TBJ


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Re: TBJ

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I sense the anger is growing ... embrace it my friend. :wink:
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“There is no escape—we pay for the violence of our ancestors.”

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Re: TBJ

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Re: TBJ

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I've been thinking about the Butlerian Jihad lately and I'm delving back into the Hacks' turd that is Machine Crud just to see how they wrap up that period and then finally be done with it. In doing so though, got me thinking about what Frank may have said over the years about TBJ. It has become even more clear to me than every before that TBJ was a religious war among humans. From the Dune Appendix on religion to quotes about TBJ over the course of Frank's books, in particular GEoD, and now to these audio interviews I found from sometime after GEoD came out, the pieces add up to the fact Keith and BoBo have it completely wrong. I could go off on a McDune tangent but the real reason for this post are the audio recording I found.

I saw this mentioned in another thread but I don't believe anyone commented on the nearly 15 mins (I found so far) that Frank talked about TBJ. And can you imagine that I heard nothing about an Evermind, a demented robot, cymeks, or a war of human solely vs machine.

I did a rudimentary transcription as I listened. There may be words I misunderstood, the audio quality isn't the best.

Parts in ( ) are context without typing out everything said and it is where I add or questions/comments from the interviewer (McNelley?) that add context to Frank's quotes:

http://bobrbogle.com/2014/07/12/frank-h ... ure-tapes/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
https://archive.org/details/cfls_00001" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
Part 17 about 6 minutes in -

(Appears to take place early 80s around the release of GEoD and prior to Heretics)

(Concept of the Butlerian Jihad) "arises out of the mythology of computers, that they can think, that they can become pseudo-human, there are limits on that of course"

"My view of it is at root they are machines and one of the pitfalls of machines is they tend to condition the people who use them to treat their fellow humans as other machines. "

"You carry that on too far and that becomes so abrasive, the treatment of your fellow humans as machines, that the whole society will turn against what they see as the instrumentality supporting this attitude. They will focus on a particular thing, the computer. "

"Of course they are hanging an innocent man (laughs) because no computer can think, it will never think like a human"

"I'll say this flatly, I'll go way out on a limb, computers deal with discrete bits, no matter how rapidly they deal with them, they are discrete bits like exposures of movie film, each frame"

"In human beings, if we deal with discrete bits, if that is the basis of our operation, our behavior, then they are so fine, so rapid, so multi-linked, that I despair of our ever separating a bit out. The best description of what we do is we operate in a continuum where there is no starting and stopping. It's a flow, it's unbroken, it's a continuum. "

"When you try to copy that, make an image of that in a system that is confined to discrete bits, you are reduced to a system that will never really reach the continuum level however they can do some things automatically, very rapidly which is the advantage of computers ... they do things automatically, without thinking. "

"We have 2 modes of mental operation at least, many more really, but I'll just address myself with 2. One is the so-called instinctual level we do things automatically.... we respond to behavioral input. And the other is a kind of pattern recognition which gives us language, art, great inventions... these are patterns, they are imposed patterns. "

(Were there certain things to incite the Butlerian Jihad) "Excesses, I thought of great war machines being made that automatically kill people, machines that would simulate great masses of people .... and predict their behavior. I thought of all of these uses of machines to maneuver people or to replace them. So the living organism rebelled and you could begin at a very small level but if there were a lot of resentment all through society it could steamroll ... look at what happened in Iran. "

"I didn't have a planet of origin in mind" (out of the 50 - 60 named planets in the first 3 Dune books) "it (the Jihad) would spread very rapidly (throughout the galaxy) yes"

"This isn't really an anti-intellectualism, the specific is stated, Thou shall make no machine in the image of the human mind "

(Any thought as to how long the Jihad lasted) "I hadn't even thought about it ... long enough to accomplish it's purpose. I'm dealing in such magnitudes of time that I can put it way back there where now they only have a memory of it but its a very important memory because it still carries the weight of law. " (An approximately modern analogy we in the West might have the racial memory of the Black Death ) "Oh yes, exactly"

