A macro-view of the GP


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Re: A macro-view of the GP

Post by Freakzilla »

Omphalos wrote:Maybe I shouldn't have drunk all that cough-syrup this morning.
Stripes! :lol:
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Re: A macro-view of the GP

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What can I say ? I like fucking my sister. It's hot. Sorry, man.
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Re: A macro-view of the GP

Post by harqalada »

I hope/assume it's OK to post in pretty old threads like this one.

Yea, I think it's clear that the "ultimate" goal of the Golden Path isn't anything like a specific outcome; the Golden Path is more like a pebble in humanity's shoe to keep it always moving and growing. At the same time, I think Leto II continued to push humanity along the Path even after his apparent death. I think the spice hoard and the message Odrade finds on Dune indicate that Leto did look into some specifics beyond his reign or the 4,000 year cut-off point (which would be small peeks compared to knowing just about everything going on everywhere during his lifetime), and I also think it's reasonable to suspect that his worm descendants continued to exercise some real prescient influence on events through their dreaming pearls. Basically, Leto's Peace represents the most overt phase of the Golden Path, but he still guides humanity for the time between GEoD and Heretics. He then passes his mantle in a sense to the Bene Gesserit, who become responsible for the next phase. This represents a significant lessening of control on his part but still the basic progression of the Path.

Some stuff you guys were posting about Sheeana in the OHDC forum made me then think if the Golden Path might not take the form of alternating periods of tyranny and scattering. Humanity runs amok and transforms in a thousand different ways for some period, then invariably starts to stagnate again, at which point a new tyrant - the combined product of Leto's long-range political planning (not the same as prescient control), his (sometimes co-opted) breeding plans, and ever-lessening direct input from his "residual" prescience - arises to once against subject humanity to a long period of enforced peace, so that its instincts can build up the pressure for a new scattering.

It seems to me like the Duncan gholas and clones must play a key role in this; I can't help but feel that the line represents something of a test-bed, or the sowing of some kind of genetic seed, that will allow new, ever more powerful versions of OM and even prescience to arise. It just seems so suggestive to me that Duncan A) recovers all his memories in Heretics through some kind of cellular connection or repository and B) has been bred so many times into so many branching and merging and independent genetic lines of import. I wonder if he isn't some kind of burgeoning OM conduit. That also seems to fit with his continual role as a source of potential and useful material - never one who actually rules or acts, always the tool.

Related to this is a question I have about the role of breeding and genetics in various kinds of Other Memory. OM clearly isn't reliant only on spice; it seems to be a basic potential of human beings in the Dune universe - could that itself be the result of evolved or bred traits?

Perhaps Kralizec is something far, far further in the future than anyone suspects; if it really is a titantic confrontation in which all of humanity hangs in the balance, is it possible that Kralizec could function as a much, much larger version of the stress-points that cause Hayt and later Heretics Duncan to regain their memories? If it threatens the nature of humanity, that would closely parallel the form of the memory-retrieving periods in Duncan's life, which seem to revolve around conflicted "natures": Hayt conditioned to kill Paul, or Duncan trained to respond to immense and primordial reproductive energies with, once again, conditioned murder. The fact that it's called a "struggle" might be suggestive. Could the Golden Path be an attempt to condition all humanity into some axial moment of self-contradiction, heralding an immense new phase shift in the entire scattered species? In a sense, that's what the first iteration of the Golden Path, Leto's Peace, is: Leto opposes humanity to its own instincts by force, and when that contradiction is finally ended humanity explodes and transforms radically.
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Re: A macro-view of the GP

Post by Freakzilla »

The GP is simple; scatter everyone so no one person/event can eliminate them all, make them invisible to prescients.

His pearls of awareness had no affect on the people in the scattering, a limited local one only.

He doesn't guide humanity at all, if anything just the opposite, he led by bad example. It is not a path.

Everyone has OM, the spice overdose is just a way to access it on a conscious level. Leto bred for instincts at a barely sub-conscious level, or almost conscious if you like. OM and prescience just below consciousness.

Kralizec was The Scattering and The Famine Times.
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Post by Kralizec »

Phaedrus wrote:Once the prey grew strong/smart/capable enough to destroy that predator, they should have been able to counter any threat equal to it.
The breeding, education, and other development on the Golden Path seem to have been mostly for capacities of concealment, indirection, and a capacity for prudent waiting. Siona conceals her role by conducting the execution of Leto II through Nayla. She and Duncan communicate the plot only to Nayla, and she, the executioner, does not even fully understand her own role. There is also indirection in the circumstance that Nayla doesn't fire on Leto II, but on the supports for the bridge and then the suspensors for the Royal Cart. The Ixians act indirectly through Hwi Noree, a sympathetic mimic vastly superior to anything the Tleilaxu had produced. The Ixians leave no fingerprints; their participation in the destruction of the God-Emperor amounts only to distraction and provocation of envy and righteous indignation. The no-ships and other no-globes the Ixians developed extended men's capacities for concealment. Their null-entropy bins extended men's capacity for prudent waiting by allowing them to convey resources into the indefinite future. The records at Dar-es-Balat are concealed in a no-globe and written on very durable materials in a code not easily broken; the God-Emperor himself, then, exhibited the possibility and worth of concealment and patient waiting, ad oculos. Similarly, by the way, it seems to be taking men decades to work out what Frank Herbert was up to. Meanwhile, the widespread scattering of his books, like sandtrout, means his dreams also approach immunity to "entropy" or destruction. "The golden smoke! The golden smoke! Lord, I believe!"
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Re: A macro-view of the GP

Post by Freakzilla »

One of Leto's stated goals was to be a predator on humanity in order to improve the stock.
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Re: A macro-view of the GP

Post by Smiley »

My only questions on this whole thing (be kind I just read through this entire thread and I am a bit tired now) are as follows:

If Leto II'swork on the Golden Path was at an end, why was he attempting to enlist the BG into it?
(see Heretics of Dune)
By provoking the destruction of Rakis did the BG accept or decline?

