Swords, Sorcery, and Socialism - Dune: Bene Gesserit Part 1

Episode Date: November 28, 2021

Part 1 of our discussion about Frank Herbert's scifi classic Dune. We focus on the Bene Gesserit and whether Dune is a reactionary story. We learn the best way to gain power is to take the long term view of history and how the Sisters are women taking some control back for themselves. Returning champion Nicole is our guest again.  Follow the show @SwordsNSocPod or email us at [e-mail]: @Himbo_AnarchistKetho: @StupidPuma69  Nicole: @gi66le_titspatreon.com/swordsandsocialismEmail: [e-mail] The Show: @SwordsNSocPodAsha: @Herbo_AnarchistKetho: @MusicalPuma69

Hello, everyone, and welcome back to Swords, Sorcery, and Socialism, a podcast about the themes and politics hiding in our genre, fiction. As always, I am Darius, and today I have with me my co-host, Kethel. Hello. Hello. And we also have a guest today, a one and only guest and returning champion, Nicole. Welcome back, Nicole. Hi, how are you it's great you get your returning champion token before anyone else gets one so congratulations on

that you're that special i look forward to the returning champion token i'm hoping this is an actual thing that'll totally be redeemable for it's totally a fungible token you can redeem for a picture I'm about to draw in Microsoft Paint. Free NFT. And a signed copy of the Books Are Good. NFT of my Books Are Good logo. Today we are going to be doing our first of an uncountable number of episodes about Dune. We're not going to do them all in a row, but today is going to be our first one. Today, we're going to be talking specifically about the Bene Gesserit, their role, what

they believe, what their goals are, and stuff like that. Before we get started, though, I want to do a special little shout out here. I, for the first time, was actually starting to look into some of our little analytics and where stuff comes from. And we have an audience that I find surprisingly international. And I want to give a shout out to a couple listeners who must be out there based on our download data. Unless you're using a VPN.

Unless you're using a VPN and shipping it around. Unless you're using a VPN, I want to give a special shout out to our one listener in Israel, our listener in Norway, and our two listeners in the UK. I say those specifically because I was looking at the data for a number of episodes and I saw like, know the one download in that country like over multiple episodes so uh you know what's funny is that in my head and i'm not going to say it out loud but i'm pretty sure i know who at least one of the ones from the uk is and i know who the one from israel is well if i'm looking at uh for here from our episode about a wrinkle in time, we also, we have one from France, one from Australia, two in Germany and two in New Zealand. So also the one from the UK is from like Glasgow or something. Yeah. From Scotland.

So whoever you are, whoever it is that Kethel knows, congratulations. We love you. And also I just found it interesting that we have overseas listeners. They're a good one. I like them a lot. And shout out to them. For all of you who are American listeners, go fuck yourselves. You're like us.

You're not special. But shout out to our one French listener. Hopefully, we don't do any books with french in them because then you will abandon us when we try to pronounce anything uh but thank you all for being listeners i really appreciate it i just wanted to shout out our special overseas uh downloads and the one bold person who downloads us and listens to us on a smart speaker that's bold that you're listening to us out loud like over a speaker instead of quietly in your headphones in your shame so bold of you wow these analytics get deep they know they literally tell you like what devices it gets

downloaded on okay so keep that in mind that's kind of scary so if you're downloading us on like your nintendo ds i'm gonna notice. I rigged my DSi to... To do podcasts. To download podcasts off of Spotify. But we are here today to talk about Dune and the Ben, specifically the Bene Gesserit. As with all of our episodes, which should be the thing going forward, obviously spoilers abound for everything we've ever talked about. And if you haven't read Dune, this probably isn't going to make much sense,

I would imagine. Especially Dune. It's one thing to pick up in the middle of a wrinkle in time. It's another thing to pick up in the middle of a 600-page tome that rivals Lord of the Rings in level of depth. Yeah. Well, what an incredibly deep and complex story about why heroes are actually bad sometimes and you shouldn't have them.

Yeah, you know what's funny is I actually dogmarked specifically the page where it says that. Where like Keynes' dad says that in his mind. Oh, yeah, when... Kynes? Kynes, Kynes. When Kynes is dying and his dad dad is like maybe don't give him a profit you piece of shit yeah kinds is dying and he's like shut the fuck up dad it's too late um if you can if you can consider anyone in this book a good person i think kinds is a pretty good person yeah

it's like kinds and his dad maybe might be the only – Yeah, I'd say they're generally pretty good. I also personally don't – if we're taking that quick detour, I also personally don't see any enmity for most of the Fremen. Oh, yeah, no. No, they're victims in all this for the most part. Like Stilgar and Chani and all them. Like they're just doing what they know how to do. So I don't blame them at all.

And there are some people within like the Duke's household that are just kind of like. I mean, Gurney's cool. Yeah, Gurney's really cool. Gurney's legit. He's just doing what he thinks is best. Duncan is cool for a very short time. For like the five minutes you see him. Don't worry, you get to see him later.

