Swords, Sorcery, and Socialism - Dune: Bene Gesserit Part 2

Episode Date: December 5, 2021

 Part 2 of our discussion about Frank Herbert's scifi classic Dune. We focus on the Bene Gesserit and whether Dune is a reactionary story. We talk about shared cultural myths, eugenics, and how trans women are real life Bene Gesserit. Returning champion Nicole is our guest again.  Follow the show @SwordsNSocPod or email us at [e-mail]: @Himbo_AnarchistKetho: @StupidPuma69  Nicole: @gi66le_tits patreon.com/swordsandsocialismEmail: [e-mail] The Show: @SwordsNSocPodAsha: @Herbo_AnarchistKetho: @MusicalPuma69

And I think that's, that was where I wanted to go next. Yes. Was because we've sort of now we've talked about where the Bene Gesserit come from and a little bit about what they do on a day-to-day basis. They do politicking. They secretly seduce people to bear their children for eugenics reasons. Because I mean, even in this book, I didn't mention, but in this book, I mean, they have Count Fenring's wife uh seduces fade rautha um to try and salvage the to try and salvage because that because they're pretty confident that this war between atreides and harkonnen will end the bloodlines so they're like well we got to

at least get one of them out of here before it ends so um count fenring's wife seduces fade rautha they don't actually show it happening but like it's implied that she's going to and there's no reason to assume she would fail. So that's like they're sort of what I will call like their day to day stuff is like politicking and backstabbing and plotting eugenics bloodlines. The other really big thing the Bene Gesserit did for their own protection. And again, focusing on this long view of history they have is the Missionaria Protectiva, which is this thing they came up with, you know, however many thousands of years ago where they spread as they were building power, they spread themselves out across all these planets.

And what they would do is all of the Bene Gesserit had all learned all the same cultural legends and mythos and beliefs from as much of humankind as possible. And languages from as much of that planet were about. belief systems of the people in those planets to the effect where if later on a benny jessera was there and in danger the benny she would be able to pick up on all these subtle clues of the belief system that had been implanted by her predecessors and then be able to manipulate those to keep herself safe it's sort of like implanting false beliefs or memories in these cultures so that, you know, at 3000 years down the road, a different Benny Jezzard is there. She can, as Jessica does often on Arrakis, hear a phrase and go, ah, that's a Shakobza phrase. Like when she first encounters the shout out Mapes,

Mapes says specific things. And Jessica's like, ah, that's a phrase it's in this language and it's referencing this thing, which means she can then inference a bunch of other things about the culture and about what she should and shouldn't be doing based specifically on things within the Fremen language and their Fremen belief system. She can say, Oh, they must've implanted this, uh, prophecy or they must've implanted this cultural belief. And that's like sort of Jessica's whole deal.

Then Paul obviously does it too. And they even both realize throughout the story while they're doing it, that it's kind of cynical, that it's like a cynical act to have implanted these religious and cultural practices. And then for them to be able to analyze it and go, oh, they do that because a Bene Gesserit 4,000 years ago told them, you know, planted this myth in their midst. And so now I can cynically use that for my own benefit. And so even though it's a thing that the Bene Gesserit are cool with, I think it's an interesting point that our main characters,

even though they go ahead and do it anyway, at least recognize the cynicism. Yeah. They're conflicted about it. Like they need to do it in order to survive and also wreak the vengeance they need to on both the emperor and the harkonnens but they're not exactly like oh this is great and awesome oh yeah no no yes this is purely to my yes yes yeah like this is completely fine there's nothing wrong with this

whatsoever it's like and this is yeah this is a complex and nuanced thing and i don't exactly feel 100 good about this it's like yeah yeah like i need i need to do this to do to accomplish the things that i feel need to be accomplished at the same time you're like i'm just kind of using these people yeah like and i mean it's explicitly stated that multiple times that they're between Paul and Jessica, they're essentially harnessing the Fremen for their own ends. Oh yeah. It's not like, Oh, we genuinely believe the same things they believe.

It's that like, we're just going to use their beliefs and just fucking. We're going to use their beliefs and we're going to use Paul's foresight to essentially make ancient made up prophecies that were inserted into their religion for the sake of helping, you know, Bene Gesserit women. But I think there's like a really important thing here about how they have like a whole long list of myths that could be implanted. of myths that could be implanted. And on Arrakis, the one they decided to implant was that

you will save them. Is that the Bene Gesserit who arrives is going to save them. They implanted in the Fremen the most, like the deepest and most desperate of their

Because the Fremen were so horrifically beaten down by everything that had ever happened to them ever. Um, that, you know, it was just like, okay, these people need, they need helped. Yeah. It was like the point where in a lot of, like I've said, in a lot of cases, the missionary protect Eva was to save Benny Jezreel. It's not a place where they got. Then they got to Arrakis and she's like, oh, it's not the missionary protectiva here wasn't just to save Bene Gesserits.

It was for the Bene Gesserits to save these people. Well, it was the the intent of the the myths and the folkloric framework was not that you need you that the people need to save the individual Bene Gesserit and all it's that oh well you should take care of this person because they will save you that's true the manipulation that way that you know it's still there to protect the Bene Gesserit who might need to make use of it. But it's not like, you know, they're, you know, you are, you know, the, the, you know, the one taking care of them, they're taking care of you. So you should look after them and all sort of aspect. That's true. I think,

I feel like that's specifically like the angle that was taken on Arrakis. I think in other planets, it's more just like, Oh, I know the right word to say say so I won't get stabbed. Or something like that. Where Anarakis, it's definitely like, you are implanted in need so the Fremen know to save you under the auspices that you will save them

from suffering. Or like on a more civilized or less brutal planet. You just need to know enough to understand the language and a few of the customs that you don't make you know you don't do something infer like the larger mythological and sociocultural framework from you know bare minimum stuff of like oh i know i have an idea of how to like roll with the punches and yes and in this situation you can improv troop well if you've the idea is that they've set enough

like sort of ground rules in every society that any benny jessica can yes and their way through that society and then jessica got to arrakis and was like holy shit they had to do a lot of groundwork here because this place fucking sucks yeah yeah it's like this place is so inhospitable and awful that the that the only legend that would like stick was one of being saved um because of just how brutal and hard life is on arrakis yeah the only legend we could give them that they would accept was the like when we show up again it will be to rescue you from like death and pain. And that's, you know, I think that sticks with Herbert's theme about sticking to like environments

sort of creating the people, right? Shaping together, yeah. Yeah, it's like it's sort of shaped by like the space by like vice versa too yeah that the belief the beliefs of the fremen shaped iraq and the firm yeah shaped arrakis as well or end up keeping iraq and they will because that's and that's the whole that's going to have to be a whole other episode is that the benny jesuit have come and you can see how much of the fremen belief system came from their early Bene Gesserit, like whoever was there. A lot of their beliefs came from the Bene Gesserit.

