Title: Dune

Recommendation: 8.7/10

Summary:

With a fast-paced plotline, engaging characters, and delightful nuggets of wisdom, I can confirm this book lives up to its sci-fi legend status.

Jim Jones, the mass murderer who is infamously remembered in the phrase “don’t drink the kool-aid”, was a character that served as inspiration for Herbert’s masterful reminder of the dangerous deep-seated pattern of giving our lives over to leaders.

At the end of the day, leaders are humans, and their mistakes are often amplified by those that follow them. To face those mistakes is often a path that includes fear. Fear of what you’ll find and the potential ostracization from the community.

Fear is felt when thinking for yourself. This is a fear that should be faced.

Highlights:

I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration. I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path. Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain.

Deep in the human unconscious is a pervasive need for a logical universe that makes sense. But the real universe is always one step beyond logic.

What do you despise? By this are you truly known.

A world is supported by four things 1) learning of wise 2) justice of the great 3) prayers of the righteous 4) valor of brave. But all are nothing without a ruler who knows the art of ruling.

The meeting between ignorance and knowledge, between brutality and culture – it begins in the dignity with which we treat our dead.