Of all the books that I’ve read, Dune has consistently been the most thought provoking and inspiring. Like many pieces of creative genius, it is a series of books that doubles as a Rorschach test. Each person takes away their own lessons from it. For me it arrived late, only after seeing Dune 2 the movie was I sufficiently excited to pursue reading through the entire series.

One of the central ideas in Dune is an undefined and yet often vaunted quality of a person which is to be human. To be human is not merely to be genetically human, but rather to be the ideal of that which is human. It is aspirational and uncommon, rather than something which could reasonably be applied to everyone. I think the presence of artificial intelligence is putting tremendous pressure on the definition we have for what makes one human.

I have adopted this idea to aspire to be human. I think humanity is about a few things: it’s leaning into our imperatives to survive, reproduce and give back to people, and it’s exercising judgment and taking risks in order to do that. To live is to embrace our imperatives and to be excellent in them, without selling our soul or violating our own code. It’s improving upon whatever hand we are dealt by life and leaving the world better than we found it when our parents brought us into it.

To live is also to accept our limitations. To live means to one day die, as there is nothing human about immortality or its logical extreme trans-humanism. To transcend being human is the opposite of my goal. My goal is to transcend distractions to being the most human I can be. The only moral imperatives I believe are things which effectively reduce violence and increase personal freedom are good things, and the opposite are bad. Trans-humanism generally involves bondage to technology. That to me is once again the opposite of what it means to be fully human.

I think to be human also involves an imperative to become the most usefully knowledgeable that you can. The more of our own personal human supply chain we can master, the better. That includes stewarding the natural world to the extent that is necessary to protect, feed, clothe, bathe and care for ourselves. Our responsibility to the planet, and the skills necessary to care for it and care for ourselves, are the essential skills. Every human should have these skills in the course of our life.

I find it shocking that preppers focus on buying weapons or building a bunker rather than getting to know their neighbour. In the event of an actual natural disaster, your plan is to shoot people for food rather than to cooperate with them? One does not need to be an orphan billionaire to learn the important lessons from Batman’s story. Any time you see disaster coming it’s better to have ten true friends than a million followers.

We should focus our time on developing and teaching each other useful skills, and being the best friend we can. Philosophically we should accept and lean into our drives to survive, reproduce and give back, as well as accepting death as necessary and natural. I think if we did turn our intelligence on these things, we would experience the full richness of being human.