But what's unique about the Fremen, and again, this will have to be a separate episode, is what Kynes Sr. and Jr. did to the Fremen belief system. Jr. did to the Fremen belief system because Kynes is, uh, Liet Kynes' father, the first, the previous planetologist was the one that saw this belief system. Obviously he didn't know it was Bene Gesserit inflected. He just saw the belief system as it was, but he did a similar thing and said, I can take this belief system and add to it and adapt it to my goals. I can make these, I can, I can change the Fremen beliefs into something that has ecology in it. And then Liet does sort of the same thing. And so that that's what the point in the book where you find that certain

parts of the Fremen belief are surprising to jessica is because those are things that have been added to the fremen belief by the planetologists they're not pure benny jesuit teachings it's things that like the terraforming of arrakis etc yeah which is just a riff on uh there there'll be a new earth and a new heaven and a new Jerusalem, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. Which, you know, talking about the longevity and the flowering diversity of iterations of various myths and all is like, that's same thing.

Like, you know, we talk about like, you know, Revelation and, you know, the apocalypse and all, like in Christian lore and all that jazz. Touchstones with Ragnarok in the Norse and all, which, you know, because of... There's a great book by E.J. Michael Witzel, I believe, or is it Michael Witzel, called The Origins of the World Mythologies,

which was written, I think, like in the... First written, like, in the 90s and all, and I think added during the aughts and all. And he was a Harvard endologist and all, but like towards the end of his career started like, you know, like noticing like, you know, mythological stuff like in the Indo-Europeans and other stuff, you know, further afield and started like an effort to like, sort of like family tree,

uh, human mythologies and all, because it's like,'s like amongst the, the, the new world mythologies, you see a similar sort of like a one example would be the, the idea of successive world ages, which you also see in like the Greeks and all with like the golden age, the silver age, the iron age, yada, yada, yada, and all. And sort of like Duff, you know, like sort of family treating those myth themes and all going like, well no based on what we know of like migration data from both genetics and archaeology we can assume that like something like the successive world ages uh mytheme that we see

both in the the uh in eurasia and in the americas but not really in like Africa and Pacifica and all. So there are different cultural groups that emigrated there as soon as they came from different sort of mythological traditions. Yeah, but like you can also dovetail like the time depth of a potential myth theme by going, well, if it shows up in the Americas and in Eurasia, that myth theme must be at the very least as old as the split off between the migrating populations so like the success of world ages thing is probably at the very least in the range of like 20 000 years old because the same thing that's essentially the same thing they've done

with languages now yeah language family trees is that because yeah you find the common words yeah it's like mythem cognates just like you, phoneme cognates and all that jazz. Cause it's like language and paradigm. Like I'm not a hard, um, uh, saber wharf sort of person where like, you know, language, you know, definitely describes what we're able to perceive and stuff like that. But it's like language does shape how we perceive and think about the world around us. And there's a feedback between, you know, how we perceive and what we can world around us and there's a feedback between you know how we perceive and what we can say and stuff like that and all um and vice versa but it's like you

know the manipulation and like the longevity of those kinds of myth themes you can kind of like dovetail back and all of just how they they emerge and how they persist and how they change over time and all is a really interesting sort of observation for fucking Frank Herbert to be like, you know, sort of positing in the goddamn 1960s and all of like, what if somebody or an organization consciously did that over thousands of years? consciously did that over thousands of years. It's wild that he's essentially, he's noticed, I would imagine he's noticed that trend that you were just talking about and was essentially in his world building posited a reason for it. Like, Oh, we have these shared mythos because these, you know, these people have gone out and sort of like spread them, some of them intentionally.

Yeah. And like one of the things that you do see amongst like you know especially like eurasian and uh american you know mythologies is this idea of like there will be an end time and there will be you know a new world after it yada yada yada like you know uh witzel talks about like basically the the eurasian and the american mythological family essentially as being a novel whereas like the much uh older african and pacifican uh mythologies are more like a forest of stories and all like they're they're all sort of like sharing the same sort of mythological setting but they're not you know connected serially in a lot of the same ways that like indo-european mythologies especially are you know sort of serialized

where there's a distinct beginning middle and ending and all to them and all it's not just like a series of stories that all mean things that sort of reference the same gods generally whereas all these other religions like this was creation this is where we

are now and then eventually you will be have a savior and or there's going to be some sort of massive world ending event that remakes the cosmos etc which you know getting back into dune uh you you obviously have you know the ideas of like pralisek and just you know like the coming of the ma, which itself is a apocalyptic mythology and all. And the Kynes generation, you know, the two of them, you know, play off of that by going, well, the actual sort of like embodiment of that is just the liberation of the Fremen and the terraformation of Arrakis into a more hospitable world

and all. This sort of apocalyptic thing I think Herbert posits throughout, I think whether he believes it or not, but within Dune he sees that apocalypse as inevitable. Especially the

tendency towards humanity to narrow its optionality via resources and get into the rut of strict hierarchies in their societies and stuff like that. That's one of the reasons, getting back to the very opening of this episode the, I saw some of the same anarchist, uh, uh, poo pooing of doom by saying it's inherently reactionary. It's like, you really haven't actually read the books.