You read enough of the novels, you get to see him later. Oh, yeah, yeah. I've looked it up. I know he comes back comes back as a of of the the atreides household duncan is the most kind of a victim just because they literally like forcibly bring it back as a force ghost they they basically literally reincarnate him over and over and over and over and over again like yeah he's in every single tying in the whole idea of like the benedict genetic memory with like cloning technologies

advanced cloning technology it's just like what and spoilers i guess it's fine for people who haven't read like you know uh like 40 year old goddamn book series um read chapter house yeah no like uh yeah uh duncan like part part of like the the evolution of duncan's character after he starts getting cloned and all of like the preceding like centuries and millennia especially during the the the reign of the tyrant and all of later the second and all and big old worm daddy is that for a lot of the time, Duncan

doesn't really remember his previous incarnations as Duncan and all, like the previous clones but eventually over time over centuries and millennia he starts actively remembering his previous incarnations and all. Well, if you're talking about genetic memory.

Yeah, it's kind of similar to the other memory of the Bene Gesserit and all. Or just Leto himself. Yeah. I don't know. But not just... Because Leto and Paul both basically underwent the spice agony and all in their own ways and sort of got that Bene Gesserit sort of state of consciousness where they're aware of their ancestral memories, yada, yada, yada.

And Duncan slowly over time – Develops it. like what Leto does, I don't know what Leto II does with him, but yeah, he eventually does start remembering like, oh shit, I've been technically reincarnated like thousands of times over millennia as Duncan Idaho. As the world's greatestly named character of all time. Yes.

You know what? I'm just going to throw it out there. I know a lot of people dunk on Herbert uh herbert for like some of his naming conventions i love it i love the fact that like in a single room there's like thufir hawat and dunk in idaho like and a guy named paul like that's fantastic i love dunk in idaho does sound like a name of someone who should be in Point Break. He's a Point Break character. But today we are here to talk about the Bene Gesserit

because I... First off, they're very interesting and also I want to try to investigate a criticism I think I saw of Dune around the time the movie was coming out because I was talking about it on Twitter and some people were like, I saw

the take that Dune is inherently a reactionary story which I don't agree with. Just immediately at a fundamental level I was like, no I don't like that take. This book is anti-colonial. But one of – I was talking to some people about the things they don't like, the things about Dune that they feel are sort of reactionary.

the way it was stated to me on Twitter was the idea that there's this like, you know, shadowy cabal of witches that secretly control the world and how it's like that they were complaining that that was somehow like, you know, it was like vilifying women by making the world secretly run by this like cabal of evil witches. And I was like, I don't, even at the time, I, again, my gut reaction was like, I don't, I don't, that's not really how the Bene Gesserit operate. No. And also saying that they control everything is a gross understatement.

Misrepresentation. Sorry. It's a gross misrepresentation because they're not really actually by the end of the first book, you realize they're not actually in control of their own goals. Yeah, because their whole goal to produce the Kwisatz Haderach ended up out of their control. Yeah. And happened without them. And at the in the final confrontation, the final scene, Paul looks at the Reverend Mother Gaius Helen Mohiam and literally looks at her and goes, you have nothing to do with this. You can't stop it. You can't control it.

This is beyond you. And I think that's like immediately a refutation of the idea that there are these like secret all powerful witches that control. Yeah. Yeah. I would definitely agree. And especially as like the series moves on and like the Bene Gesserit like persist over thousands of years, one of the arcs of their throughline as an organization, as a paradigm, so to speak, and all, their viewpoint on the world and the cosmos and all, is just that you can't control everything you literally cannot control everything um because like they they have like you know uh rise and falls as the the series and like the millennia of the rest of the series uh unfolds where basically they're continually reckoning with the fact that we we can't control the cosmos in any way shape or form and we have to like you know square that circle um and i think

to the broader sort of like underlying idea of like secretive cabals and all um i think it that the the the the the storyline with the the benedict right there of like you know i'm trying to reckon with the fact that they can't control things and all i think really echoes um something i remember alan moore talking about i think a decade or two ago um in some sort of interview about how like when he was writing from hell i think it was uh the book about like you know like shadowy freemasons or whatever in the upper crust of british society basically employing jack the ripper to you know kill people yada yada yada and all that jazz um just conspiracies and occult stuff yada yada he was like the thing i came away from doing like you know deep dives and research into

like you know conspiracy theories and stuff is that conspiracy theory, like, you know, the general proposition of a conspiracy theory is one of comfort and all the idea that, you know, the world is being run by a select singular group that you can potentially identify in one way, shape or form. That's a comforting thought, because the reality he said is that, at at least from his take which i agree with uh is that there's no one at the rudder like there are people trying to control shit but there's actively way too much chaos like you you have to like control individual human hearts and minds and there have been people trying to do that since the fucking romans yeah it doesn't ultimately work and like in in terms of in terms of dune it's like you expect something like a shadowy secret society that's like in

charge of everything that that because of the fact that that's kind of inherently impossible for that to be functional like when you have someone like frank herbert where dune is one of the most like well thought out, at least the first book is easily the most well thought out. World building. World building experiences ever. It's like, you're looking at a situation where it's like,

he wouldn't do that because that's incredibly. That's unrealistic. Unrealistic. And it kicks the can essentially. He's like, Oh yes. This hyper magic group of women it's like no it's like they're just they're just very secretive very selective and very invested in their own

self-preservation well in a way i think the benny jesuit have a lot of the same shit going on personally i think that the fremen do in that they're taking a very long view of things and they're invested in their own self-preservation. And the reason they exert so seemingly so much control over what happens in the world is because they're very disciplined and their belief is intense and they take the long view. Yeah. intense and they take the long view. It's not that they actually can control things.

