Jᴀᴄᴜʀᴜᴛᴜ - Tʜᴇ Cᴀsᴛ Oᴜᴛ

What kept the mentats from taking over?
Throughout the Dune Chronicles, mentats display every emotion but ambition.
What kept them from becoming arrogant smart asses and building empires of their own?
Is this the reason Leto II suppressed them? To keep from having to kill them?

I quote Marvin, your plastic pal who's fun to be with, who said,
"Here I am, brain the size of a planet & you ask if I can go down to the airlock..."

If you think about it Mentats already had the power behind the throne in a lot of ways, but still I think properly trained mentatism is only making yourself into a human calculator. Political prodigy cannot be taught in that way, oh wait, there already was a school devoted to the political, and the Bene Gesserit did train mentats.

I think it was clear that Leto suppressed the mentat schools for the same reason he suppressed everything else, to build up an explosion of creative and explorative energies once he was gone.

It would be interesting to know what became mentats in The Scattering. I imagine Face-Dancers with Mentats skills. That would probably be strong enough to terrify the Honored Matres.

DragEgusku wrote:It would be interesting to know what became mentats in The Scattering. I imagine Face-Dancers with Mentats skills. That would probably be strong enough to terrify the Honored Matres.

If they had absorbed the personas of Reverend Mothers in the quantities suggested, some of them were bound to be mentats.

Didn't Marty and Daniel say mentats were "a dime a dozen"?

Freakzilla wrote:Didn't Marty and Daniel say mentats were "a dime a dozen"?

I believe that was the phrase.

I still think it's odd that mentats show little to no political ambition.

D Pope wrote:I still think it's odd that mentats show little to no political ambition.

Logic is obviously a hinderance to politicians.

In PIter's case, which is specific to twisted mentats, the Baron kept a close eye on him, and thought he could control him through his flaws and addictions.
Funny enough, he was spared his mentat's plotting (the poison needle in the boy's thigh) by Thufir Hawat, the embodiement of the perfect mentat who would never have betrayed his Duke.

Did the Emperor have a mentat ? I don't remember one being mentionned. He did have the counsel of the Bene Gesserit but I have a feeling there is something somewhere about some kind of distrust, rightly because of their surhuman thinking (that could definitely outsmart its owners)

Could it be that the natural paranoia of the high born would apply to not having too smart an adviser, unless you thought you could either control or trust ?

Freakzilla wrote:

D Pope wrote:I still think it's odd that mentats show little to no political ambition.

Logic is obviously a hinderance to politicians.

I don't think you're off the mark here (is that a double negative Neb?)

It could be that some attempted to offer services and couldn't (or didn't want to) play the game those guys are forced to play.

There was Paul though, is that close enough? He made a pretty damn good one.

Nekhrun wrote:

Freakzilla wrote:

D Pope wrote:I still think it's odd that mentats show little to no political ambition.

Logic is obviously a hinderance to politicians.

I don't think you're off the mark here (is that a double negative Neb?)

It could be that some attempted to offer services and couldn't (or didn't want to) play the game those guys are forced to play.

There was Paul though, is that close enough? He made a pretty damn good one.

I think Paul was a special case, IMO being a mentat was part of being the KH.

A twisted mentat, maybe... otherwise I think they would have a problem lying, which seems to be a requirement for politics... or 'diplomacy' as Stilgar put it.

My two cents:

I don't think a mentat ruler would have that much of an edge compared to a non-mentat ruler. Because the latter would, on any level of serious politics, have a hired mentat himself. There is something won by 'doing it yourself', but it is not a giant leap in the big race. Furthermore, politics is (when you have secured yourself from the dumbest of decisions and generally have good advisors all round) as much about showmanship, charisma. Leto had this is spades. And training Paul as a mentat made sense because he did have (the beginnings of) this quality too (though I suspect Jessica's knowledge that quite the storm was brewing and that Paul might soon need to be more selfreliant than most rulers played a huge part in the decision too).

Why the mentat schools did not create a huge conspiracy and take over together? Why don't the universities (of this small watery world)? Why not the economic advisors? Because they are already quite well of, close enough to power that those who want it (the corruptible) can make a grab for it and... I just don't see how such a conspiracy would get off the ground, when the schools foster loyalty, the mentats live with noble families, etc. etc.

They were far too busy trying to impress the girls by showing off their "men tats".

HBJ

Hunchback Jack wrote:They were far too busy trying to impress the girls by showing off their "men tats".

HBJ

how I hate you now (as I wish I had made that one ^^)

I was referred to mentats in The Scattering. These mentats would be relieved of day constraints of the old Empire. Then, who knows what they could achieve?
I suspect that the force that put them to flight Honored Matres was composed of this kind of mentats and advanced Face-Dancers.

DragEgusku wrote:I was referred to mentats in The Scattering. These mentats would be relieved of day constraints of the old Empire. Then, who knows what they could achieve?
I suspect that the force that put them to flight Honored Matres was composed of this kind of mentats and advanced Face-Dancers.

Well, the advanced facedancers we see certainly seem to have gathered in quite a few personalities. Stands to reason they would have mentat abilities, if they found them useful. I wouldn't call that a mentat/AFDs alliance, though...

Yeah, if AFDs needs someone's abilities, they just took them.

Nice pussy.

I goggled face dancer cat, stumbled upon that one and it was a nice pussy indeed.

I believe that part of a mentat's process is to distance his own feelings from his computations and to focus on the facts alone. This type of approach is really the opposite of what's you'd expect from someone seeking power, which is to be driven by desire and lust for power above an interest in facts. I think that mentats function in this detached way may have been by design, so that they could be controlled and used as computing devices; Mohiam indicates in Dune chapter 1 that she sees them as something like this. Consider the differences in behavior between Thufir (loyal unto death with no thought of himself) and Piter (greedy and scheming).

Most things in the Empire were the way they were in order to maximize control; the suk school was designed to control doctors and make them safe, the Guild controlled travel and banking and made them safe (or stable), the BG no doubt had to establish PR that it was safe to take BG as a mate, and similarly I expect the mentat process was no doubt shown to be basically safe since the mentat wouldn't be self-involved enough to try to usurp his sovereign's regime. After all, there is no 'fact' which suggests one should try to take power over others and control them - the human instinct behind that is probably emotional, Paul suggests it's fear.