Golden Path as philosophy

[SandChigger]

Now if only he would drink the Kool-Aid.

[SwordMaster]

Its hard to jump into a thread that has already detailed so much but one thing you guys might add to this was that Frank used LetoII as his own mouth piece to communicate some of his more controversial ideas and philosophy. If you read more of Frank's non fiction you can see a pattern of one of his main themes throughout much of his work, both fiction and non fiction. It can be summed up in two words:

no absolutes

This is also at the core of the GP in relation to humanity of course breaking the binding tie that is our need to understand things in absolute terms. No matter if science, or philosophy or the human condition. This is what Frank and LetoII wanted to free the human mind of. Its very difficult to detail this properly I often reference his essay “listening to the left hand” as a clear concise attempt to communicate this idea. One of many puzzle pieces Frank left for us.

[Freakzilla]

The most important decision you can make right now is what you stand for- goodness...or badness.

How about a Fresca? Mmm, mmm?

[SwordMaster]

"No man has yet determined what are the powers of the species; none has yet learned from experience what the species may perform by mere laws of nature (chemical, genetic or other) or what the species may do without rational determination. For nobody has known as yet the frame of the species so thoroughly as to explain all of its operations."

FH "listening to the left hand"

this is what I think the GP was about in many ways.

[mrpsbrk]

SwordMaster, really really thanks with sugar and cherries on top for the tip about "the left hand". Wonderful read. Really enlightening about ol' Frankie's ramblings. I just noticed you did post it here, i googled it and got to a place called Aeria Gloris, not sure if it is a faithful reproduction.

Also, the consonance between the author and Leto II's voices is nothing less than striking.

But, again returning to topic (will try to post a more direct comment about the text per se at "other books"), this text pretty much screams to me that no, the GP is not about avoiding a specific threat or even about becoming resistant to any possible threat (which are actually almost the same thing, if you pause to consider). If we take "Listening" and "GEoD" as two instances of the same discourse we will see that the most important thing is to stop slow-poisoning ourselves.

To do that it is not enough to put "bad" and "good" labels (AKA Butlerian Prohibition, Muad'Dib Jihad, Gesserit screening for Humans, et al) into given poisons. We need to open our eyes. We need to live in process. We must stop believing in absolutes (though there is no value in ceasing to use them).

"Then are there no rules at all, Lord?"

"Perhaps one. Short-term decisions tend to fail in the long-term."

(Geez! The old fella must have spent a lot of time perfecting this one passage!)

Also, i find it extremely amusing that, while in many ways both texts are about the same issues, after reading GEoD you are more predisposed (at least i was) to see the risk of absolutes almost everywhere, even though Listening is more general. But in GEoD the stance of "beware of casteling yourself inside a mousetrap" is exemplified in such enticing ways...

That way, we can read "prescience" not as a superpower but as "dependence upon a single inference" or as a worst-case form of self-confirmation bias. If we do so, Siona's invisibility is no longer a strategical ploy, it is another metaphor, this time for the way out of single-mindedness (which is not to fight faith, but instead to go away from it).

And so on.

On the other hand, despite losing the "teaching" value, a metaphor-less generalized view of the GP could be... handy. That is why i still want to understand the GP better. I will agree that "Listening to the Left Hand" comes pretty close to be a straightforward explanation of the GP. But i still like to dig deeper into the wheels-within-wheels. I am pretty sure i will never tire of it...

[SandChigger]

QUOTE TAG CLEAN-UP IN AISLE 1136!

[TheDukester]

How about a Fresca? Mmm, mmm?[/i]

"Well, the world needs ditch-diggers, too."

[mrpsbrk]

>>QUOTE TAG CLEAN-UP IN AISLE 1136!

I wanted to write Leto II as Leto ][, like the old Apple ][, but didn't work out, did it? Fixd, though.

[SwordMaster]

Really good observations mrpsbrk, I enjoyed reading your comparison and smiled when I saw the quote you referenced.

GEoD wrote:
"Then are there no rules at all, Lord?"

"Perhaps one. Short-term decisions tend to fail in the long-term."

This again is where Frank could take your mind to a place where you are on the cusp of this greater understanding of life... not many authors can take you to that place.

Slow poison and the human condition. If you ask me, Frank was more of a philosipher then even he liked to admit.

