Yet again: Dune

[UncleRogi]

Was Leto II 's Golden Path- survival-a design of the Atreides, or was it a dream of prescience? Is there a difference?

There was the Kwisatz Haderach, Paul Muad'Dib

Leto decided to change the future based on what his blind father saw.....

May anyone in the know gift me with an answer?

 

[InklingStar]

If I recall correctly, both Leto and Paul saw the same future cataclysm and the fact that the Golden Path was the only way to survive it. Paul could not bring himself to do it, however, and walked into the desert rather than become the tyrant. Leto did was his father could not do.

 

[Starbreaker]

If I recall correctly, both Leto and Paul saw the same future cataclysm and the fact that the Golden Path was the only way to survive it. Paul could not bring himself to do it, however, and walked into the desert rather than become the tyrant. Leto did was his father could not do.

This is correct.

 

[Reverend]

^I think there was also an element of his trying to see another way making it impossible for him to escape his ultimate fate. Like quicksand; the more he struggled the more restricted his actions became until he was trapped with only one path left to him. Indeed, IIRC what made him hold off as long as he did was Chani. He couldn't bring himself to hasten her inevitable death.

It's an interesting and compelling idea that true prescience would become a deadly trap, either frightening a person into keeping to a "safe" path that leads to stagnation or risk the more obscure and turbulent ways, most of which end in utter oblivion. I don't think many other novels have really explored this concept, at least none that I'm aware of.

 

[Admiral_Young]

Yeah the second response is correct. Both Paul and Leto saw the Golden Path...only Leto had the courage to make the sacrifice of his humanity that it required. Unlike Paul who had Chani, Leto had nothing except his love for his sister tying him down and she understood what he needed to do. Ultimately the Golden Path is the result of millennium of gene filtering and manipulation among the royal blood lines by the Bene Gesserit, only they didn't exactly get what they wanted lol.

 

[UncleRogi]

If I recall correctly, both Leto and Paul saw the same future cataclysm and the fact that the Golden Path was the only way to survive it. Paul could not bring himself to do it, however, and walked into the desert rather than become the tyrant. Leto did was his father could not do.

That would be "Tyrant"---CAPITAL 'T '

 

[UncleRogi]

Yeah the second response is correct. Both Paul and Leto saw the Golden Path...only Leto had the courage to make the sacrifice of his humanity that it required. Unlike Paul who had Chani, Leto had nothing except his love for his sister tying him down and she understood what he needed to do. Ultimately the Golden Path is the result of millennium of gene filtering and manipulation among the royal blood lines by the Bene Gesserit, only they didn't exactly get what they wanted lol.

InDEED DID THEY NOT!



The Golden Path is nothing less than survival...at any cost.

Muad 'Dib CREATED the problem Leto solved....Paul would not un-do what he did...

So much for 'Noble Purpose'

But Muad'Dib created the Tyrant.....

Hmmmm........

 

[Admiral_Young]

Paul was afraid of what he'd created yet couldn't do anything to stop it. I believe there is a great line where he says I'm trapped by my own destiny. Indeed, the Golden Path is the ultimate survival scheme though many things would have to change. I think one of the most interesting ideas that Herbert played with is the notion of a benevolent despot or "imposed tranquility" which the God Emperor purposefully imposed upon his people.

 

[UncleRogi]

Paul was not afraid of anything....
He already knew....
He CREATED it

What that must be like....

 

[Robert Maxwell]

Paul once believed that by seeing the future he could reshape it if he didn't like what he saw. The Fremen jihad that he foresaw, for instance, he thought he could thwart if he just put the brakes on at the right moment. He anticipated doing that once he got his revenge on the Emperor and the Harkonnens and took Dune back. But by that point it was already too late, the Fremen were intent on spilling blood in his name throughout the known universe.

Having been through all that, it's no wonder he saw the Golden Path and resigned to end his life than go through with it. He learned the hard way you couldn't see the future and then change it--by seeing it, you essentially assured that it would happen.

There's a certain inexorable inevitability to the way the Dune books unfold that's really fascinating. The later books deal a lot with technology that shields people and places from prescience, which is apparently the only way to truly bring about randomness and chaos in a universe where anyone can be a seer. If you think about it, it's taking a page from quantum physics--by observing the future, you have changed it to be exactly what you saw. By not seeing the future, you can in fact be sure that it has not been written. That was basically the whole point of the no-ships and no-chambers: extricating humanity from the trap of prescience.

You could almost say that those who see the future are doomed to create it.

 

[DarKush]

I haven't read Dune in a long time. But I'm curious as to why some feel that Paul created the Golden Path? He seemed just as caught up in forces beyond his control as everyone else to me.