(Was there a formal end to the Jihad where they came down with some sort of Constitution?) "Yeah it was incorporated into what has now become The Great Convention and of course it was also incorporated into religious prohibitions. Also for the Jihad to be successful over this length of time, there had to be some substitute for that which had come to depend upon the computer ... and therefore we have the Mentat. Otherwise you would have had people getting computers and doing it all over again (laughs)"
They go on to talk about Mentats, religion, and the C.E.T. during the rest of part 17. This was just Part 17 only.

Good stuff.
The name Atreides was also consciously chosen. It is the family name of Agamemnon. Says Herbert, "I wanted a sense of monumental aristocracy, but with tragedy hanging over them--and in our culture, Agamemnon personifies that."
Frank Herbert by Tim O'Reilly
http://tim.oreilly.com/herbert/

Ghanima said. "We Atreides go back to Agamemnon..."
Distracted, Irulan asked: "Who's Agamemnon?"

Children of Dune by Frank Herbert

WTF? A BG forgets the Titans?! :)
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Re: TBJ

Post by georgiedenbro »

Thanks for the links, I will certainly listen to those sometime.
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Re: TBJ

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The serial bit versus the continuum was discussed in GEoD between Leto and the RMs Anteac and Luyseyal.
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Serkanner
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Re: TBJ

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Playing Devil's advocate here:

"(Were there certain things to incite the Butlerian Jihad) "Excesses, I thought of great war machines being made that automatically kill people, machines that would simulate great masses of people .... and predict their behavior. I thought of all of these uses of machines to maneuver people or to replace them. So the living organism rebelled and you could begin at a very small level but if there were a lot of resentment all through society it could steamroll ... look at what happened in Iran. "

This piece could easily be interpreted the way Pinky and the Brain interpreted the BJ.
"... the mystery of life isn't a problem to solve but a reality to experience."

“There is no escape—we pay for the violence of our ancestors.”

Sandrider: "Keith went to Bobo's for a weekend of drinking, watched some DVDs,
and wrote a Dune Novel."
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Re: TBJ

Post by Sardaukar Capt »

Only interpreted by morons (not talking about you :) ) who want to pick out one piece and turn it on its head, just like the Wonder Twins did. "Frank said war machines so he must be talking about Skynet"

It's clear to me while listening to the man talk, hearing his words, that he's talking about machines being used in this way that are integrated into the society and are set to automatically take over everyday functions to "free" humans but it goes completely too far and ends up robbing us of our humanity. It's not sentient machines enslaving humans. I don't ever recall him mentioning machines being self-aware here or anywhere (correct me if I'm wrong). Letting machines do our "thinking" for us, make decisions for us doesn't mean they are sentient.

I imagine the things he thought of and mentioned is like different societies creating war machines to fight wars automatically for us and we turn over the decisions a general would normally make to automation. And that goes to an extreme where the machines don't just selectively target they just go about automatically killing everything until the objective is complete. Or we turn over a decision making to automation in the medical field (Like the example in DE) where automation sees a probability of your baby being born with a defect so it automatically aborts it because we gave away our decision making for the "freedom" of automation. And over time the resentment builds up to a boiling point that one incident could incite a religious fervour, a Holy War against the "thinking machines".

That Holy War I see is by humans fed up with the control we gave to "machine thinking" that it ignites a religious spasm, a fervor against those who won't give up the machine mentality and who basically worship at the alter of the machine. Imagine how enthralled we are by our iPhones and tablets. Imagine a section of society wanting to take that away. Take us back to the early 20th century for example. It would be humans fighting humans, those wanting to fundamentally change society vs those who are content with the course society is on. Not Siri becoming self aware and turning us all into batteries and then we fight Siri.

