Public Administration through the Lens of Frank Herbert’s “Dune” Series

By

Patricia Bunker

Culture of Formal Work Organizations

PADM 9070 Fall 2013

November 25, 2013

Dr. Lee Allen

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“Bureaucracy develops the more perfectly, the more it is “dehumanized,” the more completely it

succeeds in eliminating from official business love, hatred, and all the purely personal, irrational

and emotional elements which escape calculation.”

Max Weber (Farmer,2005,177)

Introduction

David John Farmer opens Chapter 17 of his book, “To Kill The King: Post-Traditional

Governance and Bureaucracy”, with the above quote from Max Weber. I chose this quote to

open this essay on public administrative truths as seen in Frank Herbert’s Dune series because, to

me, the politics and policies of Dune, Children of Dune, and Dune Messiah, can be seen both in

reference to Max Weber’s philosophy and as the antithesis of Weber’s philosophy. Accordingly,

this essay will examine each of Weber’s main principles in the light of the political realm and

bureaucracy of the planet Arrakis and the empire to which it belongs. In addition, the societal

structure of the Dune worlds will also be examined in relationship to Herbert Simon’s “proverbs

of administration” (Simon, 53) and Woodrow Wilson’s timeless essay on administration from

November, 1886 will be reviewed because of its pertinence to American public administration

and comparisons will also be drawn between the philosophy of Weber and of his predecessor,

Georg Hegel. Lastly, Friedrich Nietzche’s influence on Herbert’s novels will be examined.

The Imperium

In order to understand the bureaucracy of Dune, it is helpful to first look at the structure of the

empire itself. At the top of the bureaucratic pyramid (Figure 1) sat House Corrino, the Imperial

House. Ruled by House Corrino, the most prominent houses in the novel were the House

Atreides which was the house of Duke Leto I; his wife, Bene-Gesserit Jessica; his son, Paul, and

daughter Alia; and grandchildren, Leto II and Ghanima; the House Harkonnen with primary

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characters Baron Vladimar Harkonnen and his nephew, Feyd-Rautha Harkonnen; and the House

Fenring, with primary characters Baron Hasimir Fenring and his wife, Bene-Gesserit Lady

Margot Fenring.

In between the Imperial House, ruled by Padishah Shaddam Corrino IV, and the other

houses, sat the Landsraad, a council of the ruling houses. While all houses held seats in the

Landsraad, the House Corrino held controlling voting interest. Also important to note were the

Sardukar, the military force of the House Corrino. The Sardukar were of such overwhelming

strength that they were a source of power and control for House Corrino.

Figure 1

CHOAM House Corrino

Sardukar Landsraad

House Altreides

Fremen

House Fenring

House Harkonnen

Space Guild

Gild

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Faufreluches

In “Terminology of the Imperium”, an appendix to the original Dune, Herbert defines the

term “faufreluches” as “the rigid rule of class distinction enforced by the Imperium. ‘A place for

every man and every man in his place’ (Herbert, 1965, 501). This clear definition is important in

an effort to understand the politics of the Dune empire because it sets the standards for a society

that has returned, after the Butlerian Jihad, to a feudal society where rank and privilege comes as

a birthright and where women, including the highly trained Bene Gesserit, have little value.

Sons follow in the footsteps of their fathers and status is determined by birth, not ability. Jessica

succinctly states this during a conversation with Thufir when she says, “Humans live best when

each has his own place, when each knows where he belongs in the scheme of things” (Herbert,

1965, 150). Despite her advanced Bene Gesserit training, Jessica understood her place as consort

to the Duke. She might not have emotionally accepted it but she knew it logically and lived

within that structure. DiTomasso, in discussing the “tyranny of oversimplification”, points out

that this structure is so rigid that even those houses or groups with highly developed security and

intelligence agents seem to have little knowledge of the other groups (DiTomasso, 314).

Hierarchical Structure

Weber stressed a formal hierarchical structure. His ideal was a top down approach where

control stemmed from the top and came down through a pyramidal structure with each level

reporting and accountable to the level directly above them. Roles would be clearly defined by a

set of rules and laws and the responsibility of public administrators would be to enforce those

rules and laws (Aschner; Johnston; Pfiffner; Samier). In discussing this hierarchical structure,

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Aschner cites Weber, stating, “if this relationship is to survive, ‘those who are ruled over must

always acquiesce in the authority that is claimed by the rulers of the day.’” (145).

Herbert portrays this acquiescence throughout Dune. Jessica and the other Bene-Gesserit

Ladies acquiesce to their leadership, accepting their positions as consorts; accepting, as Jessica

did, the rule of their order even though they knew that it meant sorrow in their personal live;

accepting the test of the gom-jabbar, even though she knew there was a possibility that it might

bring about the death of her beloved son (Herbert, 1965,5-10). Jessica herself acknowledges her

conditioning to the acceptance of these rules. When Paul has defeated Jamis and Jessica senses

Paul’s infatuation with Chani, she thinks to herself, “One of these desert women would not do as

a wife to a Duke…I can think of the marital needs of royalty without once weighing my own

concubinage” (Herbert, 1965,302).

The Fremen acquiesce to the rule of their order, with the spoils of a confrontation

belonging to the victor. Paul defeats Jamis and is told by Chani that “Combat water belongs to

the winner” (Herbert, 1965, 302). While Paul’s first inclination is to refuse, Jessica realizes that,

on Arrakis, water is power and power is of utmost importance.

Indeed, there would be no Dune at all without the acquiescence of Paul’s father, Duke

Leto I, to the power of the Imperium. It is the Imperium that orders Leto to Arrakis. Notices

posted across Arrakis read “Our Sublime Padishah Emperor has charged me to take possession

of this planet and end all dispute” (Herbert, 1965, 77). While Leto did as he was ordered, he was

filled with rage that this move had almost cost him the life of his son. The emperor himself had

no respect for the people of Arrakis. In a note to Leto, he referred to them as “barbarians whose

dearest dream is to live outside the ordered security of the faufreluches” (78). For, while the

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Fremen honored their own system of laws and rules, they wished nothing more than freedom

from the hierarchy of the Empire.

However, Herbert is also aware of the problems that can arise from hierarchy. As we

move from Dune into Dune Messiah and Children of Dune, we watch the disintegration of the

society as more and more corruption seeps in. A chapter in Children of Dune begins with a

quote from Politics as Repeat Phenomenon:Bene Gesserit Training Manual:

“Governments, if the endure, always tend increasingly toward aristocratic forms,

No government in history has been known to evade this pattern. And as the

aristrocracy develops, government tends more and more to act exclusively in the

interests of the ruling class-whether that class be hereditary royalty, oligarchs of

financial empires, or entrenched bureaucracy.” (Herbert, 1981,190).

The plot of Children of Dune revolves around the corruption of Paul’s sister Alia and the

rise to power of Paul’s son, Leto II. In Alia, Herbert had a ruler who ruled with one interest only

– that which benefited her own goals. By this point in the series, the Atreides family was not

only hereditary royalty, but also oligarchs of financial empires with ruling interest in CHOAM

and control over the Dune universe. The rise to power of Leto II brought an end to Alia’s

corruption but led to a domination that promised to change the entire universe (Herbert, 1981).

Freedom

While Weber recognized the importance of hierarchy and structure, he also understood

the restrictions that structure placed on human freedoms. David John Farmer quotes Weber in

Chapter 3 of To Kill the King (Farmer, 2005, 33).

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“The great question is. . . what can we oppose to this machinery in order to keep a portion

of mankind free from this parceling-out of the soul, from this supreme mastery of the

bureaucratic way of life.”

In both To Kill the King and Tijsterman and Overeem’s essay “Escaping the Iron Cage: Weber

and Hegel on Bureaucracy and Freedom”, we find mention of the differences between Hegel and

Weber on this topic of freedom. While Hegel saw freedom as a key element of his philosophy,

Weber saw freedom as how it related to the rule of law. He accepted concepts such as economic

freedom to control private property and freedom that was derived from constitutional law and

regulations yet, at the same time, believed that freedom stemmed from personal choice and

decisions (Tijsterman, 2008,76). Scott Gale and Ralph Hummel, on the other hand saw not

contrasts between Hegel and Weber, but an “echoing Hegel’s explicit thought, if not word for

word then issue by issue and point by point (409) of Hegel in Weber’s works.

Herbert portrays Weber’s views on personal choice throughout Dune and its sequels.

