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Lawrence of Arabia, Paul Atreides, and the roots of Frank Herbert's Dune (2021)

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Re: Lawrence of Arabia, Paul Atreides, and the roots of Frank Herbert's Dune (2021)

#61

Post by xxs »

pepa65 wrote: post #46
defrost wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Dutch East Indies was literally "mining" spice ( cinnamon, cassia, cardamom, ginger, pepper, nutmeg, star anise, clove, and turmeric ) from SE Asia for European consumption and packing ship with gold bullion in exchange. There were many actual "spice wars" fought in the region to wipe out competing crops, to build alliances, and later betray those local allies, etc.

Except that wasn't mining at all, except in a remotely metaphorical sense.

nowadays (past few decades) 'mine' (and farm) are often used in place of gather, esp. when it comes to game communities, e.g. 'mine' wood in 'warcraft III'. Farm any sort of materials, equipment, reputation, etc. So I suppose it's not that far fetched.

Re: Lawrence of Arabia, Paul Atreides, and the roots of Frank Herbert's Dune (2021)

#62

Post by tpm »

tsimionescu wrote: post #58
hayst4ck wrote: post #41

With recent events I’ve been thinking about Dune lately. Once you start to compare what happens in dune to what is happening now, it's rather unpleasant. Prescience allows for the complete domination of humanity, but to some degree we already working on pre-prescience. Privatized intelligence companies have grown as part of our corporate surveillance state. These companies, like palantir, act as “truthsayers,” divini…

> We are dangerously close to uncheckable totalitarian rule. I'm not sure we need to look to the future for that. North Korea has really shown that modern weapons and 80s era intelligence and propaganda methods, applied brutally enough, are enough to keep ~20 million people under extreme poverty and deep obedience for 80+ years now, with no signs of stopping (at least not from internal pressures) any time soon.

It's not enough, you also have to take into account specific culture and circumstances. The same as in NK could have happened in several other countries in Southeast Asia (Vietnam, Cambodia), Africa and South America (various communist dictatorships) and Europe (all countries behind the Iron Curtain). So why only North Korea?

Re: Lawrence of Arabia, Paul Atreides, and the roots of Frank Herbert's Dune (2021)

#63

Post by krige »

felipeerias wrote: post #15

The parallels with Lawrence are obvious, but I find that the character of Paul Atreides follows some older models as well. Towards the end of the first book of Dune he has become an almost mythical figure, a Moses using his divine insight to lead his people to freedom, or a Mohammed throwing them into a global war of conquest. That ambiguity is perhaps the book's greatest achievement: Paul's actions are only justifia…

Interesting to note that the recent Villeneuve adaptation seems to lean heavily into the latter interpretation (Paul and Jessica especially are ruthless and want revenge/power) while the Lynch adaptation was probably more of the former (Paul really wants to do good).

Re: Lawrence of Arabia, Paul Atreides, and the roots of Frank Herbert's Dune (2021)

#64

Post by frankvdwaal »

hayst4ck wrote: post #41

With recent events I’ve been thinking about Dune lately. Once you start to compare what happens in dune to what is happening now, it's rather unpleasant. Prescience allows for the complete domination of humanity, but to some degree we already working on pre-prescience. Privatized intelligence companies have grown as part of our corporate surveillance state. These companies, like palantir, act as “truthsayers,” divini…

And what about the Butlerian Jihad? It was a war against Thinking Machines, devices that would do the thinking for people. People were becoming less critical, they stagnated, left all that thinking work to machines, which meant that the technocratic class that controlled these machines effectively controlled mankind.

I think Frank Herbert would have a field day with our modern era of algorithms.

Re: Lawrence of Arabia, Paul Atreides, and the roots of Frank Herbert's Dune (2021)

#65

Post by nicolas_t »

UberFly wrote: post #50
bookofjoe wrote: post #33

I saw "Lawrence of Arabia" at the Riverside Theatre on Wisconsin Avenue in Milwaukee in 70mm in the summer of 1962, the year it was released. I was overwhelmed ("blown away" as a term of art didn't exist back then but would be an apt description). I was SO thrilled when, after nearly two hours, the screen said "There will now be an intermission." Never heard of such a thing back then for a movie! I note that the film…

Too cool. I've always wanted to watch this and you've inspired me.

20 years ago when I was living in Shanghai, my girlfriend was a member of the communist party (meritocratic she was enrolled because she had great grades). She had regular meetings with a small group of members of the party and they had regular discussions after being told to watch certain movies.

Lawrence of Arabia was one of those movies she had to watch to later discuss with other members... So we watched it together, had great discussion about it. Later when she went to meet with the other party members, they discussed the cult of personality surrounding the character and the use of guerrilla tactics.

(Another movie they all watched like this was 7 years in Tibet)

Re: Lawrence of Arabia, Paul Atreides, and the roots of Frank Herbert's Dune (2021)

#67

Post by keepamovin »

I'm convinced Herbert had some deep knowledge of psi phenomena. His descriptions of truthsayers reading people, timelines, race consciousness, and prescience are very similar to real experiences. His emphasis that it emerges through a combination of genetics and training of subtle awareness, plus the suggestion compounds could provide access to a state that could be sustained without them - also ring very true. The exploration of its paradoxes (destructiveness and utility of prophecy), and the contrast of those intuitive skills with the pure analytical ones of the mentat (or even of thinking machines) are also very deep. I think the idea that humanity's future involves a deeper engagement with and interplay of all these forces is also super likely. Perhaps he was friends, through his naval service, with people in the UK's version of Stargate (US psi and remote viewing programs). Surely there was such a program, tho I'm not aware of any releases of information about it.

Re: Lawrence of Arabia, Paul Atreides, and the roots of Frank Herbert's Dune (2021)

#68

Post by radarsat1 »

ggm wrote: post #37

Other people have documented Herbert's obsession with the californian ecology movement and dune re-establishment. I think he took things happening in small scale and used them as filler/detail to a story he wanted to tell in large scale.

> I think he took things happening in small scale and used them as filler/detail to a story he wanted to tell in large scale.

I think this must be a common thing that good scifi authors do. I saw a talk by William Gibson many years ago where he mentioned something very similar, he called it "part of his science fiction toolkit".

Re: Lawrence of Arabia, Paul Atreides, and the roots of Frank Herbert's Dune (2021)

#69

Post by ggm »

radarsat1 wrote: post #68
ggm wrote: post #37

Other people have documented Herbert's obsession with the californian ecology movement and dune re-establishment. I think he took things happening in small scale and used them as filler/detail to a story he wanted to tell in large scale.

> I think he took things happening in small scale and used them as filler/detail to a story he wanted to tell in large scale. I think this must be a common thing that good scifi authors do. I saw a talk by William Gibson many years ago where he mentioned something very similar, he called it "part of his science fiction toolkit".

Kim Stanley Robinson is carrying the story forward.

Re: Lawrence of Arabia, Paul Atreides, and the roots of Frank Herbert's Dune (2021)

#70

Post by int_19h »

theturtletalks wrote: post #22

Frank Herbert said him self in an interview that Dune was inspired from Sabres of Paradise by Lesley Blanch and that book is the story of Imam Shamil of the north caucasus.

While we're on this subject Imam Shamil had an interesting contemporary counterpart figure that I think deserves more recognition:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kunta-Hajji

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