Notes on Frank Herbert's Dune

Interesting ideas -  Missionaria Protectiva, Race consciousness, The struggle for self-authorship, Role others play in the fulfillment of prophecy.  

First 250:

• Missionaria Protectiva and Bene Gesserit would have planted the Muadib prophecy in Arrakis for political leverage counting on Jessica to birth a daughter. So that she could be wed to a Harkonnen and through that marriage a son could be had. The son then could have fulfilled the prophecy if Freman loyalty was needed for their cause. [Dr. Kyne's thoughts]  

• Reverend Mother Giaus Helen was aware Paul showed promise of fulfilling their Kwisatz Haderach prophecy. 

• The dialog, motivations, actions, and interplay between the characters are realistic. (Maybe this is a given for books of this caliber).

• The Duke unintentionally paid the way for Freman loyalty to Paul [as evident in Dr Kynes after thoughts on the Dukes visit to the Crawler Harvester]. Jessica paid way for the same with her Bene Gesserit cunning.  

Second 250:

• Paul is cold towards dukes passing.

• In the still-tent, Paul identifies the part of his psyche that is prescient and mentat-like as a separate entity he calls 'the sleeper'.  Through Paul's impulsive attempt to foil the guild banker's intention towards his house [following Jessica's insight], it can be assumed 'the sleeper' was driving him before his realization of its existence in the still-tent. 

• The Barron's desire to employ Hawat who had served the Atreides for 3 generations as his new mentat and to think he won't figure out yueh was the traitor is unrealistic. 

• Paul's prescience shows him probable futures that may come to past [Idaho was seen to stand with them in the desert in the vision he had in Caladan but he had died in the actual future that came to past].

• Dr. Kynes and his father had worked on terraforming the planet in a way that would have seemed natural once the tipping point was reached. 

• Based on Jessica's confrontation with Stilga in the open desert, it can be assumed that in order to use the Bene Gesserit voice she must first read the target and then mimic the target's voice for the command to take hold. But the effectiveness may also depend on the susceptibility of the target.

• Paul's decision to name himself Paul Muad'Dib instead of Muad'Db shows his need for authorship of his own fate. 

Third 250:

• Race consciousness and the struggle for autonomy; Paul dreads the future he sees birthing through him but grows more and more powerless to change it as the story moves along. Because of his struggle he becomes resentful, even toward his mother. 

• The duke's talismans, the bull's head, and the portrait of his father may have been an analogy of how he saw his father. As someone who faced the bull's horn instead of avoiding it. This may have been a driving force for him to not let his house become a renegade house and instead move to Arrakis to face danger.

• Bene Gesserit breeding; Bene Gesserit puts stock in both genes and the upbringing when choosing males to take children from. 

• A reverent mother has access to memories of other reverent Mother's in her lineage and commune with them. 

• The Freman have some prescience abilities. 

• Paul succumbs to his fate.

• It's unrealistic how fast Paul was able to figure out that Sardaukar come from Salusa Secundus when Hawat with all the mentat access he has had figured that out only 2 years after the Dukes death.  

Fourth 250:

• Alia can project her thoughts into Bene Gesserit and take some sort of control over their line of thought. This comes as a surprise to the reverent mother Giaus.

• Alia is also able to leave thoughts in others' minds to be unlocked when they next think of her [Paul's thoughts after Alia is captured by the Emperor]. 

• The spacing guild is in reality more powerful than the emperor or the great houses, but this is a fact that the Emperor seemed to have not known (contrary to how the relationship is depicted in the 1984 adaptation of the movie).

• In the appendix, Frank Herbert ties the loose end of why the Bene Gesserit order didn't act on Paul and Jessica before they moved to Arrakis or before the fall of the Emperor by saying an order even higher than the Bene Gesserit that few were in on had a hand in allowing Pauls fate. 

A Meta Commentary on Dougle Adam's Hitchhikker's Guide to the Galaxy

I read in an interview of someone had done with an author I quite like that someone had told him once that his books are popular among young adults who are not much into reading. When I first picked up the hitchhiker's guide around 10 years ago I found myself having a similar experience, I wasn’t that much into reading but I really liked the read. It was non-sensicle in a funny way most of the time, and sometimes I didn’t even know why I was laughing. But that was almost a decade ago and I have done a lot of growing in that time. So when I found myself taking a business trip and I knew I needed to pack some reading material to keep myself company I thought I’d take my guide (compilation) with me to give it a second read and this time really ponder on the meta and try and understand the author (Dougle Adams) and his motives better.

Some of what I found during the second read is speculatory and some of what is influenced by what I had already read about Dougle Adams during the first read. I still haven’t made up my mind on a few questions like what does the ‘Heart of Gold’ represent or what was Zaphod’s motivation for his actions in the book. But from what I remember from the first read, these were answered in the proceeding books (which I’m planning to get to later on).  

