552 lines
30 KiB
Plaintext
552 lines
30 KiB
Plaintext
I am the most ardent people-watcher who ever lived. I watch them inside me and
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outside. Past and present can mingle with odd impositions in me. And as the
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metamorphosis continues in my flesh wonderful things happen to my senses.
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It's as though I sensed everything in close-up. I have extremely acute hearing
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and vision, plus a sense of smell extraordinarily discriminating. I can detect
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and identify pheromones at three parts per million. I know. I have tested it.
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You cannot hide very much from my senses. I think it would horrify you what
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I can detect by smell alone. Your pheromones tell me what you are doing or are
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prepared to do. And gesture and posture! I stared for half a day once at an old
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man sitting on a bench in Arrakeen. He was a fifth-generation descendant of
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Stilgar the Naib and did not even know it. I studied the angle of his neck,
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the skin flaps below his chin, the cracked lips and moistness about his
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nostrils, the pores behind his ears, the wisps of gray hair which crept from
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beneath the hood of his antique stillsuit. Not once did he detect that he was
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being watched. Hah! Stilgar would have known it in a second or two. But this
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old man was just waiting for someone who never came. He got up finally and
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tottered off. He was very stiff after all of that sitting. I knew I would
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never see him in the flesh again. He was that near death and his water was
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sure to be wasted. Well, that no longer mattered.
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-- The Stolen Journals
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%
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Oh, the landscapes I have seen! And the people! The far wanderings of the
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Fremen and all the rest of it. Even back through the myths to Terra. Oh, the
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lessons in astronomy and intrigue, the migrations, the disheveled flights, the
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leg aching and lung-aching runs through so many nights on all of those cosmic
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specks where we have defended our transient possession. I tell you we are a
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marvel and my memories leave no doubt of this.
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-- The Stolen Journals
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%
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Sometimes I indulge myself in safaris which no other being may take. I strike
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inward along the axis of my memories. Like a schoolchild reporting on a
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vacation trip, I take up my subject. Let it be . . . female intellectuals!
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I course backward into the ocean which is my ancestors. I am a great winged
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fish in the depths. The mouth of my awareness opens and I scoop them up!
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Sometimes... sometimes I hunt out specific persons recorded in our histories.
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What a private joy to relive the life of such a one while I mock the academic
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pretentions which supposedly formed a biography.
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-- The Stolen Journals
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%
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You, the first person to encounter my chronicles for at least four thousand
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years, beware. Do not feel honored by your primacy in reading the revelations
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of my Ixian storehouse. You will find much pain in it. Other than the few
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glimpses required to assure me that the Golden Path continued. I never wanted
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to peer beyond those four millennia. Therefore, I am not sure what the events
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in my journals may signify to your times. I only know that my journals have
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suffered oblivion and that the events which I recount have undoubtedly been
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submitted to historical distortion for eons. I assure you that the ability
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to view our futures can become a bore. Even to be thought of as a god,
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as I certainly was, can become ultimately boring. It has occurred to me
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more than once that holy boredom is good and sufficient reason for the
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invention of free will.
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-- Inscription on the storehouse at bar-es-Balat
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%
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I tell you this in the hope that it will help you understand why I ad as I do
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in the full knowledge that great forces accumulate in my Empire with but one
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wish-the wish to destroy me. You who read these words may know full well what
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actually happened, but I doubt that you understand it.
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-- The Stolen Journals
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%
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Some say I have no conscience. How false they are, even to themselves.
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I am the only conscience which has ever existed. As wine retains the perfume
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of its cask, I retain the essence of my most ancient genesis, and that is
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the seed of conscience. That is what makes me holy. I am God because I am
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the only one who really knows his heredity!
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-- The Stolen Journals
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%
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You must remember that I have at my internal demand every expertise known to
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our history. This is the fund of energy I -draw upon when I address the
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mentality of war. If you have not heard the moaning cries of the wounded and
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the dying, you do not know about war. I have heard those cries in such numbers
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that they haunt me. I have cried out myself in the aftermath of battle. I have
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suffered wounds in every epoch-wounds from fist and club and rock, from
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shell-studded limb and bronze sword, from the mace and the cannon, from arrows
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and lasguns and the silent smothering of atomic dust, from biological invasions
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which blacken the tongue and drown the lungs, from the swift gush of flame and
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the silent working of slow poisons. . . and more I will not recount! I have
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seen and felt them all. To those who dare ask why I behave as I do, I say: With
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my memories, I can do nothing else. I am not a coward and once I was human.
