Dune-isms For Our Times

In honor of the general state of affairs, I present the following:



From Dune Messiah:



"Empires do not suffer emptiness of purpose at the time of their creation. It is when they have become established that aims are lost and replaced by vague ritual."



From Children of Dune, that paean to collapsed empires and failed dreams:



"A large populace held in check by a small but powerful force is quite a common situation in our universe. And we know the major conditions wherein this large populace may turn upon its keepers--

One: When they find a leader. This is the most volatile threat to the powerful; they must retain control of leaders.

Two: When the populace recognizes its chains. Keep the populace blind and unquestioning.

Three: When the populace perceives a hope of escape from bondage. They must never even believe that escape is possible!"



"Governments, if they endure, always tend increasingly toward aristocratic forms. No government in history has been known to evade this pattern. And as the aristocracy develops, government tends more and more to act exclusively in the interests of the ruling class-- whether that class be hereditary royalty, oligarchs or financial empires, or entrenched bureaucracy."



"In all major socializing forces you will find an underlying movement to gain and maintain power through the use of words. From witch doctor to priest to bureaucrat it is all the same. A governed populace must be conditioned to accept power-words as actual things, to confuse the symbolized system with the tangible universe. In the maintenance of such a power structure, certain symbols are kept out of the reach of the common understanding-- symbols such as those dealing with economic manipulation or those which define the local interpretation of sanity. Symbol-secrecy of this form leads to the development of fragmented sub-languages, each being a signal that its users are accumulating some form of power."



"People, not commercial organizations or chains of command, are what make great civilizations work. Every civilization depends upon the quality of the individuals it produces. If you over-organize humans, over-legalize them, suppress their urge to greatess-- they cannot work and their civilization collapses."