I see your point though about interpreting that one bit but that one bit is meaningless when not taking with the whole. Only the Mental Midgets would take something like the "war machine" sentence and completely ignore the theme of the whole conversation and idea. But if we got with cherry picking ideas, how about this one:
"Of course they are hanging an innocent man (laughs) because no computer can think, it will never think like a human"


If someone wanted to cherry pick sentences then this quashes the Wonder Twins version of TBJ once and for all. Frank had this opinion AFTER GEoD so it was late into his life. And if that quashes 100% of the Wonder Twins TBJ concoction then ipso facto it completely quashes their version for their Dune 7. That is my opinion.

Maybe one day a Herbert descendant will grow a conscience and donate all these supposed notes the Wonder Twins magically found AFTER they started writing along with the Dune 7 floppy discs to the Fullerton library so we can see once and for all where Frank's mind was at with Dune 7 because I honestly don't think he was going to take it all the way back to TBJ.
The name Atreides was also consciously chosen. It is the family name of Agamemnon. Says Herbert, "I wanted a sense of monumental aristocracy, but with tragedy hanging over them--and in our culture, Agamemnon personifies that."
Frank Herbert by Tim O'Reilly
http://tim.oreilly.com/herbert/

Ghanima said. "We Atreides go back to Agamemnon..."
Distracted, Irulan asked: "Who's Agamemnon?"

Children of Dune by Frank Herbert

WTF? A BG forgets the Titans?! :)
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Re: TBJ

Post by georgiedenbro »

Serkanner wrote:Playing Devil's advocate here:

"(Were there certain things to incite the Butlerian Jihad) "Excesses, I thought of great war machines being made that automatically kill people, machines that would simulate great masses of people .... and predict their behavior. I thought of all of these uses of machines to maneuver people or to replace them. So the living organism rebelled and you could begin at a very small level but if there were a lot of resentment all through society it could steamroll ... look at what happened in Iran. "

This piece could easily be interpreted the way Pinky and the Brain interpreted the BJ.
"Automatically" implies automation, which is the opposite of sentience. "Simulate" means to create algorithms to predict; a simulation is the opposite of "actually pretending to be, like Terminators". "Uses of machines" means they are used to these ends, by humans. "To maneuver or replace" means to take over the daily function of people; it doesn't say the machines were even used to kill them, although we know that machines obviously are used to kill people. That Frank didn't even mention the use of machines for killing in this context just shows how irrelevant machines AS war machines were in the general problem of the BJ.

There is no way to read this as meaning what KJA says, at all. I know I'm preaching to the choir and you were just playing D's Ad, Serk, but I really think the KJA reading of this passage would be not only incorrect, but dishonest.
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Re: TBJ

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georgiedenbro wrote:
Serkanner wrote:Playing Devil's advocate here:

"(Were there certain things to incite the Butlerian Jihad) "Excesses, I thought of great war machines being made that automatically kill people, machines that would simulate great masses of people .... and predict their behavior. I thought of all of these uses of machines to maneuver people or to replace them. So the living organism rebelled and you could begin at a very small level but if there were a lot of resentment all through society it could steamroll ... look at what happened in Iran. "

This piece could easily be interpreted the way Pinky and the Brain interpreted the BJ.
"Automatically" implies automation, which is the opposite of sentience. "Simulate" means to create algorithms to predict; a simulation is the opposite of "actually pretending to be, like Terminators". "Uses of machines" means they are used to these ends, by humans. "To maneuver or replace" means to take over the daily function of people; it doesn't say the machines were even used to kill them, although we know that machines obviously are used to kill people. That Frank didn't even mention the use of machines for killing in this context just shows how irrelevant machines AS war machines were in the general problem of the BJ.

There is no way to read this as meaning what KJA says, at all. I know I'm preaching to the choir and you were just playing D's Ad, Serk, but I really think the KJA reading of this passage would be not only incorrect, but dishonest.
And that is exactly what they have done, as is proven by their BJ trilogy. They took the words: great war machines, kill people, manoeuvre people or replace them ... and thought CYMEKS!!! :tissue2:
"... the mystery of life isn't a problem to solve but a reality to experience."