Also, I stopped reading after God Emperor. Was the Golden Path ever described in detail? What exactly did it entail? I think the far jump in time from Children of Dune to God Emperor was too great. I wish their had been a connecting book. Brian Herbert and Kevin Anderson, if you're reading this, get to work.

 

[Robert Maxwell]

I haven't read Dune in a long time. But I'm curious as to why some feel that Paul created the Golden Path? He seemed just as caught up in forces beyond his control as everyone else to me.

Also, I stopped reading after God Emperor. Was the Golden Path ever described in detail? What exactly did it entail? I think the far jump in time from Children of Dune to God Emperor was too great. I wish their had been a connecting book. Brian Herbert and Kevin Anderson, if you're reading this, get to work.

The basic idea of the Golden Path wasn't complicated. It required a Tyrant to hold down the human race for several thousand years, violently crushing dissent and opposition. This would allow organized resistance to brew and become more creative and clever, clever enough to orchestrate the Tyrant's downfall--which is exactly what happened in God Emperor with Siona Atreides and Hwi Noree. Then, this newly-liberated human race would be better and stronger for having suffered for so long. In the way Dune itself was a crucible to harden the Fremen, Leto II turned the entire universe into such a crucible.

It was all about ensuring the survival of the human race. There are some other details, like breeding a "no-gene" into the human race (to make humans difficult to eradicate by making them invisible to prescience), that were part of the overall plan, but you can best understand it as Leto II's attempt to harden humanity and ensure its survival into the distant future, despite the pain and misery his tyranny caused.

The downside is that his fall caused the Scattering, which resulted in the Honored Matres, and a whole hell of a lot of additional war and suffering--but humanity, at least, was better-equipped to survive, which was the one true goal of the Golden Path.

 

[Admiral_Young]

No it wasn't really described in detail. Leto kind of gives a description to Duncan when he asks him what it is. The entire novel is really about the consequences and result of the Golden Path.

Paul was afraid though...he didn't create the Golden Path, Paul created the political and military situation that set it up. I don't mean that he was afraid like a coward is afraid, he was just scared about what he had done and couldn't face it. Like I said he was trapped.

Regarding the Scattering...I kind of always thought that Leto knew that this would be the immediate result of what would happen after he was gone, he kind of comments about such an event earlier in the book IIRC he says something like it is inevitable. He was basically starving humanities need to explore along with crippling it's need of dependence of social structures, etc.

 

[Robert Maxwell]

Yeah, I like the whole idea that seeing the future is actually a nightmare. Most tales of time travel and prescience have someone trying to use their knowledge of future events to shape a better future--but in the Dune universe, this is simply impossible. By knowing the future you have doomed the present, every time. There is no way to win except to not play the game at all.

 

[Admiral_Young]

^ Yep. I think the books are also commenting in a way about humanity having god complexes.

 

[Distorted Humor]

Ahhh, Dune, the series that I love more then ST.

Paul saw it, and decided to walk away. Leto II saw it, and became the Tyrant.

 

[Robert Maxwell]

Absolutely. That's one of the most important themes: humans make gods out of everything. We take leaders and put all our hopes and expectations on them and we make them out to be superhuman, which inevitably weighs on them and leads to abuse of power. Herbert put a new spin on an old idea: "Power attracts the corruptible."

What happened to Baron Harkonnen and Emperor Shaddam eventually happened to Paul and Leto II. The only difference between them is that Leto knew exactly what he was getting into and fully embraced it. Ironically, he was the most effective leader humanity ever had because he had no illusions or pretensions about what he was doing or why. He never spouted platitudes or pretended to be something he wasn't--he was the Tyrant. By embracing his true nature--the true nature of all humans, in fact--he was able to secure humanity's survival. That he had to become something more/less than human in order to do it speaks to our own capacity for self-deception. It was only by becoming one with the worm that he could cut through the bullshit, as it were, and do what he had to do.

On the matter of god complexes, it's obvious that prescience itself became humanity's "god," which necessitated wiping it out, or at least making it next to useless.

Herbert was very much against orthodoxy, hero-worship, and having gods of any kind. They were all essentially the same thing to him: chains by which humans enslaved one another.

 

[Admiral_Young]

^ Very well put.

 

[Asbo Zaprudder]

Sure would be tricky to convey that message in a screenplay.

 

[Admiral_Young]

^ Are you referring to "God Emperor of Dune"? If so John Harrison was in the middle of writing a screenplay for the next mini-series but Sci-Fi cut funding for the project and it was dropped. He was disappointed that he wasn't able to bring the book to life. It would have been a truly remarkable accomplishment if it'd gone into production and aired.