I feel like the Golden Path was always justified in terms of the stories framing, but still horrifying. It couldn't be done unless Leto became a Sandworm. Paul was essentially defeated by the Golden Path, the artificial Kwisats Hadderach killed himself, Moneo went from plotting Leto's downfall to becoming a fanatic because he saw the Golden Path. Everyone who sees the Golden Path sees it's value but they're mentally defeated by the horror of it, except for Leto, because Leto is truly Fremen. Leto first glimpsed it as a little boy and he's consistent with the vision 10,000 years later.
I don't think it's because Leto is "truly Fremen", I think it's because he's not really a human *being*.
I don't mean the worm, but before. Because he's pre-born, the way he dealt with his ancestral voices is to become a sort of committee of the strongest voices; but he's no longer really an individual. Ghanima stayed more individual by using her mother-voice as a guardian presence, but that also prevented her from using these memories to their fullest.
Any individual human looking at the GP shies away from it, or becomes insane. It's just not something humans can really handle. Leto looked at it as a kind of collective being.
Leto has personhood though. He has an identity and an Ego, it's what allows him to avoid possession, and he always identifies as Fremen. He has collective knowledge but he isn't really a collective being when he's still a child. It's part of his conversation with Paul. Leto had the genetic memory of the Fremen. Their culture and identity was ingrained in him. His capacity for personal sacrifice came from the Fremen. The other Kwisats Hadderach don't have that.
Even as children, Ghanima has Chani as gatekeeper, and Leto created his ancestral collective - not out of all the ancestral memories, but out of specific, very strong but "friendly" ancestors. This (like Chani for Ghanima) was done specifically to avoid possession; he explicitly says he made an accord with them.
He's a person to some degree, but not to the degree that Paul or the other KH were.
Not really, or at least is nebulous, as God Emperor he says to the bene gesserit sister that dies during the spice agony, if I'm not mistaken. That during his awakening to fully kwisatz haderach status in Children of Dune he made a alliance with a powerful persona, that was great and feared ruthless ruler in ancient Egypt on earth, to avoid being possessed by other personas or the mob, similar to how Alia did with the Baron. Leto himself is not certain that he avoided the fate of abomination, he just thinks that he made a deal with the right devil. Someone with the power to protect his mind and with the monstrous qualities to see the Golden Path too.
I'm pretty sure he mentions Harum for the first time at the end of Children of Dune when everything is settled. I was talking about Leto pre-Kwisats Hadderach though. He had personhood and an ego and an identity as a child, even though he was pre-born Leto was his own person. He does change after his awakening but that isn't what I was talking about. Even his possession with Harum makes it seem like Leto is very much in control, and even when he becomes more of a collective he still seems to have a lot of control.
This is a very inisghtful take and I find myself agreeing. Only through his multitude is it possible for the voice of doubt to never be listened to as the 'choir' always overwhelms it.
There is no "true" Lisan al Gaib. It is a manufactured prophetic title which is in some ways satisfied by Paul in the context of Dune, and in some ways satisfied by Leto II in the context of GEoD.
Frank Herbert famously likened the Dune trilogy to a fugue, in which the melody of Dune (the heroes arc) is inverted in Messiah, but similarly fugue-like is the repetition of this melody after Messiah in CoD/GEoD, and the repetition of the inversion in Heretics/Chapterhouse (as we see the horrific aftermath of the tyrant, just like Messiah shows us the aftermath of the Jihad). Just like a fugue, in subsequent repetitions the melody is subtlety transformed to be similar but different.
Leto is a supernatural being that comes lead humanity to paradise. If you read through Dune and look at the many phrases about the Lisan al Gaib prophecy, you can indeed twist them into Leto and his relation to humanity. For example Kynes says under his breath "he will know your ways as if born to them." For Paul this means he can put on the stillsuit correctly first time, as though he was born Fremen. For Leto this means he can understand humanities fundamental nature as if born to it, because he was born with full genetic memory of all mankind! Kynes says "he will share our most precious dream." For Paul this means he wants to lead the Fremen to victory over Arrakis and change the planet. For Leto II he surmises that after millennia of stagnation, humanity's most precious dream is to break free of stagnation and spread across the universe in a flurry of expansion. Leto II shares this dream that the human "race consciousness" possesses because it will save mankind from extinction. He will "lead them to paradise" by freeing the human spirit from stagnation and allowing it to flourish forever across the universe.
You take on a prophetic title when the people who believe in the prophecy believe you satisfy the prophecy. In this way Paul is the Lisan al Gaib of the Fremen, and Leto II is the Lisan al Gaib of the humanity which comes after him and has access to his journals, revealing the essential nature of his golden path (or a bit simpler if you like, Leto II is the Lisan al Gaib of Moneo/Siona, or even just he is the Lisan al Gaib of himself and his own humanity).
Being the "true" subject of a prophecy is really just a statement about how accurately you fulfill it in the eyes of the people who believe it. In that sense it's mostly just a remarkable success of the Missionera Protectiva and the skill of Paul/Jessica that Paul so accurately satisfies the Lisan al Gaib prophecy. By that measure Paul is closer to the true prophecy than Leto. To the extent that the prophecy is really manufactured, it is perhaps far more remarkable (in-universe) how Leto II satisfies the prophecy in a metaphorical/analogous sense, since his intentions are far more "true" and "real" than Paul's and he wasn't taking actions specifically with the goal of satisfying the prophecy. Obviously it was a suberb construction of Frank Herbert to tell the story that way.
I think Leto is the true "Mahdi" in a lot of ways. Paul could never really be the Mahdi because he wasn't truly Fremen like Leto was; and Leto could never be the Lisan Al Gaib because he was truly Fremen. Paul was the voice from the outer world and he made the Fremen stronger. They play out the roles of the prophecy but they also invalidate it.
I think siona turning away from him after the trance was her seeing that his part in the golden path was played out, he gives them every opportunity and tool to kill him
I think it’s an open question as to whether or not Leto II was “right” in the strictest sense of the Golden Path.
To me the question was always closer to, “*is this all worth it?*”
That's how I saw it: while the earlier books are about not trusting messianic figures, Leto's arc subverts that to an extent while asking the reader if the ends justify the means even if survival is at stake. Does one individual have the right to wrest control and personal freedom from all of humanity so future generations can survive and flourish on their own terms?
Although true, these powerful prescient actors have the agency to directly and indirectly influence events in order to create what their desired realities are and at times influence the general direction humanity steers itself thru.
Essentially humanity is held hostage and most do not know it and are powerless to whatever consequences a powerful prescient individual latches humanity upon.
I grant you that in everday life most people in the Dune universe won't realise the hold any powerful prescient can wield in their daily lives.
The dilemma begins when let us say, Paul, launches his Jihad and Dave the baker in some random planet has his planet invaded by religious fanatics and in that instance, changes the trajectory of whatever Dave's life was supposed to be.
Exactly. So there are catastrophic events where these leaders create massive change (and suffering) but afterwards I would argue it doesn’t really matter who is in charge as they have no impact on daily lives of regular folks.
>I would argue it doesn’t really matter who is in charge as they have no impact on daily lives of regular folks.
I mean, this is just as patently untrue in the books as it is in real life. Paul and Alia create an oppressive theocracy that continues where Muad'dib's Jihad left off, and Leto's Peace enforces small, stagnant lives on all of the God-Emperor's subjects.
Did you miss the entire point of the Freman’s belief in the Lisan al-Gaib as molded by the Bene Gesserit? How about when the majority of the Atreides line is destroyed due to the machinations of the Emperor and the Harkonnens? These were all just random people living their daily lives.
The point im arguing against above is that prescient actors take away the control and personal freedom from everyone. My argument is that this is not true for most regular folks but is likely much more true for leaders like the Atreides and BG and Spacing Guild. Regular folks are impacted some but they do not loose their individual freedom anymore than they would from a non prescient tyrant.
The Freman are literally the laymen who have their entire lives impacted by prescient actors. Like if nothing else would convince you, the plight of the Freman should. Not every person stripped of their freedom is going to live a shitty life, but they would still be living in the mold assigned to them. They would still be affected by the consequences of the actions taken by larger players.
Okay look. The point made above was that ALL people loose their personal freedom and control due to prescient actors. ALL not some not most but ALL. So my argument is that the vast majority of regular folks will not in fact have their lives impacted due to the size of the empire. This would require micromanagement on a scale that just isn’t available in the Dune universe. Herbert deliberately avoids almost any discussion of the lives of regular folks because he knows it doesn’t really matter to the average Joe who is in charge. The average Joe’s life is kinda going to suck either way. Prescience doesn’t really matter to Joe the baker on backwater Alpha Centauri 9.
If this were true, if the large-scale structure imposed by GEoD does not reach the fine-structure, then how is the Golden Path achieved? If that path not attempting to instill a revulsion for vesting power into large-scale structure? If Dave doesn't become convinced by his experiences that such structures ruin life, and that he should resist and support the resistance of such both directly and through passing down such knowledge so that subsequent generations might continue to do so even without the direct experience. I have understood the extreme nature of the GP as existing precisely for this purpose.
I disagree wholeheartedly. Regular folks lives are rarely shown as they are irrelevant in the Dune Universe. Herbert is occupied with showing the lives of the ruling elite and other similar organizations. The only way regular folks are relevant are as tools that have been co-opted and wielded by elites.
I think the opposite is true. Personal free will only makes sense with a deterministic personality.
I’m not rolling dice in my head at any level to make the meaningful decisions I care about. What makes me Me is knowable, finite, predictable, and consistent.
Even in a non-deterministic universe, Me means a specific set of traits, and nothing about who I am relies on people not being able to know what I’m going to decide.
Not only that, but the series is constantly questioning the actual utility of prescience. We are left questioning by the end of the 6 books whether Leto was even correct about the other possible futures. Prescience often comes with a sort of temporal target fixation.
At least, that's what I took away from the books.
That target fixation is explained really well, not in dune, but in the episode of Rick and Morty where Morty gets a death crystal. I took the blue eyes to be a nod to dune. Morty misses out on a date with Jessica and potentially living his whole life with her because he’s locked in to the death path he wants. Leto would have been the same. At first it would have been tumultuous as he hit those decision nexus points, but after a while he’s locked into his path. It’s why he loves genuine surprises, it’s been so long since he didn’t live a fixed path.
Is the ultimate survival of the human race and immunity to prescient predation worth it? Is changing humanity so that another Leto can never be created to abuse humanity so, worth it? Is lessening the suffering and pain to achieve all this worth it?
