Quote:
Originally Posted by Astromancer
Quote:
Originally Posted by jason taylor View Post
I'm pretty sure the Bene Gesserit was mostly an evil faction.
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I was describing them as a good/lively choice, not as women of virtue and saintly lives. I see them as brutal witches disguised as nuns. Still, although I see their technophobic, anti-democracy, brutally elitist, and profoundly dishonest behavior as evil, |
Technophobic the Bene Gesserit are
not. In the first novel, Reverend Mother Mohiam actually comments that the bad situation the Empire finds itself in is compounded by the technophobia of the current culture. The BG use high-0speed computers in secret even during the height of the Butlerian prohibitions.
The BG are master manipulators, they'll use whatever cultural situation is in play at the time for their own ends, but they aren't themselves technophobic (they probably share some of the objections of the Butlerian Jihad to how the tech was being
used, though, just as Leto II himself did).
As for empires, the same empire can be a force for good, for evil, for law and order and for oppression, all at the same time, in different places, esp. if interstellar communication and travel are slow or expensive.
A good worked example of an empire that is benevolent 'from a certain POV' would be the Empire of Man in
The Mote In God's Eye and related Pournelle novels.
The EoM is dedicated, as a matter of official policy, to politically unifying the human race, by persuasion if possible, but by force where necessary. 'No' is not an acceptable long-term answer to a request to join the Empire.
The Empire is theocratic to a point (officially Christian) but allows extensive freedom of worship on the subject worlds.
They bring their conquered worlds law and order, with reasonably humane laws, and they bring advanced agriculture, medicine, and other benefits of high-technology civilization to worlds that in many cases have backslid to Stone Age levels.
OTOH, the large hereditary component in its constitution brings with it the potential for all the usual issues of hereditary authority, and the great noble families are always looking for new territories for younger offspring. The Empire will not permit secession, responding to the threat of such by force up to and including planetary sterilization.
Is the EoM good or evil? Oppressive or liberators? It depends very heavily on your point of view, as Kenobi might put it.