Have you? Because it's one long commentary on how like, you know, centralization and rigid hierarchies and all that jazz is bad for humanity on, you know, writ large and that we need to decentralize and diversify every aspect of humanity like you were saying even with with later books with stuff like

leto the second it's like you end up in a scenario where the most centralizing force in the entire series is like actually this is really. I need to die in order for this to like move on so that we can like, well, yeah, Lato's whole thing with the golden path is that like, he sees like the, the propensity for human beings as human beings to get into these ruts and just like,

you know, continue spinning our wheels. And he's like, no, because like all the various different shifting features he can see are, uh, yeah, because all the various different shifting features he can see are – Extinction. Yeah, lead to extinction.

And the ones that lead to sustainability and humans just dying with the heat death of the universe at some point trillions of years hence is the scattering and diversifying. And he's like, they need a pressure that is so worn into humanity like at the basically the the cultural consciousness level the genetic level what i that i know like will say as far as like any theme that might be extrapolated to be a little bit reactionary if anyone was going to like if any aspect of it is it is that sort of um a lot of this is driven by either if you look at the benny jesuit it's something like the eugenics sort of view they have on thing the eugenicist sort of look and also the very the very survival of the fittest churning out the strong you know that that becomes a little bit um just because of that throughout

herbert's work seems to be almost like a core assumption more so than it is something that is um consciously being communicated yeah so so it's like a core assumption of say dune is that these horrific environments then weed out and create these essentially superhumans because anyone who wouldn't be able to survive gets weeded out and everyone who's left alive has to become now of course i think some of that gets tempered by the fact that it's it's not ever really mentioned to be something like hyper genetic other than like a few inherited traits like the quick ultra quick coagulation of fremant blood for example seems to be like a genetic thing that just helped um for the most part it is actions that have to be

taken once someone is already there you know i mean and so it does show people like paul and people like jessica surviving and learning how to survive so it's like a learned thing more so than a genetic thing but it's still like there's still just an undercurrent of like and i'd say a more nuanced layer of that is that a lot of the like the the eugenic stuff and some of the other more obviously very problematic and questionable end goals and stuff like that of the Bene Gesserit and others is shaped by the pressure of the Butlerian Jihad

and all. This event 10,000 years prior to the beginning of the novel and all that has shaped humanity and how humanity relates to the universe and all by, uh, giving up artificial intelligence and all because artificial intelligence so damaged and subjugated humanity that, you know, humanity has rejected it for 10 millennia and all. And I think, you know,

we, we say 10,000 years and forget that like 10,000 years ago for us is the fucking end of the goddamn ice age and all, which is like almost a completely different world from what we live in now. You know what that is? This is like two, two of our last three books have involved, involved essentially a human revolt against technology that resulted in an age where people had to do everything without technology because we chose not to use it because that's also the cataclysm for lebowitz yep that's like the cataclysm for lebowitz it's predicated after

like a nuclear holocaust but it is still people going this technology is too much and we need to live without it yeah so like i i'm sorry uh personally i would say like you know you can definitely say that like the eugenic stuff and a lot of the other things are reactionary and all because they are reactions to this massive traumatizing event in human history and all so like yeah it's fair to call them reactionary but to say that the books themselves are inherently reactionary, I think is much more odd. Not inherently by any stretch.

I think the other thing that leads people though, to make assumptions about the sort of like reactionary nature is the fact that Herbert uses the, when he's talking about the coming jihad, he often uses the phrase race consciousness. True. Cause he's, but he's talking more like you know the young and collective like yeah he is talking about the human race yeah like humans yeah but i think in a modern context that's not always necessarily thought of that way when he's like you know when paul is with the fremen and he's having ideas about the race consciousness and the need to like plunge the galaxy into bloody war.

I think it could be misinterpreted when he's using the phrase race consciousness, because that was not a thing you would say in the modern day. Yeah. Any sort of positive connotations. And I will say is it's even within that sort of the idea of the race consciousness and the need for jihad to sort of shake up the existing order of the universe is, I think, something that is actually necessarily anti like fascist or against sort of the ideas of you're not against the ideas of general fascism because it's specifically stated they need the jihad to force the intermingling of bloodlines and peoples across planets. It's not a race purity thing. It's not that the Fremen need to do jihad to eliminate all other peoples and leave only the Fremen. eliminate all other peoples and leave only the Fremen. The idea is that they need to go to other planets to force the intermingling of all these peoples who have been separated by space and time. So it's actually sort of a forced reintegration of various splintered peoples in order to create, to shake it up and create a new standard, right.

To create a new order. And it's not that like, oh, we need to eliminate all the lesser. It's that we need to force all these people to interbreed to some extent. Which is kind of a weird problematic thing in and of itself to one degree or another. I'm not saying it's good, but I'm saying it also doesn't follow when people try to say that it's like fashy. Yeah. You're never going to get like a fascist that's like, but I'm saying it also doesn't follow when people try to say that it's like fashy. Yeah. You're never going to get like a fascist that's like, you know what we need to do? Force the entire world to interbreed.

Yeah. We will facilitate our imaginary white genocide. Like, yeah, we're going to we're going to make the white genocide happen faster by forcing by like literally going torica to do a war because we want to like intermarry with the people there like that's like the opposite of racial yeah it's it's still it's bad for other reasons yeah like namely genocide yeah yeah like it's bad for other reasons but it's not bad for like sort of those sort of of fashy reasons that I think some people imagine it to be. To be fair, this is all presented within a very... The entire setting itself is incredibly bleak, just as an idea.