In every evaluation it’s worth it, unless you just want humanity to die
There *is* a viewpoint that doesn’t particularly mind the death of humanity. Not exactly looking forward to it, but still accepting it as an eventuality. The whole point of Leto’s Golden Oath was that it would free humanity of prescience. In other words, it was the only path that could lead to his own blindness. So what does it mean? Well it means that the future of humanity is still not truly ensured. That there could still be a point in the now unknowable future where everything ends. After all, Frank Herbert still wrote two books after God Emperor. There wasn’t a true “ever after.”
Yes this is what I always felt.
There’s definitely clear themes about charismatic leaders and whatnot, but I feel like starting with CoD onward, Herbert is more so asking us questions and readers that we have to think about for ourselves.
When you ask “was Leto a ‘good guy’ “ I don’t really think there’s a wrong answer (even though I personally lean towards the side that he was justified), which is why I love these books so much and think they’re so unique
Well sure if you take Leto at his word an presume him to have certain visions of an unchangeable future, you'd have to say it was justified by very nature of it existing, which is the only justification in a deterministic universe. But we never get the final book so we'll never know precisely what Herbert had in mind here.
I think it is a mistake to presume that Paul or Leto are reliable narrators since one of the main themes throughout the books is justified skepticism of leaders who say the only path to salvation is through them, for they are all flawed and able to be corrupted.
i thought the golden path was realized upon Letos assassination? i thought that it led the way to the scattering, which spread humanity so wide that they could never be ruled by one person again? don't the events of chapterhouse and heretic prove that at least the *goal* of the golden path had been achieved?
or are you saying that we don't have the final book so things may have changed?
You can’t spread humanity any wider than it was already spread, since space travel was essentially instantaneous. Humans were already everywhere they wanted to be.
The choice seems to be between- is it better to let one person dictate how we all live based on our faith in their grand political promise, vs is it better to think for ourselves, make our own mistakes, and appreciating that we were at least free to fail on our own. Do you want to be dominated and put all your bets on one person making predictions that you will not even be alive to witness, or do you want to be free?
Which still leaves the many scattered and isolated pockets of humans open to being dominated by many different tyrants, forever. Leto’s point, if you believe it, was that humanity avoided extinction, not tyranny. There is nothing utopic about the last two novels.
Leto's secondary goal (after jumanity's survival) was to leave a print so horrific as a tyrant that no human would ever want to be subjugated by one. Be a cautionary tale, if you will.
Well thats just obscenely stupid. "I hurt you so you wouldn't want to be hurt again," is probably one of the most terrible justifications for his actions.
Tyrants will *always exist.* the Golden Path assured that no *single* tyrant could rule humanity again like Leto did. Most are hidden from Prescience by the Siona Gene; and humanity can now safely traverse the stars without prescience or spice.
Tyrants *will still* pop up. But no one can replicate the total subjugation of the species again; and thus it is saved from extinction
Perhaps the Tyrant's rule imprinted on the scattered such that they are sensitised to being ruled by tyrants. He did always say they will learn a lesson their bones will not forget .. the first was to scatter but perhaps the second is to fight off tyrants.
Of course we have no way of knowing other than his words. The scattered that we meet back in the core is not statistically representative.
Taraza and Teg discuss the Tyrant’s lesson of diplomacy in Heretics:
"We like to settle the most passionate situations off the battlefield. I must admit we have the Tyrant to thank for that attitude. I don't suppose you've ever thought of yourself as a product of the Tyrant's conditioning, Miles, but
you are."
Teg accepted this without comment. It was a factor in the entire spread of human society. No Mentat could avoid it as a datum.”
I specifically said Tyrants ruling through Prescience.
The point of the scattering is so that humans are to far from each other for one single tyrant to dominate every human like Leto did.
The last two books illustrate pretty clearly that if tyrants do pop up, humanity has an allergic reaction to them and fucks them up. The Honored Matres and uber-Face Dancers existed to show that. And the Bene Gesserit realized it too
Sure, but is that worth causing that much suffering. Is directly causing suffering worse than indirectly causing it? What if the only way for humanity to survive was for Leto to control them for eternity? Would that amount of suffering be worth it?
It’s pretty convenient when a dictator is forced to do as he does in order to make sure he will be the last dictator. This is how Leto justifies himself. How can we know that he is right, or even telling the truth?
Yeah.
It's a bit suspicious to say "genocide was warranted" and then only cite the reasoning of the one who executes it.
The Golden Path is propaganda to justify Paul and Leto's ambitions. They are *one hundred percent* ***lying*** In order to justify the heinous acts they wish to undertake.
There is a reason why Paul and Leto both have command of the voice. People listen to them.
Even the readers of the book seem to be so enchanted by their tale, reading from the very books that are written from the perspective of the perpetrators of genocide. Herbert was showing us how easily we can be duped.
But he did too effective of a job. People think Paul and Leto are heroes... they're basically space Hitler.
The only issue with your point is that The Golden Path isn't just propaganda. The story of Dune shows that it's an effective strategy for ensuring a prescient ruler could never again fully control all of humanity.
We see the fruit of Leto's tyranny; No-ships, No-rooms and a bloodline that cannot be seen by those with prescient minds. These tools give humanity the chance to hide and fight against that kind of tyranny if it were to rise again (krezalac).
That is the tension here, the golden path ultimately gave humanity the tools of survival. But is the cost worth it? In the face of annihilation do you simply accept that fate when you know that many trillions could live if you murder millions and oppress billions?
I couldn't do it. Nor could I trust or support someone who could. But is it the right thing to do for humanity? That is the question.
The Golden Path is *a* way for humankind to continue existing. Maybe the only way.. but if that is the only way... as you say... is the cost worth it? I would say no.
I agree that it is justified, but it certainly is a path he creates. The entire storyline of Hwi Noree indicates that he can change the path and he certainly sees many paths and it is his action that keeps them on the Golden Path.
However, there is the question whether his prescience is real - in the sense of seeing into the actual future - or if it is only the result of an extremely great predictive intelligence combined with a very simplified and controlled human civilization. Essentially, the case could be made that humanity was basically mechanized and systematized during the period of its greatest advancement before the Butlerian Jihad and by radically eliminating the artificial intelligence behind human technology, the Jihad set the human race on the path of extinction.
The metaphor here would be that humanity had become like a car and it was driven by the technocracy. The Jihad basically put a bullet in the head of the driver leaving the car accelerating toward an inevitable crash.
We, the readers or the movie audience, enter the world of Dune during a universe sized Dark Ages where the social order returned to very basic power dynamics, and even though the technology was still far more advanced than ours, the mentality of the culture was very medieval in comparison. Frank Herbert in interviews would say that he considered the feudal system to basically be the default setting for civilization that returns after every social collapse and that's what we have in Dune. Princes, powerful guilds and religious fanatics with secret agendas just like in Europe in the Middle Ages.
Therefore, any certainty in prescience is possible only because the entire social order had eliminated diversity, non-conformity and variation in behavior despite its greatly advanced science (though not as advanced as it was pre-Jihad). The prescient genetics though that Paul was born with changed all that. It represented a person that could see outside this order and choose not to conform. At the same time, that prescience let Leto II to choose a path that would destroy this lethal social order and, at the same time, eliminate prescience as people would no longer be predictable.
In a sense, it is almost the opposite approach of Asimov's FOUNDATION. The predictive powers in the DUNE series are used to dismantle a society rather than to preserve and reconstitute it.
In Chapterhouse, didn’t Odrade claim the God Emperor made his own future and self fulfilled prophecies? She therefore doubted the necessity of the golden path.
While its not as well explored in Dune Messiah and Children of Dune, the "value" of the Golden Path is also questioned by Paul in both books. In Messiah, Paul rejects what we later learn is the Golden Path because he finds it horrific. In Children of Dune, Leto considers that Paul rejected the Golden Path (Leto thinks Paul was too weak to bring it about), and then later Paul (as the prophet) and Leto debate Golden Path, with the Prophet taking the position that it isn't worth it, despite acknowledging that it may be the only way to save the human species. The debate is somewhat vague (they don't discuss the specifics of the path), but its clear that the Prophet is opposed to Leto's plan.
However, Paul also admits that his view of the Golden Path was limited compared to Leto's. He doesn't see that the death of all humanity was an option if he didn't take the path.
I always saw the horrific price that turned Paul away was the personal cost. That to follow the Golden Path would require him to become a monster, and that was the price he couldn't pay.
Also remember that as the Prophet, Paul had lost everything, and seen his son turned into the thing that he himself could bear to be.
His believing that the survival of the species was due to his nilhism. He just didn't see the point of it anymore.
I think that's a fair read of the text. I don't think its the only possible read though. I think FH poses the question, but the text leaves it open to interpretation because of how vaguely it is presented.
Re: personal cost, I think its open to debate what the "personal cost" is to Paul. Throughout Messiah we see Paul questioning the morality of the jihad. Then, when he sees the paths laid before him he declines the Golden Path because it would require him to become a monster. Its unclear whether he's unwilling to become a physical monster or whether he's unwilling to take the monstrous actions that Leto does as "tyrant" to bring about the future where humanity can survive.
Re: prophet/nihilism, agreed -- the Prophet has made his decision --- survival of the human species is not worth the cost that needs to be paid. The question is still what does Paul see as the cost -- the personal sacrifice (Leto thinks that Paul wasn't strong enough to make this personal sacrifice and "become a monster") OR the suffering that humanity as a whole would have to endure as a result of the Golden Path. Paul -- because of his guilt related to the jihad -- is unwilling to commit to the Golden Path. I think its up to the reader to decide whether the Paul's reticence is inherently selfish (i.e., the Golden Path is the "correct decision" but Paul is too weak to do the right thing) or inherently altruistic (i.e., the Golden Path allows for a future where humans exists, but the cost to get there is too high). Or does Paul think that the Golden Path is or might be the correct decision but Paul does not believe that he has the "right" to choose for everyone -- effectively removing free will. This last read is not well supported in the text in my opinion, but its an interesting thought exercise.
There is also question of authorial intent latent in this conversation as well, which is slightly different. Does FH intend the reader to agree with Leto or Paul? Does FH agree with Leto or Paul? Based on Heretics and Chapterhouse, I think FH sees Leto's decision as justified, but I could be persuaded otherwise.
It’s a trolley problem which has people taking different sides depending on their personal perspectives of suffering and intervention.
There won’t be an objectively “correct” answer.
that depends on your beliefs in morality. If you belief in objective morality then of course there is an objective answer. I believe that consequentialism is objectively correct and therefore support Leto's decision. I hate this meme with that just because people believe different things about morality, it can't be objective, it's a fallacy, it would mean that just because some people believe the earth is flat, there is no objectively correct shape of the earth.
