Was everything Leto II did actually necessary to avoid a worse outcome, or was it only one of many possible paths?
Now if we ignore Omnius and Erasm being hamfisted into it to make good tragedy into ordinary pulp sci fi story about survival, it was entirely unnecessary because everything that could endanger humanity was also the product of Paul/Leto’s rule. I think they both understood it and clearly said they are imprisoned in the prophecy.
The real least bad move would be destroying spice in the end of book one.
They seem to indicate, at least in the first book, that after Paul entered the sietch, the jihad was unavoidable. Even if Paul died, the Fremen would carry it out in his name. Leto II says something about how a prophet is locked into their own prophecy unless they create their death contrary to it. He mentions John the Baptist apparently engineering his own beheading to escape his vision. Supposedly this death need not be real, as Paul allowed himself to be abandoned in the desert to die, allowing Muad’Dib to die, and the Preacher to arise. He was no longer The Messiah, but this fell to Leto II, but even he “died” to the tigers and was reborn as a worm.
Right, but destroying the spice would end all the spice induced prophecies. Jihad would not happen, simply because guild would refuse to transport Fremen. Civil war in the empire would also not happen for the same reason. Trade would stop and humanity would be fragmented again, but, fun fact, most of planets were just subsistence farming feudal shitholes that would not die out, and another fun fact, the one that die would be nobility, from lack of spice. I don’t really see many downsides to this in comparison with Leto II rule and its consequences.
Well what he did eventually did end up like that one way or another. Humanity did scatter and fragment. This kind of reinforces that Dune really is anti-great man propaganda tbh. Like good job wormie, you did in 5k years what could’ve just been done in the first book…
I was actually worse though, because of scale plus the mass genocides in books 5+. Also the core of problem was not even removed, remember that the first real invisible human was Siona, and even if they really had thousands descendants really fast, the scattering started at roughly the same point so almost nobody scattering had it at first and there is just no possiblity for the genes to spread enough in 1500 years.
Imo basically every core problem of humanity in Dune stemmed from bad guys winning the butlerian jihad. That’s what make it a Greek tragedy where every choice is bad as long as you don’t free yourself from that basic iron premise.
But the basic problem of Dune as a book is that is completely idealist (with prominent Great Man theory, even though it criticise it as you said) and there is little historical materialism in it, despite constantly claiming it is a book about societies, ecology etc. After book 4 it stopped even pretending.
Oh yeah, fully agreed. I think Dune as a Greek Tragedy and not a “warning” or moral lesson makes much more sense. It’s not about what not to do, but about the inevitability of tragedy. Even if humanity escape our current cycles, we’ll just enter longer and even more tragic cycles.
Now if we ignore Omnius and Erasm being hamfisted into it to make good tragedy into ordinary pulp sci fi story about survival, it was entirely unnecessary because everything that could endanger humanity was also the product of Paul/Leto’s rule. I think they both understood it and clearly said they are imprisoned in the prophecy.
The real least bad move would be destroying spice in the end of book one.
They seem to indicate, at least in the first book, that after Paul entered the sietch, the jihad was unavoidable. Even if Paul died, the Fremen would carry it out in his name. Leto II says something about how a prophet is locked into their own prophecy unless they create their death contrary to it. He mentions John the Baptist apparently engineering his own beheading to escape his vision. Supposedly this death need not be real, as Paul allowed himself to be abandoned in the desert to die, allowing Muad’Dib to die, and the Preacher to arise. He was no longer The Messiah, but this fell to Leto II, but even he “died” to the tigers and was reborn as a worm.
Right, but destroying the spice would end all the spice induced prophecies. Jihad would not happen, simply because guild would refuse to transport Fremen. Civil war in the empire would also not happen for the same reason. Trade would stop and humanity would be fragmented again, but, fun fact, most of planets were just subsistence farming feudal shitholes that would not die out, and another fun fact, the one that die would be nobility, from lack of spice. I don’t really see many downsides to this in comparison with Leto II rule and its consequences.
Well what he did eventually did end up like that one way or another. Humanity did scatter and fragment. This kind of reinforces that Dune really is anti-great man propaganda tbh. Like good job wormie, you did in 5k years what could’ve just been done in the first book…
I was actually worse though, because of scale plus the mass genocides in books 5+. Also the core of problem was not even removed, remember that the first real invisible human was Siona, and even if they really had thousands descendants really fast, the scattering started at roughly the same point so almost nobody scattering had it at first and there is just no possiblity for the genes to spread enough in 1500 years.
Imo basically every core problem of humanity in Dune stemmed from bad guys winning the butlerian jihad. That’s what make it a Greek tragedy where every choice is bad as long as you don’t free yourself from that basic iron premise.
But the basic problem of Dune as a book is that is completely idealist (with prominent Great Man theory, even though it criticise it as you said) and there is little historical materialism in it, despite constantly claiming it is a book about societies, ecology etc. After book 4 it stopped even pretending.
Oh yeah, fully agreed. I think Dune as a Greek Tragedy and not a “warning” or moral lesson makes much more sense. It’s not about what not to do, but about the inevitability of tragedy. Even if humanity escape our current cycles, we’ll just enter longer and even more tragic cycles.
Very lib, but yeah 🤷♂️