And was the faster reflex thing just a bonus?


P.S. Are you sure the no-gene and no-fields hid things from Daniel and Marty? They seemed to know who was on the No-ship.
P.P.S. Above not reference to mcdune
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Re: A macro-view of the GP

Post by georgiedenbro »

Smiley wrote: If Leto II'swork on the Golden Path was at an end, why was he attempting to enlist the BG into it?
(see Heretics of Dune)
While I believe Leto's primary objective was to secure humanity from extinction, which both required his oversight for a time and then the Scattering, I think this was not his only objective with the Golden Plan. The part of the plan pertaining to securing humanity's future - no matter the form - he completed by his death. The rest of it would always be a work in progress to be taken up by someone else. I think he saw the BG as being true to their word that they "exist only to serve" but that they either had an incomplete understanding of what serving really meant, or that they had lost their way and become corrupted. Either way, he seemed to see in them the potential to continue his work, which I believe involved helping to lead humanity towards a better way of living (this is speculated by some to be universal democratic rule).
By provoking the destruction of Rakis did the BG accept or decline?
I need to re-read Heretics, but based on what I remember and others have said it seems unclear whether the BG were all on the same page regarding the destruction of Rakis. For my own part I think that by that time the BG as a whole hadn't quite grasped as a group what Leto II had really done, and weren't yet in the position to collectively accept. I think that Odrade may have tacitly accepted Leto II's offer on her own. One thing, though, is that Leto II changed humanity by force, and in so doing already made it so that his cause was being carried out to a certain extent. Aside from the Scattering itself, the very fact of the no-gene and that the term "tyrant" was such a powerful image for the old Empire would automatically make people more prone to avoid bowing to a great leader, which is a step towards freedom.
And was the faster reflex thing just a bonus?
I believe this was a random development unrelated to the Golden Path. FH had mentioned how nature has a way of improvising and finding ways to improve itself, and I think Teg's abilities are just an evolutionary thing.
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Re: A macro-view of the GP

Post by Smiley »

Once Dar reads the message she understands Tarza's plan. Taraza wanted to break Leto's hold on humanity (whether real or imagined). Spreading the worms might help continue the path but I wonder if that was their intention or just part of the Sheena plan. Spreading worms may have been part of the Sheena plan though.
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Re: A macro-view of the GP

Post by Freakzilla »

Scattering the worms was to continue the spice cycle and yet at the same time keep it from being a source of power for whoever controls it.
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Re: A macro-view of the GP

Post by Freakzilla »

The GP was not a "path" at all, if anything it was 'infinite' paths. Destroying Rakis, in my opinion, severed ties to the core of the old empire, potentially eleminating the reason for regular conquering from the Scattering.
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Re: A macro-view of the GP

Post by Smiley »

Very true. Rakis being the sole place of worms could be a long-term issue.
In regards to the sisterhood's agenda, I am just thinking that maybe having them transplanted to other worlds, have sheena do her thing, train other BG to do the same (chapterhouse mentions this is possible) and then you get a following on many worlds, plus you are the savior of the Old Empire when you bring back the spice. Or maybe the BG wanted spice only for themselves, but this seems less likely.

In regards to the Golden Path, or perhaps the Tyrant's mechanations, to be more precise, was he planning or hoping that Rakis would be destroyed?
The opinion's of these boards seems to be that he planned nothing after the Scattering, but then the intent of "Join me!" from the message Ordrade read seems out of place.

Maybe the destruction of Rakis was one of his four deaths?

Or maybe he made the worms more adaptable (the animal cunning and such) and humanity took thier sweet time spreading them, thus preventing the hydralic despotism he used helped along by building resistance in humans to such a thing. But then considering the fact that there may or may not be spice out in the Scattering, it is all inconsequencial.

Very speculative, I know.

But his three main goals seem to be this:

Scatter humanity so that someone will survive.
Nullify prescience's potential to control humanity (no-fields, siona gene)
Make humans mature to the point of not accepting a leader such as himself or his father (the lesson "thier bones will remember)

All else is perhaps of little importance, but still interesting. The BG seemed rather concerned in Heretics about still marching to his drum.
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Re: A macro-view of the GP

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I don't think he really planned much after the Scattering, I tend to believe Leto meant what he said about looking into the future beyond his death. Besides, if all the important players had the Siona gene or no-feilds he wouldn't be able to see much anyway.

Since he secured the continuation of human life, maybe he hoped the BG would work at achieving a better quality of life? :think:
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Re: A macro-view of the GP

Post by georgiedenbro »

Freakzilla wrote:I don't think he really planned much after the Scattering, I tend to believe Leto meant what he said about looking into the future beyond his death. Besides, if all the important players had the Siona gene or no-feilds he wouldn't be able to see much anyway.

Since he secured the continuation of human life, maybe he hoped the BG would work at achieving a better quality of life? :think:
I do think he set into motion certain things during his reign that were for the purposes of what would come after, but the difference is that he didn't look into the future to see if they actually happened. He used good old fashioned hope, I would wager. His work with the Ixians to develop the INM was certainly for the Scattering, but what of his work with the BT? And what was to come of the Duncan program? We see in the later books that others believed his program to be of lasting value, and not only for the purposes of breeding with Siona. I suspect Leto had various plans he hoped would be continued (by the BG?) but that he wasn't going to take steps to make sure of anything; he'd set things in place and let the future go free.
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