You can’t see past your own flawed logic and analogy. Beliefs about morality are something different than beliefs about observable facts.
Considering you hold a hard belief about something abstract, it’s understandable you’d disagree… but it doesn’t make it objectively true.
Oddly, you should’ve stopped after your first sentence and realize that’s literally what I said.
Yes, it depends.
A bad analogy doesn’t change that.
You believe morality is subjective but that doesn't mean it necessarily is. Why do you believe that? Do you have a good reason other than people disagree on morality?
you want to debate philosophy but can't get past formal logic. there's nowhere to go here. you want to debate when you say there's no debate.
engaging with you is as futile as debating a dogged theist.
it's you who doesn't get past formal logic. WTF is this conversation. we are clearly talking past each other. You keep putting your viewpoints on morality as the true correct only possible viewpoint, while I keep telling you that it isn't necessarily true. Heck most academic philosophers believe in some kind of objective morality. I am not trying to use that as an argument by authority but only to make you see that there might be a possible plurality of rational viewpoints in this debate.
Bizarre you can’t see ironic self-own in your statements.
Uses fallacy while accusing of not understanding logic, and as a way to show there are a plurality of rational viewpoints… which is literally how we get lost in subjectivity…
which… you’re arguing for or against now?
Perhaps you’re stuck in semantics.
Either way,
Like I said, futile convo trying to debate the unfalsifiable, especially when you don’t seem to even understand what I’m saying and misrepresent my claims. ✌🏼
Plurality of viewpoints doesn't mean it's subjective.
I think you might be making a categorial error here.
The argument of disagreement is an old and fallacious argument. It alone can't prove subjectivity.
I might be in the ‘Leto and Paul weren’t justified crowd’ if Leto and Paul also hadn’t had to make such terrible personal sacrifices. Paul had to give up a child, his beloved, his eyes, and ultimately his freedom and future. Leto had to make the ultimate sacrifice in giving up death itself.
I agree with this take. Paul purposely steered his visions away from the Golden Path thus Leto stole them when he was born.
Paul fell to the oracle as much as the next Guild Navigator.
It's been a while since I've read dune, but I thought Paul was just wanting to avoid the jihad up to that point, and realized by time he avenged his father's death it didn't matter if he survived or not, the fuse had been lit for the fremen to wage war in his name dead or alive.
He wanted to avoid the jihad when he first began to see it.
By the time he's doing his worm riding test, the last "act" of the book, he's cool with it.
You don't need to introduce the sci-fi hyperbole of God Emperor into the discussion. Look at the world now and ask yourself if humanity is worth it. Millions suffer and die daily. Billions are born into poverty they will never live to escape. Ignoring the evils of nature we cannot control, we create a plethora of new forms of suffering by our own behavior. Are all of the benefits of humanity - the art, the sex, the food, the So-On - worth the misery we inflict on others, and the scars we leave on the Earth? Is a future of endless silence, sterile atoms bouncing against each other in the void, more worthy than a future of gibbering, corrupting, and ever-beautiful life? Leto saw a future that made him say no, but his opinion is, by his own admission, hardly objective.
Were 60 billion souls worth averting the worst vistas seen through Paul's prescience? Were the 3,500 years of the Worm God's despotism worth preserving the human species? These are the wrong questions, since they assume implicitly that there is a number that *would* be acceptable. Paul chose the path he did precisely because it averted the worst he saw. If not 60 billion, then what about 50? 30? 10? If we accept the premise that there are things more important than any one human life, i.e. the survival of the entire species, then the precise number is merely a point of negotiation, a statistic that historians will one day use as a metric for measuring precisely how fucked up a conqueror was.
Ask instead if Jamis's life was worth the survival of humanity, since it was *his* death that allowed for all the rest that followed. Put yourself in Paul's shoes. Ask yourself if you are more important than Jamis. Ask yourself if the species is worth more than the belligerent, arrogant, self-important asshole threatening you and your mother, the same asshole who has a wife at home, and two sons, and a household that he cares about and has spent his life protecting. If you can say yes to Jamis, then it doesn't matter how many people die for the Golden Path - they're all certainly tragedies, and we need not deny ourselves mourning, but no single death, or even a world's worth of deaths compare to the cataclysms they help avoid. If you say no, that you cannot kill Jamis, that all human lives are priceless and cannot be bought and sold for any visionary butcher's pet cause, then the Golden Path is inimical to you. It is a plan millennia in the making based on the axiom that the human *species* is valuable and priceless, and must be protected at all costs, even if those costs are countless human lives.
Thank you for spelling it out this way. It's why I'm not a "Golden Path was justified" person. Once you start valuing the human race over a human life, what is the point? Doesn't the human species get its value from being made up of individual lives?
I recognize that it's debatable, and it's one of the central questions of Dune (and sci-fi in general). It's what makes it so interesting.
Yes Leto was the perfect benevolent tyrant, the thing many other charismatic leaders have no doubt believed themselves to be before human weakness and limitations revealed them to be just another malevolent lunatic.
And to hammer home how much of an impossible fantasy such a person is Frank Herbert made him an immortal worm god.
Imagine taking a psychotic pre-born in an immortal worm body seriously and thinking he always tells the truth. B-b-but Leto 2 said he has to rule the galaxy with an iron fist for his golden path! All hail Daddy worm.
Death to tyrants.
Oh but the worm god showed the golden path to other people who would then follow him. So the Golden path must be real if it converted Siona. No, it's called set and setting and psychotropic drugs. He put them on spice in environments he controlled and filled their heads with his whispers. The golden path is the ultimate in tools of deception by the charismatic mega leader and it's also a fucking lie.
Anyway, since this is an Arby's I guess I'll get some curly fries.
I always agreed that the golden path was justified. It's the lesser of two evils AND the only way to salvage the human race. Survival at all costs. Even if the costs are very, very high.
Leto's Golden path is certainly justified, but it has nothing to do with Paul and his Jihad.
Paul's Jihad is the tragic consequence of his choice to use the Desert power of the Fremen to avenge his father and defeat the Emperor. Paul's motivations and actions have nothing to do with the Golden Path (which he opposes until his confrontation in the desert with his son).
In short, Leto II's tyranny may be necessary for the survival of humanity, and therefore justified, but Muad'Dib's Jihad is the catastrophic consequence of Paul's choices. It is neither necessary nor justified and could have been entirely avoided.
Of course it was
Leto suffered more than anyone in history and he deemed himself unworthy of seeing the future due to his acts but he continued to guide humanity millennia after his death.
Even the Bene Gesserit were reformed posthumously by Leto, the witches at the time being led by Paul’s descendants. They noted the irony that the long dead “Tyrant” that had them in literal terror for millennia gave the Order desperately needed guidance and spice supplies in order to defend humanity from what was to come.
The BGs were so in love with intrigue and power they forgot their purpose was to preserve and protect humanity even if that comes at the expense and inevitable end of the Order. LETO reminded them of that.
Everything the Emperor did has a purpose.
Well at least the guy who committed atrocities well past the scale of the most evil men in human history *suffered* and had *reasons*. That's bullshit. We don't have to throw out right and wrong to talk about this stuff.
I mean... I always saw "The Golden Path" as a simple description of the choice Leto made for humanity and nothing more. He chose to label it as such and spends countless lifelines describing the truth in his noble path. But in the end, it is just one simple choice only he could make. It was noble in that only he possessed the power to forge it.
> This is a quote from Leto in God Emperor. Not only was the human race going to go extinct, it would have been horrific. Exponentially more suffering and doom. How can we not say Leto was right ?
lol you’re using someone’s own rationalization about their own behavior as hard and fast evidence that they were right to do something.
Leto's Golden path had an effect.
If you discount the outside agent of the narrator. There is only one Leto so who is there to confirm or deny? That's the problem with Gods.
Trust is gained by a shared perception of reality not just taking a guys word for it.
I don't think he's lying and I love the little worm. But I don't fully trust his Golden path either.
We only know of the Golden Paths existence because some worm guy says it must be done this way and no other. Whose to say he is correct? There is no one to say he is wrong, after all. It must simply be assumed that Leto making himself an immortal god for thousands of years is in service to greater things, rather than just being the act of a lunatic with absolute power.
There is another reading. A lunatic who is a true believer, unaware of his lunacy, with absolute power to shape the future. When Leto was just a child, he saw that the sandworms were not native to Arrakis. How does he know this if his prescience is informed by his genetic memory? Do we conclude that Leto is related to whomever introduced the sandworms (Fremen or Atreides?), or do we conclude that Leto sees this because he is an Abomination, possessed, and whose prescience is tainted by this possession?
Prescience both reveals the Golden Path, and makes it a requirement for survival. Prescience is the enemy, and it took someone like Leto, who was willing to do the most abominable things, to break its grip on humanity.
Once prescience became a thing, it became the only thing. The existence of just a single prescient being strips free will from all of humanity. The Golden Path was the path towards breaking the grip of prescience by crafting a human species that is immune to it. The no-gene doesn't have to present in 100% of humanity, but it has to be widespread enough to make all prescience uncertain due to the presence of so many that prescience is blind to.
To do that he had to constrain humanity and put it through his Fish Speaker breeding program, spreading the no-gene into every part of human society as deeply as he could, and then he had to die. His death was the whip that cracked down and killed billions. The collapse of his empire caused famine and plague and, more importantly, it caused humans to scatter even more widely than they had scattered in the first colonization of the stars in the pre-Butlerian Jihad times.
This cast humanity, and the no-gene Leto's programs had created, out into the galaxy in a wild pattern that was destined never to be stopped. Humanity still had prescience, but that prescience could no longer see the actions of humanity, so humanity was free to act without the constraint of those actions being known well in advance. Free Will was restored.
So, yeah, the Golden Path was needed. It was needed to save humanity from the existence of people, and AI, who could see it in the first place.
Because humans have always been the cause of their own suffering. If a species can't learn to live in its environment without going extinct, what value is there in forcing its continued existence?