[Falcor]

Hello Everyone,

I'm new to this forum, and noticed some familiar names with those on dunenovels.com which I've joined recently under the same handle. I've been itching to get into a discussion such as this one, and now that I found one which is ongoing, I must extend my excitement to you all, as well as my two cents, and also my thanks to mrpsbrk for starting this.

That said, here goes my interpretation of the GP as a philosophy:

First, I'm an atheist/humanist/naturalist, whichever of the labels works best in understanding me for you all. That said, I've read the Dune series as an atheist and haven't really seen a discrepancy with my views, but more of a magnifying glass put on certain aspects of my own viewpoints.

Ultimately, to me the purpose of the GP is to ensure humanity's continued survival for all time (notice I didn't say "end of time", for I refuse to think of time as having an end). One can then make as many possible divergent philosophies with this ultimate goal in mind as there are planets in the Duniverse, but here's my take. I believe that whatever ensures our continued survival and protects us from extinction is, in and of itself, holy and divine. Not to be confused with those actions which are done with humanity's survival in mind, I'm referring to that which actually helps mankind survive. This gets a bit shady however, in that one might argue all things are holy, despite how horrific they may be, and that the means are justified by their ends...

Although no one will know unless they live forever, and only then, only in hindsight, unless of course, prescience ever does develop.. I don't have the answer to this ends-means issue, although I try to live a life in which the ends do not justify the means, though I am willing to acknowledge that my actions in life may ultimately lead to humanity's end, despite my best intentions. Now I'm confusing myself...

In any case, here's what I believe should be mankind's next goal: diversify our holdings. Our holdings at this moment are Earth, and that's it. If a meteor came and hit us, epic GP fail... Thus, one of our next goals should be to get to Mars and terraform it so that should a meteor/comet/other catastrophic event occur in which all life on a planet is extinguished, we hopefully can evacuate to the other planet or at least have some humans survive, such that hopefully before the next catastrophe, we might be able to come back and repopulate the previously devastated planet. Of course, threat from without is what I'm speaking of, not threat from within. Honestly though, I doubt humans, although capable of it, will completely wipe themselves out, despite this threat from within which FH's books focus on. To me, the threats from within need to be addressed, but the threats from without are much more dangerous, be them other intelligent lifeforms, large impact objects, blackholes, lack of resources, etc.

In any case, I intend on living forever so that I may see all of man's advances, by means of stemcells and cybernetic augmentation. That's not necessarily in the GP, but perhaps it is, who knows.

I know what you're all thinking though:



Hehe,
~Falcor

[SadisticCynic]

Don't worry about the it appears to be quite welcome here; personally I myself plan on either living forever or dying trying .

[Freakzilla]

Hello Everyone,

I'm new to this forum, and noticed some familiar names with those on dunenovels.com which I've joined recently under the same handle.

A word of warning: Being a member here may get you banned from Dunenovels, a badge most of us wear proudly.

I've been itching to get into a discussion such as this one, and now that I found one which is ongoing, I must extend my excitement to you all, as well as my two cents, and also my thanks to mrpsbrk for starting this.

I'm happy you found us!

That said, here goes my interpretation of the GP as a philosophy:

First, I'm an atheist/humanist/naturalist, whichever of the labels works best in understanding me for you all. That said, I've read the Dune series as an atheist and haven't really seen a discrepancy with my views, but more of a magnifying glass put on certain aspects of my own viewpoints.

Ultimately, to me the purpose of the GP is to ensure humanity's continued survival for all time (notice I didn't say "end of time", for I refuse to think of time as having an end). One can then make as many possible divergent philosophies with this ultimate goal in mind as there are planets in the Duniverse, but here's my take. I believe that whatever ensures our continued survival and protects us from extinction is, in and of itself, holy and divine. Not to be confused with those actions which are done with humanity's survival in mind, I'm referring to that which actually helps mankind survive. This gets a bit shady however, in that one might argue all things are holy, despite how horrific they may be, and that the means are justified by their ends...

Although no one will know unless they live forever, and only then, only in hindsight, unless of course, prescience ever does develop.. I don't have the answer to this ends-means issue, although I try to live a life in which the ends do not justify the means, though I am willing to acknowledge that my actions in life may ultimately lead to humanity's end, despite my best intentions. Now I'm confusing myself...