Duke Leto I made personal choices. Princess Irulan comments, “…Or is it possible he

deliberately sacrificed himself that his son might find a better life?” (Herbert, 1965, 77). Jessica

made a personal choice to train her son in the ways of the Bene-Gesserit, thus paving the way for

him to become the Kwisatz Haderach, the male Bene Gesserit who would be able to see both the

past and the future. Paul made the choice to become the “Maud’Dib”, the savior whom his

people sought, not because it was what he would personally have chosen for his life but to try

and save his people from a fate that only he could see – a decision that ultimately destroyed him.

In an essay entitled “Just What Do You Do with the Entire Human Race Anyway?”, Greg

Littmann examines this problem as Paul, Alia, and Leto II were faced with it (Nicholas, 2011,

103-119). Littmann questions why, along with other characters such as Baron Harkoness, all are

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so attracted to power and how that attraction affects their personal decisions. Littmann looks at

the issue through the eyes of philosophers like Socrates and Aristotle but could have just as well

examined this question in light of Weber’s philosophy. Baron Harkoness made his choices

based only on what he thought would bring him more power and wealth. He had no regard for

how his decisions affected his subjects. Alia attempted to justify her decisions but was truly

corrupted by power and was eventually driven out of her mind and committed suicide. Paul,

while giving up his life to serve his people, was still an oppressive ruler who fought against the

attempts to set him up as “God” but had little concern for how he impacted the lives around him

on a short term basis. He was driven by a goal of avoiding a future that only he could see. Leto

II gave up even his humanity in an effort to accomplish what his father had not been able to

accomplish. He, too, however, was oppressive and ruled with no real concern for freedom or

democracy and accepted the role of “God” that his father had fought against. Both Leto II and

Paul felt that the ends justified the means, a view that I do not find reflective of Weber’s

philosophy.

Function and Organization

Another universal principle espoused by Weber was that skills or type of work

determined the organizational structure. This principle is reflected in Herbert’s works through

the various societies that formed the Dune empire. In addition to the Houses that were formed by

the nobility, other societies that were important in the novels were the Suk Physicians, the Bene-

Gesserits, the Mentats, the Space Guild, the Choam, the Ixians, and the Sardaukar, and the

Fremen. Each of these societies or organizations was defined by their specific skill or job.

The Suk Physicians were valued not only because of their skills in advanced medicine but

also because of their conditioning that supposedly made it impossible for these physicians to

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harm those they cared for (Herbert, 1965,18). Although Herbert does not give much detail on

the Suk Physicians, it is implied that this society is, like most organizations in Dune, a male-

dominated field.

The Space Guild represented financial control of the Dune universe. Defined by Herbert

as “one leg of the political tripod maintaining the Great Convention” (503), the Guild controlled

all space travel, all commercial transport, and also banking between the Houses and planets of

the Empire. The “Great Convention” was the set of rules that formed the basis of the truce

between the Guild, the Imperium, and the other Great Houses of the universe. The biggest

weakness of the Space Guild was that they were reliant on mélange. Not only were they

physically addicted to the drug, they relied on the spice to “‘see’ in an unspecified way” (Hand,

1985,25). This need gave House Atreides, who controlled the mélange on Dune, leverage over

the Guild.

Because of the ban on machines that replicated human knowledge, the Mentat society

was developed. This group also followed Weber’s structure of organization by specific skill or

knowledge. Male dominate as were most of the other organizations of Dune, the Mentats filled

the need for logical thought and accurate computational skills not available due to the Orange

Bible’s restriction on machines that replicated the human mind.

The Ixian society filled a need in the Dune organizational construct for mechanical skills.

This society, where sons followed in the footsteps of their fathers, was comprised of those who

excelled in the design and manufacture of machinery. Although held back to some extent by the

restrictions of the Orange Bible, the Ixians still managed to invent incredible machinery,

particularly miniaturizations.

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The Sardaukar were the military arm of the Padishah Emperor. Trained from infancy,

they were a killing machine that used terror to control those whom the Emperor set them against.

They were expert fighters with no moral base and absolute loyalty to the Emperor and, much like

the jihadists of today, were willing to undertake suicide missions for their cause.

The Bene Gesserit was the one organization that was female. These women, who sought

to control their society through a breeding program that they believed would produce a leader

who they could control, were schooled in both mental and physical traits that gave them a

substantial amount of control. In particular, they relied on “Voice”, a training which equipped

them to modulate their voice in such a manner that they were able to control others just through

their voice.