“There is no escape—we pay for the violence of our ancestors.”

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and wrote a Dune Novel."
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Re: TBJ

Post by Sardaukar Capt »

I would highly, HIGHLY doubt the Hack or BoBo have listened to that particular tape let alone all 10hrs. I seriously doubt they even know these recordings exist. I've never seen them mention that they ever took anytime to go out to Cal St Fullerton and read Frank's papers there (correct me if I'm wrong) or listen to recordings (before this was digitized and put online). Bobo didn't even know he had a case full of FH's notes in his attic for 10+ years after his father's death that he somehow magically discovered AFTER him and the Hack started plotting and writing their McDune version.

Good Hack's (devil is accurate also haha) advocate, Serk but I don't either of them are even smart enough to find this tidbit and claim it as inspiration. They will stick to this mythical notes and outline on floppy disc they claim to have found. I would be curious to know where they actually went to get the info off those 1980s 5.25 floppy discs. BoBo isn't that technologically inclined like his father was. I wonder if anyone ever asked him that outside tehkja's presence and if so what BoBo said.

I can imagine this: "Kevin told me he put the discs in his laptop and he printed out a copy for me" and it wouldn't surprise me :)
The name Atreides was also consciously chosen. It is the family name of Agamemnon. Says Herbert, "I wanted a sense of monumental aristocracy, but with tragedy hanging over them--and in our culture, Agamemnon personifies that."
Frank Herbert by Tim O'Reilly
http://tim.oreilly.com/herbert/

Ghanima said. "We Atreides go back to Agamemnon..."
Distracted, Irulan asked: "Who's Agamemnon?"

Children of Dune by Frank Herbert

WTF? A BG forgets the Titans?! :)
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Re: TBJ

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Hmm, I'm not sure if I agree with him that
"Of course they are hanging an innocent man (laughs) because no computer can think, it will never think like a human"
.

Frank Herbert was interested enough in artificial intelligence research to write Destination: Void in 1965 with a reasonable degree of verismilitude, which means he also kept up with the long string of disappointments in AI research after the 1960s—I think that's what's feeding his cynicism, here.

Personally, I was really happy to read Butler's original argument, written as a jest in a time when thinking machines were maybe only a glint in Charles Babbage's eye. It's really easy to read, as far as nineteenth century prose goes, and summarized, it goes like this:
  • Machines are improving faster than humans.
  • Every time we make machines stronger, faster or work harder we make it easier for humans to be weak, slow and lazy.
  • Increasingly, humans spend their time improving and servicing the machines.
  • We think we're directing machine development for our own ends, but are we? The cells that make up our body are also working in their own interests; nevertheless they are subservient to a far greater and more complex system.
  • There is no effective difference between biological evolution and machine evolution.
  • If they aren't already, machines will become the primary vehicle for progress, and humans will become subservient to the machines.
Butler's proposed remedy for the problem? Smash all machines!
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Re: TBJ

Post by lotek »

I've always wondered though, when the main core of the BJ is
"Thou shalt not make a machine in the likeness of the human mind"

When you think that a good portion of humanity is lazy, stupid and bigoted, I reckon we're looking at Bender more than Skynet.
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Re: TBJ

Post by georgiedenbro »

I think a lot of what was in the O.C. Bible might have been taken to be rules for post-Jihad behavior. The chief of these in the OC Bible appears to have been "Thou shall not disfigure the soul." This rule was apparently just as important as the one against machines, as it severely limited what sorts of endeavors would be permissible or not. This is the law, for instance, that would disallow artificial insemination genetic engineering.
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Re: TBJ

Post by Sardaukar Capt »

In my opinion, religion and TBJ are completely and totally intertwined. Frank chose the work Jihad on purpose. You don't start a Holy War taking billions of lives without the feeling of a grave and immediate danger of losing your humanity and soul along with a complete and utter resentment of the current conditions you are living under.
The name Atreides was also consciously chosen. It is the family name of Agamemnon. Says Herbert, "I wanted a sense of monumental aristocracy, but with tragedy hanging over them--and in our culture, Agamemnon personifies that."
Frank Herbert by Tim O'Reilly
http://tim.oreilly.com/herbert/

Ghanima said. "We Atreides go back to Agamemnon..."
Distracted, Irulan asked: "Who's Agamemnon?"

