Comment by hparadiz
2 days ago
I find the entire dune series to be boring as hell for this reason. Like watching paint dry. Literally everyone in it is a slave in one way or another. No one lives better than today's modern humans. We're as readers meant to take the extremist "correct" position that of course labor is its own virtue and that therefore automating anything is wrong. Nothing in the dune universe is actually compelling. I don't care what happens to any of the characters at all. It's baffling that this series gets all this attention.
It's not so much slavery but feudalism. It is a return to form. I think there are a lot more people capable of self-actualization and meaning in the dune universe than our own.
>We're as readers meant to take the extremist "correct" position that of course labor is its own virtue and that therefore automating anything is wrong.
I don't think the book forces the reader to take a position on anything. It just portrays a brutal yet intricate medieval-like society.
It is only sci-fi and not fantasy in the sense that some people are concious of their role as both a cause and effect of ecology. (Whereas in our modern society we are only the cause, and in our ancient history we are only an effect).
The reason why everyone's hands are tied is because they are constrained by politics/war/religion/culture/economics/technology and if you tug the thread back the it all goes back to ecology. The key mover in the plot isn't paul but pardot kynes.
Edit:
Shower thought. There is a fifth element in dune that is able to free people from their political/religious/cultural/economic constraints. It's love. People do irrational things out of love. Paul Atredies was a forbidden love child, and his existence is the impetus for the whole conflict and his existence as a messiah destroys pardot kynes' post-mortem plan.
You might have misunderstood. Automation isn’t wrong, what’s wrong is allowing machines to control or direct humans. So a machine that builds cars is fine, and most worlds have plenty of those, but a machine that decides what the car should look like how how many to build would be anathema.
Of course the book mostly takes place on a world with so little infrastructure that most of the goods are made offworld and imported. The native Freemen population makes plenty of stuff out of local resources, but they want to or have to stay hidden from the rest of society and so they don’t have any factories. The stillsuits they wear are hand made, but are exquisitely high–tech and display an ethos of perfectionism in their construction.
Also you might not have picked up that anyone able to afford a small amount of spice in their diet can live for much longer than anyone does today, and even the average person enjoys a wealth of products from hundreds of planets. House Atreides made their fortune harvesting whale fur and selling the clothes and other products made from it. At some point in history they became a Great House by arming themselves with nuclear weapons. There’s a form of personal wealth that doesn’t quite exist today! :)