As we've said, it's not possible. We learned that. But the reason it seems like they do or why they exert the amount of control that they do exert in the story is because, like the Fremen, they have all of these ongoing things that make them strong. They have a rigorous system. They have complete buy-in from all of their members. They have, you know, a, you know, a 10,000 year like plan going on.

And all of these things allow them to exert sort of an outsized amount of, of control. And it's like, honestly, if you're going to talk about a group that has more control over everything than anybody else, it's like, it's like the Ben and Jezera. I don't even think the Ben and Jezera has as much control as like the guild does. No, the guild has way more control over society. So it's like you have,

you have other organizations that have far more control over the direction that things are able to take than like the Bene Gesserit. Well, I mean, it's also sort of like a differentiation between like hard power and soft power sort of principle. Yeah, that's like a big thing

with the Bene Gesserit. The Guild has obviously a lot more hard power because they control like the logistics and the economics of the imperium and all whereas the bene gesserit have more soft power and that they're more diplomatic to a degree and more sub rosa manipulative but the thing with them is i would i would agree that like they

just like the fremen and just like later the second have the long view of like the if i remember correctly the the the the actual primary objective of like the quizat hadarak is not necessarily to like you know for their own preservation as like an organization or as quote-unquote women etc it's we want a stabilizing figure so that humanity can survive indefinitely and uh it's it's kind of you know the long like you know the like as you're saying with the fremen they want you know they want a stable uh sustainable planet where they don't have to you know necessarily be rigorously disciplined every single goddamned moment of their lives. They want to be able to relax and have abundance and stuff like that and all.

Later the second sees Krasilak, the apocalypse, basically at every turn in his prescient vision and sees humanity dying and doesn't want humanity to die. He wants humanity to prosper and flower and just and flower and, you know, just live until like the heat death of the universe. And his golden path is there to try and put the pressures on humanity to be like, don't fucking, you know, uh, uh, uh, relegate yourself to one resource. Don't relegate yourself to one form of social organization you know be diverse be decentralized flower go out into the cosmos and become different things that are all still technically human because you are human and let humanity flower and prosper and never die out they all technically like want these, good things, but do end

up doing horrible fucking things. Horrific crimes. Like the eugenics program, the jihad of Muad'Dib, the hydraulic despotism of the era of the tyrant,

yada, yada, yada, and all. Whatever the fuck Leda second was getting up to. Well, yeah, that's his hydraulic despotism and all, especially in the later books after God Emperor is referred to as the era of the tyrant before the scattering and all. So technically, his golden path does kind of work. He does scatter into many pieces.

Yeah. I think we're right there. It's's all and then you get furries so it's it's awesome oh my god yeah you know like heretics or chapter house and like people start coming back from the great scattering and all some of them are genetically altered cat people and oh my god is that where dr. Who got it? Potentially. Ah, this is the, this is the future commies want. This is the future of the left wants. Um,

Ben and Jesuit cat girls. Ben and Jesuit. Okay. You say that like it's a bad thing. Um, uh, okay. So I think it might be time to make a quick diversion back though to generally what we can figure out about the basics of the benny jesuit like who are they

where they come from so from what you gather and i'm trying to draw here mostly from the first book obviously it will come from my general knowledge of other ones, but generally the Bene Gesserit were an order that was founded in the chaos after the Butlerian Jihad, after we destroyed computers. Well, like true AI. We destroyed AI and robots in the likeness of humans, which, you know what? Good. So after that, though, there was, I think in one of the appendices, it describes that there was a vast sort of all the religions of the world.

Obviously, we're all sort of out there still. And among those were also what he calls like sorceresses and like witches. these mostly women exerting a lot of sort of of power over people through religious sex or cults or whatever there's manyisms you know based stuff and all awesome you know all these mystic women with like power over people and the benny jesuit developed as an order as sort of a group of people gathering sort of all these mystical women together and binding them into an order to be able to control this power that these women clearly held. Then somewhere along the way, they developed all of their sort of their precepts and their training.

They developed their like, you know, Bindu fighting system where they can control their bodies to like the molecular level. If you're a Reverend mother, you know, Bindu fighting system where they can control their bodies to like the molecular level if you're a reverend mother. You know, perfect control of your body, which sort of comes from sort of like, you know, I'd imagine this sort of like, you know, Zen Buddhist tradition, this idea of like being perfectly. Well, I'm probably wrong about that, but it's this idea of being like, you know, perfectly within yourself and being calm. Yeah, it's I as a as a comparative religions major. Yeah, help me. I would. And like this kind of stuff being my bread and butter is my jam. I would say more than likely.