Notes (taken down sequentially as I read the book)

• Parallels can be drawn between Ford Prefect and vampires found in fantasy novels. In that, both Ford and vampires are similar in character and some of their abilities (like suggestive mind control).  

• The fact that Arthur's house is to be demolished for a bypass on the same day the earth is to be demolished for a similar purpose may be Douglas’s way of pointing at the grand humor of metaphor between the insignificant (small) which we deem important and the significant (big) which we don't always see which is what's really important. 

• Douglas would have identified himself most with Zaphod Beeblebrox. He might have entertained a voice in his head when he lived that inspired him to make Zaphod have two heads. He might have tried to acquire what the 'heart of gold' represented to him. 

• Through the paragraph where Arthur is reflecting on the demolition of the earth (while on the Vogon ship, Douglas seems to be discussing his existential worldview. He also seemed to have been a determinist. 

• The metaphor between sex and death: the astronomically low odds of being picked up while holding your breath and waiting to die in space is the same as the telephone number of Arthur's 'one that got away'. Since Arthur does get together with her at the end (as I remember from the first read of the series) the author may be implying the odds were the same because the two of them were fated together.

• Discussing the mechanics of the improbability drive, Douglas leans on the fact that most things we rule out as impossible are in fact improbable. The bit about creating finite improbability using a 'sub meson brain' and the coffee cup would have referred to Douglas's belief that the needle in the meters Scientologist use gets moved as they believe it does, defying physics and reason. 

• Marvin the robot may represent a time in Douglas' life when he was depressed because of his existential worldview. But he seemed to have grown past that stage to be able to identify himself with Zaphod. Taking this analogy further it may also well be that the four main male characters represent different stages of his life and how he saw the world during those periods.   

• Magrathea probably represents the god makers of ancient civilizations like that of Greece and Mesapothenia. 

• 'The whale and the bowl of petunias' segment is a plot device that can be thought of separate from the rest of the meta-story. He hints at this when talking in advance of the missile attack. The whale in the story device may have been used to explore Douglas's view on how short life is and the irony of being self-aware so close to our end. The bowl of petunias would have been used as a juxtaposition in that compared to a whale the bowl of petunias would look rigid and inanimate but met the same end. To Douglas, the bowl of petunias may have represented the mysteries of faiths and the practitioners that believe in reincarnation.

• Based on the content of the chapter where Slartibartfast is introduced and the chapter before that, Slartibartfast is probably someone Douglas knew in person who had lost his real name. A kind of godly stranger you would expect to find in a cosmopolitan city like New York as depicted in fiction like the 'one above all' in the Marvel canon.

• The program the mice race ran on the organic computer (earth) made me think of Hegel's model of thesis and antithesis perpetually building up to a greater synthesis to form the absolute. 

• Vroomfondels and Majikthise's resistance to the creation of a machine that can answer the ultimate question, in general, can be a metaphor for the resistance science and reason face when inquiring about matters that traditionally fall under the realms of philosophy or theology. And in specific, it might represent the resistance Douglas Adams faced in his own existential inquiries as he tried to acquire 'the heart of gold'. 

• Douglas would have used the segment about Deep Thoughts' superiority over previous computers as an analogy over how great thinkers of the past generations needed to outdo each other in their search for meaning (thesis and antithesis). If Douglas did identify best with Zaphod he has used this character to brush his own ego in humorous ways. So he may have been gloating about himself through Deep Thoughts superiority at the beginning of the chapter. Later in the chapter, Deep Thoughts' inferiority to the Organic Computer may have been influenced by biblical wisdom prophets like Isaiah and John the Baptist's foretelling of the coming of Jesus Christ when they were asked the question.

• The answer 42 seemed to have no meaning at the surface level. In the chapters leading up to the answer, Douglas probably used the two philosophers Vroomfondel and Majikthise to discuss his own reservations about such an answer. He might have thought of the ethical consequences of such an answer (responsibility of knowledge) or he may have decided to go with an answer like 42 out of his need for self-preservation (if he did identify himself as Deep Thought). But I think it was in his nature to need to leave some trace of what he truly thought. Being a determinist and an existentialist who also entertained the surreal. And thinking of the astronomical odds that needed to be beat for Arthur and Trillion to happen. When he wrote 'so once you do know what the question actually is, you'll know what the answer means' he might have held the belief that we're born with some innate capacity to predict our end (answer) and that we are able to make these predictions by knowing ourselves (question). For Douglas Adams, this question may have been love (or sex, depending on how you see it). 