The Fremen were the desert nomads. While subjects of the ruling house on Arrakis, they

maintained their own structure and organization with their own rules and standards for those who

lived as part of their society. At the beginning of the Atreides rule on Arrakis, the Fremen were

the only men who were able to harness and ride the sandworms. As such, they controlled a very

important part of the planet. A patriarchic society, they considered women as primarily

possessions and wives of those who were defeated in contests were awarded to the victors along

with other possessions.

Lastly, the CHOAM or Combine Honnete Ober Advancer Mercantiles, was the

organization that controlled trade in the Empire. Not a standalone organization, CHOAM was a

trifecta of the Emperor and other Great Houses in partnership with the Guild and the Bene

Gesserit. Because it included the Guild who controlled transportation, the Bene Gesserit who

could use Voice to control others, and the Emperor and Great Houses which controlled the other

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resources of the universe, this organization provided a certain balance for the universe as a

whole. However, Paul, in his incarnation as The Preacher, said in a letter to CHOAM,

“What you of the CHOAM directorate seem unable to understand is that you seldom

find real loyalties in commerce. . . .Men must want to do things out of their own

innermost drives. People, not commercial organizations or chains of command, are what

make great civilizations work. . . . If you over-organize humans, over-legalize them,

suppress their urge to greatness – they cannot work and their civilization collapses.

(Herbert, 1981,306)

“Law of small number”

Frank Furedi wrote that Weber advocated the “law of small number”, the belief that

public life is always dominated by small networks of people” (Furedi, 126). That certainly held

true in Dune, where the elite ruled and the majority of the populace had little or no choice but to

comply. Weber did not believe that the general populace could effectively lead or govern. He

did have a strong affinity for charismatic leaders. The Dune series certainly contained evidence

of charismatic leaders, beginning with Duke Leto I. The Duke was known as “Leto the Just”.

He was respected by the men who followed him. When he questioned one of his men as to

whether he regretted following him to Arrakis, the man responded “No, Sire. You couldn’t turn

and I could do nought but follow you.” (Herbert, 1965,86). However, Leto could also be

ruthless, ordering Thufir, his Mentat assassin, to “forge certificates of allegiance” for over 250

Harkonnen loyalists whom the Atreides have eliminated, taking everything away from their

families and making it look legal. And, while Leto seems to love his people, he takes them,

including his beloved Jessica and son Paul, to a world that he knows in his heart is dangerous

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and will destroy any quality of life that they have, in order to further the cause of his family and

the Atreides name

Paul Atreides, later Maud’Dib, also became a charismatic leader. Some of Paul’s

charisma developed because of his personal characteristics while some of his charisma was

attributable to what he was – a trained warrior, a noble by birthright, the Kwisatz Haderach by

breeding and Bene Gesserit training. Paul’s son, Leto II, also becomes a charismatic leader with

a force of personality that overshadows his father and overwhelms the influence of his

grandmother, aunt and sister. Leto II transforms himself, literally as well as figuratively, into the

sandworm and, at the same time, a God whose tyrannical rule will last for centuries (Herbert,

1981).

Lady Jessica, while a Bene Gesserit whose order claims to serve others, certainly is

responsible for manipulating others and the Bene Gesserit order as a whole has one main purpose

– to manipulate the entire human race through their breeding program. Jessica does, however,

realize this and resents it.

In “The Prince on Arrakis: Frank Herbert’s Dialogue with Machiavelli”, Kevin Mulcahy

points out that Baron Harkonenn contrives a scheme which comes straight from Machiavelli’s

The Prince. Harkonenn will use any means necessary, no matter how evil or brutal, to secure the

planet Arrakis for his own personal profit. He is evil incarnate. However, Mulcahy sees the

importance to this portrayal not in contrast between the Atreides and the Harkonenns but in “the

disturbing similarity between the two” (Mulcahy, 25). Duke Leto, Paul, and Leto II all strive for

good but often fall back on evil and justification that the ends justify the means.

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Ideal-Types

Margaret Stout examined Weber’s approach of ideal-types relative to public

administration. In her article, “Revisiting the (Lost) Art of Ideal-Typing in Public

Administration”, Stout discusses Weber’s use of ideal-typing to formulate “four bases of

legitimate power” and his consequent resolution of those bases into “three types of authority:

rational, traditional, and charismatic” (Stout, 504). Table 1 below shows those three authority

types, the legitimacy power base associated with it, and an example of how it is evidenced in

Dune.