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-- The Stolen Journals
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%
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Your Lord knows very well what is in your heart. Your soul suffices this day as
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a reckoner against you. I need no witnesses. You do not listen to your soul,
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but listen instead to your anger and your rage.
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-- Lord Leto to a Penitent, From the Oral History
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%
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Odd as it may seem, great struggles such as the one you can see emerging from
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my journals are not always visible to the participants. Much depends on what
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people dream in the secrecy of their hearts. I have always been as concerned
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with the shaping of dreams as with the shaping of actions. Between the lines of
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my journals is the struggle with humankind's view of itself-a sweaty contest on
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a field where motives from our darkest past can well up out of an unconscious
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reservoir and become events with which we not only must live but contend.
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It is the hydraheaded monster which always attacks from your blind side.
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I pray, therefore, that when you have traversed my portion of the Golden Path
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you no longer will be innocent children dancing to music you cannot hear.
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-- The Stolen Journals
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%
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How sad it was that the Shadout of old had become today's Fish Speaker. And a
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true crysknife had been used to bind a servant more strongly to her master.
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He knew that some thought his Fish Speakers were really priestesses
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-- Leto's answer to the Bene Gesserit.
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%
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The Duncans always think it odd that I choose women for combat forces, but my
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Fish Speakers are a temporary army in every sense. While they can be violent
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and vicious, women are profoundly different from men in their dedication to
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battle. The cradle of genesis ultimately predisposes them to behavior more
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protective of life. They have proved to be the best keepers of the Golden Path.
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I reinforce this in my design for their training. They are set aside for a time
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from ordinary routines. I give them special sharings which they can look back
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upon' with pleasure for the rest of their lives. They come of age in the
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company of their sisters in preparation for events more profound. What you
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share in such companionship always prepares you for greater things. The haze
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of nostalgia covers their days among their sisters, making those days into
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something different than they were. That's the way today changes history.
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All contemporaries do not inhabit the same time. The past is always changing,
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but few realize it.
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-- The Stolen Journals
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%
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I know the evil of my ancestors because I am those people. The balance is
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delicate in the extreme. I know that few of you who read my words have ever
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thought about your ancestors this way. It has not occurred to you that your
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ancestors were survivors and that the survival itself sometimes involved savage
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decisions, a kind of wanton brutality which civilized humankind works very hard
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to suppress. What price will you pay for that suppression? Will you accept your
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own extinction?
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-- The Stolen Journals
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%
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What is the most profound difference between us, between you and me? You
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already know it. It's these ancestral memories. Mine come at me in the full
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glare of awareness. Yours work from your blind side. Some call it instinct or
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fate. The memories apply their leverages to each of us-on what we think and
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what we do. You think you are immune to such influences? I am Galileo. I stand
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here and tell you: "Yet it moves." That which moves can exert its force in ways
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no mortal power ever before dared stem. I am here to dare this.
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-- The Stolen Journals
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%
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The female sense of sharing originated as familial sharing-care of the young,
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the gathering and preparation of food, sharing joys, love and sorrows. Funeral
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lamentation originated with women. Religion began as a female monopoly, wrested
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from them only after its social power became too dominant. Women were the first
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medical researchers and Practitioners. There has never been any clear balance
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between the sexes because power goes with certain roles as it certainly goes
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with knowledge.
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-- The Stolen Journals
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%
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Unceasing warfare gives rise to its own social conditions which have been
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similar in all epochs. People enter a permanent state of alertness to ward
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off attacks. You seethe absolute rule of the autocrat. All new things become
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dangerous frontier districts-new planets, new economic areas to exploit, new
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ideas or new devices, visitors-everything suspect. Feudalism takes firm hold,
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sometimes disguised as a politbureau or similar structure, but always present.
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Hereditary succession follows the lines of power. The blood of the powerful
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dominates. The vice regents of heaven or their equivalent apportion the wealth.
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And their know they must control inheritance or slowly let the power melt away.
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Now, do you understand Leto's Peace?
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-- The Stolen Journals
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%
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Our ancestor, Assur-nasir-apli, who was known as the cruelest of the cruel,
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seized the throne by slaying his own father and starting the reign of the
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sword. His conquests included the Ururnia Lake region. which led him to
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Commagene and Khabur. His son received tribute from the Shuites, from Tyre,
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Sidon, Gebel and even from Jehu, son of Omri whose very name struck terror
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into thousands. The conquests which began with Assur-nasirapli carried arms
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into Media and later into Israel, Damascus, Edom, Arpad, Babylon and Umlias.
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Does anyone remember these names and places now? I have given you enough clues:
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Try to name the planet.
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-- The Stolen Journals
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%
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I am beginning to hate water. The sandtrout skin which impels my metamorphosis
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has learned the sensitivities of the worm. Moneo and many of my guards know my
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aversion, Only Moneo suspects the truth, that this marks an important waypoint.
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I can feel my ending in it, not soon as Moneo measures time, but soon enough as
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I endure it. Sandtrout swarmed to water in the Dune days, a problem during the
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early stages of our symbiosis. The enforcement of my will power controlled the
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urge then, and until we reached a time of balance. Now, I must avoid water
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because there are no other sandtrout, only the half dormant creatures of my
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skin. Without sandtrout to bring this world back to desert, Shai-Hulud will not
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emerge; the sandworm cannot evolve until the land is parched. I am their only
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hope.
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-- The Stolen Journals
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%
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"Another Festival so soon?" the Lord Leto asked.
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"It has been ten years," the majordomo said.
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Do you think by this exchange that the Lord Leto betrays an ignorance of time's
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passage?
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-- The Oral History
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%
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From that welter of memories which I can tap at will, patterns emerge. They are
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like another language which I see so clearly The social-alarm signals which put
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societies into the postures of defense attack are like shouted words to me.
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As a people. you react against threats to innocence and the peril of the
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helpless young. Unexplained sounds, visions and smells raise the hackles you
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have forgotten you possess. When alarmed, you cling to your native language
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because all the other patterned sounds are strange. You demand acceptable
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dress because a strange costume is threatening. This is system feedback at
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its most primitive level. Your cells remember
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-- The Stolen Journals
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%
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Safaris through ancestral memories teach me many things. The patterns, ahhh,
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the patterns Liberal bigots are the ones who trouble me most. I distrust the
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extremes. Scratch a conservative and you find someone who prefers the past over
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any future. Scratch a liberal and find a closet aristocrat. It's true! Liberal
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governments always develop into aristocracies The bureaucracies betray the true
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intent of people who form such governments. Right from the first, the little
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people who formed the governments which promised to equalize the social burdens
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found themselves suddenly in the hands of bureaucratic aristocracies. Of
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course, all bureaucracies follow this pattern. but what a hypocrisy to find
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this even under a communized banner Ahhh, well, if patterns teach me anything
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it's that patterns are repeated. My oppressions. by and large, are no worse
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than any of the others and, at least. I teach a new lesson.
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-- The Stolen Journals
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%
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The trance-state of prophecy is like no other visionary experience. It is not
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a retreat from the raw exposure of the senses (as are many trance-states) but
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an immersion in a multitude of new movements. Things moue. It is an ultimate
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pragmatism in the midst of Infinity, a demanding consciousness where you come
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at last into the unbroken awareness that the universe moves of itself, that it
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changes, that its rules change. that nothing remains permanent or absolute
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throughout all such movement, that mechanical explanations for anything can
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work only within precise confinements and, once the walls are broken down, the
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old explanations shatter and dissolve, blown away by new movements. The things
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you see in this trance are sobering, often shattering They demand your utmost
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effort to remain whole and. even so, you emerge from that state profoundly
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changed.
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-- The Stolen Journals
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%
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When I set out to lead humankind along my Golden Path. I promised them a lesson
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their bones would remember. I know a profound pattern which humans deny with
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their words even while their actions affirm it. They say they seek security and
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quiet, the condition they call peace. Even as they speak. they create the seeds
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of turmoil and violence. If they find their quiet security. they squirm in it.
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How boring they find it. Look at them now. Look at what they do while I record
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these words. Hah! I give them enduring eons of enforced tranquility which plods
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on and on despite their every effort to escape into chaos. Believe me, the
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memory of Leto's Peace shall abide with them forever. They will seek their
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quiet security thereafter only with extreme caution and steadfast preparation.
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-- The Stolen Journals
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%
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As each day passes, you become increasingly unreal, more alien and remote from
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what I find myself to be on that new day. I am the only reality and, as you
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differ from me, you lose reality. The more curious I become, the less curious
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are those who worship me. Religion suppresses curiosity. What I do subtracts
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from the worshipper. Thus it is that eventually I will do nothing, giving it
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all back to frightened people who will ,find themselves on that day alone and
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forced to act for themselves.
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-- The Stolen Journals
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%
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The problem of leadership is inevitably: Who will play God?