Children of Dune by Frank Herbert

WTF? A BG forgets the Titans?! :)
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Re: TBJ

Post by georgiedenbro »

Sardaukar Capt wrote:In my opinion, religion and TBJ are completely and totally intertwined. Frank chose the work Jihad on purpose. You don't start a Holy War taking billions of lives without the feeling of a grave and immediate danger of losing your humanity and soul along with a complete and utter resentment of the current conditions you are living under.
I agree it was definitely religious. In the passage from the tapes Frank all but says that the BJ was an overreaction that had a religious fervor but that didn't precisely address the root of the problem - which is man's tendency to want to be ruled or enslaved.

This is one of the reasons in another thread I was arguing that the people in the Imperium aren't as non-religious as they claim they are. They do have some beliefs that are 'unproven' in a strict sense but that they adhere to quite vehemently. The Atreides just have more personal beliefs of this sort than the others, that's all, as things like "being kind" weren't part of the Great Convention after the BJ, but the Atreides act as if they were anyhow.
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Re: TBJ

Post by Sardaukar Capt »

Wanting to be "enslaved" or ruled was one of the roots of the problem, as Frank envisioned IMHO. We gave ourselves over to more and more automation and machine control over our lives and society for convenience and to "free" ourselves. And that went to far and too deep that there was finally an eruption from humanity (or a significant part of it) to overthrow that mindset. One could argue even agnostic people would join that "holy war" if they felt their humanity was being rob of them by the societal mindset to let machines control our everyday lives for us.

All this is fascinating stuff I wish Frank had gotten a chance to write about and not this Battlestar Galactica wannabe drivel the Wonder Twins came up with. (by the way love BG... hate mentioning it and the morons in the same sentence).
The name Atreides was also consciously chosen. It is the family name of Agamemnon. Says Herbert, "I wanted a sense of monumental aristocracy, but with tragedy hanging over them--and in our culture, Agamemnon personifies that."
Frank Herbert by Tim O'Reilly
http://tim.oreilly.com/herbert/

Ghanima said. "We Atreides go back to Agamemnon..."
Distracted, Irulan asked: "Who's Agamemnon?"

Children of Dune by Frank Herbert

WTF? A BG forgets the Titans?! :)
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Re: TBJ

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georgiedenbro wrote:This is one of the reasons in another thread I was arguing that the people in the Imperium aren't as non-religious as they claim they are.
I'm sure the faufreluches were very religious but I still don't think the nobility were.
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Re: TBJ

Post by georgiedenbro »

Freakzilla wrote:
georgiedenbro wrote:This is one of the reasons in another thread I was arguing that the people in the Imperium aren't as non-religious as they claim they are.
I'm sure the faufreluches were very religious but I still don't think the nobility were.
Consider a couple of passages:
Dune Messiah wrote:"A mentat!" Mohiam muttered.
Scytale glanced at the old Reverend Mother, seeing the ancient hates which
colored her responses. From the days of the Butlerian Jihad when "thinking
machines" had been wiped from most of the universe, computers had inspired
distrust. Old emotions colored the human computer as well.
It's not just the following of some law - the Great Convention - which people follow out of fear of penalties for violation. Mohiam, here, really feels the ancient hatred towards anything to do with machine-logic. This doesn't feel to you like religious fervor?
Dune Messiah wrote:"By artificial means only. That's my offer."
The Reverend Mother closed her eyes to hide his face. Damnation! To cast the
genetic dice in such a way! Loathing boiled in her breast. The teaching of the
Bene Gesserit, the lessons of the Butlerian Jihad -- all proscribed such an act.
One did not demean the highest aspirations of humankind. No machine could
function in the way of a human mind. No word or deed could imply that men might
be bred on the level of animals.
Again, this isn't the BG subscribing to the laws of the land as imposed by the BG and Great Convention: They really do hate the idea of these proscribed acts. This isn't just law, it's deep belief in the tenets of the Jihad. Is there any particular reason not to call this a religious belief?