Not even just Arrakis, but the whole uh potty shot like emperor like whole thing the imperium yeah the imperium itself it's i think it's i think it is a little obvious that maybe some bits of this were definitely an influence on something like warhammer but like um just elements of of this imperium being so like and i won't say it's like like you said this book isn't like anti-fascist or anything because the book isn't discussing fascism really at all what it it does kind of discuss these sort of like colonialist imperialist feudal stuff um a lot and kind of shows the the negatives of that um more so than or just general colonialism imperialism as a concept i would say if it's anti-fascist in any way it's more the commentary on like some of the aspects of like earth fascism and all and not like this they're like fascism is

bad and here's why blah blah blah but like it's not some of the underpinning roots of like you know of fascism are like colonialist mindsets imperialist mindsets all that sort of stuff and on just to be like this is bad guys this is bad it's really bad yeah also i mean that could be a whole further conversation in an episode talking about politics about the politics and also of the like like that Paul isn't a good person. Well, yeah. But like I said, when you get into it, I think that's one of the misreadings of the book is that Paul is a hero. And I think if you read Paul as an unambiguous hero, you can lead yourself to some fashy adjacent points because he's essentially like an untouchable, flawless,

he's an Ubermensch Ubermensch. Right. So like, if you see Paul as a hero, that could lead you to some unfortunate reactionary views where like, you need this Ubermensch who you have to worship without reservation. You have to worship without reservation you have to whose orders you have to follow without reservation and he is going to lead a war that will like remake the galaxy like that's bad if you read it that way that's bad but the point is you're not supposed to

like what he's doing is bad compared to most um because technically even though it's not like funny this it falls into the realm of satire which you know is intentionally over-exaggerated specific things in order to point out flaws but it's like it's like this book definitely go goes the mile to make sure to include plenty of stuff that makes you go okay this guy isn't good you know it's it's trying so hard to do that this isn't. Good. You know it's trying so hard. To do that. This isn't like something like Warhammer.

Like I mentioned before. Where they recently had to release a thing saying. Hey the Imperium is actually evil as hell. And you shouldn't support them. But at the same time. There are no good guys in this universe. At the same time. In that setting.

They've been spreading. You know there have been novels. Released in the past 20-30 30 years that are all full of like the marines being good heroic people and it's like so you brought this on yourself in a way that you would write kind of went out they went out of their way to explain that the imperium of man got that way for reasons. And they give you those reasons. And then they're like, well, you're not supposed to like, like them. But it's like, but you've written novels where they're the heroes that don't have the subtlety of telling you that they're bad. It's like, it's like a lot of these, these, you didn't take enough careful consideration.

Yeah. There are a lot of mass marketed paperback books that were written by people who were contracted to write these novels that weren't thinking about it as satire in the same way and they wrote heroic stories in the vein of I mean we could talk about problematics this will have to be a conversation one day I don't know if you've ever played the Halo games but that is a deeply some especially

the extended stuff in the novel some deeply problematic shit and and like I've definitely seen the Brian Davidbert unraveled yeah and that's that that's that's gonna be an interim that'll be an interim thing we're gonna talk about like the politics of the politics of the spartans alone um but it's like you like somebody like warhammer like they've kind of brought that on themselves by presenting these guys as heroes in their paperbacks, in their novels.

So people who are already fans of the aesthetic, which it's a cool, albeit fucked up aesthetic, like it makes, so it gets presented to them in a positive light. This book doesn't do any of that. So it's like he does not hide the fact that this stuff is fucked up he does not hide the fact that these things that even these characters see these even the characters as they're doing them are like i am not so sure about this it yeah especially sorry sorry especially paul while he's doing stuff he's like yeah this is gonna be bad there's gonna be a lot of negative consequences to this thing that I'm about to do.

Yeah, and then he just does it. It's like, you know he's a bad guy. It's not as though they're playing like the prophecy thing straight, you know? This isn't like Star Wars where they're like, oh, here's a vague prophecy that's just being played as is. This is, the prophecy was planted years ago as a self-defense mechanism for the benedict

that just happened to fall into place because paul has prescient mind powers it's like so the dude essentially manipulates this this thing on accident at first and then intentionally further on in order to make himself appear like a god it's like he's not a good person yeah and one of the great things is like some of the the uh the criticisms of that sort of stuff that seem to become missing a lot of that nuance and all uh for me was like okay so either you haven't read uh like dune messiah especially uh or you've only ever seen like the lynch adaptation of dune that's something i'm really worried about and i hope that they do well in part two of this this movie is presenting paul as a piece of shit and well i know i know villanueva said that he wants to do

at the very least after part two he wants to do dune messiah and all where like, you know, Paul's like, uh, reckoning with all of this shit he did as like, I am a shitty, shitty, horrible person. And I'm just going to go out into the desert and be eaten by a fucking sandworm. Like it's, um, yeah, I think Villeneuve had said, stated that he, if he gets his way, he'll make three movies. This first one was the first half of Dune. The second one is going to be, and then the next three movies this first one is the first half of dune the second one is going to be and then the next two are going to be like the second half of dune and parts of dune messiah dune messiah like that's what he wants to do and they've already greenlit part two they greenlit it like a week after it released after the first one released because

they were waiting to see if it would make money yeah Yeah. And it did. So, I mean, odds are that if the second one is anywhere near as grossing as the first, then they'll probably give him that third one. They'll probably make money. Yeah. And I'm just hoping for Worm Daddy on the big screen. See, this is something I'm sure the two of you are going to strongly disagree on. And I have very little opinion on, because, you know, usually adaptations I'm, like, squirrely about anyways.

See, okay, I will give this first movie credit for doing a really good job those are the most fun i've had watching a movie in memory right like that's the most fun i've had watching a movie in such a long time but i also have this thing i inherently hold in my heart where i'm terrified of adaptations because i think there's some things that just aren't meant to be adapted to screen. And so I'm terrified of the idea of actually showing us fucking Worm Daddy. I'm sure it is going to be all of crafty and horror

and I am here for it. It's going to be H.R. Giger shit. It should be. It's going to be. Inject that into my veins. The thing is, that would be a litmus test for people because the first movie, the first book can be kind of read almost as well, deeply political and thematic. An action story like you can still technically you could walk in and if you and if you're kind of just turning your brain off, you can just watch it as an action film. Or you can read this as, I mean, it'd be more difficult to read this as an action film. But that's also the same outlook that gets people to misrepresent Paul as a hero.

