"Eye of Ibad" by me, Daniel Leifert; digital vector illustration
Humans, more than any other animal, live in two worlds. The first is Reality, the real stuff we are immersed in and inseparable from. The second is the Realm of Ideas, composed of our perceptions and conceptions of aspects of reality. With all the misinformation bombarding us on the internet, it's getting harder and harder to tell what's real and what's not.
To remedy the situation, I want to give you training in media literacy skills through a series of articles, all totally FREE. Of course, nothing is truly free, so what I'm really asking you for is your time and energy, but I'll never make you pay a cent. I deeply believe this is important material which can improve many lives, so I am honored to make it accessible to you for free. No registration of any kind required.
If you improve your media literacy skills, you can gain clarity in thought and action. You can tell reality and fabrication apart. You can filter through the influences media imposes on you, keeping what you want and discarding what you don't. Your actions gradually become a reflection of your heart's truest desires. By these combined effects, you gain personal empowerment, freedom, and protection.
But this sounds too good to be true, right? The catch is that it's not all that easy to learn this skill and apply it to everyday life. These ideas won’t change your life on their own, at least not in the way people normally mean that. They’ll give you new ways of seeing the world and acting in it, which are needed to change your life. It'll sometimes be uncomfortable, confusing, and difficult. It'll take time, effort, and self-reflection. It'll require making some new habits of perception and thought. But if you stick it out, I promise it'll be worth it, because these are the types of gifts that keep on giving.
Even along the way, I think you'll notice positive changes. That's how it was for me. There may be ups and downs, but I believe every one of you can do this. Even if no one in your life believes in you, not even yourself, you can count me among your true believers.
Of course, there is a big difference between "can" and "will". I believe you can do this, but you also might choose not to. There is no shame in it. I understand, life is busy and stressful and it's hard to hold onto even the things we want to keep when so many things are competing for our attention. I've consumed lots of self-help content that I've never put to use. I get it. Really.
But obviously I want you to succeed. My purpose here is really to distill a whole bunch of information and make the vital stuff as digestible, enjoyable, memorable, and practical as I can. I am designing this material to be like seeds, so as you practice, your understanding will grow and become more intuitive. My task is also not that easy, and at time of writing I am working alone. So I really appreciate your feedback and suggestions.
To do this, I'll be giving you brief explanations of theory, mental tools for applying it, mnemonics for remembering it, and examples of applying it all. As the title suggests, I'll be using the Dune saga by Frank Herbert as a recurring subject for analysis.
This may seem like a strange choice. Why not use non-fiction media or current events? Analyzing entertainment media is often degraded in our society as being "useless", "unpractical", and "pretentious". Degrees in the arts are notorious for bad job prospects. This would seem to make my choice of using Dune totally antithetical to my goals. But I have my reasons.
Using entertainment media has the practical effects of:
As for choosing Dune specifically, it's quickly become one of my favorite pieces of literature, proving itself to be a kaleidoscope of wisdom and treasure trove of value. I could surely do a similar thing with other works of literature, but Dune provides ironically-fertile ground for these ideas to grow and flourish in the mind. It's also popular, spans many topics, and I love it.
This series will have a special focus on General Semantics, a system of ideas created by Alfred Korzybski and studies by Frank Herbert around the time he wrote Dune. These ideas are foundational to the ideology of the Bene Gesserit sisterhood, whose members play leading roles throughout the Dune Chronicles("Frank Herbert" O'Reilly).
“Personal Power in Dune 1” and onwards will contain spoilers for the movies and books. But the Dune series is so layered and expansive that I believe plot spoilers will not actually ruin your enjoyment of the series. I think you’ll enjoy my content more if you have read them already, but if you’re not interested in doing so yet, that's ok. Maybe I'll inspire you to pick them up.
You may have seen a red flag when I said Dune is a favorite of mine. Rightly so. If I like it so much, won't my analysis be heavily, unusably biased?
I don't love Dune in an uncritical way. I love it partly because it is open to so many angles of criticism. I think the Dune books, and Frank Herbert himself (as evidenced by his biography Dreamer of Dune), were flawed in a variety of ways, many of which I will discuss. Dune is also full of flawed characters, and it quickly becomes unclear which characters are "right" in any given situation.
But by all accounts, Frank Herbert and his characters are surely remarkable in a variety of ways.
