Honour and cultur in dune

[Emperor Harkonnen]

I am just rereading Dune, and I have been thinking about how the culture is so different from current western culture.

It seems that almost all cultures in Dune(meaning the various planets/houses) are not concerned with individualism. Even Duke Leto does on some occations not value individual lives. I really find the little respect for individual human lives pretty disturbing. More important is family, traditions and especially honour. But is honour rational? In my opinion it often isn't. Why would they care so much about it. having Mentats and BG who certainly should be more concerned with what is rational.

Any thoughts on this?

[Dante]

Why is care for the individual rational?

[Emperor Harkonnen]

Individualism (in the sense of individual freedom) might be rational from an economic point of view, but maybe not politically.

But I was really more reffering to honour as not being rational. WHy would you fight with honour if you could do better by cheating when your own survival depends on it?

[SandChigger]

WHy would you fight with honour if you could do better by cheating when your own survival depends on it?

A sense of honor is very often an important part of an individual's self-image, and sometimes a person would rather die than betray or have that self-image destroyed.

The question becomes, in what form are you prepared to accept "survival"? What good is surviving if you are no longer intact, no longer you?

[Emperor Harkonnen]

I am acctually more questioning why honour is a part of people at all in Dune, not whether or not they would die in honour as they obviously would. I am questioning this because on several aspects in Dune they are being rational, but in other aspects honour and irational behaviour dominates.

Today you would see that honour is very important in some cultures, such as muslims and some asian cultures. Whereas In the western world (mainly meaning the "protestant" countries), it is almost unimportant. It seems like the protestant culture from the nordic and anglo countries has dissapeared completely in Dune. By protestant culture I mean a feminine, low power distance and individualistic culture. Even though this culture dominates all the richest countires in the world (except Japan and Singapore), I cannot find any traces of it in the Dune universe among any groups.

[Lord J]

I look at the value of "honor" as a tool for encouraging ethical behavior and control. In other words, it is a programmed rule in the lives of the subjects of the Empire. People (particularly Atreides soldiers) fight and die with honor because it makes them stronger opponents, kind of like martyrs. The big difference, of course, is that it's not the martyrs making the decision to die, it's their commanders. Patriotism and honor are necessary bedfellows in this setup. Honor reinforces the concept of a universal balance between good and evil, which is close enough to traditional religion to make it useful for the ruling class.

As far as individual rationalism, the Empire is, by definition, not a democracy. The subjects of the Empire are a mindless horde, as far as the Harkonnen are concerned, and thankful servants according to the Atreides. The book is full of important individuals, but those individuals are the ruling class and lieutenants. The only reason one would want individual rationalism is if the individuals were all making choices, which they do not. The ruling class make the choices, and the subjects obey or die.

[Emperor Harkonnen]

I agree with you that honor could be a way of getting control. thus it might be beneficial to the ruling class.

But I wouldn't say that honor is something that makes the Atreides soldiers particularly stronger. I believe in the book their strenght came from a special training and good leadership(enforcing loyalty) (which was why the emperor wanted to eliminate them). Sardaukar are also focused on honor, but this is not what makes them good fighters either.

You can draw a parallell to the second world war. To the japanese honor and loyalty to the emperor was essential. This still didn't make them better fighters than the americans. Even though they were similar technologically, the kill/death ratio of the americans far exceeds that of the japanese. Being rational in war has shown better results. I believe the japanese were worse off with their suicide and kamikaze attacks than they would be without. This is why I think that in Dune the various houses might have been better off with a culture favoring the rational thought in war.

[ErasOmnius]

Why is care for the individual rational?

The more people that benefit from a commodity or resource, the better for mankind as a whole.

[Emperor Harkonnen]

Good point. Individual freedom is what maximizes profits. But adding a government that cares for the indivduals even further increases profits. Look at the current economic models of the US and the nordic countries. (by profit one can think GDP)

Another aspect of honor I thought about is revenge. Everyone are so obsessed with revenge in Dune, even though this is an irrational feeling. It doesn't serve a purpose in itself. It might serve a purpose if the person you are revenging yourself on provides an example to be followed by others, but this is not the case in Dune for everything.