Yeah. Is if you're just coming into it like an action story where he just gets to come and avenge his dad. Unfortunately, there's not a whole lot you can do about it because people are going to come into it just like, especially when you adapt it like this but like but even but the fact that it kind of blows my mind that people are able to misrepresent it after reading the book because how can you make it through 600 something pages of this and not be thinking about it it's like you would have to be skipping parts that you're bored with well to be to be fair, a lot of those people, they do have the same sort of people that say they skip boring sections of books. Like, I'm sorry, if you tell me that you read Lord of the Rings,

but you skip all the poetry because you think it's boring, I'm going to discount your opinion on the themes of the book. So people are like, man, I really just don't like the Frodo-Sam chapters. I've got to skip them. I mean, don't get me wrong. I personally find the Frodo and sam chapters less interesting than some of them oh yeah they're more they're more difficult to read through but like also like if you just say oh i skip all the poetry and the singing because it's silly you're also missing

like important thematic messages of the work yeah so and then those people will go on to say something like oh dune is a little bit is reactionary it's like bro you didn't read it very closely like yeah you're not doing like a close reading of the work in that sense but i the circle is back around here that sort of yeah that sort of like um that idea that reading it closely like you know shows you the actual, like what Herbert actually meant. You referenced a little bit ago, the idea that like Paul, while he's doing what he needs to do is intentionally manipulating these prophecies laid down by the Bene Gesserit. And that sort of puts to pain the idea that the Bene Gesserit are really all that

powerful on a grand scale because when it comes down to it paul can just look at what they've done and change it or like manipulate it to the ends that he sees fit which are as he says directly to the reverend mother at the end this is outside of your control i'm doing this now you don't have anything to say about it. And like that, like nearly breaks her because she's been so inundated in the Benny Jesuit, like way that they have this control outside of any other measures that Paul can just say,

you don't know. No, you actually don't have, because I've seen all these futures and all these futures say you ain't got nothing. Unfortunately. Yeah. And it's also at the same moment he realizes he's not in control either yeah which uh is like

talking about like the bleakness of the setting and all like how neo-feudal it is which is a comment from i think um uh the reverend mother and all uh at some point in the book of like you know observing like you know one of the reasons why the Bene Gesserit operate in the way they do is because they see the, the world around them for what it is that like, you know, humanity is stultified itself in this neo-feudal setting, you know, just hyper-focusing on one material resource and limiting all other possibilities, yada, yada, yada. And so they're like, we really can't,

you know, change, you you know the cosmos so radically that you know as as an order without the quiz at hadrak and all because that's one of the reasons why they've been working towards the quiz at hadrak and all is to be able to like affect grander change and all but like so we're operating in the ways that we can but one of the things that like you're talking about the bleak setting and all and like the takeaways of like from like you know the the the sort of like theme of like these perilous times and extreme environments and all that jazz you know acts as a crucible on humanity that like kind of like forces human beings to do better and stuff like that and combining that with like you know a bit of a read of that scene at the end between paul and the reverend mother of like you know i'm outside of your control this

is outside of your control you you can't do anything about this and all i think is honestly kind of positive sort of takeaways of like yeah especially like nowadays and all with like the the both the the physical environments we find ourselves in and the cultural environments we find ourselves in of uh just like the world burning down around us and all seems dire and way out of our control but it's like human beings when we're put through a crucible also tend to you know become incredibly adaptable and inventive and ingenious when we have that pressure on us to you know die or survive and a lot of times you know we find ways to fucking survive and so there's that is like oh yeah no like we can just you know reach super human levels

of you know activity and ingenuity and all that jazz funny enough it's kind of like those moments of like stories you hear of people who are like were climbing and they got trapped under a rock that was coming down on them and they literally broke past the the mental barriers in their mind that prevent them from like breaking their own muscles from using them too much to get like this one ton rock off of them exactly exactly and even just like the the mental like sociological aspect of like you know yeah everything seems really fucking dire and all but that pressure oftentimes forces us into die or survive and a lot of times just the fucking impulse from biological evolution is

we find ways to fucking survive and and despite the the benny jessica's like attempts to control they and just you know talking back towards like the idea of like the read of like oh the benny jessica or this shadowy cabal you know pulling the strings and you know controlling the the imperium and all that jazz and it's like well no as i said earlier like the the takeaway of alan moore from like researching conspiracy theories is like there's no one at the helm there are people trying to fucking control everything but there's no one at the helm there's no one controlling every aspect of the cosmos every aspect of the world and there's always the ability of individuals either individually or collectively to go no we're outside of your control you just have to do it you know you just have to like sort of like make the effort to be like no fuck you and you may not be

controlling everything just the way that paul can't control everything but you can at the very least say no fuck you you're not going to control this either so you may pay for it with your life but you can have to barely you know flip the middle finger as you go down i found that specific passage at the end where paul is talking to the reverend mother because i feel like i just wanted to be able to read that passage specifically in referencing the fact that in the end the benny jesuit's grand schemes come down to nothing. Yeah. It's in the final confrontation. They're sort of talking to each other. Paul raises his voice. Observe her comrades.

This is a Bene Gesserit reverend mother, patient in a patient cause. She could wait with her sisters, 90 generations for the proper combination of genes and environment to produce the one person their schemes required. Observe her. She knows now that the 90 generations have produced that person here i stand but i will never do her bidding um skipping forward a little bit he says um

um i get i'll give you only one thing, Paul said. You saw part of what the race needs, but how poorly you saw it. You think to control human breeding and intermix a select few according to your master plan. How little you understand of what, and then she's, you know, you mustn't speak of these things, the old woman hissed. Silence, Paul roared. The word seemed to take on substances twisted through the air between them under Paul's control. Skipping forward.

Yeah, I remember your Gamjabar, Paul said. You remember mine. I can kill you with a word. And it's like Paul just calling out, you've waited 90 generations for this moment. And that moment is here now. And you can't control it anymore. It is beyond you.