Is it the bread and the butter and the jam? Yes. OK. It's a whole fucking sandwich. I mean, you want a decadent. okay it's a whole fucking sandwich i mean you want a decadent um uh more than likely like given like you know it's uh like i got the the wiki pulled up here just for like an easy reference and all um given that's like it's pranabindu and all both of which are like um uh shit uh hindu terms and okay okay um more than likely it comes from, you know, the, the types of yoga that deal with that stuff, sort of like, you know, slowing down the heart rate

and, you know, like being able to like control like various autonomic processes, which is technically not impossible. I know that, um, there are, uh practices amongst especially tibetan buddhist monks and all um where they can train themselves to go from the waking state of consciousness which is basically beta or alpha down directly into deep sleep delta and all and for decades even into the 20th century scientists were like bullshit can't do that you know the the cycling of the brain is a natural autonomic thing you cannot learn to control it and then they got some of these uh monks that are trained in the specific sort of traditions to do that into um laboratory uh studies and you know hooked them up to um encephalograms and all that

jazz and we're fucking floored to see these guys go, no, like, we can, we can literally just sort of, like, sit here and drop from, like, alpha, which is, like, sort of relaxed, aware, and all, sort of, like, you know, a light meditative state and all, just directly down delta and all, just deep dreamless sleep and all, and they're like, yeah, no, we go from um being able to like perceive like the world around us and all to just nothing like there's no world around us there's no sense of self you're just this open field of awareness and all and then when you come back out thoughts and emotions start re-arising and a sense of self re-arises and then you know you get back into the waking state of

consciousness and oh hey there's a world around you and stuff like that so that kind of like autonomic control is maybe overblown in some ways you know depending on you know what kind of shit you're talking about but not technically impossible so i feel like that's that's like what herbert is talking about is at the very least more grounded than jedi yeah i feel like that that's a that's a huge thing with about is at the very least more grounded than Jedi yeah I feel like that that's a that's a huge thing with a lot of Herbert stuff it's like that's really really really stretching it but is technically possible like the voice like the way they use it in this the Bene Gesserit have this ability that lets them essentially for those who wouldn't know um that essentially allows them control over people but it isn't like it's not like the force

it's not like a mind trick um it's like the benny jesuit are just so good at analyzing and understanding people that after spending enough time with you maybe a couple minutes they can get a feel for what things they would be able to say that would essentially make you do what and especially like they with their their physical control of their own bodies they can like pitch their voices in certain ways certain ways the perfect little thing to subliminally just say the perfect thing to make you angry if you if they're trying to get you to stand up like like what what does she do with uh like jessica does with um the guards oh no she does it with through fear where she where most people don't know that the penny jessica can do it and through here she tells him to sit down against his own will she says sit down in such a way that he knows that he has to sit down and he's and him being a mentat he's

so trained that he knows what's happened to him but he still can't stop it like as it's happening he's like so this would be something that a lot of people who would have seen the movie but not read the book would be a little bit well not the new movie but the the lynch film because the lynch film it's presented more like a jedi mind trick sort of thing yeah yeah i do actually like how they did the voice in the in the movie because they didn't it can't really take the time to explain it in the new villanueva movie but they do this like audio thing where it's essentially like different people saying the line and then they just got like layered over each other so when they say something in the voice,

you're hearing like many voices saying it at the same time. I feel like once I get to see this movie that that's going to be, because it just makes me think of avatar. And when he goes into the avatar state, it has that like multi-layered voice. And that always used to give me chills as a kid. Like as soon as like the voice came out, you're like, Oh, well, yeah, well kind of a little bit. I'm really excited to see this movie is what I'm saying.

So the Bene Gesserit have the voice. They have this like insane body control over their like, you know, their Bindu system. They've got insane control over their pitch, how they hold themselves, the things they say and the emotions they feel. over their pitch, how they hold themselves, the things they say, and the emotions they feel. This is all siphoned through a lot of like liturgies, like sayings and phrases that they repeat to themselves, which is going to be really similar to anyone who's done any sort of like meditation that a lot of times getting yourself to meditate properly is focusing on a key phrase and repeating it and repeating it, repeating it. That's where you get the, like the famous, you know, phrase about in order to still fear, you know,

yeah, the litany against fear, which is, you know, fear is the mind killer. That's the one I was going to find because that, that is my favorite of the ones. It's great. It's a, it's a. Incredibly well-designed line from Herbert. Like it's, it's fantastic. And that scene with them and that scene with them in the thopter in the storm, that's just a really powerful moment where Jessica is panicking a little bit

and she's like, I got to remember this litany. And then Paul is just, he just says it out loud. Yep. And it calms both of them down just because of like the fact that he's saying, and she's like, shit yeah this kid like she already knows like everybody already knows that paul is kind of insane and brilliant but but she's just like this is a different kind of kid like yeah i will not i will not fear fear is the mind killer it is the small death you know i will become hollow and let the fear wash over me and it's like i would face down my

fears and you know face down my fears after the fear is gone nothing shall remain like uh i was saying before we started recording and all that like you know i uh i first read the books like in college and all but i grew up with my dad like loving the lynch version and all and like watching that over and over and i grew up like fucking idolizing like jessica and the benedicte et cetera et cetera et cetera i was like they're so fucking cool and uh being a trans woman and all i was like i wish i was a benedicte which is like again just like a number of those little things i'm looking back it's like oh bitch how did you not know uh but yeah yeah no like i i i was a geeky kid obviously growing up and all and uh yeah no use the litany of against fear so many times for

myself when i was growing up i'm just like trying to control myself and all like control my fear and face fear and stuff like that that so that's like that that that thing alone like for me like has like a deep sentimental value of just like it really is a really well-written sort of like litany it's a it's a nice little prayer hymn nice little mantra to remind you of like this is okay fear happens just you know don't don't fight it just let it flow over you maintain your stability and you'll be able to you know you, and you'll survive this and all. I found it. Just for the record, I wanted to read it accurately. I found it at the end of the exact chapter you were talking about,

