Absolute idealist look on the politics and society, especially Heretics and Chapterhouse are horrible, taking straight potshots at socialism, despite socialism apparently not existing for at least 15 millenia anywhere. In earlier books at least Bene Gesserit had a cynical and duplicious but still materialist outlook. Last two are several steps down in quality all around, being constant stream of poor man zen conversations.
Though for a murican writer working in 60’s-80’s Herbert wasn’t really chuddy.
Though for a murican writer working in 60’s-80’s Herbert wasn’t really chuddy.
From what I heard, Herbert seems to be like a libertarian, although whether he was the bleeding heart time (a la Stranger in a Strange Land) or the fascist one (a la Starship Troopers), Idk…
I would said libertarian, main idea of all six books is “don’t trust prophets, tyrants, governments etc.”, but he sometimes stanned aristocracy in the greek meaning of the world*, in sense that he wrote that every single form of bureocracy (that is apparently every government) will deform into aristocracy so we could as well have good aristocracy like Leto I - although that might be ironic since after a second of applying historical materialism to Leto he seems like incredibly ambitious type who was just very good at PR.
He also liked weird system being caste system for the poors and feudalism plus capitalism for the rich. Plus some social darwinism here and there.
*Notably in 5 and especially 6 book which are clearly weakest and least consistent of the series, maybe because he was basically already dying writing them.
Absolute idealist look on the politics and society, especially Heretics and Chapterhouse are horrible, taking straight potshots at socialism, despite socialism apparently not existing for at least 15 millenia anywhere. In earlier books at least Bene Gesserit had a cynical and duplicious but still materialist outlook. Last two are several steps down in quality all around, being constant stream of poor man zen conversations.
Though for a murican writer working in 60’s-80’s Herbert wasn’t really chuddy.
From what I heard, Herbert seems to be like a libertarian, although whether he was the bleeding heart time (a la Stranger in a Strange Land) or the fascist one (a la Starship Troopers), Idk…
I would said libertarian, main idea of all six books is “don’t trust prophets, tyrants, governments etc.”, but he sometimes stanned aristocracy in the greek meaning of the world*, in sense that he wrote that every single form of bureocracy (that is apparently every government) will deform into aristocracy so we could as well have good aristocracy like Leto I - although that might be ironic since after a second of applying historical materialism to Leto he seems like incredibly ambitious type who was just very good at PR.
He also liked weird system being caste system for the poors and feudalism plus capitalism for the rich. Plus some social darwinism here and there.
*Notably in 5 and especially 6 book which are clearly weakest and least consistent of the series, maybe because he was basically already dying writing them.