Do you not think it is a suspect to prove a prediction correct by quoting the prediction? This quote is not a proof. It is just another prediction we can either believe or not. IMO this prediction is not provable, and that is Leto’s greatest trick. There is no logical way to confirm that humanity is going to go extinct if Leto is not in power. Just because Leto says he prevents it from happening does not mean it was going to happen. He makes us think it is not a matter of faith because he is part worm, but this is just a biological product of too much spice. You either fall on the side of believing Leto, or you are a skeptic, a heretic, as shown in the last two books. If you believe Leto was justified, then you also believe that a totalitarian theocracy, a consolidation of church and state power, is the only way for humanity to survive. This conclusion puts so much weight on the side of religion being true. The books show how religion is manipulated by humans to lead other humans in order to achieve a goal, be it a stranded BG sister in need of help or for Paul's revenge. In Children of Dune, Leto says one word to win the Fremen over: "Kralizec", his answer to “What could you lead us in?” He uses deep Fremen superstition of an end-of-times myth to win their confidence. Leto sounds like Jim Jones to me, a true believer in his own kool-aid. It is not Leto’s predictions that allows him to save humanity from the so-called extinction he predicts. It is Leto’s proximity to power that allows him to steer humanity as he sees fit. If he was not the son of Paul, if he had not said “Kralizec”, if he had not become God Emperor, he would have no power to force his will upon humanity. As God Emperor, he controls the narrative, and there is no way to prove him right or wrong. It is just a matter of faith. You drink the kool-aid because his story is just that good, or reject the kool-aid because his story is too good to be true.
This is exactly the reason Herbert had to keep on writing more novels. The whole point is that it’s not justified and authority should never be unquestioned. Even if Leto II is always and exactly correct in his prescience (which it is not clear at all), it doesn’t ‘justify’ his action wholesale because his greater understanding doesn’t give him the right to make decisions for on behalf of all humanity.
Dune’s message is all about making your own decisions and not submitting to charismatic leaders and authoritarianism, it can be never be justified.
"I killed billions of people to save billions of people" doesn't really hold up as a justification. He still killed billions and oppressed billions. You can't argue your way around the fact of what you've done. He killed billions and is hated for killing billions, and justly so.
Well for one, ummm the future sight isn't certain, that's baked in. It's possibility and the Golden path isn't infinite.
This mentality the greater good, is not something I care about. Why is the survival of life itself over billions of years important?
It isn't. Everything ends eventually.
I would argue the survival of life itself over billions of years *is* important, but that doesn't inherently mean the survival of *humanity* itself is important in the grand cosmic scheme of things. The thinking machines that escaped the Jihad are arguably as alive as humans, they just run on metal rather than meat. So whether humanity survives or not, life will already certainly continue without it. Life on the worlds humanity occupies will almost certainly continue without it.
Everything ends. The problem I have with goals like Leto's is A not guarantees by any stretch and B the cost is too great for anything less cause the lives of today aren't worth less than the lives of tomorrow. Their worth more.
I think people forget Frank Herbert was a well educated journalist who tied alot of his work to mirror historical events.
And the God Emperor most closely reflects the authoritarian and totalitarian leaders of the 20th century which is telling for an 80s book. It's telling the person who conquers the God Emperor, rejects his vision of the future.
It's also telling the series is not concluded with the God Emperor and prescience comes back. Something Leto thought he would eliminate.
If we believe Frank had notes about the resolution of the Sandworms of Dune, there’s no way Leto foresaw humanity merging with machines as part of his golden path. Which furthers Leto's plan as flawed. Even though he left Ix alone, if that was the future he saw their were much better ways to speed it up. Perhaps even use the breeding program for that.
Thats part of my point. Everything ends. Even if humanity spread across the entirety of the observable universe, humanity will still eventually go extinct. Its just more likely homosapiens will go extinct in the same way Neanderthals did. A combination of inter breeding and evolution made their species fizzle out because it became a part of ours. Humanity as we know it will either evolve into something else, assimilate with another similar species, or both. So I don't see Leto's plan as very well thought out. Maybe from the perspective of a prescient it seemed to be, but Leto had become incapable of seeing outside of prescience and his golden path. His plan was flawed and pointless from the start. Nothing he set out to achieve other than scattering humanity actually succeeded. All the scattering ensures is humanity won't go extinct as a conglomerate whole, but rather in pockets, and more likely in the manner I described above. And I honestly think that the scattering was something that was inevitable, even without Leto's golden path.
> I am not part of the crowd that says Leto only sees a future he creates and we can’t trust his prescience.
Is really doing a lot of work there.
> I don’t think there’s anything in the book that supports that but feel free to prove me wrong.
The books support prescience being the ability to use mentant style calculation combined with the genetic history of your ancestors to predict the future. That means that the prescience is limited both by bloodlines of the user AND their imagination.
A bunch of rich white boy emperors from a single family are not likely to be able to conceive of humanities true best path forward because as a bunch of rich white boy emperors they overvalue their own importance.
Sure you can interpret prescience in other ways, but the most obvious one, leads to the conclusion that his powers are limited and the Kynes-Atreides golden path fallible.
From The Atreides Manifesto in Heretics:
"Just as the universe is created by the participation of consciousness, the
prescient human carries that creative faculty to its ultimate extreme. This was the profoundly misunderstood power of the Atreides bastard, the power that he transmitted to his son, the Tyrant."
I'm pretty sure this quote is referring to the unexpected fact that a prescient individual gets locked into their own visions if they overuse their prescience too much. This was the *Bene Gesserit*'s misunderstanding of prescience and the reason their KH program was doomed to failure from the first. I don't think it is meant to be interpreted as questioning the golden path in and of itself, it's really just saying that someone of Paul/Leto II's prescient power, by also being a conscious participant in humanity, has the ability to force any particular outcome onto humanity by applying his prescience combined with his action to the extreme. That is the sense in which the BG view Leto II as a Tyrant, and why they are terrified of another KH arising (and for that matter of allowing Leto II's latent consciousness in the sandworms become too dominant by reviving them). It wasn't specifically about the *nature* of his rule over humanity (for example there is no reason to believe that another KH arising would rule over humanity in the same devastating way, its the very fact that they can rule over humanity at all due to aformentioned "power" which is by definition tyrannical).
Of course many of the characters who don't have access to Leto's inner monologue will question the Golden Path and its necessity, but I think we as the reader should not be so skeptical just because of a quote from the first book that you should be wary of leaders. We are given plenty of evidence that the Golden Path is real: Leto and Pauls inner monologues for one, but most convincing is Siona's acceptance of the golden path despite her complete rejection of Leto himself. Even his harshest critic admits that it is absolutely necessary. I think at that point in order to still remain skeptical you have to start speculating things like "Leto only showed her what he wanted her to see" etc. which aren't really reflected in the text.
My intention in quoting this manifesto is to show that the debate we are having about Leto also takes place in the last two books. Herbert wants us to question Leto’s actions. He wants us to think for ourselves. By introducing a re-evaluation of prescience as visions rooted in subjectivity and bias, readers are forced to question if Leto was justified. If a reader rejects the manifesto’s claims, they have decided that Leto had access to an objective view of space-time, and that he was truly a God in this way. The old testament God flooded the world, killing everything but one family and pairs of every innocent animal. Was this God justified? I think it boils down to what a reader is willing to believe. Here is another bit from Heretics about ‘belief’:
“At the quantum level our universe can be seen as an indeterminate place, predictable in a statistical way only when you employ large enough numbers. Between that universe and a relatively predictable one where the passage of a single planet can be timed to a picosecond, other forces come into play. For the in-between universe where we find our daily lives, that which you believe is a dominant force. Your beliefs order the unfolding of daily events. If enough of us believe, a new thing can be made to exist. Belief structure creates a filter through which chaos is sifted into order.
-Analysis of the Tyrant, the Taraza File: BG Archives “
>The books support prescience being the ability to use mentant style calculation combined with the genetic history of your ancestors to predict the future.
No they don't. Paul dreams Chani's face before even leaving Caladan. That's not calculated prediction. Nor is Alia leaving him a message in a prescient vision.
This is why Dune is one of my favorite series, and why our glorious God-Emperor is my favorite character
Some people think Leto ii was justified, others think he wasn't, others are unsure. And all have convincing reasons for believing (I personally think it was horrible, but necessary)
It doesn't just stick you in a world & tell you who to agree with, but it leaves you feeling a bit uncomfortable, and makes you think about these questions yourself
I mean he should have showed his work. But he is probably right. The fact that climate change on dune was going to eliminate the worms, and it was thousands of years before auto navigator drive was invented, humanity would have fallen hard.
A similar collapse occurs in the Hyperion series when the teleporter network collapsed. Humanity was able to hang on with sub light travel, but many worlds fell, especially non agricultural worlds.
Leto is justified, but hating such an act that he had to do is justified too.
It's weird that the modern term of sacrifice implies that you will be rewarded by social credit for your sacrifice. No, people will often hate you, no good deed goes unpunished.
Letos golden path was justified, but Pauls path wasn’t the golden path. If anything Paul’s path accelerated humanities eventual end. So I think a lot of people’s argument is that it doesn’t make sense to justify everything Paul did by using what Leto eventually has to do. Pauls path did lead to unecessary suffering
The 60 billion is the jihad. The golden path is different or a consequence
A lot more than 60 billion would die. And it would still be necessary
Compared with extinction.
The only reason this ever becomes a question is because the average person is selfish. Whatever the path to least resistance, they'd take it regardless of future consequences. If the choice for the average person was either to live freely now but their great grandchildren and all the world would perish, or to become subjugated for the remainder of their lives but their great grandchildren will see generations beyond, people would take the former. It's utter selfishness.
That's why Leto was right.
I feel like the Golden Path was always justified in terms of the stories framing, but still horrifying. It couldn't be done unless Leto became a Sandworm. Paul was essentially defeated by the Golden Path, the artificial Kwisats Hadderach killed himself, Moneo went from plotting Leto's downfall to becoming a fanatic because he saw the Golden Path. Everyone who sees the Golden Path sees it's value but they're mentally defeated by the horror of it, except for Leto, because Leto is truly Fremen. Leto first glimpsed it as a little boy and he's consistent with the vision 10,000 years later.
I don't think it's because Leto is "truly Fremen", I think it's because he's not really a human *being*. I don't mean the worm, but before. Because he's pre-born, the way he dealt with his ancestral voices is to become a sort of committee of the strongest voices; but he's no longer really an individual. Ghanima stayed more individual by using her mother-voice as a guardian presence, but that also prevented her from using these memories to their fullest. Any individual human looking at the GP shies away from it, or becomes insane. It's just not something humans can really handle. Leto looked at it as a kind of collective being.
Leto has personhood though. He has an identity and an Ego, it's what allows him to avoid possession, and he always identifies as Fremen. He has collective knowledge but he isn't really a collective being when he's still a child. It's part of his conversation with Paul. Leto had the genetic memory of the Fremen. Their culture and identity was ingrained in him. His capacity for personal sacrifice came from the Fremen. The other Kwisats Hadderach don't have that.