• The mice believe they manipulated Trillion off of earth as they needed a holiday, but as Douglas uses the deterministic thread of her needing to meet Arthur at the center of the story. He is implying the mice themselves were used and were not the causative agents in the matter. 

• Douglas seemed to have used the mice in chapters 31 and 32 to discuss his own thought process of coming up with a meaning to the grand question. 'How about What's yellow and dangerous' may have represented a meaning that can be understood through reason or philosophy. 'What do you get if you multiply six by seven' may have represented a mathematically or scientifically decipherable meaning and 'how many roads must a man walk down' may have represented a meaning that can be understood through the humanities (art).

• 'R the velocity measure' in chapter 34 and Slartibartfast's lifestyle trouble which he mentions to Arthur may have been a hint at Douglas's own struggles to avoid some perceived undesirable end he wanted to avoid which may have looked as procrastination to the outside (which he was renowned for). The end he feared may have been the loss of his agency to a deterministic world (as this is likely how Douglas perceived it). This view is expressed in sentences like 'it's all planned out' and 'don't panic'.    

What's meant by 'Dog' when it's used symbolically?

Some months ago I posted my opinion on how symbols like ‘dog’ and ‘horse’ and a few others are misunderstood and misused in society. Later I realized that some of my friends had no idea about what I was talking about and that it confused some of them and possibly frighted a few others. Because I shared my opinion through Facebook I didn’t really want to write anything too long, but since this is my blog I think it's time I set the record straight.

‘Dog’ as a symbol has been used at least since the times of the greek to refer to a person who we consider a friend and sympathize with who has fallen below the ethical standards of society. A few examples of this definition can be found in stories and interpretations in greek tragics such as Medea and Hecuba. In the case of Hecuba, she is literally beastified with a dog-like face at the end of the play. 

In eastern wisdom cultures such as that of ancient Sri Lanka, a similar meaning of degradation of morality in a person is associated with the symbol of the dog. There are examples of ancient kings calling emissaries of the Dutch dogs based on the ethical standards and cultural values of the country. There are also proverbs such as ‘balo biruwata kadhu kada paath wenna’ which translates to ‘mountains don’t crumble just because dogs bark at them’ this proverb analogically refers to how just because an unethical person makes accusations at an ethical person, doesn’t mean that the ethical person's value grows less.

Needless to mention, culture is something that is in flux and is relative; meaning it changes as times change and it depends on the country or the general area of the world the culture belongs to. Ethics still depend on culture to a great extent in today’s world. So something that is unethical in one part of the world may be ethical in another. 

Getting back to the topic of discussion, this subjective symbolistic definition of ‘Dog’ which used to be known in the high culture (especially by academics) crossed into popular culture during the past century through Hollywood movies and tv shows. It is used in many ways, sometimes to depict the foreigner from a faraway land who is a friend, but has much to learn in the ways of the host's culture such as Worf from Star Trek. Or sometimes it’s used in the paternity relationship, where a father wants to bring up his son to be a good man usually referring to the son as ‘buddy’. The symbol is used in some other ways as well, but the common denominator is the subjective ethical assessment that depends on the cultural values of the person making the assessment. The general western popular culture definition of this symbol is one of friendship and a gentle form of guidance. 

Sadly this symbol which is one of care sometimes gets used in malicious and culturally insensitive ways. Partly because people don’t understand its origin and partly because people are insensitive to other cultures. As we have been getting to know each other better, becoming more cosmopolitan societies, and understanding each other's cultures better, the misuse of this symbol would become less common. 

This is what I was building up from in what I said in my Facebook post and I hope this blog post helped drive the point (took me a whole 45 minutes I could have spent watching celebrity gossip on youtube wording this).

           

  

    

            

     

      

A happy new year

Maybe for the first time in our recorded history, the whole world came together as a conscious unanimous response to stop this pandemic. Sure, the response wasn’t ideal and we’re not entirely out of the woods, but can I be brave enough to say that the response was a whole lot better than what we have been able to muster in the last 10000 years. I for one am glad I was part of that effort in my own insignificant way by wearing a mask, sanitizing my hands, and getting jabbed a few times. I can’t help but feel just a little proud as a human being of the global response.

As we’re beginning to loosen the grip of fear the pandemic had on us and start building back our homes, our enterprises and our countries, I hope we remember that with adversity there is also opportunity. The opportunity to be better than what we were. The opportunity we tasted the last couple of years as we worked together to combat the virus while keeping our civility and sanity.

As Sri Lankans we can choose to grab the opportunity by honoring our duty, with optimism based on reason (which I am hoping to write about later on), with tolerance for one another and cooperation. Or we can choose to let the loss and hurt define us and let it send us back even further down the chain. The river that flows finds a way. Around the obstacles or through them. So let the river flow.