Of course both of these passages apply to the BG, for whom we expect Mohiam stands as a good example, and not necessarily to the nobility. It's possible the nobility follows the tenets more as laws and less as deep convictions. But with BG as wives or concubines in many Great Houses and bringing up the children there, we might well expect the Great Houses to have been taught with the BG values in this area and ultimately to have the same sentiments of hate towards forbidden acts and forbidden technology. Aside from the lack of a supernatural metaphysics as we see nowadays in religion, in significant what way does the code lived in the Imperium differ from a religion?
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Re: TBJ

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Sorry, but I don't agree. I'm not religious but still abhor many of the things religions proscribe.
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Re: TBJ

Post by georgiedenbro »

Freakzilla wrote:Sorry, but I don't agree. I'm not religious but still abhor many of the things religions proscribe.
Fair enough. I'm mostly interested in showing that the nobility in the Imperium wasn't totally secular, in the sense of really not believing in anything other than power and the tools of statecraft in a completely Machiavellian sense. I believe the Appendix when it says that the nobility thought of religion as nothing more than a puppet show for the masses, but it seems to me that they did really believe in something, whether you want to call it 'religious', 'ethical', or even just 'a lesson in their bones' from the Jihad.

One of my favorite details in the Dune series is that Frank doesn't presuppose all the Judeo-Christian values that we espouse in our culture here, even as avowed non-Christians. "The golden rule", "help those in need", "love is very important"; all of these are things believed by most atheists in America, but they are Judeo-Christian artifacts in large part. They existed outside of Christianity too, but these were absolutely core to Christianity. Frank takes those away in Dune and shows us how people would behave when more than a few generations removed from such a tradition, as we now are. A current atheist is only 1-5 generations removed from religious folk; what will people be like 100 generations removed? I love this part of Dune, so when I suggest that the Imperium had 'something religious' about it, I'm not talking about Christianity or anything like that, I just mean that they aren't completely devoid of a code of axioms to govern their behavior as a group.

We might even imagine the time right before the Jihad, where perhaps there were many people who really were devoid of any onus to avoid certain acts; they would have done anything at all to gain power. After the Jihad behavior became regulated according to a code, some of which may be in the O.C. Bible, and enforced by the Great Convention. And it would appear that the code was believed in, not merely obeyed.
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Re: TBJ

Post by Sardaukar Capt »

For me, more so than the code being believed in a religious sense, for it to survive 10K years, it had to be such a monumentally traumatic event for humanity that the racial memory of the prohibitions that followed still held true after 100 centuries. Some by the point of Dune follow it for religious reasons and others because trauma has been ingrained in their racial memory that mankind nearly became extinct that the thought of violating those prohibitions is revolting.
The name Atreides was also consciously chosen. It is the family name of Agamemnon. Says Herbert, "I wanted a sense of monumental aristocracy, but with tragedy hanging over them--and in our culture, Agamemnon personifies that."
Frank Herbert by Tim O'Reilly
http://tim.oreilly.com/herbert/

Ghanima said. "We Atreides go back to Agamemnon..."
Distracted, Irulan asked: "Who's Agamemnon?"