His wife, Beverly Herbert, took great part in Dune as well. According to their son Brian in Dreamer of Dune, she was vital to Frank's brainstorming and editing process. So I'd like to thank both of them, despite their passing, for their work on this wonderful series. I'd also like to thank all the other people: friends, relatives, teachers, artists, coworkers, and others, who have inspired and enabled me to produce this work. You have my eternal gratitude.
Let's get to it. This first article aims to give you a taste of what I have to offer and inspire you to keep returning.
Before we begin, I urge you to keep an open mind to the ideas I present to you. I give them to you not as a monolith or inflexible doctrine, but as a toolbox. Consider each individual idea, and if it rings true and useful in your heart, take it with you. If it repels you, leave it behind, and it will be here if you return to it later. I would never force you to agree with me absolutely in all things, as others might attempt. I just want you to take what you find valuable.
The ancient Greeks and Romans had many ideas which we would today consider outdated, misguided, or outright nonsense, but the usefulness of many of their ideas is undeniable, leaving an eternal mark on human history.
I ask you only to consider these ideas with a similar sort of charity, and to not dismiss everything I say if we disagree in some areas. I respect your beliefs, even when they differ greatly from mine, and I hope you can do me the same courtesy.
In our journey we must venture into the desert, a landscape in the Realm of Ideas where human idea structures are ground into sand and dust by fierce sandstorms, intense heat, and time. While the desert presents an entirely new set of challenges, it is here that you can truly be free, like the Fremen (literally “free men”) of Dune. Through the content I produce, I will give you the tools and techniques needed to survive here, to avoid dying of thirst, getting trapped in sand, or being consumed by a sandworm.
Most live in the towns and cities of the Realm of Ideas, where collections of ideas are bound together in familiar patterns and given often only one name. A house may truly be a collection of wood, nails, wires, and many other materials, yet we see the pattern of them and call it a house. These human idea structures lay in awareness as implicit assumptions, blinding us to the true nature of reality, and binding us with chains unseen. We forget that the chains are there, and forget what it is like to live without them. They are so thin and subtle that, encountering one of them, they seem not to matter, but the combination of countless tiny chains strips you of your freedom and locks you into stagnation.
“They have a saying: ‘Polish comes from the cities; wisdom from the desert.’” (Herbert, Dune)
You can learn to harvest the fruits of both, polishing and refining existing idea structures in the city and gaining powerful wisdom for moving through the world in the desert. However, we will spend most of our time exploring the desert, gaining a deeper connection to the media of the world.
When I first told you this was about media literacy, you probably thought of only entertainment/information media: TV, movies, video, books, articles, art, etc. But I actually mean "media" in a much broader way:
This etymology raises the question, what is the medium at the center of?
After all, we don't enjoy movies just because we enjoy bathing our eyes in flashing light. Not just any movie will do. The things the medium of film convey to us are the things we derive meaning and enjoyment from.
A medium works by using a contrast within itself to create signs. By perceiving a contrast of some kind within a medium, we can perceive and form signs within that medium. This text uses contrast in the brightness of light to reveal its signs to you, a very common characteristic of signs. Dark lines and curves over a blank light canvas (or vice versa if you're using dark mode) give an easily-readable contrast. Sequences of different noises are imposed upon a background of significantly quieter ambient noise to create enough contrast for speech to work. If the contrast is reduced too much, the signs are lost in the medium; the text becomes unreadable and speech cannot be heard.
A medium cannot really transmit a thing to an observer in its entirety.
The medium of paint (or for you, internet-goer, the medium of electronic pixels) does not give the viewer a pipe, just a sign which signifies a pipe. It also gives us letter-signs that signify French words, which signify human ideas.
In the language of semiotics, a sign is made up of the signifier and the signified:
In other words, a sign is a pattern that points to other patterns, either a pattern directly from Reality or a pattern in the Realm of Ideas. When we perceive a sign, we have a semantic reaction (a general semantics term) which converts our perception into meaning(s) and causes us to react to the meaning(s). These reactions can include thoughts, feelings, and actions. (Korzybski) When seeing Magritte's painting, your semantic reaction might give you ideas of a physical pipe, along with some French words, and perhaps an annoyance towards modern art.
