Then people quote it bc they can’t look at Lola bunny’s tits
I find that a lot of people never read past the first book, so the central thematic message of the entire series is often lost on them.
There's a lot of places you can read up on this online in detail with very little effort, but a tl;dr that's of value to take into the film etc:
- Dune is about notions of social power and corruption
- It's about how elites create mythologies to perpetuate inequality
- It's about how the people living within these structures are unable to see beyond them
- It's about how conservatism and authoritarianism are the most inefficient and destructive means of social control
- The central message is about SUSTAINABILITY, explored both through physical and social environments, and how the unmanaged corrupting effects of human fear are the primary barrier against sustainable decision making
The whole point of the first book is that Herbert gets you rooting for the Atreides by playing on all of these themes and mythologies.
They're the Good Guys! Snappy uniforms! Characters you get attached to! Super perfect genetic ubermenschen with happy proles serving them!
And that's OK, on that level of knee jerk reaction we have trained into us as kids.
But that's the key to unlocking the much more important messages Herbert explored in his work.
His books are progressive masterpieces that were well ahead of their time, so it's a shame so many people think they're just about boxy zappy swordfights and desert ninjas.
Don't celebrate 'heroes', beware of them.
From the man himself - https://web.archive.org/web/20120107220342/http://www.frankherbert.org/news/genesis.html
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Direct_action#:~:text=counter-economics
Hopefully people interested in non-violent direct action against the state will see that counter-economics is a viable method of fighting against the state. I'm not necessarily interested in them becoming conscious agorists, but I do like the idea of people being agorists on accident :)
So something that strikes me about Jon Pertwee's Doctor is that he's kind of at odds with himself when it comes to authority. On one hand he's staunchly against it, but on occasion he talks down to his companions specifically about respecting the chain of command.
I know Jon Pertwee was quite rebellious, and the showrunner and writers were often very progressive and politically charged, so maybe the bursts of authority-pandering were due to the BBC?
My theory is about the circumstances of the Doctor's regeneration from the Second into the Third. The Time Lords allow him to choose his new face, but after he can't make up his mind, they seem to choose for him. What if they moulded this new Doctor to be less of a renegade and more of an agent? And that his innate self rebels against this, but can't overcome it completely.
Would also explain why he went so far in the opposite direction when regenerating into the Fourth Doctor.
“We have never sought power. We have sought to disperse power, to set men and women free. That really means: to help them to discover that they are free. Everybody’s free. The slave is free. The ultimate weapon isn’t this plague out in Vegas, or any new super H-bomb. The ultimate weapon has always existed. Every man, every woman, and every child owns it. It’s the ability to say No and take the consequences. ‘Fear is failure.’ ‘The fear of death is the beginning of slavery.’ “Thou hast no right but to do thy will.’ The goose can break the bottle at any second. Socrates took the hemlock to prove it. Jesus went to the cross to prove it. It’s in all history, all myth, all poetry. It’s right out in the open all the time.”
― Robert Anton Wilson, Leviathan
One of the most troubling aspects of the world during the last few months, for me, has been watching leftism and anti-authoritarianism slide towards gleeful acceptance of the burgeoning scientocracy. I believe that this has occurred for two reasons.
- People have become afraid, and in doing so sacrificed their own logic and ethics to satiate a misguided desire for safety and survival.
- The desire to disassociate with religion and its persona has led people to overly identify with scientific authorities, or at least what we are told of them and their work through corporate media. Many anarchists, left and right, are ideologically captivated by the realist/physicalist/positivist interpretations of reality that were born of Protestant philosophy, but now appear to belong to a secular worldview, chiefly because they provide an illusion of certainty that is easily weaponized rhetorically and ideologically. This makes them highly susceptible to coercion given a ‘scientific’ reasoning is involved.
Each of these issues has been exacerbated by a habit we have picked up, via the particular psychology evolved from online media interactions, of seeking first and foremost to capitulate towards things which most closely symbolize that which affirms our identity. This has always been somewhat true, but the specific characteristics of online media have inexorably shaped humanity in such a way that our image games of affirmation and negation now take inordinate priority over our principles. That is to say, principles now temporarily serve an image gesture, and are no longer the core basis for ideas, actions or identity.
It is difficult to explain this
... keep reading on reddit ➡
I’m trying to learn more about Marxism-Leninism and their critiques of anarchist ideology. What are some the most glaring issues with anarchism? And how does Marxism-Leninism avoid/solve them?
