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On the flip-side of our discussion though I want to bring up a “Character” from history that is very undude. King John of England earned the title “Lackland”very early in his life because his father King Henry III when he divided up his kingdom for his sons inheritance left nothing to John, giving England, Normandy, and Anjou to his eldest brother Henry the Younger, He gave Aquitaine to Richard, and Poitou to Geoffrey. For most of his life despite being the son of a king John had no property of his own and was never expected to become king. Eventually he did become king and held all the lands that had been given to his brothers. He gained this though through scheming and murder. Once he became king he faced setbacks and fought against what could have been seen as fate. If he had practiced Wu Wei he may have achieved his goals but instead through his fighting turned his friends against him and eventually his own people not to mention the condemnation of the Catholic Church. In all he is an excellent example of how to not be Dude.
I think those are both good examples of dude, the paleontologist Robert Bakker I would argue is also very dude especially when considering his contributions to the field of not only paleontology but also to skepticism. He and another Paleontologist named Jack Horner both worked on Jurassic Park as consultants. Dr. Allan Grant in the movie is based off of Horner and the paleontologist in the second movie The Lost World is based on Bakker. At the time of its release Bakker and Horner were arguing about whether or not the Tyrannosaurus rex was a scavenger or a predator. Horner actually pulled strings and managed to get the character based on Bakker eaten by the T-rex. When Bakker saw this he called Horner and said, “See, I told you they were predators.” The ability to laugh at oneself is to me very Dude but in his book the Dinosaur Heresies Bakker fought the ideas of the time that dinosaurs were slow moving cold blooded reptiles and as a result led to our newly rediscovered belief that dinosaurs were fast moving and warm blooded. If for nothing else I think he should count as a Dude for the skepticism shown in this book.
