Wednesday, July 03, 2002

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 reach of 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. With this insight into the power process, our Imperial Security Force must be ever alert to the formation of sub-languages.

-Lecture to the Arrakeen War College by the Princess Irulan

Brian Herbert (Editor), The Notebooks of Frank Herbert’s Dune

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