B (62:58)
From Geico, you know, save 15% on the insurance. Progressiva. So this is again, to the bureaucracy. It evolved. They've given it a label. They're like, oh, yeah, are we going to initiate this big red button that we've, like, programmed and spent all this time thinking about? And it's like. Or just do something new. And that's her two choices, right? It's. It's stick with the old, do the thing that's been working for thousands and thousands of years but is now very obviously not working, or do something new. Take a chance, act in the chaotic present and launch the order. The Bene Gesserit and in many ways the only hope for humanity. Because if the Bene Gesserit don't do anything, the Honored Matre are very likely going to drag humanity down with them. Now, it is worth kind of considering the possibility that like, there are enough people out there in the scattering that humanity broadly is safe, the Golden Path is intact. But this old Imperium, that doesn't mean the old Imperium has no value. And we're talking about trillions of lives. So it's like she is making a decision for trillions of lives, right? And it is. And again, it's like, do you then throw humanity, all trillions and trillions of humans into an unknown tomorrow by your own single handed decisions? It's insane. And both paths, to be clear, risk annihilation. There is no historical precedent that she can lean on. She can't look back and go, oh yeah, we know that this is going to happen. And the fucking twist of it all is that she has prescience. She has some prescience, but she also knows not to use it. She's learned that lesson from Paul and from Leto too. Quote, I could lock our future into unchanging form. Muad'dib and his tyrant son did that. And the tyrant spent 3,500 years extricating us. End quote. So her Sea Child and her heresy, it does put her at like an advantaged position in this case. I do think that she is like exactly the right person to steer the Bene Gesserit at this moment. But also among all of this, she's cognizant of her Atreides lineage. We got this fascinating quote today about the Atreides. Atreidesian. Atreidesian gesture. Yeah, the idea of like the grand gestures where you become a story for all time. Paul's grandfather dying on the horns of a Seleucin bull to thousands of cheering and then screaming onlookers. It's like, what an insane thing. And people still talk about it thousands and thousands of years later. Is she going to be like those other Atreides people, like Paul who fucking walked into the desert, just disappeared a God into the sand, and then later came back alive and then got beaten to death by priests? Or like Leto, you know, who was literally a God shot from a bridge and then exploded into a pile of fish, you know, like, what is she gonna do? You know, is she going to do something right? Is she going to launch humanity into this unknown tomorrow for it only to turn out that she was writing a Good story. Being a fun character in a cool story. There's a Tradesian gesture only to doom humanity and nothing else. Is that the instinct? Is that the pull? It's a weakness. Duncan says she's cognizant of herself as an Atreides. She wrote the Atreides Manifesto, after all. She's also uniquely human. I wanted to point this out. She talks. I think o', Draid, more than almost any other Bene Gesserit character that we meet in this book and in the previous, is so present. And she loves the Van Gogh painting. She comments on the overcooked quality of her food. She is recognizing the immediate now. And she's whistling. She sings to herself. She likes music. She likes poetry. She. She loves and doesn't let that get beaten out of her by Bene Gesserit teachings, which also makes her more aware of what's at stake. Someone like Balanda could push a button to doom a trillion people or whatever. Because Balanda's thinking in archives and terms and strategy and chess pieces and all of that. I think o' Draid thinks about all the human stories and the life and the mystery. She has pity even for the Honored Matre. But nevertheless, it is important that she do something. She has to do something. And we see her as she walks out among the cows. You know, Blonda is about to figure out whatever her plan is. She, you know, she says, blonda is going to know by morning what I'm planning to do. So here we are with the cows under the starlight, enjoying the frost of the night.
