of the Furqan, and the third book, Jihad, would feature "sayings of Muad'dib".
But in this novel, after the interlude, there would be a fourth section: a heavy rewriting of Messiah (of course followed by an appendix with countless lore sections like in the original).
Messiah would follow the timeline of its original Herbert-edition, but the main ideas of the novel would be radically different. Divided into two parts, it would begin begin in the latter half of his Jihad and end in his blinding and journey into the Desert. The purpose of this portion would be to begin constructing Alia as a secondary protagonist and the one to, in the absence of God-Emperor Leto II, guide Humanity along the Golden Path where at the end they will be released from a predictable causal chain of events. In a sense, the idea of the God-Emperor being an evil working to prevent a ruler like himself from arising again is echoed in this rewrite.
The very idea of the plot against Emperor Muad'dib in Dune Messiah is kind of ridiculous to me, made plausible exclusively by the use of another partially prescient character who uses his visions of the future to constantly change his actions such that he cannot be predicted by other prescient figures like Paul and Alia. The issue is that Paul is not just prescient, he heads the most unstoppable military force in the Universe and could, in my opinion, simply kill every single person that threatens him in his own court before continuing his voracious conquest across the universe.
Let's break it down:
The Fremen army are the best fighters in the universe. No individual army would be capable of beating them in an un-strategic manner, and when unified in spice-induced communality such that they truly do act as a single organism rather than a standard military hierarchy, they are strategically advantaged in most encounters. But, we could also point out that such an unstoppable fighting force is limited in size and so would have to be very selective in where it occupied territory directly covering such vast distances as "the Known Universe".
The Fremen alone cannot conquer the whole of the Constellation of Mankind — but that's okay, they don't have to. They simply need to slaughter as many enemies as they can and hold out until those enemies exhaust their personal spice reserves by which they fund their Spacing Navigators after the splintering of the Guild. The Fremen have a total monopoly on all spice production, and in the latter years of the Jihad, they control the only infrastructure for space travel. The bulk of the navigators, most of the heighliners, the ability to produce new space-faring equipment — the rest of the univeres is simply outgunned. It has been thousands of years since a Heighliner was built for a crew who was even trained to fold space without Spice. For all intents and purposes the art simply cannot be recovered in time to win against the Fremen — and even if it was, it's unreliability would pale in comparison to the Fremen armies ability to appear wherever they like, whenever they need.
But even with all of that, the Fremen Prophet Muad'dib is completely prescient. His forces, unbeatable and unreserved as they are, also already know the enemies motions before the enemy does. Muad'dib knows where his prey will hide before they do.
The only people that can truly resist Muad'dib are the few that grasp at some degree of prescience and can hope to obscure their actions from his gaze. But it isn't as if he doesn't know of their existence generally and can go out and hunt them the old fashioned way. But this isn't to say that these figures are hopeless. Instead, they would serve a different role in the narrative. Paul and Alia's golden path is the hope of producing a generally prescient humanity such that they would never be able to fall prey to a totalitarian prescient-ruler such as Muad'dib. In effect, these semi-prescient individuals against which Paul must struggle so as to assert his rule and which serve the role as primary antagonists in the story, serve the role of subtle heroes resisting the genocidal, totalitarian rule of Muad'dib. They provide glimpses into human life beyond the Fremen. They also serve to highlight Paul's own rule as a fate to be avoided, and as actors of a kind of free will, a will disconnected from the causal chain that allows for prescience, the very will that Paul wants to foster through his Golden Path.
Two other aspects of Dune Messiah as well as the later Dune novels I would also want to include, though: Ix and Richese on the one hand, and the Bene Tleilax on the other.
It's through Ix and Richese that we can get a better understanding of technology in the Dune universe, and can also set up the general inevitability of thinking machines. In a sense, the great fear guiding the Golden Path is a thinking machine that is wholly prescient and can, as consequence, beat humanity just as Paul did. The Bene Tleilax, on the other hand, could be introduced as a foil to the Bene Gesserit — "Bene" identifying the "clan" or "order". Either of these, though, can identify a threat from the other perspective — the eugenic and genetic attempts to modify and "improve" humanity whose attempts thus far have lead to catastrophe's like the Fremen Jihad. I wouldn't want the critique of authority present in the "first part" of Dune to fall apart in this fourth section and ending on a critique of the top-down attempts to command humanity, to assign humanity to a rational calculus or plan, is itself a disastrous and terrifying concept.
Paul now walks the knife edge between the horrific, authoritarian mutation of humanity, and the equally totalitarian usurpation of it by an alien force of its own creation. But the liberation for humanity that Paul, and throughout the story slowly Alia, seek cannot simply be bestowed to them from on high. Paul and Alia, as leaders, exist not as "the one's who have the power", but as the focal point of a socially relational context. For example: the structure of leadership entails either doing what must be done to keep one's hands on the reigns of power, or be lost to obscurity. Alia, for example, is forced to either die or take on the role of Khalifa; despite her noble intentions, her status is self-perpetuating and alienates her from her primary goal of liberating humanity. In fact, leadership already alienates Paul from his friends-turned-followers, such that he cannot speak with them as anything other than subordinates, alienating him from the liberation he so strongly aims for.
It would be here why the presence of Alia as Khalifa would be so important and where the re-arrival of Chani would come into play — the Fremen are tired of war, they want the social transformation, the spreading of the sietches and the laying of knives, that paradise offers them. The hymns state that the Mahdi will bring a paradise, the Sietches will extend to encompass all — any Fremen might ask why their Sietches on other worlds wouldn't do the same? Why should Arrakis alone stand as the borders of the Ichwan Bedwine, the commonwealth and paradise? In a way, I feel it would be interesting to parallel the rise of the original muslim caliphates in this regard — Muad'dib's rule on Arrakis as the Rashidun, his reign post-Jihad as the Umayyad, and the era of his end and the Khilafah of Alia as the Abbassid and Córdoba.
The Fremen are in this way comparable in the narrative with a small band of prescient rebels and the wider cultures of humanity now living between the flows of Fremen Sietches across the Known Universe.
These rumblings through assert two things, 1) that Alia is, by nature of her position, caught between the role of Khalifa or death and 2) Chani can step forward as an ordinary Fremen. Chani, throughout this book in the novel, would undergo her own focus and transformation on her personal journey to undergo the Holy Agony (Herbert calls this the Spice Agony) which one undertakes when drinking the water of life. In a sense, she represents the average Fremen taking control of her own psychology and physiology, the very act that Paul and Alia want.
The Golden Path that Paul and Alia wish to aim Humanity down is one in which they, in a sense, outgrow the the power of the Mahdi and his Khalifa. The conditions must be set for them to take the reigns for themselves, to shed the Khilafah itself and to willfully resist it — they must take their own psychology and physiology as theirs, not to be toyed with from on high, but to evolve without command from below.
Chani, in a sense, embodies these conditions. She does not come to humanity as a new Mahdi, a new leader, but arises from within human as a particular human being who has taken her humanity into her own hands; she has made her personal humanity a personal affair to be settled by her, a human. She saw "that place in her that she dare not look" and dared to step there, and, seeing her do this, not as a Mahdi but as someone like them, others can follow and do the same. In a way, she would echo the daily life of a Sietch explored in Muad'dib, the expressing of needs and forming of working groups to sate those needs. Someone steps forward, and others join in with an activity lacking command.
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