Also that Gurney wants to take his own life when he almost kills Jessica because he thinks she was the traitor. This is completely irrational. He is needed in the battlefield. To me it seems that Paul more and more goes away from this view of honor towards the end of the book.

[Dante]

The more people that benefit from a commodity or resource, the better for mankind as a whole.

That isn't caring for the individual, it's sharing resources among a population. Nice to see that you're wrong about economics as well as, you know, everything else.

Good point. Individual freedom is what maximizes profits. But adding a government that cares for the indivduals even further increases profits. Look at the current economic models of the US and the nordic countries. (by profit one can think GDP)

Actually no, profits are maximised by sacrificing the freedoms of individuals so that conglomerates can overrule them. Monetary profits, anyway. Consider which has more purchasing power, an individual or a bank. Who has greater sway over politicians/leaders, the few rich or the many poor? When the rich talk of "freedom" they mean freedom from legislation that prevents them from exploiting the poor in order to achieve greater profits. They call it freedom, but it isn't freedom of the individual.

As for honour, it's rarely rational, but there are other considerations. The Bene Gesserit, to take your example, have their own ideas about behaviour and morality, but would consider honour as a variable in any given equation. They don't follow, for example, Atreides honour, but would consider it as an influence when advising Atreides rulers (or indeed predicting Atreides actions for others. It is helpful for people like the BG to cultivate certain forms of behaviour among sub-groups of people in order that they be easily predicted or even controlled. Witness the Missionaria, among other things). Likewise a mentat would take their employer's personal code of conduct into consideration when reaching a decision. Advising someone to act against their code of honour could have worse repercussions than failing to make the more rational decision.

Further, it is often beneficial to have a reputation as an honourable person. Doing something stupid could have beneficial results in the long run if people are able to look back and remember that when things were tough, you did the right thing, though it was hard. The downside of having such a repuation is the need to maintain it, but honour is nothing if not a double edged sword.

[Emperor Harkonnen]

Actually no, profits are maximised by sacrificing the freedoms of individuals so that conglomerates can overrule them. Monetary profits, anyway. Consider which has more purchasing power, an individual or a bank. Who has greater sway over politicians/leaders, the few rich or the many poor? When the rich talk of "freedom" they mean freedom from legislation that prevents them from exploiting the poor in order to achieve greater profits. They call it freedom, but it isn't freedom of the individual.

You are wrong. If individuals or corporations with execessive monopoly power maximizes their profit, this does not maximize the profit of society as a whole. This is a market inefficiency that has to be dealt with by governments. This is because this reduces the freedom of other individuals. THis is the perfect role of the government, removing market inefficiencies.

All economic theory states that a free market is what maximizes profits. This means freedom to the individual. This is also proven through the GDP per capita of various countries:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(PPP)_per_capita

In which of these countries have individuals and corporations the most (especially financial) freedom? The top countries! Look at the US! (some of these are tax paradises or heavily depend on oil income, so these should maybe be ignored)

Good point on honor by the way, I guess there are both advantages and disadvantages to it. Difficult to measure in which cases it will be beneficial and in which not. But if you die, in many cases, your reputation(which is as you stated the main advantage to honor) is no longer necessary.

[Dante]

What's more important, your life or the survival of your house? It's just a matter of priorities.

You didn't specify whose profits. Individual freedom might maximise individual profit, but gross profit (in the sense of raw generation of wealth) is better accomplished by stepping on people.

[Emperor Harkonnen]

You didn't specify whose profits. Individual freedom might maximise individual profit, but gross profit (in the sense of raw generation of wealth) is better accomplished by stepping on people.

Yeah I didn't specify, I meant to maximize the profits of a country, and in the Dune case a House. So my argument was basically that in order to increase their wealth, a house would be smart to allow further individual, financial freedom and to take care of their individuals. (This is based on how economics work today and is merely what I believe)

Individual freedom doesn't necessarily increase the individual profits acctually, it maximizes the total profit. So you would still see a wealth difference between people. But as you say, I guess the profits of one family such as the Harkonnens, could be achieved by stepping on people. But this would depend on their motives. Wouldn't it be better for the Harkonnens to increase the total wealth of their population rather than the wealth they control?