It is turned to ash in your hands. Yeah. And even though you have partly seen what needs to be done, you didn't see it well enough. And now all of your scheming is worthless. And I think that's really, I think sort of the end goal, my end sort of point here about the Bene Gesserit is despite their power, despite their scheming, despite all their plans in the end,

it actually doesn't mean anything because they finally, they actually kind of, it's sort of the be careful what you wish for, because they got the person they wanted, but it wasn't the person they thought they were going to get. And it wasn't the result they thought they were going to get either. Obviously, in the later books that go on scheming and doing other Bene Gesserit nonsense. But like in this moment, you realize that their master plan, like no matter your scheming ends up in nothing. or plan like no matter your scheming yeah ends up in nothing yeah again it's that sort of

like Greek tragedy thing of like you know it's just you you keep trying to fight against a theme of fate etc and the cosmos does not have to bend to your will that way and will buck against it

if you keep trying to impose your will hubristically they are cool though oh yeah fucking cool as shit i mean given that like you're fucking cool one of the reasons why like um i decided to like uh start in on voice training and all voice feminization and all was just so that i could get you know good enough to like you know potentially pass as you know assist in my voice and all but then occasionally be able to drop into you know just old masculine and just doing a you know a version of the benedict just do the voice at people yeah especially like you know people like fucking like cat called me on the street and be

like shut up what who wasn't i heard that on a podcast recently someone did that oh it was on uh the kill james bond podcast um one of the hosts is uh abby thorn from philosophy too okay yeah and at one point they were doing something and she was talking and then just suddenly dropped back into like you know and she put the, the voice, the voice she has to, she used to have to put on to be like who she used to be. And it was like, Oh my God. Like it was like the most audibly shocking thing is she's just talking and suddenly her voice just dropped. It was like, ah, fuck. Yeah. She used the voice on me. God damn it. Yeah. Yeah. I, I am comparatively a Bene Gesserit initiate compared to like her fucking Reverend Motherness in that regard.

So in terms of every episode, I feel like we had some sort of mildly spicy takeaway. And mine is that like if you want actual Bene Gesserit in the real world, you just have to be like a trans woman. Well, I mean, we do alter our bodily chemistry so altering your body chemistry doing voice training to be able to speak in a specific way uh a lot of us uh are very militaristic and disciplined in our mindsets and all like secretly a cabal that controls the world you know that's true that's true so what we're saying here actually is that basically the entire of the the entirety of of britain is house harkonnen where they just don't trust you at all they just inherently don't believe the the witches of the of the many jesuit god and

you know what i'm gonna go on record and saying that the uk is just house yeah it's just it's just gaiety prime oh fuck yeah yeah again i apologize to our two our two listeners in the uk and that that does scam i'm sorry to our two uk listeners but you do live on gaiety prime i'm sorry um good luck with that i'm sure you guys will have you know gladiator games soon enough on the track that you're going i mean the baron harkonnen prince andrew and hey don't let's not forget that gaty prime is is you is just a fucked up industrial wasteland. And where did the Industrial Revolution start? Where are your beloved Luddites from, Darius? Yes.

Yeah, because they were fighting what was coming. Also, just like the Baron Harkonnen, the queen, dead. Yeah, she's entered her chrysalis. She's entering a new phase. No, I did point out that phase is called that. I pointed out the other day she's actually ascending to lichdom. They just they're they're they're transporting her heart into a phylactery right now, which is the whole phase. It's a it's a big ceremony with her and Henry Kissinger where they're just achieving literally they're using each other to I mean Henry Kissinger

has collected enough souls over the course of his life to power his phylactery for a long time and depending on how you feel I have a feeling that if Frank Herbert had lived long enough to finish the final book

in the Dune series and all, Henry Kissinger probably would have shown up as Henry Kissinger, just because that man is going to live for millennia. And I mean, if you count sort of the house Windsor as in total, there's a lot

of souls there. Yes. Yeah, they are just like through the ages. Probably weird spider. You know, funny thing that I do want to point out is what is like the name of the resource

that they're all going after being spice. And if you think about what the British and many others were going after as like a singular resource, it was the non-drug version of Spice. All that jazz, yeah.

That's right. I'm sticking to it. Trans women are the Bene Gesserit and the UK is Gaiety Prime. I'm sticking to it. We don't like these people. We don't trust them. They're evil and they're secretly controlling the world to their own ends.

We're not doing that. No, no, no. No, no, no. No, no, no. It was like what I said the other day where somebody was like, oh, these people are controlling in charge of the Democrat Party. And I was like, what they fail to consider is that, in fact, I am in control. I personally am in charge

if you want conspiracy theories it's me i did it i i am the illuminati i'm the queez out's hotter act all right it doesn't i'm the i'm the guy the guy who was yelling at you at work the other day not only is he the protagonist of his own story, he is in fact the Kwisatz Haderach. Everyone is the Kwisatz Haderach of their own story. Oh, God. Then again, you know, in the Dune universe, if I do exist, I'm clearly one of the people legitimately at the beginning during the

butlerian jihad oh yeah like if i do exist in the dune universe i don't exist in the time at the time of the first novel oh no i existed like 10 000 years before this and probably more in the range of like probably 20 000 years yeah because earth well yeah it didn't even happen on Earth. Yeah. I'm saying my spirit existed in that jihad. Oh. That's where I existed. I'm no Harkonnen or Atreides. I'm just some guy on a random planet trying to break his computer with a baseball bat. Which, after the problems we've had recording this episode, I feel like I'm justified

in doing that. Um, so what have our, what are our takeaways here for the Bene Gesserit? I want to like, we've already done it a lot, but I sort of want to summarize things in sort of the number one and like the critiques of them and number two like like what can we take away from how herbert uh sort of like portrays them in the critiques of them i think we're just saying this idea that they're actually secretly in control of everything is just shown to be blatantly false in many like yeah that's that's critique from someone who read the first couple chapters yeah right so that's, I think, is just false. They are a powerful

organization, but not any more powerful or less powerful than the Spacing Guild. It's in a different way. Or the House of the Emperor themselves. Like the Chome. Like the Land Rod and Chome, etc.