Children of Dune by Frank Herbert

WTF? A BG forgets the Titans?! :)
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Re: TBJ

Post by georgiedenbro »

Sardaukar Capt wrote:For me, more so than the code being believed in a religious sense, for it to survive 10K years, it had to be such a monumentally traumatic event for humanity that the racial memory of the prohibitions that followed still held true after 100 centuries. Some by the point of Dune follow it for religious reasons and others because trauma has been ingrained in their racial memory that mankind nearly became extinct that the thought of violating those prohibitions is revolting.
You make an excellent point. The BG RM's would obviously have memories of the actual events of the Jihad, and so for them the prohibitions wouldn't merely be a part of history that left a scar so strong they still remember it. For a RM it's like the Jihad happened just yesterday, they remember it in full, and from multiple different ancestral perspectives.

In this sense it's probably the case that the BG would have a far stronger gut devotion to the tenets of the Great Convention, whereas with the nobility it might be less so. The BG probably take pains to teach the children of noble families about the horrors of the Jihad, but it would vary with each person to what extent he really comes to feel the horror of it or just obeys the tenets because it's the law.
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Sardaukar Capt
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Re: TBJ

Post by Sardaukar Capt »

Racial memory not in the sense of the BG OM but just think how "Black Death" or "Black Plague" or "The Plague" is ingrained in our racial memory in the West as McNelley and Frank mentioned in that tape. Even today the "plauge" is so ingrained in us as a cataclysmic and near apocalyptic event, that modern fiction about a modern day "plague" (zombies) is some of the most popular stuff going because it resonates with deeply ingrained fears. The Jihad had to be even a million times more traumatic than that.
The name Atreides was also consciously chosen. It is the family name of Agamemnon. Says Herbert, "I wanted a sense of monumental aristocracy, but with tragedy hanging over them--and in our culture, Agamemnon personifies that."
Frank Herbert by Tim O'Reilly
http://tim.oreilly.com/herbert/

Ghanima said. "We Atreides go back to Agamemnon..."
Distracted, Irulan asked: "Who's Agamemnon?"

Children of Dune by Frank Herbert

WTF? A BG forgets the Titans?! :)
georgiedenbro
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Re: TBJ

Post by georgiedenbro »

Sardaukar Capt wrote:Racial memory not in the sense of the BG OM but just think how "Black Death" or "Black Plague" or "The Plague" is ingrained in our racial memory in the West as McNelley and Frank mentioned in that tape. Even today the "plauge" is so ingrained in us as a cataclysmic and near apocalyptic event, that modern fiction about a modern day "plague" (zombies) is some of the most popular stuff going because it resonates with deeply ingrained fears. The Jihad had to be even a million times more traumatic than that.
Yeah. I think Frank's sci-fi premise of the BG OM is what he possibly foresaw our current racial memory developing into. So while now we may have racial memory (or not, science will tell us sometime), we definitely do have cultural memory of the plague, which isn't quite the same on a technical level. But the OM that RM's have is really supposed to be the future analogue to our current 'racial memory' of cataclysms like the plague or being hunted by wild beasts 300,000 years ago. In the case of the RM's, though, their racial memory can be accessed directly and experienced like personal memories, hence my comment.
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lotek
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Re: TBJ

Post by lotek »

There is already some evidence of racial memory transmitted by genes.

A growing body of evidence suggests that environmental stresses can cause changes in gene expression that are transmitted from parents to their offspring, making 'epigenetics' a hot topic. Epigenetic modifications do not affect the DNA sequence of genes, but change how the DNA is packaged and how genes are expressed. Now, scientists have shown how epigenetic memory can be passed across generations and from cell to cell during development.
Image
Images of C. elegans embryos show inheritance and transmission of an epigenetic mark. The 1-cell embryo (left) shows the mark (green) inherited on sperm chromosomes but not on the oocyte chromosomes (pink) from a mutant mother lacking the methylation enzyme PRC2. The 2-cell embryo (right) shows transmission of the mark on the sperm-derived chromosomes in each daughter nucleus.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/20 ... 141448.htm" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
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