Since they control the population, they indirectly control their wealth, even though they don't have imidiate access to it. In the long run, this would be beneficial to them.

[Dante]

Mmno, I'm still thinking that if a house (or country) wanted to maximise profits it would tax its citizens into poverty and trade away everything the lower classes produce in exchange for even more obscene values of wealth. If profit is all you're concerned with then all other considerations are just detractions from it. Especially pesky things like free will.

Consider, if a country were to replace every citizen with an unthinking robot that does nothing except work all day save a couple of hours for recharging, in a working day they would gain a greater profit than one which had to pay workers as well as provide working conditions in which they could live, possibly housing, healthcare, holidays, all that jazz. Therefore it's in the interests of profit-minded controllers to have their workers be as robot-like as possible. That is hard working, uncomplaining, ignorant and completely devoid of personal possessions or free will.

My point being that if you want to act in a different way (with honour, for example?) then you're going to need to compromise profit in favour of, say, sustainability, propaganda, ethics, environmentalism, whatever.

[TMA_1]

Because power is held on a planetary scale, and the distances are so massive, the whole enviornment affected the culture and politics of mankind. Planets became Feifdoms to men who were family to the ruling elite. It is a really cool concept that seems to make no sense, but the environment itself distanced mankind, brought him back politically into an archaic form of rule. Back to the times of the platonic Golden Man. When social class made sense again. Kynes talked of energy increasing as a system became smaller. Imagine our culture now, nearly all democratic, so close to one another, a true global village. Now imagine that dispersing into space...

Why are there so many wars now? As the system closes further and further, matter contained within heats up faster and faster... entropy.

The Jihad? The Golden Path? Dispersions, slowing down entropy.

[Emperor Harkonnen]

Acctually most studies on this (I study management, economics and finance so I've had a couple of courses on thist), and most companies in free markets, agree that providing benefits to employees increases their productivity. Meaning that providing your employees with benefits equal to $1 would increase your revenues by more than $1. This is of course up to a certain point. Which point this is, is pretty difficult to say generally, but it certainly is not where the workers only get paid enough food to replace the calories they lost working.

Taxing the hell out of your citizens, will kill all motivation to work, and they will do as little as possible. Controlling people costs money. Therefore incentives that are cheaper than controlling is the best way of making sure people work, and the best way to create excessive profits for any individual, state or company.

But lol, your resoning about the robot is quite funny. Only problem is that people have free will...

My point being that if you want to act in a different way (with honour, for example?) then you're going to need to compromise profit in favour of, say, sustainability, propaganda, ethics, environmentalism, whatever.

Well yeah, that was basically my point when starting this whole thread. That being so focused on honour, is usually not rational, so why do they do it when they are so rational in other aspects of society. They should now that it compromises profits, like you said.

[athanasios]

A robot only produces, it doesn't consume.

[Emperor Harkonnen]

A robot only produces, it doesn't consume.

Lol! No shit sherlock

[Lord J]

Robots don't consume? Huh? Doesn't everything consume energy?

Anyway, I just wanted to comment on one thing that Dante said:

Therefore it's in the interests of profit-minded controllers to have their workers be as robot-like as possible. That is hard working, uncomplaining, ignorant and completely devoid of personal possessions or free will.

Regardless of the free will comments (which I have addressed ad nauseum in the PRP forum) this is not a bad concept of how a state can dominate and maximize profits, but I think that there is a bit of confusion in this thread because whereas Dante is talking about states, it seems that (and correct me if I am wrong) Emperor is talking more about corporate economics. If you ran your faction like a corporation (or with multiple corporations), you would have incentives, freedoms, personal belongings, etc. This is because you have to coax work out of the populace. To use words that I'm more familiar with, you have to use positive reinforcement. The problem with this is that planets in the Duniverse (as TMA noted) are fiefdoms, and "individual freedom" (that feeling when you can pick a positive reinforcer instead of constant aversives) must either be stomped out (the Harkonnen way) or directed into love, loyalty, and servitude for the ruling party (the Atreides way). The Atreides way, therefore, is relatively less efficient than the Harkonnen way, but the people are more likely to be loyal because, in the words of Machiavelli, they love the prince (or in this case, the Duke).

