Water Discipline & the Jihad

[D Pope]

Paul of Dune is as offensive as it is insulting and something stirred my memory of this
festering mound of quarantined toxicity. The details aren't important but I would like
discussion of the takeaway- how did Jihadi Fremen maintain water discipline when off
Arrakis? We have the one story of a fremen taking a dip in the ocean and getting sick
on sea water, noting that the whole troop still wore stillsuits. I can imagine Fremen
becoming berserkers when invading such an alien environment but when the conquering
is done and he's settling back in the lobby of his command center that used to be a hotel,
it can't be easy to keep your suit tight with all the fountains, swimming pools, rivers,
and what would a Fremen think of a storm drain?

So again, I'd like your thoughts about Water Discipline & the Jihad.

[Freakzilla]

Well, we do see water discipline becoming slack in the homes of the jihad veterans on Arrakis! Off-world I imagine it would take some time but I'm sure eventually discipline would slip, but probably not as much as at home.

[georgiedenbro]

Well, we do see water discipline becoming slack in the homes of the jihad veterans on Arrakis! Off-world I imagine it would take some time but I'm sure eventually discipline would slip, but probably not as much as at home.

I can only speculate but I tend to focus on FH's statements about resource shortages and how they shape life. He mentions how water on Arrakis is an analogy for spice, oil, gold, or any other high-demand resource whose limited supply shapes one's existence. An example we see in the series of a limited supply exploding is space travel. The Guild monopoly was largely responsible for the stagnant conditions in the Empire, and the moment the supply of navigation tools become essentially infinite with the advent of the INM the entire universe exploded and changed shape. All of the old systems and balances become irrelevant.

In Dune we see an entire culture built around water-deprivation and deterioration due to sand and storms. I would guess that when going off-planet for the first time some Fremen might have started hoarding water, stowing it in any vessel they could find and hiding it with the thought of taking it back to Arrakis and being rich. I imagine that eventually it would occur to them (and for others maybe the realization was immediate) that filling your suitcase with water on a water-rich planet is ridiculous. It's like filling your bags with dirt or rocks, which are everywhere. I would guess that most off-world Fremen would have discarded water discipline almost completely with the self-deceptive thought that it was only temporary and things would return to normal once back home on Arrakis. Perhaps the most fanatical Fremen would keep the appearance of water discipline even though in practice there can be no such thing in a water rich world. Without the fundamental water shortage the entire Fremen way of life is irrelevant, and I think this leads nicely into FH's general theme of thinking you want to attain a goal but upon attaining it you are changed in such a way that the goal ceases to have meaning. This is both a philosophical and an ecological point, since Arrakis, the Fremen, Paul, and even the BG all got what they wanted in spades and paid the price for it. To go from unlimited water on far-away worlds and then return to Arrakis would make water discipline seem strange and ritualistic rather than a necessary fact of life. It would undermine one's identity and even maybe the sense of the point of living. We see this clearly in DM, and even though FH never connects the dots for us explicitly it's very clear that the Fremen aren't merely having trouble re-adapting to life on Arrakis, but they have really ceased to be Fremen in any meaningful sense. They are one step on the way to becoming true Museum Fremen, where the old ways are an historical footnote rather than a way to survive.

[Serkanner]

How much time does a Fremen need to lose his water discipline?

[D Pope]

How much time does a Fremen need to lose his water discipline?

To go from unlimited water on far-away worlds and then return to Arrakis would make water discipline seem strange and ritualistic rather than a necessary fact of life.

It would undermine one's identity and even maybe the sense of the point of living.

Water discipline is their identity, personified by the stillsuit- as Faradn pointed out in CoD.
I'm betting they don't start to lose it until mud bricks become a thing. All through the jihad it would
have insulated them from the culture shock of all the water rich worlds they conquered. Remember,
they kill anyone in the open without a stillsuit. When they get back, I think it'd be more like a return
to the familiar, I don't think the strange and ritualistic part hits until the next generation with all
the 'beautiful young people.'

Photos of Fremen in stillsuits posing in front of oceans.
"Too much water can inflict a man with fatal carelessness."

Here's what brought this on;
There's a chapter in 'pole of dude' where Stilgar is on a Guildship and he goes to a drinking fountain or
something only to realize that he's only getting a drink because it's there and wonders when he started
doing that.
fuk fuk fuk!
I know it's not Dune but but it's under my skin like some STD that doesn't go away.

[Omphalos]

How much time does a Fremen need to lose his water discipline?

This is a question of mass psychology. Looking at individual cases isn't that helpful. The drift from water discipline would be very slow, and would likely be slowed futher by the fact that the those who traveled off world to fight were soldiers with some pretty strict military discipline, all of whom were also very tangled up in the Fremen mystical outlook on life, and who were also just realizing that their way of life was actually superior to others and gave them a competitive advantage. I'd wager that the mass of Fremen would continue to adhere to it, and likely continued to do so until they were transformed into Museum Fremen, or at least until the mass of them came to the conclusion that the change they were preparing for in the early novels was going to become a reality.

So they're not gonna go changing shit all higgedly-piggledy. It's gonna be very slow.

[Naib]

I'm sure at the time the Fremen Jihadi didn't even realise they were being altered by the presence of so much water when off-world. It probably happened in small ways at first. Suit seals not as tight. No rubbing of creosote juice on the hands to impair perspiration. Things like that adding up over time.

Then they got home and found it difficult to adjust back to old ways.