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-- Muad'Dib. From the Oral History
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%
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I am both father and mother to my people. I have known the ecstasy of birth and
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the ecstasy of death and I know the patterns that you must team. Have I not
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wandered intoxicated through the universe of shapes? Yes! I have seen you
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outlined in light. That universe which you say you see and feel, that universe
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is my dream. My energies focus upon it and I am in any realm and every realm.
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Thus, you are born.
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-- The Stolen Journals
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%
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I have isolated the city-experience within me and have examined it closely.
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The idea of a city fascinates me. The formation of a biological community
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without a functioning, supportive social community leads to havoc. Whole
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worlds have become single biological communities without an interrelated
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social structure and this has always led to ruin. It becomes dramatically
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instructive under overcrowded conditions. The ghetto is lethal. Psychic
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stresses of overcrowding create pressures which will erupt. The city is an
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attempt to manage these forces. The social forms by which cities make the
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attempt are worth study. Remember that there exists a certain malevolence
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about the formation of any social order. It is the struggle for existence
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by an artificial entity. Despotism and slavery hover at the edges.
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Many injuries occur and, thus, the need for laws. The law develops its
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own power structure, creating more wounds and new injustices. Such trauma
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can be healed by cooperation, not by confrontation. The summons to cooperate
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identifies the healer.
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-- The Stolen Journals
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%
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The singular multiplicity of this universe draws my deepest attention.
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It is a thing of ultimate beauty.
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-- The Stolen Journals
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%
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Groups tend to condition their surroundings for group survival. When they
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deviate from this it may be taken as a sign of group sickness. There are
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many telltale symptoms. I watch the sharing of food. This is a form of
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communication, an inescapable sign of mutual aid which also contains a deadly
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signal of dependency. It is interesting that men are the ones who usually tend
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the landscape today. They are husband-men. Once, that was the sole province of
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women.
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-- The Stolen Journals
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%
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If you know all of your ancestors, you were a personal witness to the events
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which created the myths and religions of our past. Recognizing this, you must
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think of me as a myth-maker.
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-- The Stolen Journals
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%
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Let there be no doubt that I am the assemblage of our ancestors, the arena in
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which they exercise my moments. They are my cells and I am their body. This is
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the favrashi of which I speak, the soul, the collective unconscious, the source
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of archetypes, the repository of all trauma and joy. I am the choice of their
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awakening. My samhadi is their samhadi. Their experiences are mine! Their
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knowledge distilled is mfr inheritance. Those billions are my one.
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-- The Stolen Journals
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%
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"Make no heroes," my father said.
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-- The voice of Ghanima, From the Oral History
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%
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The prophet is not diverted by illusions of past, present and future. The
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fixity of language determines such linear distinctions. Prophets hold a key to
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the lock in a language. The mechanical image remains only an image to them.
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This is not a mechanical universe. The linear progression of events is imposed
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by the observer. Cause and effect? That's not it at all. The prophet utters
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fateful words. You glimpse a thing "destined to occur." But the prophetic
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instant releases something of infinite portent and power. The universe
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undergoes a ghostly shift. Thus, the wise prophet conceals actuality behind
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shimmering labels. The uninitiated then believe the prophetic language is
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ambiguous. The listener distrusts the prophetic messenger. Instinct tells
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you how the utterance blunts the power of such words. The best prophets
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lead you up to the curtain and let you peer through for yourself.
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-- The Stolen Journals
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%
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The pattern of monarchies and similar systems has a message of value for all
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political forms. My memories assure me that governments of any kind could
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profit from this message. Governments can be useful to the governed only so
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long as inherent tendencies toward tyranny are restrained. Monarchies have
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some good features beyond their star qualities. They can reduce the size and
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parasitic nature of the management bureaucracy. They can make speedy decisions
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when necessary. They fit an ancient human demand for a parental (tribal/feudal)
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hierarchy where every person knows his place. It is valuable to know your
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place, even if that place is temporary. It is galling to be held in place
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against your will. This is why I teach about tyranny in the best possible way
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by example. Even though you read these words after a passage of eons, my
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tyranny will not be forgotten. My Golden Path assures this. Knowing my message,
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I expect you to be exceedingly careful about the powers you delegate to any
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government.
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-- The Stolen Journals
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%
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You know the myth of the Great Spice Hoard? Yes, I know about that story, too.
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A majordomo brought it to me one day to amuse me. The story says there is a
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hoard of melange, a gigantic hoard, big as a great mountain. The hoard is
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concealed in the depths of a distant planet. It is not Arrakis, that planet.