In any case, here's what I believe should be mankind's next goal: diversify our holdings. Our holdings at this moment are Earth, and that's it. If a meteor came and hit us, epic GP fail... Thus, one of our next goals should be to get to Mars and terraform it so that should a meteor/comet/other catastrophic event occur in which all life on a planet is extinguished, we hopefully can evacuate to the other planet or at least have some humans survive, such that hopefully before the next catastrophe, we might be able to come back and repopulate the previously devastated planet. Of course, threat from without is what I'm speaking of, not threat from within. Honestly though, I doubt humans, although capable of it, will completely wipe themselves out, despite this threat from within which FH's books focus on. To me, the threats from within need to be addressed, but the threats from without are much more dangerous, be them other intelligent lifeforms, large impact objects, blackholes, lack of resources, etc.

In any case, I intend on living forever so that I may see all of man's advances, by means of stemcells and cybernetic augmentation. That's not necessarily in the GP, but perhaps it is, who knows.

I know what you're all thinking though:



Hehe,
~Falcor

I don't think you're crazy, it seems you have a very good understanding of the GP.

...and welcome! Please post in the "Introduce Yourself" forum if you get the chance.

[A Thing of Eternity]

I don't think we have to worry about black holes... that said we should obviously get onto another planet as soon as possible, but I don't think people comprehend the difficulty involved in this. Even with insane technological advances, it will be hundreds of years before we can even begin looking at this seriously.

Until then, our worst enemy is ourselves. We might get hit by a meteor, but we will have to deal with mass famine, pandemics (man made and natural) and war for the foreseeable future.

[Rakis]

It's always nice to read optimism from the pacific coast...

[A Thing of Eternity]

I'm in Alberta now, optimism isn't an option here.

I actually heard someone say "yeehaw" (but not making fun of hicks, this guy meant it) for the first time this weekend. Sad times are upon me.

[Omphalos]

I'm in Alberta now, optimism isn't an option here.

I actually heard someone say "yeehaw" (but not making fun of hicks, this guy meant it) for the first time this weekend. Sad times are upon me.

Are you living there now? Any Indian culture for your girlfriend there to avail herself of? My wife would go nuts without all the Chinese and Filipino stuff here.

Youll get used to it eventually.

[A Thing of Eternity]

I'm in Alberta now, optimism isn't an option here.

I actually heard someone say "yeehaw" (but not making fun of hicks, this guy meant it) for the first time this weekend. Sad times are upon me.

Are you living there now? Any Indian culture for your girlfriend there to avail herself of? My wife would go nuts without all the Chinese and Filipino stuff here. There's plenty of Asian stuff/people in pretty much any major city in Canada, we imported a lot of them as slave labour for the railway back in the day. Luckily now they get a little more respect.

Youll get used to it eventually.

Yeah, living in Calgary as of last weekend. There is some Indian culture here, we found a few good restaurants. I'm mostly hoping there's enough Indians/Sikhs here to have a proper Vaisakhi celebration in the street, otherwise I'll probably have to travel back to Vancouver for that (by far my favorite religious celebration).

My main beef (oh, that's a pun, you just have to be Albertan to get it) with Calgary so far is that it's essentiall a big downtown surrounded by suburbs, which are connected by mini-highways. There isn't really that usual urban area, or proper strips and such.

Also the cowboys suck. A lot.

Hope I do get used to it!

[mrpsbrk]

Falcor breathed fire:

In any case, here's what I believe should be mankind's next goal: diversify our holdings. Our holdings at this moment are Earth, and that's it. If a meteor came and hit us, epic GP fail... Thus, one of our next goals should be to get to Mars and terraform it so that should a meteor/comet/other catastrophic event occur in which all life on a planet is extinguished, we hopefully can evacuate to the other planet or at least have some humans survive, such that hopefully before the next catastrophe, we might be able to come back and repopulate the previously devastated planet.

In biological/ ecological terms (though to tell the truth i still didn't find a quote in my Ricklefs, which probably means i extracted that info from some less than very reputable source) an individual's main competitors are always from his own species. As an illustration: in the proverbial primeval jungle the proto-human suffered more evolutive pressure from other humans (who ate the same berries and small rodents and so on that HE was trying to get) than from the sabre-toothed tiger nearby (who did consume a lot of resources, but not the same ones).

