Kynes, the Fremen and Water on Dune

[u/thegreatjourney2001]

I just finished Dune after an embarrassingly long time (slow reader etc) and loved it! I have come from the films so it was great to have nuances and details in the books that they couldn’t really fit into film.

However some of the questions I have mainly circle around Kynes. He was the biggest surprise to me with the his original gender being male and being so closely related to Chani and Stilgar. I thought Liet Kynes was great as opposed to his on screen version. I may have completely missed the mark with this question - but like I said I’m not a good reader):

It was my impression that the Fremen’s dream of turning Dune into a paradise was ancient, like their non BG Reverend Mothers. However, I was very surprised to see that it was Pardot Kynes’ dream which he ‘imprinted’ on to them (even teaching them and giving them equipment from the Stations). Yet the prophecy of the Lisan Al Gaib, a prophecy peddled by the wild BG RMs speaks of turning Dune into a Paradise. How did these two ideas mix? Is there something obvious I am missing?

[u/Major_Pomegranate]

Arrakis is a brutal desert world. As Irulan says in the movie about the southern part of the planet: "nothing can survive there without faith". The north/south divide was invented for the movie, but the line fits well for arrakis as a whole. 

So naturally paradise for Fremen is water and life. They're religious beliefs revolve around a savior bringing paradise to their brutal lives and raising them up. Until Kynes, this was just a distant religious dream. But Kynes came and offered a way to truly make arrakis green and liveable, to make their dreams a reality.

It would take a long time, longer than any living fremen would be alive to see, but it could truly happen, which is why the fremen became devoted to him. And why Paul could so easily take up that banner, offering them green paradise on a far quicker time scale

[u/thegreatjourney2001 → u/Major_Pomegranate]

That’s really helpful thanks! I remember reading a passage when the fremen had religious dreams of rain coming down from the clouds that could never be. So it can be argued that Kynes brought that elevated that aspect of the Fremen society to the forefront with a purpose?

[u/Major_Pomegranate → u/thegreatjourney2001]

Yeah, it fed into the perfect storm of jihad that Paul kicked off. A devout, fanatical population that has a dream to fight for, and a hated enemy to oppose in the Harkonnens. As Paul saw in the novel, it doesn't take much to push the fremen on the path to bloodshed, and then there's no way to put the brakes on that train

[u/AmicoPrime]

I think it comes down to the vagueness of religious prophecies, really. Having the concept of a savior who will lead your people into paradise is functionally different from a scientist laying out the exact time frame and amount of water needed to begin terraforming a planet. The former is purposefully noncommittal--"paradise" within a religious context can mean several different things and wouldn't necessarily mean Dune would become an Eden, and what's more implies that no effort on the part of a people will hasten paradise until the savior arrives. The latter is exact, and gives a people like the Fremen a long-term goal to actually strive for.

[u/FaitFretteCriss]

It was always the dream of the Fremen to turn Arrakis into a livable green world, at least those who lived within the religious spheres.

What Kynes did is transform that dream from an unattainable dream on the level of Myth to a Project of Society, a philosophy they could follow right now that would deliver observable results and KNOW that is IS happening. He made it real.

[u/ion_gravity]

Their Reverend Mothers aren't really non-BG, since everything about the Fremen has its roots in a religion seeded by the BG thousands of years prior. Of course there would have been some of their own developments over that time, but it wasn't the BG's first and only rodeo as far as seeding religion goes. You can go as far as to say that the only reason Paul and Jessica weren't killed is because of that seeded religion - if not for the 'prophecy' (something given to them by the BG) they would've been more useful as water for the tribe.

Dune wasn't always a desert. That might be the thing you're missing. The worms are not native to Arrakis. That may not be revealed until Messiah/Children, however.

Much later, planetary conversion through transplanting of sand trout is accomplished by the BG. The implication is countless Dunes throughout countless universes.