Questions for GEDC: Session II

What do you think makes the Duncan clones turn out differently? Is it that the cloning technology isn't perfect or is it the circumstances the Duncan is under leads to what type of Duncan he'll become? Also, shout out to Uncle Marcus, still looking forward to watching the Mummy for the first time. We were so close!

Can u give a deep drive of who the fish speakers are? Still confused.

After the last chapter for this session's reading intro about savagery for survival, I am reminded of Ursula K Leguin's Carrier Bag Theory of fiction (link below). Long story short, seeing the evolution of humans solely through tools for hunting and violence is narrow minded and focuses on hard tech that could survive ages (e.g. arrow heads) over things like bags which would decompose and not leave traces to be found. All this to say, Leto made a peace that is bad (people try to kill him over and over), but savagery for survival is not necessarily better. Why put survival as the most important thing if it is to be about perpetual savagery? Why live 3500 years (and relive over 10 000 years of past lives) if only to perpetuate survival and savagery? https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/ursula-k-le-guin-the-carrier-bag-theory-of-fiction

PJ B

QUESTION: In the last chapter of this session there was a conversation between Moneo and Duncan about homosexuality in the army. Duncan was even a little defensive when Moneo looked at him kind of hinting about it. What’s your take on Herbert’s comments about homosexuality? For me it seems odd that in the Duniverse homosexuality is not widely accepted and seen just as human behavior. I believe Herbert’s comments are not necessarily homophobic, rather a little dated compared with today’s standards. It seems that he comes from a place where homosexuality was regarded a detrimental trait; which might be the case given that this book was published in the early 80’s.

Observation I’ve been thinking about this the last couple of days, but I find it very fascinating that after 10,000’s of years of farming melange, using melange in seemingly every important field in the imperium, the BG, the guild, past emperors ect., and creating the entire known universe around melange, that humanity would be so addicted and so dependent on it, that one day, the whole universe would start worshiping a Sandworm, the creators of spice and one would be our master and ruler. Could this be a warning to us, the reader, about how absurd our dependence of oil is? Will we one day worship something like oil as a god? And when I read the first header in this session, I thought again how interesting it was that leto’s wish was “to destroy me”. He has become the living embodiment of Spice and power. This is the first time I’m reading these books and I’ve been doing it with you guys since Dune Club started (Fedaykin forever), so I don’t know how the series will ends or what the golden path really is but my theory so far, with what I’ve read and think I understand about Frank Herbert, is that Leto wants humanity to be self sufficient. To stop relaying on things like oil and gold. Can Leto’s hate for being a worm be translated as his hate for spice and humans inner lie that we want someone (or some god) to tell us what to do? Another synchronicity I noticed about Leto and the spice melange was that they are both something that forces people to view the world with greater ways of thinking. They are both great teachers. Leto is the tough, hard lessons we physically must go threw, that humanity has to learn, and melange grants people the hyper awareness to allow greater levels of thought and teachings. Leto the actions (material) and spice the thought (psyche). I love this series cause it can just get dissected more and more with farther analysis.

QUESTION:. Is the God emperor's statement that he named his fish speakers after the first priestesses who spoke to fish based on anything real? I can't find out anything about it but it seems odd that Herbert would have made that up.

QUESTION: Leto seems very tired and disappointed by Duncan's predictable reactions. But do you think that they have been through the first meeting so many times that they have optimized the situation to a "best case scenario", where Duncan does not freak out too much and then goes on to be useful for some period of time, and other reactions lead to his early death?

OBSERVATION: I just re-read the passage on the bookmark and I think enlightenment is hard work. Way harder than we realize. People find Leto’s presence (prescience) challenging to endure. I imagine that’s why so many Duncans have tried to kill him and often end their servitude in bitterness. We humans are so quick to adopt opinions based on few facts and so unwilling to take the time to think deeply and from multiple perspectives about anything. The message of this book is timeless and timely. QUESTION: Did you arrive at any new insights reading GEOD this time? STUPID QUESTION: Do you think that your allergy outbreak is a reaction to dealing with ideas you’ve had reading the book?

Lucas Fehr

Putting it back on the rails with more manageable observations, I have two of them: Observation #1: The reference at the bottom of p.112 to Nayla's crysknife being an -unfixed- blade is a nice callback to the Glossary entry for crysknife in the back of the first book. In the Ace paperback edition of that book (which I believe is the same one used for the first Dune Club) with the black cover, that glossary entry is on p. 837-838. Observation #2: The statement on p. 117 that 'all contemporaries do not inhabit the same time. The past is always changing, but few realize it." feels like it applies to any person much earlier in life that we might have had an emotional hangup with, such as in school. This ties into the concept of time in Watts Wave 3 by Akira the Don, and that we as 2-legged creatures are lucky to remember what we ate for breakfast this morning, let alone things about when we were children. Even if memory were perfect, people 5 feet away from you have very different movies going on in their heads. (update on 9-20: and also as regards the first season Star Trek TNG episode where Wesley Crusher suggests that space and time and thought are not the separate things they appear, and the Traveller admonishes him to keep his mouth shut :) )