Fear is the mind-killer

Frank Herbert was born on this day in 1920. Dune is one of my favourite science fiction books, and I have read it a number of times; most recently, I revisited it as an audiobook in 2020 before continuing with Dune Messiah the following year.

With Denis Villeneuve’s Dune: Part Two completing his two-film adaptation of Frank Herbert’s novel earlier this year, this seems a reasonable excuse to write briefly about the Bene Gesserit’s Litany Against Fear, a passage that I have liked for years.

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.
 

—Frank Herbert, Dune (1965)

In Dune, Paul Atreides, the novel’s central character, recites the Litany while undergoing a Bene Gesserit test of his humanity: his hand is placed in a box that seems to be burning it away, while the gom jabbar—a poisoned needle—is held at his neck. The best-known line appears near the beginning and, taken alone, can sound like an instruction to suppress fear or a judgement on anyone who feels it. Read as a whole, however, the Litany is doing something more interesting: fear is faced and allowed to pass through before we are asked to turn inward and examine the path it has taken.

What I like about the sentiment is that it takes seriously both the feeling of fear and the behaviour that can follow from it. Fear may be a rational response to danger, but it can also distort our sense of proportion, narrowing attention and pushing us towards irrational action. The Litany leaves room for the feeling while insisting that it need not dictate the response.

In science, public policy and leadership, uncertainty cannot be wished away, and decisions still have consequences, including the decision to wait. The relevant question is whether fear informs judgement or takes it over: sometimes it makes delay feel safer than choosing; at other times, it produces action simply to escape the discomfort of waiting. The point is to retain enough composure to understand what is happening, including inside our own heads, before choosing how to respond.

The test is a rather brutal setting for this idea, resting as it does on a sharp distinction between supposedly human self-command and animal instinct, with failure punished by death. I do not find that distinction particularly persuasive, but away from the box and the needle the Litany still offers a useful account of self-control: understanding what fear is doing to our thinking and behaviour before it decides the response for us. I have tried to follow that advice myself, although not always, and not always successfully.