They're expressions of power in different ways. And like I said earlier, to the contrary, I think to the contrary of it being sort of anti-woman, I think the Bene Gesserit in a way represents women finding a way where they can exert

some control over their lives in a deeply patriarchal society. In a deeply, I mean, deeply society where the Bene Gesserit are literally bought as concubines like a guy will just a duke will just send a buyer to the Bene Gesserit and be like I need a concubine

it's like a space where they can have almost more control over their life yeah so like in that way I think the Bene Gesserit actually are I don't want to call it a positive force, but like an understandable one for women attempting to exert control in a world where they have none. And so I think that's actually a good thing. Um, this is sort of the two main things I wanted to point out there. Do either of the two of you have sort of final like thoughts or takeaways from what the Bene Gesserit do or point out there, do either of the two of you have sort of final like thoughts or takeaways

from what the Bene Gesserit do or what they represent in the Dune universe? I would say that, yeah, like Herbert, Herbert with a lot of this stuff, as we've kind of covered, you know, is showing both like the, the potential heights of what human beings are capable of as human beings. And that, that comes through with a lot of the Ben and Jesseret stuff where people might,

you know, you know, not see the, the actual criticisms of them that are in the text and all either explicitly or implicitly and all, and just, you know, sort of like have that action movie surface read of like,

Oh, they're really fucking cool. Which was like me as a kid. And I was like of like oh they're really fucking cool which was like me as a kid and i was like yeah they're really fucking cool but also yeah and like they they may have uh good intentions technically on the macro scale but that leads to a lot of fucked up stuff on the mezzo and micro scales yeah i mean most people like you know we have good intentions in the long run yes um and so it's not like you know that they're like oh yeah sorry to like destroy stuff or anything or like you know like enslave humanity or anything like that but it's like yeah no they're doing a very ethically questionable breeding program um and they're also sort of like while they they may be exercising and grabbing as much agency as they can as women in this deeply patriarchal neo-feudal uh society and all they're i guess as an organization they're they're sort of like

you know grabbing as much agency as they can to to operate within the system itself um they're girl bossing it um they they do also gaslight a lot so just stripping their individual members and they have gatekeeped gatekept yeah so they are gaslighting gatekeep girl boss so they are all of them yes they are the model um but but you right, they do, they as a group have agency, but you're saying the individual members have all this. Yeah, because again, it's like, there is, as much as I think some anarchists might disagree, and I think wrongly, there is a commentary throughout all of the Dune series on hierarchy there's a commentary on centralization both of power and of resources and all of this stuff

that you know just runs through the entire thing and one of them is just like the fucked up hierarchy of the Bene Gesserit and all where it's like yeah no they have all of these technically powersit and all. Where it's like, yeah, no, they have all these technically powers and all, whether or not it's like just, you know, the development of human abilities, both mental and physical, to nigh superhuman levels,

but they're constrained in so many goddamn ways because of their hierarchical structure and all um because they have to control towards this one end and all and that you know i think if you don't have an anarchist read you can't see the the commentary that is there of these structures are fucked up and all. Of like, yeah, they may be trying to build a more sustainable and stable future for humanity, but they are doing it in ways that are incredibly fucked up and all. And I think that is inherent

in the way that they are characterized and all is that the eugenics program obviously the manipulation of societies on a sociocultural level with the missionary protectiva obviously is fucked up uh the the manipulation of societies in the sort of soft power cloak and dagger stuff fucked up and all maybe it's like you know not the worst thing technically and all like given the setting and the parameters of everything but it's still fucked up um and yeah yeah i mean in in the end all of their like hierarchical power turns to ash because they try to control too much yeah and that and that thing that they created essentially told them you don't have any control.

It's gone. Yeah. You never had any control. Well, they actually, they, they succeeded in creating in a way and creating this person. And that person then had the power and the prescience to realize that all of

it was pointless. You know what I mean? Like they, they tried so hard to create this like this this this you know superhuman that when that superhuman got created he looked at what they did and went that was pretty fucked up that you did that like you should have done that i think as far as my takeaway on the on the benedict i i want to go back to the that one all-encompassing theme of like the people put under great pressure and i see that in the benedict obviously like that that that

that shows itself in the benedict but it's almost like the pressure that women are put under in the society because they're incapable of expressing any power, because they are effectively showpieces, concubines, and second-class citizens for the most part, that's like the intense pressure that is being put upon them. That they then essentially take on themselves in order to become more than those that they're supposedly under, in quotation marks. In general, my read of it is, well, not necessarily saying that the Bene Gesserit are good. It's saying that, you know, this immense amount of pressure that is put upon them, that is put upon a lot of women in this society, kind of gave them an opportunity to achieve these heights in a way of, of their own choosing, essentially. Um, so there is that element of empowerment, even if the structure of the Bene Gesserit itself kind of disempowers its own individual members. It is, it is kind of

questionable to see it as some sort of like Illuminati, um, even if the word Jesuit is in there and, or like, and, and a lot of there and a lot of weird conspiracy theories are out there about the Jesuits, especially from American evangelicals. Catholic and all that stuff. Yeah, but I mean, we didn't point that out in the episode, but it's true.

The Bene Gesserit, even if, I think it's Herbert's son said it, but we can't really confirm it. Yeah, there's like an actual... There are parallels you can draw I think it's Herbert's son said it, but it's not, there's like an actual, there are, there are, there's parallels you can draw between the Jesuit and the Jesuits because the Jesuits were famous for,

especially in the Americas literally putting themselves out into like native societies. And of course, you know, obviously trying to change, uh, convert them all to Christianity. Uh, it's what they obviously trying to change uh convert them all to christianity uh that's what they were trying to do but like jesuits had a reputation for going out into societies that were not their own and preaching and you can i think you know draw a little bit of parallels there between the jesuits and i think it's mostly a linguistic thing like he just included that almost kind of warped jesuit they're just just less as a a like these guys are a direct analog to the jesuits and more wanted a connection

to some sort of spiritual group from the past whatever that one might have been and he but i mean the but i mean like the preaching to societies. I mean, there is definitely that parallel. One thing I did see with the Dune fandom wiki is that apparently Bene Gesserit is like a Latin phrase, meaning well-behaved and all. That's also nice. Like, in the context, the quote, as in the context of a government appointment, Quam deo se Bene Gesserit? During good behavior and all. So that might be a play there like we're well behaved and disciplined why does everything come back to the catholic

like 14 1500 years of western history has been strongly shaped by imperial rome so has been strongly shaped by imperial rome so yeah i'm not gonna pull a neva cantor and start uh ranting about sol invictus but you fucking hate rome all my homies hate rome all all of our i think all major problems in western society can either be traced back to diacletian and constantine so they're basically the reason everything's fucked up now. All right. Any final thoughts on sort of the Bene Gesserit? Otherwise, we could talk, obviously,

about different aspects of Dune for forever, which is what we will do eventually. We'll have more episodes about different pieces. This will probably be a two-parter about the Bene Gesserit. We might have another two-parter after that about a different aspect of Dune. Obviously, there's all sorts of things to talk about. We can go more in-depth on the hero narrative and