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It is not Dune. The spice was hidden there long ago, even before the First
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Empire and the Spacing Guild. The story says Paul Muad'Dib went there and
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lives yet beside the hoard, kept alive by it, waiting. The majordomo did not
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understand why the story disturbed me.
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-- The Stolen Journals
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%
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Memory has a curious meaning to me, a meaning I have hoped others might share.
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It continually astonished me how people hide from their ancestral memories,
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shielding themselves behind a thick barrier of mythos. Ohhh, I do not expect
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them to seek the terrible immediacy of every living moment which I must
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experience. I can understand that they might not want to be submerged in a mush
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of petty ancestral details. You have reason to fear that your living moments
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might be taken over by others. Yet, the meaning is there within those memories.
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We carry all of our ancestry forward like a living wave, all of the hopes and
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joys and griefs, the agonies and the exultations of our past. Nothing within
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those memories remains completely without meaning or influence, not as long as
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there is a humankind somewhere. We have that bright Infinity all around us,
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that Golden Path of forever to which we can continually pledge our puny but
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inspired allegiance.
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-- The Stolen Journals
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%
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The realization of what I am occurs in the timeless awareness which does not
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stimulate nor delude. I create a field without self or center, a field where
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even death becomes only analogy. I desire no results. I merely permit this
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field which has no goals nor desires, no perfections nor even visions of
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achievements. In that field, omnipresent primal awareness is all. It is the
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light which pours through the windows of my universe.
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-- The Stolen Journals
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%
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One of the most terrible words in any language is Soldier. The synonyms parade
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through our history: yogahnee, trooper, hussar, kareebo, cossack, deranzeef,
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legionnaire, sardaukar, fish speaker... I know them all. They stand there in
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the ranks of my memory to remind me: Always make sure you have the army with
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you.
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-- The Stolen Journals
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%
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Do you know what guerrillas often say? They claim that their rebellions are
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invulnerable to economic warfare because they have no economy, that they are
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parasitic on those they would overthrow. The fools merely fail to assess the
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coin in which they must inevitably pay. The pattern is inexorable in its
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degenerative failures. You see it repeated in the systems of slavery, of
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welfare states, of caste-ridden religions, of socializing bureaucracies-in
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any system which creates and maintains dependencies. Too long a parasite and
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you cannot exist without a host.
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-- The Stolen Journals
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%
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In the cradle of our past, I lay upon my back in a cave so shallow I could
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penetrate it only by squirming, not by crawling. There, by the dancing light of
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a resin torch, I drew upon walls and ceiling the creatures of the hunt and the
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souls of my people. How illuminating it is to peer backward through a perfect
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circle at that ancient struggle for the visible moment of the soul. All time
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vibrates to that call: "Here I am!" With a mind informed by artist-giants who
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came afterward, I peer at handprints and flowing muscles drawn upon the rock
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with charcoal and vegetable dyes. How much more we are than mere mechanical
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events! And my anti-civil self demands: "Why is it that they do not want to
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leave the cave?"
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-- The Stolen Journals
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%
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The Duncans sometimes ask if I understand the exotic ideas of our past?
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And if I understand them, why can't I explain them? Knowledge, the Duncans
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believe, resides only in particulars. I try to tell them that all words are
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plastic. Word images begin to distort in the instant of utterance. Ideas
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imbedded in a language require that particular language for expression.
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This is the very essence of the meaning within the word exotic. See how it
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begins to distort? Translation squirms in the presence of the exotic.
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The Galach which I speak here imposes itself. It is an outside frame of
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reference, a particular system. Dangers lurk in all systems. Systems
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incorporate the unexamined beliefs of their creators. Adopt a system, accept
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its beliefs, and you help strengthen the resistance to change. Does it
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serve any purpose for me to tell the Duncans that there are no languages
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for some things? Ahhh! But the Duncans believe that all languages are mine.
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-- The Stolen Journals
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%
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Given enough time for the generations to evolve, the predator produces
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particular survival adaptations in its prey which, through the circular
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|
operation of feedback, produce changes in the predator which again change the
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prey etcetera, etcetera, etcetera .... Many powerful forces do the same thing.
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You can count religions among such forces.