[Emperor Harkonnen]

So why must individual freedom be stomped out or directed into loyalty?

The problem here is of course if people want democracy, they will riot. But I would presume this is a larger risk in a state where people have lower standards of living.

I am saying that a normal state that wants as much income as possible should allow freedom to its individuals, and care for it's individuals. The rational would be to run the state like a corporation, where only profits matter and where they are maximized, which seems to be the goal for both house atreides and harkonnen in the novel.

I can't really see how it is so difficult to understand:

1: You want almost full employment, because unemployed people is a waste of resources since people are resources

2: You want every employee to produce as much as possible for as little cost as possible. (as mentioned before, this does not involve stepping on people)

The reasoning behind this, is that it allows better use of the work force (by treating all medical conditions free and allowing free education) and it motivates people to create stuff that allows for the economy to work in it's best state.

[Lord J]

Interesting, I clearly need to think about this post as I write it.

Here is the problem, I think. The Empire was formed prior to the relatively low cost of interplanetary travel (I'm pretty sure it's still not cheap), and the majority of subjects were probably unable to travel between planets (this stunts physical mobility, which is tied to economic/social mobility, if I remember Sociology 101 correctly ;) ). For there to be freedom of economic choice (i.e., worker's freedom) each planet would need to house multiple corporations. This would lead eventually to a threat to government as the rise of the military-industrial complex and individual corporate wars would throw the planet into turmoil (much like we have now with the various factions fighting over control of the Middle East). Alternatively, a single corporation could "control" the planet (much like a fiefdom), but individual workers cannot efficiently move between planets, and therefore select corporate entities that better suit their interests.

I feel like I'm probably missing something here, but it's all part of the discussion.

[athanasios]

If you fail to get the point it is not my fault. Anyway it is out of topic so I will keep silent.

[Emperor Harkonnen]

Yeah you are kind of missing the point, but it is still an interesting topic you are bringing up.

Just short my point was that running a country like the USA, which is probably the most capitalistic(IMO this is freedom since the government has little influence) country (I am speaking of nations with more than 5 million citizens) in the world, gives the highest income. USA has the highest GDP per capita of all countries in the world, given my assumptions. This is a proof that freedom maximizes value.

(Lol I sometimes find this forum so funyy, because you need to state EVERY LITTLE assumption in every post, orelse people will just start discussing the little "mistakes" in your logic, that really has no effect on the main subject, and you go off topic)

But your point was pretty interesting anyway, imagine a corporation in the future taking a planet and running it as a production facility of several goods, eventually turning into a government but still running it as an organization. I wonder how that would turn out, especially if there were stockholders on other planets as well that checked that the corporation really was maximizing profits.

[Lord J]

Never mind, I clearly am missing the point. :D

[gowachin]

I am just rereading Dune, and I have been thinking about how the culture is so different from current western culture.

It seems that almost all cultures in Dune(meaning the various planets/houses) are not concerned with individualism. Even Duke Leto does on some occations not value individual lives. I really find the little respect for individual human lives pretty disturbing. More important is family, traditions and especially honour. But is honour rational? In my opinion it often isn't. Why would they care so much about it. having Mentats and BG who certainly should be more concerned with what is rational.

Any thoughts on this?

If the BG and Mentats were real people and organizations... they probably would be more rational. But they're not real people, they're not even people... they're characters. Having characters act rational (or trying to) all the time would make for a boring story. Honor, revenge, the lives of royal families, traditions (or the breaking of them)... people (real people) like these things in stories. It makes the story bigger, better for many readers.

I'm not trying to be flippant... I just don't know if the concepts Emperor H is trying to explore can be really connected to a story like Dune, because characters have to be bigger, more intense, more emotional than real people (or real countries, or real planets). Take Duncan for example... he's such a great character, but I would find his emotions (and his homophobia) tiresome as a real person.