[D Pope]

Then they got home and found it difficult to adjust back to old ways.

I'm not so sure it would have played out like that. Fremen have the"deep conditioning," living
with a military perfection for their whole lives. Going to a water rich world would strengthen
their discipline- as if simply leaving the desert wouldn't be enough of a culture shock to tighten
the ranks, they're going to an alien environment as an invading army! Think about depression
era grandparents, despite living in a post war paradise, they never really shook their 'waste
not- want not' frugality. It takes a generation born to plenty to loose the inhibitions.

There's a great line from Conan the Barbarian (movie) where Mako says something like "Success
can test ones metal as surely as surely as the strongest adversary.' Fremen returning from the
jihad would have had to cope with some really mind boggling changes but the water discipline
would've been something to cling to. One of the old ways that gives ground slowly.

[Naib]

I'm not so sure it would have played out like that. Fremen have the"deep conditioning," living
with a military perfection for their whole lives. Going to a water rich world would strengthen
their discipline- as if simply leaving the desert wouldn't be enough of a culture shock to tighten
the ranks, they're going to an alien environment as an invading army! Think about depression
era grandparents, despite living in a post war paradise, they never really shook their 'waste
not- want not' frugality. It takes a generation born to plenty to loose the inhibitions.

There's a great line from Conan the Barbarian (movie) where Mako says something like "Success
can test ones metal as surely as surely as the strongest adversary.' Fremen returning from the
jihad would have had to cope with some really mind boggling changes but the water discipline
would've been something to cling to. One of the old ways that gives ground slowly.

I can see that. Especially in times of conflict on foreign soil, anything homelike would be fiercely defended.

I guess it would have been the following generation, as Arrakis is greening, that would look at the old ways and feel they were less needed.

[Smiley]

Fremen did come down wulith "water sickness" or something like that after seeing oceans. And as freak mentioned water discipline was becoming lady

[inhuien]

Lazy?

[Smiley]

yeah. meant lazy.

Been trying to get something written and so naturally I've been plagued with typos.

[D Pope]

Not sure about water sickness.
Is there anything specific in the text?

[Freakzilla]

"A Fremen dies when he's too long from the desert," Paul said. "They call it
the 'water sickness.' Isn't that odd?"
"That's very odd."
~Dune Messiah

[D Pope]

Thanks Freak, you da man!

I guess that pretty much solves that.

[Naib]

I don't think calling it water sickness odd really.

Being away from the desert implies that they are near much greater amounts of water. It's the proximity to so much water that is making them sick. And it doesn't necessarily mean it's a psychological sickness. Foreign water can do bloody awful things to you if it's not treated correctly.

[D Pope]

One form of Harkonnen oppression leaves Fremen feeling like there's no where to go. (Necessary to keep your slaves from escaping.)
Then comes Paul and the jihad, Fremen realize their freedom isn't limited to the planet- I should think there'd be an adventurous type
of Fremen willing to find his fortune off planet. -Work the rest of your life mining spice and turning Dune into a fit place or retire to a
palace on a planet that already is fit. Perhaps the water sickness is propaganda designed to keep Fremen on Arrakis.

Maybe they're like some retirees I've known, with no job they're dead in a few months.

Maybe it's just spice withdrawal.

Maybe Paul is being cynical.

[Naib]

Maybe they're like some retirees I've known, with no job they're dead in a few months.

What would a Fremen retirement community be like? Old Fremen shuffling about bitching about water discipline, complaining about it being too cold, wondering why their grandchildren never visit, riding a sandworm with the left indicator flashing the entire time?

[Freakzilla]

Maybe they're like some retirees I've known, with no job they're dead in a few months.

What would a Fremen retirement community be like? Old Fremen shuffling about bitching about water discipline, complaining about it being too cold, wondering why their grandchildren never visit, riding a sandworm with the left indicator flashing the entire time?

Isn't that pretty much where Farok lived? Suburban Arrakeen homes for veterans of the Jihad?

[Captain_Cackwurst]

One form of Harkonnen oppression leaves Fremen feeling like there's no where to go. (Necessary to keep your slaves from escaping.)
Then comes Paul and the jihad, Fremen realize their freedom isn't limited to the planet- I should think there'd be an adventurous type
of Fremen willing to find his fortune off planet.

If i remember correctly, there was some quote in the first novel that stated that fremen that left Arrakis got actually hunt down by other fremen. (My memory is pretty blurry tho)

[D Pope]

One form of Harkonnen oppression leaves Fremen feeling like there's no where to go. (Necessary to keep your slaves from escaping.)
Then comes Paul and the jihad, Fremen realize their freedom isn't limited to the planet- I should think there'd be an adventurous type
of Fremen willing to find his fortune off planet.

If i remember correctly, there was some quote in the first novel that stated that fremen that left Arrakis got actually hunt down by other fremen. (My memory is pretty blurry tho)

That's a new one for me but I've missed things before.
Anyone know anything about Fremen hunting down Fremen who leave Dune?

Edit;
Could you be thinking about how no one who has seen a chrysknife can leave Dune without permission?

[Freakzilla]

Edit;
Could you be thinking about how no one who has seen a chrysknife can leave Dune without permission?

That's the only thing I can think of that's even close.

[machinor]

Well I think in the Corrino-Empire, the spice addiction would work as a leash on all Fremen. Melange war quite expensive everywhere else and being addicted that heavily to it, they would surely die from withdrawal.