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-- The Stolen Journals
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%
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It required almost a thousand years before the dust of Dune's old planet-wide
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|
desert left the atmosphere to be bound up in soil and water. The wind called
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|
sandblaster has not been seen on Arrakis for some twenty-five hundred years.
|
|
Twenty billion tons of dust could be carried suspended in the wind of just one
|
|
of those storms. The sky often had a silvery look to it then. Fremen said:
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|
"The desert is a surgeon cutting away the skin to expose what's underneath."
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|
The planet and the people had layers. You could see them. My Sareer is but
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a weak echo of what was. I must be the sandblaster today.
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-- The Stolen Journals
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%
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Most civilization is based on cowardice. It's so easy to civilize by teaching
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cowardice. You water down the standards which would lead to bravery.
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|
You restrain the will. You regulate the appetites. You fence in the horizons.
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|
You make a law for every movement. You deny the existence of chaos.
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|
You teach even the children to breathe slowly. You tame.
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-- The Stolen Journals
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%
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What is the most immediate danger to my stewardship? I will tell you.
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It is a true visionary, a person who has stood in the presence of God
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|
with the full knowledge of where he stands. Visionary ecstasy releases
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|
energies which are like the energies of sex-uncaring for anything
|
|
except creation. One act of creation can be much like another.
|
|
Everything depends upon the vision.
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-- The Stolen Journals
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%
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|
You cannot understand history unless you understand its flowings, its
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|
currents and the ways leaders move within such forces. A leader tries to
|
|
perpetuate the conditions which demand his leadership. Thus, the leader
|
|
requires the outsider. I caution you to examine my career with care.
|
|
I am both leader and outsider. Do not make the mistake of assuming that I
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|
only created the Church which was the State. That was my function as leader
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|
and I had many historical models to use as pattern. For a clue to my role as
|
|
outsider, look at the arts of my time. The arts are barbaric. The favorite
|
|
poetry? The Epic. The popular dramatic ideal? Heroism. Dances? Wildly
|
|
abandoned. From Moneo's viewpoint, he is correct in describing this as
|
|
dangerous. It stimulates the imagination. It makes people feel the lack of
|
|
that which I have taken from them. What did I take from them? The right to
|
|
participate in history.
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-- The Stolen Journals
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%
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|
You think power may be the most unstable of all human achievements?
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|
Then what of the apparent exceptions to this inherent instability?
|
|
Some families endure. Very powerful religious bureaucracies have been known
|
|
to endure. Consider the relationship between faith and power. Are they
|
|
mutually exclusive when each depends upon the other? The Bene Gesserit have
|
|
been reasonably secure within the loyal walls of faith for thousands of
|
|
years. But where has their power gone?
|
|
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-- The Stolen Journals
|
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%
|
|
Think of it as plastic memory, this force within you which trends you and your
|
|
fellows toward tribal forms. This plastic memory seeks to return to its ancient
|
|
shape, the tribal society. It is all around you-the feudatory, the diocese, the
|
|
corporation, the platoon, the sports club, the dance troupes, the rebel cell,
|
|
the planning council, the prayer group . . . each with its master and servants,
|
|
its host and parasites. And the swarms of alienating devices (including these
|
|
very words!) tend eventually to be enlisted in the argument for a return to
|
|
"those better rimes." I despair of teaching you other ways. You have square
|
|
thoughts which resist circles.
|
|
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|
-- The Stolen Journals
|
|
%
|
|
What am I eliminating? The bourgeois infatuation with peaceful conservation
|
|
of the past. This is a binding force, a thing which holds humankind into one
|
|
vulnerable unit in spite of illusionary separations across parsecs of space.
|
|
If I can find the scattered bits, others can find them. When you are
|
|
together, you can share a common catastrophe. You can be exterminated
|
|
together. Thus, I demonstrate the terrible danger of a gliding, passionless
|
|
mediocrity, a movement without ambitions or aims. I show you that entire
|
|
civilizations can do this thing. I give you eons of life which slips gently
|
|
toward death without fuss or stirring, without even asking 'Why?' I show you
|
|
the false happiness and the shadow-catastrophe called Leto, the God
|
|
Emperor. Now, will you learn the real happiness?
|
|
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|
-- The Stolen Journals
|
|
%
|
|
In all of my universe I have seen no law of nature, unchanging and inexorable.
|
|
This universe presents only changing relationships which are sometimes seen as
|
|
laws by short-lived awareness. These fleshly sensoria which we call self are
|
|
ephemera withering in the blaze of infinity, fleetingly aware of temporary
|
|
conditions which confine our activities and change as our activities change.
|
|
If you must label the absolute, use it's proper name: Temporary.
|
|
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-- The Stolen Journals
|
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%
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