Table 1

Authority

Type

Power Base Dune Example(s)

Rational Legality & right to exercise authority Landstraad – As a type of League of

Nations, the Landstraad gave

legitimacy to the ruling houses

Traditional Authority comes from belief in the way

things have been in the past

The Royal Houses – House Corrino,

House Atreides, even House

Harkonenn – all ruled by hereditary

succession

Charismatic The character of the person in power –

heroism, or simply the ability to sway

others to your side through your words

and actions

The House Atreides – Duke Leto I,

Paul, Leto II, Lady Jessica – all

exhibited charismatic leadership

Herbert demonstrates in Dune and the Dune sequels that the charismatic authority type

often prevails, at least over a period of time, because charismatic leaders are able to attract the

almost fanatical support of their followers. The problem, from my viewpoint, of charismatic

authority is that the support may only last until the next, more charismatic leader comes along.

Duke Leto, although he had been removed from power by assassination, not the rise in power of

his son, was quickly forgotten as the people swarmed to support a new, promised savior in the

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charismatic Paul. Paul, in turn, was quickly overshadowed when his son, Leto II, rose to power

and assumed an even more God-like persona both in his own mind and in the minds of his

followers.

Weber’s “Iron Cage” and Simon’s “Proverbs”

While Weber referred to democracy as an “iron cage” (Kalberg, 178), Herbert Simon

sees many of the same points as “proverbs” (Simon, 53). Kalberg quotes from Weber’s

“Parliament and Government in a Reconstructed Germany”:

The bureaucratic organization, with its specialization of trained skills,

its delineation of competencies, its rules and hierarchical relations of

obedience…is…in the process of erecting a cage of bondage which

persons – lacking all powers of resistance-will perhaps one day be

forced to inhabit” (Kalberg, 179).

Herbert’s Dune universe epitomized this structure. The feudal society, structured on rule by

hereditary succession and with entire planets and populations devoted to one specific highly

trained skill, was truly an “iron cage”, trapping all those who inhabited it. The only way out was

to overpower another ruling family as Paul did in the Jihad. However, this concept of the iron

cage clearly comes to the forefront in a later Dune sequel, God Emperor of Dune, when Leto II

completes his transformation into the sandworm with the Godhead displayed below in Figure 2

(Herbert, 1983).

This picture, courtesy of Rick Matheny, and downloaded from

http://dune.wikia.com/wiki/Leto_Atreides_II/XD, portrays Leto II encased in the

constricting skin of the sandworm, a true “iron cage”, having abdicated his humanity

for the vision of saving his people from the corruption and decay of the downward

spiraling empire.

Figure 2

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Weber vs. Simon

In 1946, Herbert Simon approached public administration as a series of proverbs.

Interestingly, these proverbs, while stated differently, were obviously based on Weber’s

principles. Shown below in Figure 3 is a diagram of Weber’s six principles of public

administration while next to it is a table comparing Simon’s “proverbs” (Simon, 1946, 53-67).

with those principles. The only Weber principle that Simon did not address with his proverbs

was the principle of impersonality. It is also the only principle not as yet addressed in this paper.

Table 2

Woodrow Wilson

On November 1, 1886, Woodrow Wilson wrote an essay titled “The Study of

Administration” In that essay, in discussing past governments, he stated “Government went

about imperatively and compelled men, without thought of consulting their wishes. . . . No one

who possessed power was long at a loss how to use it. The great and only question was: Who

shall possess it?” (Wilson, 1886,2). This was also true of the Dune universe. Neither the

Padishah or any of the leaders of the ruling houses gave any thought to consulting those whom

they ruled. The Padishah ordered Duke Leto I to go to Arrakis. While Leto contemplated not

Simon Weber

Specialization

of the task

Technical

Qualifications

Hierarchy of

authority

Hierarchichal

Structure

Grouping for

efficiency

and control

Organization by

function

Span of

control

Accomplished by

Documentation

and

Rules/Regulations Figure 3

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obeying the Emperor, taking his family and escaping the fate he knew awaited him, he did not

act on his thoughts. The rule of the Emperor was strong. Thufir Hawat summed it up succinctly

when he was asked by Paul, why, knowing the risks, his father was still taking them to Arrakis.