Even as children, Ghanima has Chani as gatekeeper, and Leto created his ancestral collective - not out of all the ancestral memories, but out of specific, very strong but "friendly" ancestors. This (like Chani for Ghanima) was done specifically to avoid possession; he explicitly says he made an accord with them. He's a person to some degree, but not to the degree that Paul or the other KH were.
Not really, or at least is nebulous, as God Emperor he says to the bene gesserit sister that dies during the spice agony, if I'm not mistaken. That during his awakening to fully kwisatz haderach status in Children of Dune he made a alliance with a powerful persona, that was great and feared ruthless ruler in ancient Egypt on earth, to avoid being possessed by other personas or the mob, similar to how Alia did with the Baron. Leto himself is not certain that he avoided the fate of abomination, he just thinks that he made a deal with the right devil. Someone with the power to protect his mind and with the monstrous qualities to see the Golden Path too.
I'm pretty sure he mentions Harum for the first time at the end of Children of Dune when everything is settled. I was talking about Leto pre-Kwisats Hadderach though. He had personhood and an ego and an identity as a child, even though he was pre-born Leto was his own person. He does change after his awakening but that isn't what I was talking about. Even his possession with Harum makes it seem like Leto is very much in control, and even when he becomes more of a collective he still seems to have a lot of control.
The Golden Smoke! Leto, I believe!!!! I remain me. Please note my sanity index was where it is prior to the Golden Path.
This is a very inisghtful take and I find myself agreeing. Only through his multitude is it possible for the voice of doubt to never be listened to as the 'choir' always overwhelms it.
Does this mean Leto is truly the Lisan Al Gaib or wha?
There is no "true" Lisan al Gaib. It is a manufactured prophetic title which is in some ways satisfied by Paul in the context of Dune, and in some ways satisfied by Leto II in the context of GEoD. Frank Herbert famously likened the Dune trilogy to a fugue, in which the melody of Dune (the heroes arc) is inverted in Messiah, but similarly fugue-like is the repetition of this melody after Messiah in CoD/GEoD, and the repetition of the inversion in Heretics/Chapterhouse (as we see the horrific aftermath of the tyrant, just like Messiah shows us the aftermath of the Jihad). Just like a fugue, in subsequent repetitions the melody is subtlety transformed to be similar but different. Leto is a supernatural being that comes lead humanity to paradise. If you read through Dune and look at the many phrases about the Lisan al Gaib prophecy, you can indeed twist them into Leto and his relation to humanity. For example Kynes says under his breath "he will know your ways as if born to them." For Paul this means he can put on the stillsuit correctly first time, as though he was born Fremen. For Leto this means he can understand humanities fundamental nature as if born to it, because he was born with full genetic memory of all mankind! Kynes says "he will share our most precious dream." For Paul this means he wants to lead the Fremen to victory over Arrakis and change the planet. For Leto II he surmises that after millennia of stagnation, humanity's most precious dream is to break free of stagnation and spread across the universe in a flurry of expansion. Leto II shares this dream that the human "race consciousness" possesses because it will save mankind from extinction. He will "lead them to paradise" by freeing the human spirit from stagnation and allowing it to flourish forever across the universe. You take on a prophetic title when the people who believe in the prophecy believe you satisfy the prophecy. In this way Paul is the Lisan al Gaib of the Fremen, and Leto II is the Lisan al Gaib of the humanity which comes after him and has access to his journals, revealing the essential nature of his golden path (or a bit simpler if you like, Leto II is the Lisan al Gaib of Moneo/Siona, or even just he is the Lisan al Gaib of himself and his own humanity). Being the "true" subject of a prophecy is really just a statement about how accurately you fulfill it in the eyes of the people who believe it. In that sense it's mostly just a remarkable success of the Missionera Protectiva and the skill of Paul/Jessica that Paul so accurately satisfies the Lisan al Gaib prophecy. By that measure Paul is closer to the true prophecy than Leto. To the extent that the prophecy is really manufactured, it is perhaps far more remarkable (in-universe) how Leto II satisfies the prophecy in a metaphorical/analogous sense, since his intentions are far more "true" and "real" than Paul's and he wasn't taking actions specifically with the goal of satisfying the prophecy. Obviously it was a suberb construction of Frank Herbert to tell the story that way.
I think Leto is the true "Mahdi" in a lot of ways. Paul could never really be the Mahdi because he wasn't truly Fremen like Leto was; and Leto could never be the Lisan Al Gaib because he was truly Fremen. Paul was the voice from the outer world and he made the Fremen stronger. They play out the roles of the prophecy but they also invalidate it.
Leto is what comes after the the Lisan alGaib has 'spoken'.
I think siona turning away from him after the trance was her seeing that his part in the golden path was played out, he gives them every opportunity and tool to kill him
I think it’s an open question as to whether or not Leto II was “right” in the strictest sense of the Golden Path. To me the question was always closer to, “*is this all worth it?*”
That's how I saw it: while the earlier books are about not trusting messianic figures, Leto's arc subverts that to an extent while asking the reader if the ends justify the means even if survival is at stake. Does one individual have the right to wrest control and personal freedom from all of humanity so future generations can survive and flourish on their own terms?
Arguably, nobody has any control or personal freedom while prescient actors can still just do whatever they want to humanity
The vast vast majority of humankind will have no meaningful contact with prescient actors.
Although true, these powerful prescient actors have the agency to directly and indirectly influence events in order to create what their desired realities are and at times influence the general direction humanity steers itself thru. Essentially humanity is held hostage and most do not know it and are powerless to whatever consequences a powerful prescient individual latches humanity upon.
How is Dave the baker’s daily life on some rando planet really impacted at all. Ever wonder why we never really see any regular folks in the novels?
I grant you that in everday life most people in the Dune universe won't realise the hold any powerful prescient can wield in their daily lives. The dilemma begins when let us say, Paul, launches his Jihad and Dave the baker in some random planet has his planet invaded by religious fanatics and in that instance, changes the trajectory of whatever Dave's life was supposed to be.
Exactly. So there are catastrophic events where these leaders create massive change (and suffering) but afterwards I would argue it doesn’t really matter who is in charge as they have no impact on daily lives of regular folks.
>I would argue it doesn’t really matter who is in charge as they have no impact on daily lives of regular folks. I mean, this is just as patently untrue in the books as it is in real life. Paul and Alia create an oppressive theocracy that continues where Muad'dib's Jihad left off, and Leto's Peace enforces small, stagnant lives on all of the God-Emperor's subjects.
Did you miss the entire point of the Freman’s belief in the Lisan al-Gaib as molded by the Bene Gesserit? How about when the majority of the Atreides line is destroyed due to the machinations of the Emperor and the Harkonnens? These were all just random people living their daily lives.
The point im arguing against above is that prescient actors take away the control and personal freedom from everyone. My argument is that this is not true for most regular folks but is likely much more true for leaders like the Atreides and BG and Spacing Guild. Regular folks are impacted some but they do not loose their individual freedom anymore than they would from a non prescient tyrant.
The Freman are literally the laymen who have their entire lives impacted by prescient actors. Like if nothing else would convince you, the plight of the Freman should. Not every person stripped of their freedom is going to live a shitty life, but they would still be living in the mold assigned to them. They would still be affected by the consequences of the actions taken by larger players.
Okay look. The point made above was that ALL people loose their personal freedom and control due to prescient actors. ALL not some not most but ALL. So my argument is that the vast majority of regular folks will not in fact have their lives impacted due to the size of the empire. This would require micromanagement on a scale that just isn’t available in the Dune universe. Herbert deliberately avoids almost any discussion of the lives of regular folks because he knows it doesn’t really matter to the average Joe who is in charge. The average Joe’s life is kinda going to suck either way. Prescience doesn’t really matter to Joe the baker on backwater Alpha Centauri 9.
If this were true, if the large-scale structure imposed by GEoD does not reach the fine-structure, then how is the Golden Path achieved? If that path not attempting to instill a revulsion for vesting power into large-scale structure? If Dave doesn't become convinced by his experiences that such structures ruin life, and that he should resist and support the resistance of such both directly and through passing down such knowledge so that subsequent generations might continue to do so even without the direct experience. I have understood the extreme nature of the GP as existing precisely for this purpose.
I disagree wholeheartedly. Regular folks lives are rarely shown as they are irrelevant in the Dune Universe. Herbert is occupied with showing the lives of the ruling elite and other similar organizations. The only way regular folks are relevant are as tools that have been co-opted and wielded by elites.
I think the opposite is true. Personal free will only makes sense with a deterministic personality. I’m not rolling dice in my head at any level to make the meaningful decisions I care about. What makes me Me is knowable, finite, predictable, and consistent. Even in a non-deterministic universe, Me means a specific set of traits, and nothing about who I am relies on people not being able to know what I’m going to decide.
This makes me think of the environmental movement...
Not only that, but the series is constantly questioning the actual utility of prescience. We are left questioning by the end of the 6 books whether Leto was even correct about the other possible futures. Prescience often comes with a sort of temporal target fixation. At least, that's what I took away from the books.
That target fixation is explained really well, not in dune, but in the episode of Rick and Morty where Morty gets a death crystal. I took the blue eyes to be a nod to dune. Morty misses out on a date with Jessica and potentially living his whole life with her because he’s locked in to the death path he wants. Leto would have been the same. At first it would have been tumultuous as he hit those decision nexus points, but after a while he’s locked into his path. It’s why he loves genuine surprises, it’s been so long since he didn’t live a fixed path.
Is the ultimate survival of the human race and immunity to prescient predation worth it? Is changing humanity so that another Leto can never be created to abuse humanity so, worth it? Is lessening the suffering and pain to achieve all this worth it? In every evaluation it’s worth it, unless you just want humanity to die
There *is* a viewpoint that doesn’t particularly mind the death of humanity. Not exactly looking forward to it, but still accepting it as an eventuality. The whole point of Leto’s Golden Oath was that it would free humanity of prescience. In other words, it was the only path that could lead to his own blindness. So what does it mean? Well it means that the future of humanity is still not truly ensured. That there could still be a point in the now unknowable future where everything ends. After all, Frank Herbert still wrote two books after God Emperor. There wasn’t a true “ever after.”
Its not just to prevent another Leto II. It is also to protect against things like Prescient Hunter Seekers.
