Skip to main content

In Dune, was the Golden Path really necessary?


I am trying to understand the reason why Leto III merged with the sandtrout in Children of Dune and why he was so committed to the Golden Path.


I just finished the first three books and I fear that I have missed the point of why prescience is so bad. According to the wikipedia entry, Leto wanted to teach humanity a lesson to avoid stagnation, so much so that he punishes them for 3,500 years by being a brutal emperor.


What isn't clear to me is how this actually saves humanity? Given the horrors of Muad'Dib's holy war and Leto's rule you'd think that having a few prescient noblepeople running around wouldn't be so bad. And why does he need to merge with a sandtrout and then let the Sandworms go extinct in order to accomplish this?


I checked out the Dune and Children of Dune miniseries in the hopes that the "made for TV" aspect would simplify the explanation of Leto's commitment but it doesn't do a good job explaining that either, it just seems to be a rehash of Leto's speeches on why the path is necessary.



Answer




The golden path was necessary due to the events that are seen through prescience and not fully realized until after Chapterhouse: Dune.


Without the Golden Path, humanity stagnates: it grows ever more dependent on melange and Arrakis, on the Spacing Guild, the Bene Gesserit, and the other powers-that-be. Realize that, through the control of melange and the Kwisatz Haderach breeding program, the main powers of the Dune Universe literally control humanity's continued evolution.


Paul Muad'Dib and Leto II both foresee the final destruction of mankind by an unknown power due to its complacency. So, Leto attempts to instill such a hatred of the centralized power structure that's at the heart of humanity's stagnation so humans would do everything in their power to "scatter": to go to the farthest reaches of the known Universe to avoid being tied to one central authority. This causes the established powers to lose their hold on humanity's progress and future.


The Scattering has one major additional effect: the development of humanity's ability to avoid prescience, which allows a section of humanity to elude the unforeseen power in the universe that will ultimately destroy them. This side effect plays heavily into the unwritten final chapter of the series, later adapted into Hunters of Dune and Sandworms of Dune.


In it, the unknown power uses a form of prescience to detect every possible move humans can make and provide the appropriate counter. That is, if I know what you're going to do before you do it, you can never defeat me. Developing the ability to avoid prescience allows humanity to have a fighting chance against the unknown power.


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Did the gatekeeper and the keymaster get intimate in Ghostbusters?

According to TVTropes ( usual warning, don't follow the link or you'll waste half your life in a twisty maze of content ): In Ghostbusters, it's strongly implied that Dana Barret, while possessed by Zuul the Gatekeeper, had sex with Louis Tully, who was possessed by Vinz Clortho the Keymaster (key, gate, get it?), in order to free Big Bad Gozer. In fact, a deleted scene from the movie has Venkman explicitly asking Dana if she and Louis "did it". I turned the quote into a spoiler since it contains really poor-taste joke, but the gist of it is that it's implied that as part of freeing Gozer , the two characters possessed by the Keymaster and the Gatekeeper had sex. Is there any canon confirmation or denial of this theory (canon meaning something from creators' interviews, DVD commentary, script, delete scenes etc...)? Answer The Richard Mueller novelisation and both versions of the script strongly suggest that they didn't have sex (or at the very l...
1 comment
Read more

Why didn't The Doctor or Clara recognize Missy right away?

So after it was established that Missy is actually both the Master, and the "woman in the shop" who gave Clara the TARDIS number... ...why didn't The Doctor or Clara recognize her right away? I remember the Tenth Doctor in The Sound of Drums stating that Timelords had a way of recognizing other Timelords no matter if they had regenerated. And Clara should have recognized her as well... I'm hoping for a better explanation than "Moffat screwed up", and that I actually missed something after two watchthroughs of the episode. Answer There seems to be a lot of in-canon uncertainty as to the extent to which Time Lords can recognise one another which far pre-dates Moffat's tenure. From the Time Lords page on Wikipedia : Whether or not Time Lords can recognise each other across regenerations is not made entirely clear: In The War Games, the War Chief recognises the Second Doctor despite his regeneration and it is implied that the Doctor knows him when they fir...
Post a Comment
Read more

story identification - Animation: floating island, flying pests

At least 20 years ago I watched a short animated film which stuck in my mind. The whole thing was wordless, possibly European, and I'm pretty sure I didn't imagine it... It featured a flying island which was inhabited by some creatures who (in my memory) reminded me of the Moomins. The island was frequently bothered by large winged animals who swooped around, although I don't think they did any actual damage. At the end one of the moomin creatures suddenly gets a weird feeling, feels forced to climb to the top of the island and then plunges down a shaft right through the centre - only to emerge at the bottom as one of the flyers. Answer Skywhales from 1983. The story begins with a man warning the tribe of approaching skywhales. The drummers then warn everybody of the hunt as everyone get prepared to set "sail". Except one man is found in his home sleeping as the noise wake him up. He then gets ready and is about to take his weapon as he hesitates then decides ...
Post a Comment
Read more

warhammer40k - What evidence supposedly supports Tau as related to the Necrontyr?

I've heard of rumours saying that the Tau from Warhammer 40K are in fact the Necrontyr. Is there anything that supports this statement, in WH40K canon? I just found this, on 1d4 chan 1 : Helping Necrons? Or are they Necrontyr descendants? An often overlooked issue is that Tau have no warp signatures, just like Necrons, hate Warpspawns and Warp in general, just like Necrons, have the exact same skull shape,stature and short lives, and the overwhelming need for Technology and beam weapons, JUST LIKE NECRONS. GW may have planned a race that simply prepares a pacified, multiracial galaxy for Necrons to feast upon, supported by Ethereals that have a C'tan phase blade. Then there is a reference of "dark seed in east" by the Deceiver, so the tricky C'tan might give Tzeentch the finger in the JUST AS PLANNED competition. Or maybe GW just has so little creativity that they simply made a new civ conforming to an Old One's standards without knowing it. Is this the connec...
Post a Comment
Read more