Ok, so this seems like a big detour. What i mean is: pragmatically speaking the inner threat is always more important. Given that there are both internal and external threats, it is likely that the internal are more pressing. As i understand it, your point is that, while on normal conditions this is so, external threats have a bigger chance of going beyond what we can currently bear.

My instinctive reaction to that is: the problem is not the unpredictable EXTERNAL threat, but the UNPREDICTABLE external threat, or for that matter, the unpredictable threat per se. Any qualifications we make on that diminish our capacity to see it before it sees us.

Also, we must remember that the Chronicles were written during the cold war, when atomic warfare was a very real threat. So even if now conditions are different, i would argue that what FH was trying to address was more akin to what you call "external". And i don't even fully agree that the conditions are that different: for example, even if our current arms race is in a slower pace, now we have more runners in it, with many nations being suspected of trying to develop nuclear weapons, and not only that but non-government sources of threat.

But, following another line completely, i would like to point that conditions like the "hit by a meteor" can be found in our species past, actually. Around some lakes in Africa, for example, archaeologists found many layers of remains from different periods in time, and one of the patterns they found was that, through many periods of hardship, some species tended to grow rapidly in numbers just after the crisis, which seems to be the ones that could adapt more and thus exploit the setback that his competitors also had, and humans were always one of those. That means, we humans seem to be particularly tuned to face the kind of unpredictable, external, threat you point to.

That said, what do you think those kinds of ideas lead us to conclude when applied to other areas of life, beyond so-to-say "presidential measures" or big large scale enterprises that are largely out of the scope of such a forum? For example, day-to-day life, or the "living forever" thang (though i do not praise this one idea), or what-have-you? I mean, this thread was exactly to discuss the GP in less "procedural" terms...

[niño-gusano]

Leto wants to show the people that religions are a farce, God does not exit, and we are better off without him. Human kind is the real God. Down with Rome!

[mrpsbrk]

God does not exit

But hey, God DOES exist, indeed. His name is Leto.

[mrpsbrk]

Leto wants to show the people that religions are a farce, God does not exit, and we are better off without him. Human kind is the real God. Down with Rome!

Even more important, though the Chronicles do contain more than a few warnings about the dangers of the misuse of religion, i also believe it contains examples of ways that religions can be used to make us stronger. As Kelly would say, the hallmark of a powerful technology is that it can be powerfully abused. We do not have the option of "going back to pre-religion times", so we should learn to use religion intelligently. And "just say no" does not work in this case.

[niño-gusano]

Leto é o único Deus verdadeiro....e Marcio o seu máis grande profeta...

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Leto is the only true God...and Marcio is his greatest prophet..

[SandChigger]

Only until orald comes back.

[niño-gusano]

The only way to "use religion inteligently" is being critic so , faith is out of place. By being critic you avoid giving to much power to church hierarchy. And by avoiding church hierarchy you avoid abuse and stagnation.

[mrpsbrk]

The only way to "use religion inteligently" is being critic so

Is it? I don't know. I don't feel like the BG were specially critic of religion per se, i feel they had an analysis of religion, but refrained from actually going into a criticism. Obviously that is an undecidable question. Anyway, by "critic" i infer you propose to actually oppose religion, which pretty much allows your enemy to determine which issues get the attention: if he says A you say not-A, when you actually may not even be interested in A.

faith is out of place.

As an example, you are saying not-faith, though i feel "faith" is a non issue, a bad question, something unworthy of my wondering. To be fair, i once was interested in faith and in whether it was important or not, and i even had a taxonomy of belief modes where faith had a neat place. Since then, i came to think of such classifications as crude simplifications, and now prefer a model of human understanding that is more open-ended.... So, yea, i do not care too much about faith, but i would not be found wasting my time arguing about it being out of place either.

By being critic you avoid giving to much power to church hierarchy. And by avoiding church hierarchy you avoid abuse and stagnation.

Oh, hierarchy. That is an interesting issue. And one given very much attention in the Chronicles no less!

But, then again, "avoiding giving too much power" to them is enough? Since you yourself generally speaking want to have more power, augmenting the power of the groups you belong to is a good thing, and therefore so is giving power to the hierarchy.

In a Dune example, diminishing the power of the Muad'dib would restore Stillgar to being a thinking individual instead of the blind follower he turns into at the end of Dune? I do not know. I do not much think so. I think what makes Stillgar blind is not the power per se, but the relation with the leader.

What do you think?