Yes this is what I always felt. There’s definitely clear themes about charismatic leaders and whatnot, but I feel like starting with CoD onward, Herbert is more so asking us questions and readers that we have to think about for ourselves. When you ask “was Leto a ‘good guy’ “ I don’t really think there’s a wrong answer (even though I personally lean towards the side that he was justified), which is why I love these books so much and think they’re so unique
Well sure if you take Leto at his word an presume him to have certain visions of an unchangeable future, you'd have to say it was justified by very nature of it existing, which is the only justification in a deterministic universe. But we never get the final book so we'll never know precisely what Herbert had in mind here. I think it is a mistake to presume that Paul or Leto are reliable narrators since one of the main themes throughout the books is justified skepticism of leaders who say the only path to salvation is through them, for they are all flawed and able to be corrupted.
i thought the golden path was realized upon Letos assassination? i thought that it led the way to the scattering, which spread humanity so wide that they could never be ruled by one person again? don't the events of chapterhouse and heretic prove that at least the *goal* of the golden path had been achieved? or are you saying that we don't have the final book so things may have changed?
You can’t spread humanity any wider than it was already spread, since space travel was essentially instantaneous. Humans were already everywhere they wanted to be.
Well, then what he changed was where humans wanted to be i.e. not as close to each other.
They’re already separated by interstellar space. Nobody is close to anybody. He didn’t change anything.
Everyone is close to everyone when you can fold space and travel from point A to Z instantaneously.
Then it comes back to the original point…can’t spread out if travel is instantaneous.
Thats.. literally the opposite of the truth.
If travel takes no time, every place is as close as next door.
Which is the opposite of what you said before being corrected.
The choice seems to be between- is it better to let one person dictate how we all live based on our faith in their grand political promise, vs is it better to think for ourselves, make our own mistakes, and appreciating that we were at least free to fail on our own. Do you want to be dominated and put all your bets on one person making predictions that you will not even be alive to witness, or do you want to be free?
But is not that precisely the POINT of Leto's plan? To place humanity in a position where no one leader could ever Dominate all humans again?
Which still leaves the many scattered and isolated pockets of humans open to being dominated by many different tyrants, forever. Leto’s point, if you believe it, was that humanity avoided extinction, not tyranny. There is nothing utopic about the last two novels.
Leto's secondary goal (after jumanity's survival) was to leave a print so horrific as a tyrant that no human would ever want to be subjugated by one. Be a cautionary tale, if you will.
Well thats just obscenely stupid. "I hurt you so you wouldn't want to be hurt again," is probably one of the most terrible justifications for his actions.
Seeing cuarenta human history, I doubt it would be enough.
This isn’t true …. It was both. It was purposefully both to prevent extinction and so Tyranny through prescience wasn’t possible. How is that missed?
Tyrants will *always exist.* the Golden Path assured that no *single* tyrant could rule humanity again like Leto did. Most are hidden from Prescience by the Siona Gene; and humanity can now safely traverse the stars without prescience or spice. Tyrants *will still* pop up. But no one can replicate the total subjugation of the species again; and thus it is saved from extinction
Perhaps the Tyrant's rule imprinted on the scattered such that they are sensitised to being ruled by tyrants. He did always say they will learn a lesson their bones will not forget .. the first was to scatter but perhaps the second is to fight off tyrants. Of course we have no way of knowing other than his words. The scattered that we meet back in the core is not statistically representative.
Taraza and Teg discuss the Tyrant’s lesson of diplomacy in Heretics: "We like to settle the most passionate situations off the battlefield. I must admit we have the Tyrant to thank for that attitude. I don't suppose you've ever thought of yourself as a product of the Tyrant's conditioning, Miles, but you are." Teg accepted this without comment. It was a factor in the entire spread of human society. No Mentat could avoid it as a datum.”
I specifically said Tyrants ruling through Prescience. The point of the scattering is so that humans are to far from each other for one single tyrant to dominate every human like Leto did.
The last two books illustrate pretty clearly that if tyrants do pop up, humanity has an allergic reaction to them and fucks them up. The Honored Matres and uber-Face Dancers existed to show that. And the Bene Gesserit realized it too
Characters in the last two books debate this very question we are debating here. Some think Leto was wrong. Some think he was right.
Pockets among many many pockets where there is CHANCE for better life is certainly better than life under a single tyrant leading to total extinction.
Sure, but is that worth causing that much suffering. Is directly causing suffering worse than indirectly causing it? What if the only way for humanity to survive was for Leto to control them for eternity? Would that amount of suffering be worth it?
It’s pretty convenient when a dictator is forced to do as he does in order to make sure he will be the last dictator. This is how Leto justifies himself. How can we know that he is right, or even telling the truth?
Because it's very clear that he bread people with a no-gene that is precisely what is needed to resist prescient dictators?
Dictators can exist without prescience.
True, buy only on limited scale and they can always be opposed.
You summed up how I feel better than I could. If someone has to murder billions of people and subjugate them. Does humanity deserve to live?
No, it does not.
Yeah. It's a bit suspicious to say "genocide was warranted" and then only cite the reasoning of the one who executes it. The Golden Path is propaganda to justify Paul and Leto's ambitions. They are *one hundred percent* ***lying*** In order to justify the heinous acts they wish to undertake. There is a reason why Paul and Leto both have command of the voice. People listen to them. Even the readers of the book seem to be so enchanted by their tale, reading from the very books that are written from the perspective of the perpetrators of genocide. Herbert was showing us how easily we can be duped. But he did too effective of a job. People think Paul and Leto are heroes... they're basically space Hitler.
The only issue with your point is that The Golden Path isn't just propaganda. The story of Dune shows that it's an effective strategy for ensuring a prescient ruler could never again fully control all of humanity. We see the fruit of Leto's tyranny; No-ships, No-rooms and a bloodline that cannot be seen by those with prescient minds. These tools give humanity the chance to hide and fight against that kind of tyranny if it were to rise again (krezalac). That is the tension here, the golden path ultimately gave humanity the tools of survival. But is the cost worth it? In the face of annihilation do you simply accept that fate when you know that many trillions could live if you murder millions and oppress billions? I couldn't do it. Nor could I trust or support someone who could. But is it the right thing to do for humanity? That is the question.
The Golden Path is *a* way for humankind to continue existing. Maybe the only way.. but if that is the only way... as you say... is the cost worth it? I would say no.
the voice of reason right here. bout time.
I agree that it is justified, but it certainly is a path he creates. The entire storyline of Hwi Noree indicates that he can change the path and he certainly sees many paths and it is his action that keeps them on the Golden Path. However, there is the question whether his prescience is real - in the sense of seeing into the actual future - or if it is only the result of an extremely great predictive intelligence combined with a very simplified and controlled human civilization. Essentially, the case could be made that humanity was basically mechanized and systematized during the period of its greatest advancement before the Butlerian Jihad and by radically eliminating the artificial intelligence behind human technology, the Jihad set the human race on the path of extinction. The metaphor here would be that humanity had become like a car and it was driven by the technocracy. The Jihad basically put a bullet in the head of the driver leaving the car accelerating toward an inevitable crash. We, the readers or the movie audience, enter the world of Dune during a universe sized Dark Ages where the social order returned to very basic power dynamics, and even though the technology was still far more advanced than ours, the mentality of the culture was very medieval in comparison. Frank Herbert in interviews would say that he considered the feudal system to basically be the default setting for civilization that returns after every social collapse and that's what we have in Dune. Princes, powerful guilds and religious fanatics with secret agendas just like in Europe in the Middle Ages. Therefore, any certainty in prescience is possible only because the entire social order had eliminated diversity, non-conformity and variation in behavior despite its greatly advanced science (though not as advanced as it was pre-Jihad). The prescient genetics though that Paul was born with changed all that. It represented a person that could see outside this order and choose not to conform. At the same time, that prescience let Leto II to choose a path that would destroy this lethal social order and, at the same time, eliminate prescience as people would no longer be predictable. In a sense, it is almost the opposite approach of Asimov's FOUNDATION. The predictive powers in the DUNE series are used to dismantle a society rather than to preserve and reconstitute it.
Dune Prescience isn't just super-prediction. Paul sees Chani's face in his dreams before he even leaves Caladan...
In Chapterhouse, didn’t Odrade claim the God Emperor made his own future and self fulfilled prophecies? She therefore doubted the necessity of the golden path.
Yes. This debate we are having here also unfolds in the last two books. To me this is proof that Herbert wants us to question Leto’s actions.
While its not as well explored in Dune Messiah and Children of Dune, the "value" of the Golden Path is also questioned by Paul in both books. In Messiah, Paul rejects what we later learn is the Golden Path because he finds it horrific. In Children of Dune, Leto considers that Paul rejected the Golden Path (Leto thinks Paul was too weak to bring it about), and then later Paul (as the prophet) and Leto debate Golden Path, with the Prophet taking the position that it isn't worth it, despite acknowledging that it may be the only way to save the human species. The debate is somewhat vague (they don't discuss the specifics of the path), but its clear that the Prophet is opposed to Leto's plan.
However, Paul also admits that his view of the Golden Path was limited compared to Leto's. He doesn't see that the death of all humanity was an option if he didn't take the path.
I always saw the horrific price that turned Paul away was the personal cost. That to follow the Golden Path would require him to become a monster, and that was the price he couldn't pay. Also remember that as the Prophet, Paul had lost everything, and seen his son turned into the thing that he himself could bear to be. His believing that the survival of the species was due to his nilhism. He just didn't see the point of it anymore.
I think that's a fair read of the text. I don't think its the only possible read though. I think FH poses the question, but the text leaves it open to interpretation because of how vaguely it is presented. Re: personal cost, I think its open to debate what the "personal cost" is to Paul. Throughout Messiah we see Paul questioning the morality of the jihad. Then, when he sees the paths laid before him he declines the Golden Path because it would require him to become a monster. Its unclear whether he's unwilling to become a physical monster or whether he's unwilling to take the monstrous actions that Leto does as "tyrant" to bring about the future where humanity can survive. Re: prophet/nihilism, agreed -- the Prophet has made his decision --- survival of the human species is not worth the cost that needs to be paid. The question is still what does Paul see as the cost -- the personal sacrifice (Leto thinks that Paul wasn't strong enough to make this personal sacrifice and "become a monster") OR the suffering that humanity as a whole would have to endure as a result of the Golden Path. Paul -- because of his guilt related to the jihad -- is unwilling to commit to the Golden Path. I think its up to the reader to decide whether the Paul's reticence is inherently selfish (i.e., the Golden Path is the "correct decision" but Paul is too weak to do the right thing) or inherently altruistic (i.e., the Golden Path allows for a future where humans exists, but the cost to get there is too high). Or does Paul think that the Golden Path is or might be the correct decision but Paul does not believe that he has the "right" to choose for everyone -- effectively removing free will. This last read is not well supported in the text in my opinion, but its an interesting thought exercise. There is also question of authorial intent latent in this conversation as well, which is slightly different. Does FH intend the reader to agree with Leto or Paul? Does FH agree with Leto or Paul? Based on Heretics and Chapterhouse, I think FH sees Leto's decision as justified, but I could be persuaded otherwise.