It's important to note that our idea of a thing is not the thing itself in Reality. This seems obvious at first, but many human problems are caused by consciously or subconsciously mistaking a sign for the thing(s) it signifies. We'll tackle this in more detail in later articles.
But here we're still looking at human-created signs intended for communication, which we're all conditioned to notice. But in truth, media is all around us, constantly, in every crevice of reality. Every thing in the world is constantly emanating countless signs we can interpret. Often a sign is intensely plain and obvious, “so clear it is difficult to see” (Herbert, Dune Messiah). It is not a question of “does the universe give us signs?”, but rather “which signs matter to us at this time?”.
For example, a mere chair tells us many things about itself. By the media of space, substance, and form, it shows us:
Many signs of the chair will be obvious to most people familiar with chairs.
This is not the last time we shall speak with penetrating scrutiny on the subject of chairs. (try to contain your eagerness for this exciting topic)
Non-human-created media will often require more specialized understanding to interpret more of the signs, since it was not formed from human intentions. Mother Earth herself is a potent example, speaking to us through the media of both “living” and “nonliving” components in esoteric ways:
With the proper lenses, vast new layers of reality can be seen, understood, and interacted with. Everything conveys something else.
"Think you of the fact that a deaf person cannot hear. Then, what deafness may we not all possess? What senses do we lack that we cannot see and cannot hear another world all around us?" - OC Bible, Dune by Frank Herbert
As you can see from these examples, our semantic reactions depend on factors internal and external to us. Our beliefs, experiences, thoughts, emotions, etc. collide with our environments to create these semantic reactions. This is especially true for human-created signs, because their functioning relies on us agreeing (to varying extents). Language works because we agree that certain groups of letters and sequences of sounds mean certain things. One of my major goals for this content is to give you a greater awareness of your semantic reactions and consciously modify them in ways that are beneficial.
"The affairs of man are conducted by our own man-made rules and according to man-made theories. Man's achievements rest upon the use of symbols. For this reason, we must consider ourselves as a symbolic, semantic class of life, and those who rule the symbols, rule us." - Alfred Korzybski Science and Sanity
Now you begin to see why spending time in the desert can give us freedom and personal power. There is still much more to learn, but this is all for now.
Some of you may be overwhelmed now that I've exposed your everyday world as being more nuanced and complex than you realized. If that's the case, I hope you'll push through and return for the next article anyway. As we learn more, these things become easier to accept, digest, and use.
Some of you may be bored if you already understand all the concepts we've discussed so far. I'd encourage you to return as well. I think you'll still find something of value here. Even if it's only info you already have, arranged in a more useful way.
Please give me your feedback in the comments or by contacting me directly. I can't promise I'll respond to all of you, but I'll at least read your messages.
As I said earlier, I'm writing this alone currently. Again, I'll never charge for any of this content, but I'm not above asking you to spend money freely on things that aren't essential to the content. If you spend money through any of these affiliate links, I'll be very grateful. If I can make enough to quit my day job, I'll be able to create these materials much faster and with higher quality.
Even more important, if you find this material and my mission valuable, please share it with people you care about. I care much more about reaching people and making a difference in their lives than I care about making money from this.
If you're interested in venturing deeper on your own, get a copy of Dune or one of Korzybski's books. Dune is notorious for being difficult to adapt to film, so if you've enjoyed any of the Dune film adaptations, you're really in for a treat when you read/listen to the books.
In the next installment, we'll go over more basics of General Semantics and gain some useful tools for understanding and using these concepts.
So far we've barely scratched the surface of General Semantics, but if you are especially eager, you can read about it yourself. The founder, Alfred Korzybski, has written a couple books most-associated with General Semantics. However, they're both rather dense reads. Korzybski was born into a family of aristocratic mathematicians, scientists, and engineers, and uh... it shows...
His work appears notorious for being hard to read. Manhood of Humanity is shorter and much more approachable in my opinion. I disagree with Korzybski in certain areas that I feel are important, but I'll return to that in later articles.
There are also numerous other books which explain various General Semantics concepts. I'm not an expert in General Semantics, and I probably won't provide the best explanations for the topic that exist. The main value I am aiming to provide here is through the mental tools I mentioned earlier, wrapped in more-convenient packaging, bundled with the occasional personal insight. Many of these ideas are complex and conflict with habitual ways of behaving, so I feel a tool-centric approach is valuable.