Hawat said, “Because the Emperor ordered it.”(Herbert, 1965, 30).

Wilson goes on to discuss the development of public opinion as the “first principle of

government” (Wilson, 5). While that may hold true for modern day democracies, it certainly did

not apply to Dune. Wilson makes two points that, I believe, are key to understanding why the

governments of the Dune series never make the progression to freedom and liberty for their

people. First, Wilson says,

The principles that rule within the man, or the constitution,

are the vital springs of liberty or servitude. Because independence and

subjection are without chains, are lightened by every easy-working device of

considerate, paternal government, they are not thereby transformed into

liberty. Liberty cannot live apart from constitutional principle; and no

administration, however perfect and liberal in its methods, can give men

more than a poor counterfeit of liberty if it rest upon illiberal principles of

government (Wilson, 1866).

More importantly, Wilson asserts that “The ideal for us is a civil service cultured and self-

sufficient enough to act with sense and vigor, and yet so intimately connected with the popular

thought, by means of elections and constant public counsel, as to find arbitrariness of class spirit

quite out of the question” (Wilson). Herbert did not portray Wilson’s ideals in Dune. Instead,

he created empires ruled by men with a singular purpose – the control of power. Even under the

rule of House Atreides, in many ways the most benevolent of the rulers of this fictional universe,

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the constitutional principles that Wilson considered the bedrock of liberty were missing. There

was no basis for any form of democratic government.

Fifty years after Wilson’s insightful essay, Marshall Dimock revisited Wilson’s views on

public administration in an essay of his own for Political Science Quarterly. Dimock saw public

administration as dynamic rather than static. Based on the constitutional principles that Wilson

considered so critical, public administration should be an ongoing process of discovering not

only “what government can properly and successfully do” (Dimock, 1937,29) but also the most

efficient and cost effective manner of doing those things. Contrast this with Herbert’s

governments on Arrakis who often failed to consider or realized but ignored the high costs of

their actions, in terms of both the economy and human lives. Dimock does concede, however,

that bureaucracy will not be and cannot be expected to always be efficient. He states, “The

problem of administration is therefore to eradicate, if possible, those consequences of

bureaucracy which are undesirable” (Dimock, 1937, 39) and goes on to enumerate three

particular concerns: “inflexibility, disunity, unresponsiveness” (39). All three of these

characteristics were prevalent among the ruling class of the Dune universe.

A Modern Approach to Public Administration

While Hegel, Weber, Wilson and even Dimock wrote their treatises on public

administration many years ago, Polya Katsamunska, Ph.D. and associate professor at the Public

Administration and Regional Development of University of National & World Economy,

examined more modern approaches in 2012. He states, “The most important characteristic

shared by the earlier systems of administration is that they were ‘personal’, based on the loyalty

to a particular individual such as a king, a leader, a minister or a party, instead of being

‘impersonal’, based on legality and the loyalty to the organization and the state” (Katsamunska,

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2012, 76). The administrations portrayed in Dune and its sequels certainly fit this model.

Loyalty to the Padishah, the Dukes or Barons of the Noble Houses, the Reverend Mother of the

Bene Gesserit, the leaders of the Fremen tribes, and most importantly to Paul Maud’dib and

Leto II, the God Emperor was the theme that ran through the four novels from Dune to Dune

Messiah to Children of Dune and finally to God Emperor of Dune. Although the theme was

evident in Dune alone, following the story through all four of these books made it much clearer

to me.

In contrast to this model of administration, Katsamunska describes modern public

administration as more of a business orientation with an emphasis on “economy, efficiency and

effectiveness of government organizations” (78). He cites Al Gore’s “The Gore Report” for

“four key principles” for changing our government and administrative practices. These

principles included:

1. A results orientation with less accountability for rules and regulations and more

for outcomes.

2. Do more with less – a back to basics approach.

3. A customer orientation that puts customers as the focal point.

4. Employee empowerment so that employees are able to achieve these results.

The objective of governing based on these principles would be a more transparent and efficient

government that was responsive to the needs of its citizens. This model is certainly not evident

anywhere in Herbert’s Dune novels.

