Week 17: What the Dune movies helped me realize: We don't have enough good mentors

Lead like House Atreides

I recently watched both Dune movies with my girlfriend. The films had outstanding production with spectacular visual effects, such as the explosion at the end of this video and great acting from a star-studded cast with the main character Timothee Chalamet leading the way. What stood out to me most was one of the underlying themes within the movie: People who are programmed to believe specific things will behave in particular ways. The film showcases different examples where groups of people hold different values depending on their upbringing.

One particular example lies in the main character, Paul. In the movies, Paul, although reluctant at times, is inspired by his mother and father to lead a nation. The film takes place in a multi-planetary world where multiple "houses" are at war for various geopolitical reasons, such as the production and supply of spice, a fictional psychedelic drug central to the Dune series. Paul's house, the Atreides, gets caught in the middle of it, and by the second movie, it is up to him to lead a nation into war for freedom. Whether he knew it or not, Paul had been molded to be a leader since birth. His father taught him about leadership and combat. He coupled him with some of the house's best mentors, who showed him the ropes and turned him into a formidable leader and soldier. His mother taught him the ways of the Benne Gesserits, a robust social, religious, and political force whose members train to obtain superhuman powers such as "the voice," which allows users to manipulate people through their speech. 

Much like Paul was molded into the leader that he was, all humans are programmed to become a certain way due to environmental factors such as living conditions, wealth, and geographic location. I'll take it one step further and say that adults with the most proximity to a kid influence most of how they turn out. This includes parents, older siblings, mentors, etc.; they become these children's most prominent role models. In my youth, I was shaped by all of these factors. I was born in Venezuela, where the culture and values are much different than those in America. We also went from being a middle-class family in Venezuela to a lower-class family near poverty when we moved to the U.S. I spent much of my teenage years in a small Florida town, interacting with mainly American people and learning their customs. Throughout this whole journey, the one constant thing was my parents. My dad, a former mechanical engineer for a petroleum company in Venezuela, and my mom, an accountant who owned a small fashion boutique, raised my sisters and me and were the most influential people in our lives. They weren’t perfect, but they instilled values that have allowed us to become people of high makeup, which I will define later. As young parents (my mom had me at 19), I don’t believe they were intentionally raising us; after all, there is no parenting playbook. Instead, they led through their actions where we saw what they did daily, and we modeled our behavior after them. All of this leads me to my main point: I believe we have a shortage of role models who can mold young people in a way that moves society forward.

To move society forward, we need people of high makeup. What is a high makeup? It means a person who positively contributes to society and uplifts people around them to do the same. It doesn't mean you are rich, created a hot new startup, or take a cold plunge every morning. Although some people are of high makeup, it goes further than that. It means that you respect human life, bring positive energy to your interactions, and that you're helping society by working on things that help improve the quality of life for our species.
A great example of this is my mother. She is respectful to everyone she meets. You can tell by the way she speaks to them gently and acknowledges them. Anyone who talks to my mother feels special because of how she interacts with them. Rarely will you catch her in a bad mood, and if she is in one, she doesn’t bring that energy to other people. She is aware of her state and ensures that they can feel the warm, positive energy when she's around others. Lastly, she is contributing significantly to society. She is a mom first and has spent much of her time raising my sisters and me. That is a task in itself, but she’s also the CFO of my family’s construction company and keeps our financial department in check so that we can build affordable housing in the state of Florida.

My mom is an extreme example. Not everyone will be like her, nor should we aspire to be. Similarly, you can build the next Facebook and have high makeup. But you can also be the neighborhood plumber who is fixing leaky toilets and solving crappy problems for lots of people (pun intended) or a grandma who is taking care of the grandkids and is molding them to be quality adults. All these people have something in common: