Golden Path as philosophy

[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?

[niño-gusano]

Yes! that´s the issue, changing the relationship with "your master". The hierarchy of any religion tries to modify your behaviour and your beliefs. So, in order to achieve some balance, you, as an "intelligent follower"should be able to bend religion acording to your beliefs.
I mean, what Leto wanted to show was that God is something inside of us. When it becomes a tangible entity or when a powerful hierarchy is created to "speak His word" human kind gets enslaved.

[mrpsbrk]

I mean, what Leto wanted to show was that God is something inside of us. When it becomes a tangible entity or when a powerful hierarchy is created to "speak His word" human kind gets enslaved.

I don't believe in that. I think that Leto wanted to show things that were not very much related to god or God. Religion, i feel, was at most a metaphor for it...

[SadisticCynic]

Just as a reply to the first part of your longer post there mrpsbrk, as I recall the Bene Gesserit were agnostics of a sort; remember the satirical poem Murbella wrote on the bathroom mirror (wall?).

[mrpsbrk]

Just as a reply to the first part of your longer post there mrpsbrk, as I recall the Bene Gesserit were agnostics of a sort; remember the satirical poem Murbella wrote on the bathroom mirror (wall?).

No, i don't remember no poem.

[SandChigger]

Obtuse.

The captive Honored Matre was a fascinating study...and amusing at times. There was her joking doggerel posted on the wall of the ship's Acolyte dining room.

Hey, God! I hope you're there.
I want you to hear my prayer.
That graven image on my shelf:
Is it really you or just myself?
Well, anyway, here it goes:
Please keep me on my toes.
Help me past my worst mistakes,
Doing it for both our sakes,
For an example of perfection
To the Proctors in my section;
Or merely for the Heaven of it,
Like bread, for the leaven of it.
For whatever reason may incline,
Please act for yours and mine.