Chapter 18


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Freakzilla
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Chapter 18

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The life of a single human, as the life of a family or an entire people,
persists as memory. My people must come to see this as part of their maturing
process. They are people as organism, and in this persistent memory they store
more and more experiences in a subliminal reservoir. Humankind hopes to call
upon this material if it is needed for a changing universe. But much that is
stored can be lost in that chance play of accident which we call "fate." Much
may not be integrated into evolutionary relationships, and thus may not be
evaluated and keyed into activity by those ongoing environmental changes which
inflict themselves upon flesh. The species can forget! This is the special value
of the Kwisatz Haderach which the Bene Gesserits never suspected: the Kwisatz
Haderach cannot forget.

-The Book of Leto, After Harq al-Ada

While crossing the sand from The Attendant back to Sietch Tabr, Stilgar couldn't help but think of Leto's comment on how beautifull the young women are this year. They often don't wear stilsuits anymore and villages are being made of mud bricks. He feels like part of a dying breed, but he feels this is a sign that the Fremen are becoming more like people on other planets in the Imperium. People had always dreamed of starting a new life on another planet but to the Fremen, this had never even been a possibility. The old ways forced them to look inward, not outward. Leto had spoken of limiting migration but to the Fremen this had always been but this new outward vision was causing his old beliefs to crumble. He realizes this could be a danger to Alia's plans as well. Durring the Jihad he had learned that Arrakis was a model for how Shaddam IV wished to mold the rest of the Imperium; supress the people to hopelessness. Stilgar fears the comming changes, sameness and stability are the goals of government. As they reach the entrance to Sietch Tabr, Leto stops Stilgar and says tradition isn't the absolute guide that he thought it was.
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Re: Chapter 18

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Revised, cleaned.
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Re: Chapter 18

Post by leagued »

This is a great, short chapter. Good character showcase for Stilgar and his reactions to Leto. It also reflects quite well just how FH could cause you spend hours parsing the meaning of every statement he makes.
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Re: Chapter 18

Post by georgiedenbro »

Children of Dune wrote:The life of a single human, as the life of a family or an entire people,
persists as memory. My people must come to see this as part of their maturing
process. They are people as organism, and in this persistent memory they store
more and more experiences in a subliminal reservoir. Humankind hopes to call
upon this material if it is needed for a changing universe. But much that is
stored can be lost in that chance play of accident which we call "fate." Much
may not be integrated into evolutionary relationships, and thus may not be
evaluated and keyed into activity by those ongoing environmental changes which
inflict themselves upon flesh. The species can forget! This is the special value
of the Kwisatz Haderach which the Bene Gesserits never suspected: the Kwisatz
Haderach cannot forget.

-The Book of Leto, After Harq al-Ada
I assume this epigraph means by "the species can forget" that certain bloodlines are lost altogether, the ancestral memories stored therein gone for all time. In a less literal sense I'm sure it also implies that even if the bloodlines are intact, the species can temporarily forget if no one is present who is sensitive to the past such as a RM. So that brings us to what is meant by the KH being special in that he can never forget. Should we just take this to mean that he can remember both male and female memories, and as such, doesn't forget the male side of history as the RM's are obliged to do? And yet the BG would surely have understood this much, and so what can Leto mean by saying the KH remembers in a way the BG didn't foresee?

We know the KH sees all of time as one reality, and for sure the BG didn't foresee this. Does that imply that all knowledge from history is automatically known by the oracle, just the same as knowledge about the future, regardless of whether it was in a far-off place or not in his bloodline?

I begin to wonder whether this passage isn't linked to what we see in CH:D. I won't say anything about how it may be related (spoilers), but for those who have read CH:D and have wondered what the deal is with you-know-who and his serial-ahems all coming back regardless of whether or not they were lost, does this not sound like "the KH cannot forget" in a different form? I wonder if Frank envisioned that later turn of events from the start.
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Re: Chapter 18

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Is is said very plainly in the texts that prescience is not just the future. To the prescient there is no separation between past, present and future.

However, I took this to mean lessons from history.
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Re: Chapter 18

Post by georgiedenbro »

Freakzilla wrote:Is is said very plainly in the texts that prescience is not just the future. To the prescient there is no separation between past, present and future.

However, I took this to mean lessons from history.
Agreed about the prescience, but it seems to have always been implied that prescience is something of a local phenomenon, that the oracle, depending on the strength of his sight, can see or influence things in his local area of space, but that this reach doesn't cover infinite distance. This is due, mostly likely, to the fact that the oracle will only see future paths that either directly involve him or that will result directly from his actions. I never got the impression that Paul could, for example, see the details of what was happening in a far-off galaxy or in uninhabited systems; in other words, being prescient didn't make him absolutely omniscient, it just gave him information about local currents that potentially crosses paths with his life.

Similarly, while in a sense all of mankind shares a common past, my question is basically whether the oracle can see the past that pertained to him and his bloodline, or whether he literally can just see all of history, everywhere, no matter the distance or whether all people involved died and were never heard from again. If so, this would make his Other Memory completely redundant and simply a worse version of his omniscience of the past. The books seem to imply that the KH bridges past, present, and future, but I don't know if I remember a passage that really spells out that the KH knows things about the past that would be impossible to know without OM or history texts.
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Re: Chapter 18

Post by Freakzilla »

I would say all people.

As to what "local" means, Leto comments on that later in this book. :wink:
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