Ketha, where they're in the doctor. Fear is the mind killer. Fear is the little death that brings total obliteration. I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when it is gone past me, I will turn to see fear's path. Where the fear has gone, there will be nothing. Only I will remain. And this is something else I specifically want to do in these Dune episodes, referencing other comments I've seen, is I've seen people talk about, this is a general point,

people talk about novels like Dune, especially once they get older, where they're like, oh, I loved it as a kid because it seems so deep. Then they get older and realize it's just a book. And that just grates on me because that, to me, reeks of like, well, I'm an adult. I don't do childish things anymore. You know what I mean? Oh, yeah, no, I definitely saw at least one or two Twitter threads

that were like, well, if you read it when you're in grade school or high school, it seems really profound, but blah, blah. This is when we pull out on fairy stories and throw it out. Yeah, this is me going back to on fairy stories by Tolkien. These are important stories even for adults, and the things in These are important stories, even for adults. And the things in them are important for everyone and for society as a whole. And this fear litany is a perfect from the Bene Gesserit example of that, because if you are legitimately scared of something, there is a lot going on in this quote. There's accurate.

It's purposeful the idea that yeah that beat that fear being the little death that brings obliteration is the idea that once you allow the to your mind to be scared and to let the fear take over you you are no longer capable of taking other action once fear has become like what dominates your mind now there's no longer anything else you can do. Like you've, you've immobilized yourself. Yeah. It's the, um, it's the, the, the adrenaline spike that leads to flight, fright, uh, fight, flight, or freeze where you cannot make a rational choice and all. And that's basically what you're trying to control is like the the normal bodily autonomic process of oh there's a danger around me and all and do i i don't want you don't necessarily want

to just immediately impulsively like strike out because you might hurt someone that is not you know an actual threat and all you might flee and you know cause harm that way you might hurt someone that is not, you know, an actual threat and all. You might flee and, you know, cause harm that way. You might freeze up and stuff like that and all. So you're not making conscious choices. You're not making rational choices in any way, shape or form. You're making impulsive choices and being able to calm yourself and ride out that adrenaline spike real quick by reminding yourself that this is temporary it will pass over you will survive don't let it control you helps you you'll kind of maintain that conscious control that rationality of like i'm not just going to give in to natural impulse and act unmindfully i mean it

kind of comes back to the whole um the uh the gum jabbar box uh lesson and all of like you know uh which in uh one of my few criticisms of the the recent movie was not explaining fully what the box is about and all and what the commentary of like we're gonna see if you're a human is and all because for anyone who's not read the book like that scene, especially with someone with the kind of power and potential power that Paul has, the Bene Gesserit want to make sure that he's not going to abuse it. It is kind of like the Jedi dictum of we don't train Force users over a certain age, yada, yada, yada. And also we try to limit the amount of like deep personal uh connections especially romantic connections that jedi have because you have so much power that if you get swept away by your emotions or anything like that you can cause havoc on a humongous scale

and someone like paul is kind of like a jedi essentially and the the whole point of the box in the gamja bar is you know uh the the the reverend mother you know says in the book that you know um we're trying to see if you're a human because an animal gets their their uh like leg trapped in uh like a basically a bear trap or whatever they'll nod off so that they can flee and all and save their own life and all impulsively a human being a true human being will stay in the trap feign death until the threat to their their group their community emerges to reclaim the trap and then the human being will try to take out that enemy and all the human being will like to take out that enemy and all. The human being will control their impulses

so that they can take out the grander threat and all. Which brings us, these dovetail into two of the most important, I think, beliefs of the Bedi-Jezuit. One is that separation of what they say human from animal, but in reality what it's referencing, going back to sort of the litany, is not being controlled by your emotions, not being emotional or impulsive. So that's one of their main things is control of yourself. what humans do is wait for what set the trap to eliminate that threat to their people is that the second most important thing about the benny jesuit is i think like we've referenced their long view of history that these things that has been more but that they will do whatever it

takes whatever sacrifice they need to make in order to make that move that will better save the human race which brings us into sort of their grand strategy they developed in their history, uh, which is to create this savior more or less this like extra human. Um, yeah, basically a male version of,

uh, a Reverend mother superior and all. Yeah. Um, who will be able to in his person take the grandest view and make the biggest moves to ensure

this sort of stability for humankind. What that means on sort of like the interpersonal and sort of societal day-to-day level it means that Bene Gesserit do a lot of politicking behind the scenes. Insane amounts. They're the most cloak and dagger motherfuckers ever um going back to what you had said about

hard power soft power it's like they really are the embodiment of soft power because uh uh benny jesuit all women it's women only um um mean, the order itself is mostly women and all. There are like men, because one of the characters who's like a, I think a duke or something like that. Count Fenring. Yeah, Count Fenring. Yeah. Count Fenring who was in almost Kwisatz Haderach. Yeah, something like that. But like, you know, he was a male trained by the Bene Gesserit, basically an agent not in the order technically,

but like sort of of the order and all. So, yeah, I can talk about him in a second here because he definitely ties in with Paul. But by and large, the Bene Gesserit are the ones that are technically trained specifically in the order within its like halls and its schools or women. the ones that are technically trained specifically in the order within it's like halls and it's schools or women. And they exercise power by being married to or partnered with powerful

people, which I'm not sure how they kind of weaseled that deal, but it's because of their, it's because of their other skills because having a, being a Duke or a count or a baron and having a Bene Gesserit means that you have someone who can listen to, who can determine the motives

