VoyForums
[ Show ]
Support VoyForums
[ Shrink ]
VoyForums Announcement: Programming and providing support for this service has been a labor of love since 1997. We are one of the few services online who values our users' privacy, and have never sold your information. We have even fought hard to defend your privacy in legal cases; however, we've done it with almost no financial support -- paying out of pocket to continue providing the service. Due to the issues imposed on us by advertisers, we also stopped hosting most ads on the forums many years ago. We hope you appreciate our efforts.

Show your support by donating any amount. (Note: We are still technically a for-profit company, so your contribution is not tax-deductible.) PayPal Acct: Feedback:

Donate to VoyForums (PayPal):

05/11/24 12:14:54 [ Login ] [ Main index ] [ Post a new message ] [ Search | Check update time | Archives: 1, [2], 3, 4 ]

[ Next Thread | Previous Thread | Next Message | Previous Message ]

Date Posted: 15:42:03 02/24/05 Thu
Author: IDAHO
Subject: Entertainment as a system of control Lacking in Dune

After thinking a little bt about the Dune Saga, mainly the first book, I have come to the conclusion that Herbert includestwo main systems of control for the characters of his world: religion and politics.

Both are used to maintain goevernance and control by an elite ruling class over a massive population within a social structure: The Empire. All the leaders of the Dune novels from The Baron and Shaddam, to Paul and Leto II, seek to turn the systems of religion and politics to their own use to maintain power.

What is lacking, however, in my opinion is another integral system of control: Entertainment. Entertainment as a an opiate for the masses is by far a more prevalent system of control that is used in modern Western Civilization. And for all intents and purposes will be the dominant form of control as large media corporations are swiftly becoming some of the most powerful lobbyists in politics and become the gatekeepers to the dissemination of ALL information, be it political, religious, or otherwise. Killing ourselves with entertainment has long been a fear projected by such authors as Aldous Huxley in his viosinary novel "BRAVE NEW WORLD".

I find it starkly absent in Dune. Clearly sex is a system of control in the Dune novels (especially the later ones) but Herbert doesn't equate it so much with Entertainment as he does with biology.

It seems that the absence of Entertainment is largely due to the effects of the Butlerian Jihad destroying all sorts of machines that would remove popular entertainment such as recorded music, television, and cinema from the vocabulary of the characters of the world of Dune (though in reading the Butlerian Jihad trilogy, none of those forms of entertainment are present). There is no virtual world like the internet connecting people for communications or for entertianment because such a network might be facilitated by a nominally thinking machine (though it is more likely because Herbert didn't think of anything close to an internet when he was writing back in the 50's).

It seems to me that this ommission of a system of control is a glaring one, however, as I see this as the dominant form of manipulation in our modern world. For what is religion or politics without the medium to disseminate them?

If you ask me, this should be a major theme incorporated into the next Dune novels to take this series to the next level. For ultimately, the real danger posed by thinking machines I don't think is a brute war of physical force, but a war of the mind where the subversion and conquest of the Machines would be through seemingly innocuous means: the subtle control of information and the human dependence and need for mindless entertainment that superimposes passive submission to active thinking.


-IDAHO-

[ Next Thread | Previous Thread | Next Message | Previous Message ]

Replies:

Post a message:
This forum requires an account to post.
[ Create Account ]
[ Login ]
Forum timezone: GMT-7
VF Version: 3.00b, ConfDB:
Before posting please read our privacy policy.
VoyForums(tm) is a Free Service from Voyager Info-Systems.
Copyright © 1998-2019 Voyager Info-Systems. All Rights Reserved.