Herbert's inversion of the hero narrative. There's a big conversation to be had about ecology, obviously. Ecology and worms. Praise the maker and his waters uh and there's you know numerous like just the actual politics of the universe and how their government is structured that sort of thing there's all sorts of other conversations uh to be had uh a conversation eventually at some point about the actual like religious beliefs of like the fremen and within the universe but that you

know again i don't remember if that was on the recording at the beginning or not but that'll i want to do that with someone yeah an expert on specific religions than i am uh but those are all conversations look to have in the future they're all not going to come in a row because that would be too many dune episodes in a row for this podcast uh but we will it's sort of like lord of the rings and leguin we'll get back into it on occasion because you know those are like these are like the three um honestly when you're talking about deeply political and or influential i mean obviously obviously dune and lord of the rings are the big ones um one for sci-fi and one for um though to be fair what i find funny about this is i think

would still classify dune as fantasy um based on her own definition um yes but you know yes she was incredibly um so and and it's really important to note the influence of dune because like if you you know people are like oh man this movie reminds me like when they're watching the movie like oh this reminds me of star wars i'm like well yes yes um it's like have you seen the star wars do you know what they are um it's like do you know what these are kind of a reference to in essence um the jedi are sort of like a they're they're like a weird mostly i mean they do have more of like a almost while they're not explicitly patriarchal there's definitely more of that in

there in the jedi than there is in the bene gesserit um but um you know it's that east it's a mixture of with the force they took more of those eastern philosophy like mostly um you know like zen buddhist and uh taoist philosophy and brought that sort of thing in and then took ideas from the bene gesserit and stuck it there and like so like the jedi do have at least some sort of touchstone thing and it's and it's very obvious that george lucas has read dune i mean otherwise you wouldn't have had tatooine otherwise you wouldn't have had like um you know i've i've managed to go an entire episode about dune and i didn't haven't made haven't a single time up until right now, and I'm going to say it now, you know, reminded everyone that I hate sand. It's coarse and it gets everywhere.

Oh, god damn it, Darius. Anakin would be so much cooler if he was a Fremen. Oh, my God. Anyway, that'll be a bonus. There's even a drug in the Star Wars universe called Spice, and I'm pissed about that.

Well, I mean, there are Fremen on Tatooine. They're called the Sand People. True. I'm going to say, like, you know, technically the Fremen don't like sand either, otherwise they wouldn't be wearing those steel suits the way they do.

But to be fair... Yeah, but, like, the Sand People are adapted to their planet. They walk in a specific way, so it's not to hide their passing across the sand people are adapted to their planet. They walk in a specific way to hide their passing across the sand. And technically, the sand people aren't originally from Tatooine. That's true. They got there later. Though Tatooine has a far less ecological origin.

But we're – yeah, that's – That's a conversation for Knights of the Old Republic eventually one day. The new one just got not the new one, but it did just get re-released for this later. But no, thank you everyone for listening to these couple episodes about

mostly about the Bene Gesserit. We can't always be on the show and have that capacity. The ideas within any one of the ideas within Dune are going to naturally float into the other ideas within any one of the ideas within dune are going to naturally float into the other ideas within dune to a to a point where you can't really separate them too much um you can obviously delineate what the general topic is going to be but it'll end up

floating into other spheres yeah that's true well thank you all for listening super appreciate it uh again shout out to our like six international listeners except for the ones in the uk who i insulted during this episode oh don't worry at least the one that i know would would be okay with that oh well good then fuck you uh but no thanks thanks for coming we're glad you're here uh thank you again to our guest nicole for hanging out with us again maybe someday we'll no offense to you but maybe someday we'll have a guest that isn't you. It's all right. I mean, we try. I mean, we do.

Actually, to be fair, our last episode had two guests. Our episode about His Dark Materials had two guests on it, and we lost the audio. Oh. Yeah, so. Is that just like your girlfriend in Canada, Darius? Yeah, they definitely are real. I met her at camp, they definitely are real.

They're definitely real. One of them, I know, it was good. We'll revisit that at some point and try to bring them back so we can fix it. But thank you all for listening. If you want to do the podcast stuff, go to your podcast apps and tell

them that we're super cool. You give us all the scars or whatever. Lie and tell them that we're super cool. Yeah, you go to iTunes and you tell them that we fucking kick ass or whatever. If you want to follow us, you can follow the show on Twitter at SwordsNSockPod. We don't tweet much from the show. It's mostly just to say when new episodes are,

but you can follow us there. You can DM the show with any questions. You can also email the show at swords and socialism pod at proton mail.com. You can follow me on Twitter at himbo underscore anarchist. Uh, you can follow Ketho on Twitter. Stupid Puma 69.

And if you said so what? Now, Nicole, you can plug yourself if you want to, if you want people to follow you on Twitter. I'm on Twitter at GiggleTits and all. G-I-6-6-L-E underscore T-I-T-S. And I get so many, so many horny dudes following me just because I have tits in my name. It's like, I, you are not going to see anything.

I'm sorry, homie. But no, I know. I know it's false advertising, but again, yeah. Again, you're using your Bene Gesserit tricks on these poor men to manipulate their behavior by using specific language. Don't speak of such things. Thank you all very much for listening. You're all fantastic.

This should be a couple of episodes you listen to and we'll be back probably with another Dune episode after this because I'm not done yet. Goodbye. Bye.