and emotional state of everyone around you. Like it's a powerful, powerful tool. What the Bene Gesserit did in order to get themselves in positions where they can affect outcomes of the world is they essentially made themselves into indispensable tools and i think this is actually in a roundabout way i could be wrong in a roundabout way sort of women endeavoring for their own empowerment because the world of

dune is wildly patriarchal oh yeah it's nearly exceedingly yeah. It's neo-feudal. Exceedingly. It's neo-feudal. It's wildly patriarchal. But what the Bene Gesserit have done is wrested an amount of control and power from the hands of men for themselves. By making themselves so useful, they have essentially given themselves agency. Now it's not necessarily better agency for any individual Bene Gesserit woman, because depending on their situation, they might not have any. And a lot of times it seems they don't, they have to do exactly what the, the order wants them to do. But the order as an entity itself, which I think is the level at which Herbert views a lot of things, is the entity itself has agency for women within it, which they would not have otherwise. a concubine of a powerful person that concubine can, can exert control over the world that a regular concubine would not have

because she's Bene Gesserit. Yeah. Yeah. It's the, the simple fact that like, you know, they have like, you know, the, the truth sayers and all that jazz and the fact that like, you know, if you have a Bene Gesserit in your household, you've got someone who can you know basically be a poison taster for you safely be a poison taster and all and especially when you have like the art of canley the art of vengeance uh that runs rampant amongst the houses and all

of like literally everyone's just poisoning each other all the goddamn yeah yeah and just like you know like um like the the hunter seeker scene and all uh in dune and and all that kind of stuff where it's like the cloak and dagger stuff it's like yeah having someone who's you know perceptions and analysis of the world around them is so good they can kind of basically at like a 99.9 level figure out if someone is lying or withholding information yada yada yada without like you know resorting to fucking torture or some shit like that, which obviously doesn't work. Um, you know, you can, you know, that that's really fucking good to have on hand. Uh, you can have someone who can like, you know, like taste food for you and go, Oh yeah, no, this is poison.

This is not poison. And also not lose them because they can, you know, reconvert, you know, the, the poison in their body only reverend mothers can do that bit though i think right because that's the test that's the test to become a reverend mother is that you drink poison and change it but the benny jesuit even the regular ones are trained at detecting the poisons before they do it like they're almost as good as like the poison snoopers in terms of like smelling it sort of feeling it being like i think there's something in here yeah um which sort of between the benny jesuit's power and a mentat's power you sort of that's kind of how that great houses cover all their bases for safety right yeah and you know making up the uh the loss of ai is just this focus on the the the achievement of the human being and how how

just you know the the limitations uh of humanity that can be pushed and all of like you know well like we're not going to do ai so we're just going to train people to be fucking human supercomputers well to my knowledge that's like a huge theme throughout most of herbert's stuff i mean and in in essence even though it's not necessarily about the benny jesuit like like that's what arrakis yeah is is it's like this is an environment that he created in a way to show what it would be like, what the, the, what humanity can be when it's put under all this strain, that they can come out on top of it and be more than humans were before. If you look at, sorry, I just realized,

if you look at the different sort of organizations throughout his world, just realized if you look at the different sort of organizations throughout his world each one of them represents humanity pushed to the next level like he is he the the benny jesuit are like you know body control and like and mental social interaction, pushed to the next level. The Mentats are logical and reasoning abilities, pushed to the next level. The Sardaukar and the Fremen are human physicality, pushed to the next level. So all of Dune, like you just said, Ketho, was essentially Herbert positing situations in which humans have to reach that next level and the scenarios that arise to make that happen. And it explores each different way a human can reach those existential limits. And what's special about Paul is that he was reaching all

of them. Yeah, because he was a Mentat and because he was trained as a mentat to a degree. He's trained as a Bene Gesserit and all. And then he gets trained by the Fremen. And then he gets trained by the Fremen. So he is essentially the synthesis of these outgroups who have specialized and stretched human ability to its utmost limits. And then this, you know, what Paul becomes is the nexus point between all of those human extremes. And I never hadn't really put that together until you just pointed out, Katho, that that's sort of a theme of Herbert is like, how far can people go? And within this one novel, he's showing us how far they can go in every direction. And then Paul is then bringing those back together it's like but it's it's really funny because like throughout most of it you notice that the the the potential capabilities of individuals are almost measured by like proportionally to the extremeness of the

environment in which they are placed so it's like it, it's like we see the Sardaukar, how do you say that? Sardaukar. Sardaukar. And like the Fremen are like making quick work of them. And it's like. Because the Fremen live in a place even more extreme than Seleucus Secundus. And it's like,

oh, and that's part of the reason that somebody like leto would be a threat to the emperor and why he would want him gone is because if he comes to arrakis and gets the fremen the fremen will be able to take the emperor well yeah well that was the original the original idea was that even without the fremen house atreides had trained a fighting force strong enough to make the Emperor feel threatened, even without Fremen. And also the fact that Leta I is incredibly popular and all amongst both the... I mean, have you seen Oscar Isaac? Well, I mean, yeah. Well, he's just popular. I mean, my taste in men

is very niche, but Oscar Isaac does fall into that niche. That's like Kyle Mac mclaughlin and look if anyone if anyone like is attracted to men in any capacity i feel like everyone's niche should include oscar isaac that's true like if your niche doesn't include him i don't i don't i mean you've got the two you've got the two male archetypes in the newest movie you've got you've got the oscar isaac and you've got timothy chalamet you've got've got Oscar Isaac and you've got Timothee Chalamet. You've got your hunky man and you've got your powerful brooding twink.