The Influences of Friedrich Nietzsche and the Role of Religion in the Herbert Novels

Although religion is not an element of universal administrative truths, personal religious

beliefs are the foundation for moral values and cannot help but influence judgments made by

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public administrators. Because of that, I have chosen to conclude this paper with a look at

religion in the Herbert series and that discussion would not be complete without an examination

of the philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche as I see it reflected in the novels.

While Herbert reveals only snippets of “truths” from the Orange Catholic Bible, it is clear

from the beginning that this document is the basis for religious thought as well as for rules and

laws in Herbert’s Imperium. In a conversation with the Bene Gesserit Reverend Mother at the

very beginning of Dune, Paul asks why the Bene Gesserit’s “test for humans” (Herbert,

1965,11). When the Reverend Mother responds, “Once men turned their thinking over to

machines in the hope that this would set them free. But that only permitted other men with

machines to enslave them.” Paul responds with a quote from the Orange Catholic Bible, “’Thou

shalt not make a machine in the likeness of a man’s mind.’” (11). While the Calvin and Hobbes

cartoon below makes light of this idea, the fear of machines that could think for men permeated

both the social and political structure of Dune, resulting in the development of the Mentats, the

Bene Gesserits, and the Spacing Guild and restricting the development of the Ixian society which

was responsible for the development of machines.

http://focusdeficit.tumblr.com/post/6133 1

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While the Orange Catholic Bible provides the frame of reference for much that occurs in

Dune, the religious fervor of the Bene Gesserits drives their quest for the breeding of the Kwisatz

Haderach, the male Bene Gesserit whose “organic mental powers would bridge space and time”

(Herbert, 1965, 506). They are willing to discard all normal convention and breed brother to

sister if that is what they need to do to achieve their end goal.

The Fremen are quickly willing to accept Paul as the Maud’dib, their savior and promised

one. I could not help but make a comparison between Paul of Arrakis and Apostle Paul of the

Christian religion. Paul the Apostle zealously persecuted followers of Jesus prior to his

conversion on the road to Damascus. He wandered in the desert for three years after his

conversion and returned to preach the message of Jesus as Son of God and as Savior of the

world. Paul of Arrakis, son of a man, was elevated to the role of Savior, but ended up

wandering in the desert of Arrakis, returning to civilization as The Preacher railing against the

political powers of his sister, Alia (Herbert, 1975).

Another comparison that can be drawn between the Herbert novels and Christianity lies

in the hierarchy of the religious figures as shown in Figure 4 below. While in Christianity, the

Supreme Being is God the Father, with Jesus the Son of God as his incarnation on Earth and

Joseph, the human father of Jesus, representative of mankind at the bottom of the structure,

Herbert appears to invert the positions of God the Father and Jesus the Son in the Dune series.

Duke Leto I, totally human with no aspirations to a God-like position, fathers Paul, who

reluctantly assumes the role of savior as Maud’dib and sacrifices himself for the good of his

people, as Jesus sacrificed himself for mankind. However, it is Leto II, son of Paul, who pays

the ultimate sacrifice, totally abandoning his humanity to become the sandtrout and the God

Emperor.

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Figure 4

So where does Nietzche fit in the picture? While the Bene Gesserit tested for humans

and saw humanity as the bridge between animals and the Kwisatz Haderach, Nietzsche saw

humanity as the bridge between animal and “overman” (Nietzsche). Herbert’s Dune series is an

epic about transition – in personal lives, in the life of the planet, in the transition from man to

God – and Nietzsche saw life as transition from man to animal to “overman”.

Conclusion

As public administrators, what can we learn from Herbert’s novels? In my opinion, we

can learn much about humanity. We can learn to be alert to our own inner striving and quest for

power – power that can as easily destroy as it can create. We can learn to value others as the

ruling classes of the Dune empire did not. Most importantly, we can learn to value our moral

structure and the importance of how we treat others as we make decisions that impact their lives.

Christianity

God the Father

Jesus, the Son of God

Man (represented by Joseph, father

of Jesus)

Religious Figures of Dune Empire

God Emperor (Leto II, son of Paul)

Paul, the Maud'dib and father of God

Emperor Leto II

Man (represented by Duke Leto I, father of Paul)

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Calvin and Hobbes are deeply troubled by the sins of the Dune universe. Let us always be

moved by the evil and sins in our world and do our best as public administrators to mitigate those

evils.

http://i2.wp.com/www.thegeeklikes.com/wp

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