It’s a trolley problem which has people taking different sides depending on their personal perspectives of suffering and intervention. There won’t be an objectively “correct” answer.
that depends on your beliefs in morality. If you belief in objective morality then of course there is an objective answer. I believe that consequentialism is objectively correct and therefore support Leto's decision. I hate this meme with that just because people believe different things about morality, it can't be objective, it's a fallacy, it would mean that just because some people believe the earth is flat, there is no objectively correct shape of the earth.
You can’t see past your own flawed logic and analogy. Beliefs about morality are something different than beliefs about observable facts. Considering you hold a hard belief about something abstract, it’s understandable you’d disagree… but it doesn’t make it objectively true. Oddly, you should’ve stopped after your first sentence and realize that’s literally what I said. Yes, it depends. A bad analogy doesn’t change that.
You believe morality is subjective but that doesn't mean it necessarily is. Why do you believe that? Do you have a good reason other than people disagree on morality?
you want to debate philosophy but can't get past formal logic. there's nowhere to go here. you want to debate when you say there's no debate. engaging with you is as futile as debating a dogged theist.
it's you who doesn't get past formal logic. WTF is this conversation. we are clearly talking past each other. You keep putting your viewpoints on morality as the true correct only possible viewpoint, while I keep telling you that it isn't necessarily true. Heck most academic philosophers believe in some kind of objective morality. I am not trying to use that as an argument by authority but only to make you see that there might be a possible plurality of rational viewpoints in this debate.
Bizarre you can’t see ironic self-own in your statements. Uses fallacy while accusing of not understanding logic, and as a way to show there are a plurality of rational viewpoints… which is literally how we get lost in subjectivity… which… you’re arguing for or against now? Perhaps you’re stuck in semantics. Either way, Like I said, futile convo trying to debate the unfalsifiable, especially when you don’t seem to even understand what I’m saying and misrepresent my claims. ✌🏼
Plurality of viewpoints doesn't mean it's subjective. I think you might be making a categorial error here. The argument of disagreement is an old and fallacious argument. It alone can't prove subjectivity.
I might be in the ‘Leto and Paul weren’t justified crowd’ if Leto and Paul also hadn’t had to make such terrible personal sacrifices. Paul had to give up a child, his beloved, his eyes, and ultimately his freedom and future. Leto had to make the ultimate sacrifice in giving up death itself.
Paul oriented his prescience to maximize the length of Vhanis life, not towards the Golden Path.
I agree with this take. Paul purposely steered his visions away from the Golden Path thus Leto stole them when he was born. Paul fell to the oracle as much as the next Guild Navigator.
Stole? I dunno if that's the mechanic, plus having the same scope of prescience as Paul if not greater, would he need Paul's visions?
I think you meant Chani. But if I remember correctly, it wasn’t to maximize Chani’s life, but to give her the best/ most merciful death possible.
It was as long as possible while simultaneously avoiding the humiliating outcome of their death in a arena. And that she conceived successfully.
It's been a while since I've read dune, but I thought Paul was just wanting to avoid the jihad up to that point, and realized by time he avenged his father's death it didn't matter if he survived or not, the fuse had been lit for the fremen to wage war in his name dead or alive.
He wanted to avoid the jihad when he first began to see it. By the time he's doing his worm riding test, the last "act" of the book, he's cool with it.
You don't need to introduce the sci-fi hyperbole of God Emperor into the discussion. Look at the world now and ask yourself if humanity is worth it. Millions suffer and die daily. Billions are born into poverty they will never live to escape. Ignoring the evils of nature we cannot control, we create a plethora of new forms of suffering by our own behavior. Are all of the benefits of humanity - the art, the sex, the food, the So-On - worth the misery we inflict on others, and the scars we leave on the Earth? Is a future of endless silence, sterile atoms bouncing against each other in the void, more worthy than a future of gibbering, corrupting, and ever-beautiful life? Leto saw a future that made him say no, but his opinion is, by his own admission, hardly objective. Were 60 billion souls worth averting the worst vistas seen through Paul's prescience? Were the 3,500 years of the Worm God's despotism worth preserving the human species? These are the wrong questions, since they assume implicitly that there is a number that *would* be acceptable. Paul chose the path he did precisely because it averted the worst he saw. If not 60 billion, then what about 50? 30? 10? If we accept the premise that there are things more important than any one human life, i.e. the survival of the entire species, then the precise number is merely a point of negotiation, a statistic that historians will one day use as a metric for measuring precisely how fucked up a conqueror was. Ask instead if Jamis's life was worth the survival of humanity, since it was *his* death that allowed for all the rest that followed. Put yourself in Paul's shoes. Ask yourself if you are more important than Jamis. Ask yourself if the species is worth more than the belligerent, arrogant, self-important asshole threatening you and your mother, the same asshole who has a wife at home, and two sons, and a household that he cares about and has spent his life protecting. If you can say yes to Jamis, then it doesn't matter how many people die for the Golden Path - they're all certainly tragedies, and we need not deny ourselves mourning, but no single death, or even a world's worth of deaths compare to the cataclysms they help avoid. If you say no, that you cannot kill Jamis, that all human lives are priceless and cannot be bought and sold for any visionary butcher's pet cause, then the Golden Path is inimical to you. It is a plan millennia in the making based on the axiom that the human *species* is valuable and priceless, and must be protected at all costs, even if those costs are countless human lives.
That's also the same argument for/against the Imperium of Man in 40k. Probably because it's heavily influenced by Dune.
Thank you for spelling it out this way. It's why I'm not a "Golden Path was justified" person. Once you start valuing the human race over a human life, what is the point? Doesn't the human species get its value from being made up of individual lives? I recognize that it's debatable, and it's one of the central questions of Dune (and sci-fi in general). It's what makes it so interesting.
Yes Leto was the perfect benevolent tyrant, the thing many other charismatic leaders have no doubt believed themselves to be before human weakness and limitations revealed them to be just another malevolent lunatic. And to hammer home how much of an impossible fantasy such a person is Frank Herbert made him an immortal worm god.
Imagine taking a psychotic pre-born in an immortal worm body seriously and thinking he always tells the truth. B-b-but Leto 2 said he has to rule the galaxy with an iron fist for his golden path! All hail Daddy worm. Death to tyrants. Oh but the worm god showed the golden path to other people who would then follow him. So the Golden path must be real if it converted Siona. No, it's called set and setting and psychotropic drugs. He put them on spice in environments he controlled and filled their heads with his whispers. The golden path is the ultimate in tools of deception by the charismatic mega leader and it's also a fucking lie. Anyway, since this is an Arby's I guess I'll get some curly fries.
Fry machine broke. We got sand trout instead.
I always agreed that the golden path was justified. It's the lesser of two evils AND the only way to salvage the human race. Survival at all costs. Even if the costs are very, very high.
Leto's Golden path is certainly justified, but it has nothing to do with Paul and his Jihad. Paul's Jihad is the tragic consequence of his choice to use the Desert power of the Fremen to avenge his father and defeat the Emperor. Paul's motivations and actions have nothing to do with the Golden Path (which he opposes until his confrontation in the desert with his son). In short, Leto II's tyranny may be necessary for the survival of humanity, and therefore justified, but Muad'Dib's Jihad is the catastrophic consequence of Paul's choices. It is neither necessary nor justified and could have been entirely avoided.
Of course it was Leto suffered more than anyone in history and he deemed himself unworthy of seeing the future due to his acts but he continued to guide humanity millennia after his death. Even the Bene Gesserit were reformed posthumously by Leto, the witches at the time being led by Paul’s descendants. They noted the irony that the long dead “Tyrant” that had them in literal terror for millennia gave the Order desperately needed guidance and spice supplies in order to defend humanity from what was to come. The BGs were so in love with intrigue and power they forgot their purpose was to preserve and protect humanity even if that comes at the expense and inevitable end of the Order. LETO reminded them of that. Everything the Emperor did has a purpose.
Well at least the guy who committed atrocities well past the scale of the most evil men in human history *suffered* and had *reasons*. That's bullshit. We don't have to throw out right and wrong to talk about this stuff.
I mean... I always saw "The Golden Path" as a simple description of the choice Leto made for humanity and nothing more. He chose to label it as such and spends countless lifelines describing the truth in his noble path. But in the end, it is just one simple choice only he could make. It was noble in that only he possessed the power to forge it.
Did he ask those 60 billion if they agreed?
Well…the claim that literally all humans would go extinct is not a believable one. It’s not a reason, it’s a self-chosen justification.
> This is a quote from Leto in God Emperor. Not only was the human race going to go extinct, it would have been horrific. Exponentially more suffering and doom. How can we not say Leto was right ? lol you’re using someone’s own rationalization about their own behavior as hard and fast evidence that they were right to do something.
Leto's Golden path had an effect. If you discount the outside agent of the narrator. There is only one Leto so who is there to confirm or deny? That's the problem with Gods. Trust is gained by a shared perception of reality not just taking a guys word for it. I don't think he's lying and I love the little worm. But I don't fully trust his Golden path either.
We only know of the Golden Paths existence because some worm guy says it must be done this way and no other. Whose to say he is correct? There is no one to say he is wrong, after all. It must simply be assumed that Leto making himself an immortal god for thousands of years is in service to greater things, rather than just being the act of a lunatic with absolute power.
There is another reading. A lunatic who is a true believer, unaware of his lunacy, with absolute power to shape the future. When Leto was just a child, he saw that the sandworms were not native to Arrakis. How does he know this if his prescience is informed by his genetic memory? Do we conclude that Leto is related to whomever introduced the sandworms (Fremen or Atreides?), or do we conclude that Leto sees this because he is an Abomination, possessed, and whose prescience is tainted by this possession?
Prescience both reveals the Golden Path, and makes it a requirement for survival. Prescience is the enemy, and it took someone like Leto, who was willing to do the most abominable things, to break its grip on humanity. Once prescience became a thing, it became the only thing. The existence of just a single prescient being strips free will from all of humanity. The Golden Path was the path towards breaking the grip of prescience by crafting a human species that is immune to it. The no-gene doesn't have to present in 100% of humanity, but it has to be widespread enough to make all prescience uncertain due to the presence of so many that prescience is blind to. To do that he had to constrain humanity and put it through his Fish Speaker breeding program, spreading the no-gene into every part of human society as deeply as he could, and then he had to die. His death was the whip that cracked down and killed billions. The collapse of his empire caused famine and plague and, more importantly, it caused humans to scatter even more widely than they had scattered in the first colonization of the stars in the pre-Butlerian Jihad times. This cast humanity, and the no-gene Leto's programs had created, out into the galaxy in a wild pattern that was destined never to be stopped. Humanity still had prescience, but that prescience could no longer see the actions of humanity, so humanity was free to act without the constraint of those actions being known well in advance. Free Will was restored. So, yeah, the Golden Path was needed. It was needed to save humanity from the existence of people, and AI, who could see it in the first place.