Yeah. What else could you want? This film has it all. If you don't like that, Jason Momoa is here. Jason Momoa is there too. Leto is incredibly popular amongst the houses. He's a well-liked man and especially a well-liked man,

especially a well-liked noble and all who has power and it has, you know, armies at his back, yada, yada, yada. That alone, you know, if he can, you know, maintain the diplomatic diplomatic equilibrium with other noble houses and stuff like that could definitely be a uh you know a threat to the emperor because when you're emperor you don't want you know popular people below you you want disorganization to one degree you want people fighting each other so that you can have control so that they can't unite against you there's there's a really great bit in here about – because the beginning of each chapter has a little snippet from the collected sayings of Maud.

Yeah. Some of them are Muad'Dib. It's all from Princess Irulan. Yeah, it's all from Irulan, who is Ben-Jezret. Yeah. She's the eldest daughter of the emperor. Of his majesty, the Padishah emperor. Yeah, so...

I gotta be honest, I don't actually know his name. Fuck. What the fuck's the emperor's name? I don't remember. He's not hooked up now. But like... She talks about how one time she was taken by the hand by the emperor

through the hall of portraits to show him an image of the duke of duke leto and how um my father was 71 at the time and looking no older than the man in the portrait and i was but 14 and i remembered deducing in that instant that my father secretly wished the Duke had been his son and disliked the political necessities that made them enemies because it's like everyone respected Leo. Yeah. Well, I mean,

even though the emperor like has him killed, it is pretty clear the whole time. The emperor like likes him personally, but he sees him as a huge threat and he doesn't see the Harkonnens as any threat, which is the funny thing, which to be fair,'t i know but it's funny because we because we talk about this like about how leto is like well liked and he sees the fremen as an opportunity yeah but the harkonnens are such massive self-absorbed dickheads that they don't see any potential in the fremen and

they don't see it's like it's like the harkonnens if they had done correctly could easily have taken the fremen and made them into the world's biggest like it but they didn't because like the extreme colonialist mindset of like these these are just fucking savages. And something I want to point out about the household that ties back to the Bene Gesserit, the Harkonnens are the only ones that don't have a Bene Gesserit. The Harkonnens don't have – I was going to bring that up if you didn't. The Harkonnens don't have a Bene Gesserit because they don't trust them. The Duke, the Baron Harkonnen does not trust Benny Jezzeret. He doesn't trust anything he can't control.

Yeah, exactly. Which to be fair, I mean, to some degree, he probably shouldn't trust the Benny Jezzeret. Oh no, cause Benny Jezzeret would hate them. They don't like him. Yeah. But actually, I actually, I don't think they don't hate him though. They see him as being useful because this goes back to, I think what is the, the, the more, the other thing that people remember about the Betty Jezra in their

interpersonal relations is that they have this in order to produce their profit. They have this weird thing about genetics going on where they, they're very much in the like important people have strong blood. And you need to combine the genetics of families that prove themselves exceptional. And if you combine those bloodlines together, you can create better people. It is low key eugenics. Well, I mean, it's definitely eugenics, obviously. But I don't think it's that on the nose about good blood and stuff like that. It's just that the fact that they saw that Fade Ruatha would be a good genetic match for a child that was the offspring of jessica's bloodline which they specifically say or includes the baron harkonnen um and uh and they specifically they specifically talk about

salvaging bloodlines okay like they say that like the reason they're sad when the harkonnens as it was as far as they can tell kill all of the atreides is because they are sad at the Harkonnens, as far as they can tell, kill all of the Atreides is because they are sad at the loss of the Atreides bloodline. And that like, they don't want to kill off all the Harkonnens either, because that would be a loss of the Harkonnen bloodline. And these are some of the bloodlines they've been working the hardest to like cultivate, because that's why they specifically- Once again, all in all. the hardest to like cultivate because that's why they specifically yeah and they want well they want to bring it all together in one person but the benny jesuit want it to be one generation further down the line yeah so within their plan this is another thing you see the benny jesuit

do at least twice in the first book they will have one of their women said the women the benny jessert women can decide upon intercourse if they want to that intercourse to produce a child and what gender of child they have that level of control over their own biology and so which seems strange because the the gender is you know technically determined by the sperm and not the egg but it's happening inside whatever yeah um but so jessica the lady jessica is the result of a benny jeseret seducing the baron harkonnen when he was young before he got exclusively into young boys yeah before he got twinks um when he was young, he did a lot. And they specifically sent a Bene Gesserit woman to seduce him and bear a girl child. Because they wanted to then have that girl child join the Atreides bloodline and produce a child.

