Today's Rewind Wednesday uses Dune 2 to talk about the story of history that was told after WWII, when scholars crafted a political theory of Western action that starts in 1648: an era laden with Holy Roman Empire politics that have strong echoes in Dune.
That grand postwar tale of Western history served the creation of the UN even amid new waves of economic colonialism - and as Dune notes, left us with a mess of power systems to which we're still far too tightly bound.
https://open.substack.com/pub/mlclark/p/dunes-emotional-history-of-the-west
@MLClark Frank Herbert's Dune is heavily influenced by Islam/Middle East and can see the equivalence of the rise of Moors from Morocco and subsequent military conquest of Spain starting 711 AD and reign of ~700 years with profound scientific/political advancements in the region. Let alone, the tools that were essential in ocean navigation later on.