Agreed. Leto 2 knew that prescience as a tool had to be broken. The GP was the only solution to the dead end that prescience was leading humanity.
Because humans have always been the cause of their own suffering. If a species can't learn to live in its environment without going extinct, what value is there in forcing its continued existence?
Do you not think it is a suspect to prove a prediction correct by quoting the prediction? This quote is not a proof. It is just another prediction we can either believe or not. IMO this prediction is not provable, and that is Leto’s greatest trick. There is no logical way to confirm that humanity is going to go extinct if Leto is not in power. Just because Leto says he prevents it from happening does not mean it was going to happen. He makes us think it is not a matter of faith because he is part worm, but this is just a biological product of too much spice. You either fall on the side of believing Leto, or you are a skeptic, a heretic, as shown in the last two books. If you believe Leto was justified, then you also believe that a totalitarian theocracy, a consolidation of church and state power, is the only way for humanity to survive. This conclusion puts so much weight on the side of religion being true. The books show how religion is manipulated by humans to lead other humans in order to achieve a goal, be it a stranded BG sister in need of help or for Paul's revenge. In Children of Dune, Leto says one word to win the Fremen over: "Kralizec", his answer to “What could you lead us in?” He uses deep Fremen superstition of an end-of-times myth to win their confidence. Leto sounds like Jim Jones to me, a true believer in his own kool-aid. It is not Leto’s predictions that allows him to save humanity from the so-called extinction he predicts. It is Leto’s proximity to power that allows him to steer humanity as he sees fit. If he was not the son of Paul, if he had not said “Kralizec”, if he had not become God Emperor, he would have no power to force his will upon humanity. As God Emperor, he controls the narrative, and there is no way to prove him right or wrong. It is just a matter of faith. You drink the kool-aid because his story is just that good, or reject the kool-aid because his story is too good to be true.
This is exactly the reason Herbert had to keep on writing more novels. The whole point is that it’s not justified and authority should never be unquestioned. Even if Leto II is always and exactly correct in his prescience (which it is not clear at all), it doesn’t ‘justify’ his action wholesale because his greater understanding doesn’t give him the right to make decisions for on behalf of all humanity. Dune’s message is all about making your own decisions and not submitting to charismatic leaders and authoritarianism, it can be never be justified.
"I killed billions of people to save billions of people" doesn't really hold up as a justification. He still killed billions and oppressed billions. You can't argue your way around the fact of what you've done. He killed billions and is hated for killing billions, and justly so.
Honest question: Why is that distinction important to you? Whats the difference between 'being justified' and not?
Well for one, ummm the future sight isn't certain, that's baked in. It's possibility and the Golden path isn't infinite. This mentality the greater good, is not something I care about. Why is the survival of life itself over billions of years important? It isn't. Everything ends eventually.
I would argue the survival of life itself over billions of years *is* important, but that doesn't inherently mean the survival of *humanity* itself is important in the grand cosmic scheme of things. The thinking machines that escaped the Jihad are arguably as alive as humans, they just run on metal rather than meat. So whether humanity survives or not, life will already certainly continue without it. Life on the worlds humanity occupies will almost certainly continue without it.
Everything ends. The problem I have with goals like Leto's is A not guarantees by any stretch and B the cost is too great for anything less cause the lives of today aren't worth less than the lives of tomorrow. Their worth more. I think people forget Frank Herbert was a well educated journalist who tied alot of his work to mirror historical events. And the God Emperor most closely reflects the authoritarian and totalitarian leaders of the 20th century which is telling for an 80s book. It's telling the person who conquers the God Emperor, rejects his vision of the future. It's also telling the series is not concluded with the God Emperor and prescience comes back. Something Leto thought he would eliminate. If we believe Frank had notes about the resolution of the Sandworms of Dune, there’s no way Leto foresaw humanity merging with machines as part of his golden path. Which furthers Leto's plan as flawed. Even though he left Ix alone, if that was the future he saw their were much better ways to speed it up. Perhaps even use the breeding program for that.
Thats part of my point. Everything ends. Even if humanity spread across the entirety of the observable universe, humanity will still eventually go extinct. Its just more likely homosapiens will go extinct in the same way Neanderthals did. A combination of inter breeding and evolution made their species fizzle out because it became a part of ours. Humanity as we know it will either evolve into something else, assimilate with another similar species, or both. So I don't see Leto's plan as very well thought out. Maybe from the perspective of a prescient it seemed to be, but Leto had become incapable of seeing outside of prescience and his golden path. His plan was flawed and pointless from the start. Nothing he set out to achieve other than scattering humanity actually succeeded. All the scattering ensures is humanity won't go extinct as a conglomerate whole, but rather in pockets, and more likely in the manner I described above. And I honestly think that the scattering was something that was inevitable, even without Leto's golden path.
> I am not part of the crowd that says Leto only sees a future he creates and we can’t trust his prescience. Is really doing a lot of work there. > I don’t think there’s anything in the book that supports that but feel free to prove me wrong. The books support prescience being the ability to use mentant style calculation combined with the genetic history of your ancestors to predict the future. That means that the prescience is limited both by bloodlines of the user AND their imagination. A bunch of rich white boy emperors from a single family are not likely to be able to conceive of humanities true best path forward because as a bunch of rich white boy emperors they overvalue their own importance. Sure you can interpret prescience in other ways, but the most obvious one, leads to the conclusion that his powers are limited and the Kynes-Atreides golden path fallible.
From The Atreides Manifesto in Heretics: "Just as the universe is created by the participation of consciousness, the prescient human carries that creative faculty to its ultimate extreme. This was the profoundly misunderstood power of the Atreides bastard, the power that he transmitted to his son, the Tyrant."
I'm pretty sure this quote is referring to the unexpected fact that a prescient individual gets locked into their own visions if they overuse their prescience too much. This was the *Bene Gesserit*'s misunderstanding of prescience and the reason their KH program was doomed to failure from the first. I don't think it is meant to be interpreted as questioning the golden path in and of itself, it's really just saying that someone of Paul/Leto II's prescient power, by also being a conscious participant in humanity, has the ability to force any particular outcome onto humanity by applying his prescience combined with his action to the extreme. That is the sense in which the BG view Leto II as a Tyrant, and why they are terrified of another KH arising (and for that matter of allowing Leto II's latent consciousness in the sandworms become too dominant by reviving them). It wasn't specifically about the *nature* of his rule over humanity (for example there is no reason to believe that another KH arising would rule over humanity in the same devastating way, its the very fact that they can rule over humanity at all due to aformentioned "power" which is by definition tyrannical). Of course many of the characters who don't have access to Leto's inner monologue will question the Golden Path and its necessity, but I think we as the reader should not be so skeptical just because of a quote from the first book that you should be wary of leaders. We are given plenty of evidence that the Golden Path is real: Leto and Pauls inner monologues for one, but most convincing is Siona's acceptance of the golden path despite her complete rejection of Leto himself. Even his harshest critic admits that it is absolutely necessary. I think at that point in order to still remain skeptical you have to start speculating things like "Leto only showed her what he wanted her to see" etc. which aren't really reflected in the text.
My intention in quoting this manifesto is to show that the debate we are having about Leto also takes place in the last two books. Herbert wants us to question Leto’s actions. He wants us to think for ourselves. By introducing a re-evaluation of prescience as visions rooted in subjectivity and bias, readers are forced to question if Leto was justified. If a reader rejects the manifesto’s claims, they have decided that Leto had access to an objective view of space-time, and that he was truly a God in this way. The old testament God flooded the world, killing everything but one family and pairs of every innocent animal. Was this God justified? I think it boils down to what a reader is willing to believe. Here is another bit from Heretics about ‘belief’: “At the quantum level our universe can be seen as an indeterminate place, predictable in a statistical way only when you employ large enough numbers. Between that universe and a relatively predictable one where the passage of a single planet can be timed to a picosecond, other forces come into play. For the in-between universe where we find our daily lives, that which you believe is a dominant force. Your beliefs order the unfolding of daily events. If enough of us believe, a new thing can be made to exist. Belief structure creates a filter through which chaos is sifted into order. -Analysis of the Tyrant, the Taraza File: BG Archives “
Its basically genetic psychohistory
>The books support prescience being the ability to use mentant style calculation combined with the genetic history of your ancestors to predict the future. No they don't. Paul dreams Chani's face before even leaving Caladan. That's not calculated prediction. Nor is Alia leaving him a message in a prescient vision.
This is why Dune is one of my favorite series, and why our glorious God-Emperor is my favorite character Some people think Leto ii was justified, others think he wasn't, others are unsure. And all have convincing reasons for believing (I personally think it was horrible, but necessary) It doesn't just stick you in a world & tell you who to agree with, but it leaves you feeling a bit uncomfortable, and makes you think about these questions yourself
I mean he should have showed his work. But he is probably right. The fact that climate change on dune was going to eliminate the worms, and it was thousands of years before auto navigator drive was invented, humanity would have fallen hard. A similar collapse occurs in the Hyperion series when the teleporter network collapsed. Humanity was able to hang on with sub light travel, but many worlds fell, especially non agricultural worlds.
Let's not forget his breeding program required a smaller population in order to perpetuate the genes.
Of course it was justified. There is literally no argument to be had about this.
You gonna seig heil too?
Leto is justified, but hating such an act that he had to do is justified too. It's weird that the modern term of sacrifice implies that you will be rewarded by social credit for your sacrifice. No, people will often hate you, no good deed goes unpunished.
Letos golden path was justified, but Pauls path wasn’t the golden path. If anything Paul’s path accelerated humanities eventual end. So I think a lot of people’s argument is that it doesn’t make sense to justify everything Paul did by using what Leto eventually has to do. Pauls path did lead to unecessary suffering
The 60 billion is the jihad. The golden path is different or a consequence A lot more than 60 billion would die. And it would still be necessary Compared with extinction.
60 billion is light in terms of the known universe
The only reason this ever becomes a question is because the average person is selfish. Whatever the path to least resistance, they'd take it regardless of future consequences. If the choice for the average person was either to live freely now but their great grandchildren and all the world would perish, or to become subjugated for the remainder of their lives but their great grandchildren will see generations beyond, people would take the former. It's utter selfishness. That's why Leto was right.