Because they wanted Jessica, they wanted to mingle those ancestries so that Jessica would have a daughter and then that daughter could marry Phaedraotha. And that Phaedraotha and that Atreides' daughter together would produce the perfect specimen to be the Kwisatz Haderach. The problem is, is Paul was just super duper special and just did it himself. Well, no, the problem is that Jessica decided because she, she cared about Leto so much that he wanted a son and all. And she's like, I'm going to give him a son and all, because I love him. Because again, it's that, that, that, that tension between the long view, you know, strict rationalist,

you know, like I have to, you know, do what's right and, you know, emotion or like, you know, the logic versus the emotion, sort of like in that discipline of mind and body and all that jazz within the- Yeah, the Reverend Mothers are really- Within the Bene Gesserit, which is like that can get you to

superhuman levels but it's also suppressing of the individual obviously and all and one of the commentaries in there is just like you know human beings making choices for themselves and all and jessica allowed her emotions to overrule the the instruction she'd been given yeah um and yeah obviously the reverend mother was super pissed about that because as far as the reverend mother was concerned jessica could have just fucked up like a few thousand years of selective breeding fair that's why that's why emma hyam was real pissed because the fact that then the harconens and the Atreides all had men, that that like ruined their like, you know, 3000 year plan. It also made Leto's life more like hanging on a thread. Because it's like, yeah, because she mentions at the beginning, it's like this makes him more of a political target because he has heirs.

It's like, it's like this makes him more of a target and essentially is what sets up what happens to him if he'd had a daughter then there could have been more political maneuvering that could have saved his life and there would have been more time because he the harkonnens wouldn't have moved against him because eventually leto would die and i mean that's what the emperor wouldn't have fell as threatened yeah the empire specifically well joint wouldn't have necessarily joined i would argue that that's how the benny jessert feel about it yeah it's not necessarily i would argue that the harkonnens were going to kill the atreides one way or another no matter what gender of child they had yeah because it's uh throughout the

series it's you know pointed at like you know the harkonnen atreides rivalry goes back to butlerian jihad it goes back to the prior it goes back to the battle of uh what corinne or whatever it was yeah uh reminds me uh emperor's name is shadam karina the fourth so his name actually is shadam okay okay um that's right uh but yeah it goes back to like that final battle of like the butlerian jihad where an atreides accused a harkonnen of cowardice or something and got them like exiled or some shit they've been holding that like ever since that's like that's like some uh some romeo and juliet uh copulate montesquieu bullshit. So, but I think, I mean, that ties into one of the other main themes

that we'll get into a different episode when we're talking about the politics of Dune specifically, is that he did base a lot of this, I mean, like the Atreides literally traced their house to like fucking Agamemnon, right? To like the ancient Greeks. So the sort of like enmity between the houses and this sort of stuff,

I think is supposed to represent this sort of like the kind of shit you'd see in like the iliad or the honest tragedy stuff but especially all storyline of like i'm trying to avoid genocide and the entire point of like greek tragedies is you you can't avoid the fate that has been woven for you by the fates. Any act of hubris to try and affect that is only going to advance that fate closer and closer and closer. Yeah, obviously everyone knows about like – One of these days they needed to have a Greek fable about a guy just going along with it and being like, the fates, you tell me this is what's going – okay, I'll do it and then fucking you up somehow. And the fates fail tell me this is what's good okay i'll do it and then fucking it up somehow there's there's um that would be interesting so the fates are like what do i do my scissors are broken no that was the hercules disney hercules movie where his his hair strand

turned to gold and they couldn't cut it couldn't cut it oh that's the real because it became it because it became a god um so the fates of gods which is what i find oh yeah yeah that's one of the things that like all throughout indo-european uh mythology is just the fact that like yeah the the gods are really fucking powerful but they're not all powerful and there's other entities in the cosmos that are more powerful than them like Like, you know, the generalized fates. Anyways, getting back to Doom.

We've got sort of the background of the Bene Gesserit sort of set up. This organization of women who have trained themselves. Everyone in the universe kind of calls them witches because of the power they hold. Even though they don't really have magic per se, it's because this is a sci-fi novel all of their power is described in like biological terms uh i mean there's stuff that's like

more i would say they're they're sort of like grounded psionic to a degree like a lot of their stuff is sort of like mental and physical discipline and all but they have stuff like the other memories which is technically biologically based to one degree or another which is genetic memory but the reverend mothers also have the ability to transfer their memories and personalities like as other memories into other reverend mothers upon their death and all which yeah one could say is you know technically maybe like a sharing of like genetic material at a really low level even though there's no like swapping of spit or anything it's like a touch of the forehead to the touch of the forehead

but that right there is kind of a psionic thing and also just like the prescience of reverend mothers paul uh spacing guild navigators etc et cetera. It's like, that's psychic. Well, to be fair, it's like, that's, that's like the, almost the point of like the spice, for example, is to essentially give people psionic powers. Yeah. It's a super powered psychedelic. Yeah. What I meant was not, was more that like the people in the Dune universe by and large just think the witches

think the benny jezrit just like do magic like as far as they're concerned they're just like these are just magic witches yeah whereas because of just you know i'm sorry to sorry to jump over but like partially because of uh just the way that people who don't know what they're witnessing can, you know, just sort of spin off, you know, assumptions. And also the simple fact of like the Missionaria Protectiva and all of the Bene Gesserit, where they are explicitly and consciously manipulating the folklore and the beliefs of, you know, other populations. Well, I mean, any technology sufficiently advanced is indistinguishable from magic. Well, I mean, any technology

sufficiently advanced is indistinguishable from magic. And for most of the people in the universe, the things that many Jesuit trained themselves to do are so sufficiently advanced it may as well be magic. And like we were mentioning with the Missionaria Protectiva,

it's like that's such a huge... That plays such a subtle but enormous role.