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It's not so much flourishing as it is surviving. He's such an Ultra Hitler that the second they can everyone gets the hell out of dodge and makes sure no one else can follow them or know where they went, ensuring humanity's proliferation and survival indefinitely
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Mar 4, 2024 04:40
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Aurubin posted:I only really know God-Emperor from pop-cultural osmosis and summaries, what's Herbert's justification for why the end of thousands of years long oppression would lead to humanity eventually flourishing (after subsequent thousands of years of famine, etc.)? For Leto II it's the end of prescience, but what's Herbert's thesis? Just seems comparatively juvenile to the themes articulated in Dune and Messiah. Don't quote me on this but the golden path is the only one that doesn't lead to humanity's extinction. I think a more apt term would be "only path that's not a river of poo poo". If memory serves, it involves breeding of a human that's completely immune to prescience.
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Mar 4, 2024 04:47
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That is the in-universe explanation, but I think the question was more about the thematic justification. The first couple books were intended as warnings against the dangers of charismatic leaders. The later ones seem to have a message of "well actually, ultra hitler could be good (because of a contrived fictional situation)."
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Mar 4, 2024 04:52
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Bugblatter posted:That is the in-universe explanation, but I think the question was more about the thematic justification. The first couple books were intended as warnings against the dangers of charismatic leaders. The later ones seem to have a message of "well actually, ultra hitler could be good (because of a contrived fictional situation)." Yeah this is more what I'm getting at.
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Mar 4, 2024 04:53
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Isn't there an element in God Emperor that he's essentially making humanity "smoke the whole pack of cigarettes" in terms of dictatorship? like he's not just saying "gently caress you" to the Bene Gesserit, but he's literally instilling a genetically-coded distaste for authoritarianism into everyone. At the same time though I think it's important to question all of Leto II's actions and point of view; for all that he claims to know exactly what he's doing I think he really doesn't actually understand himself very well or why he behaves the ways he does.
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Mar 4, 2024 04:58
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Bugblatter posted:That is the in-universe explanation, but I think the question was more about the thematic justification. The first couple books were intended as warnings against the dangers of charismatic leaders. The later ones seem to have a message of "well actually, ultra hitler could be good (because of a contrived fictional situation)." I don't necessarily see Paul as a charismatic leader. He fills a propaganda role seeded by the Bene Gesserit and knows that once you inspire the fremen, there's no way to un-ring that bell. Leto (Dad) was a more obvious archetype of charisma. I've said this enough for every poster in the thread to deserve forming a line and punching me in the stomach, but if you operate in a complex social environment, charisma can cause you to be erased. Our ape brains are clearly not capable of improving in certain arenas.
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Mar 4, 2024 05:03
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Martman posted:Isn't there an element in God Emperor that he's essentially making humanity "smoke the whole pack of cigarettes" in terms of dictatorship? like he's not just saying "gently caress you" to the Bene Gesserit, but he's literally instilling a genetically-coded distaste for authoritarianism into everyone. At the same time though I think it's important to question all of Leto II's actions point of view; for all that he claims to know exactly what he's doing I think he really doesn't actually understand himself very well or why he behaves the ways he does. Yeah, that's the plan. I just think it's not a very good one, in-universe reasons notwithstanding. Is that what Herbert is getting at? Despite Leto's omniscience, even he doesn't know if he's doing the right thing? I don't quite get what Herbert is trying to say, or, if it is the turbo-Hitler thing, don't agree with it. Plus big wormy boy.
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Mar 4, 2024 05:03
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Leto sees that in the future, humanity will eventually be wiped out by thinking machines that are equipped with prescience. To fight back against that, he engineers an autocracy that is specifically designed so that the resistance against his regime and reaction to it will give humanity the tools it needs to survive that future prescient thinking machine threat. By limiting space travel, and even intra-planetary travel, he showed humans that they were small enough and concentrated enough that a single tyrant could ruled over the entire species: the reaction to that was The Scattering, a spreading out of humans into the galaxy in so wide a fashion that it's impossible to grasp all of humanity at once. By using prescience to cement his rule and foil plots against him, he motivated the enemies of his regime, the BG and Tleilaxu and Ixians, to invest all their efforts into techniques and technologies to foil his prescient sight. The exact same tech that's developed to eventually rid humanity of Leto is the tech that inoculates humanity from the prescient machines. That's the idea of the book - that Leto made himself into exactly the tyrant he needed to be in order for humanity to avoid falling to a future threat. That humans will react to the trauma of autocracy by finding ways to defeat it, and he made himself the exact tyrant he needed to be such that the resistance that developed against him would also save humanity from prescient machines.
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Mar 4, 2024 05:06
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There was also something about if prescience is possible then it will be replicated with a machine eventually, and if that happens humanity is toast if they aren't so spread out they're physically inaccessible to anyone with a prescience machine and the desire to do bad things with it.Pinterest Mom posted:Leto sees that in the future, The whole conceit of God-Emperor is that his archives are discovered buried in a tomb complex equipped with exactly such a prescience-stealth techno field. Arglebargle III fucked around with this message at 05:09 on Mar 4, 2024 |
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Mar 4, 2024 05:06
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Arglebargle III posted:There was also something about if prescience is possible then it will be replicated with a machine eventually, and if that happens humanity is toast if they aren't so spread out they're physically inaccessible to anyone with a prescience machine and the desire to do bad things with it. Pinterest Mom posted:Leto sees that in the future, humanity will eventually be wiped out by thinking machines that are equipped with prescience. To fight back against that, he engineers an autocracy that is specifically designed so that the resistance against his regime and reaction to it will give humanity the tools it needs to survive that future prescient thinking machine threat. By limiting space travel, and even intra-planetary travel, he showed humans that they were small enough and concentrated enough that a single tyrant could ruled over the entire species: the reaction to that was The Scattering, a spreading out of humans into the galaxy in so wide a fashion that it's impossible to grasp all of humanity at once. Yes these are all the in-universe reasons, but Dune and Dune Messiah were all THEMES vis a vis oil, the environment, imperialism, religion, etc. Just doesn't seem to be a consensus on what God-Emperor is trying to say. Or I'm stupid.
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Mar 4, 2024 05:11
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Pinterest Mom posted:Leto sees that in the future, humanity will eventually be wiped out by thinking machines that are equipped with prescience. To fight back against that, he engineers an autocracy that is specifically designed so that the resistance against his regime and reaction to it will give humanity the tools it needs to survive that future prescient thinking machine threat. By limiting space travel, and even intra-planetary travel, he showed humans that they were small enough and concentrated enough that a single tyrant could ruled over the entire species: the reaction to that was The Scattering, a spreading out of humans into the galaxy in so wide a fashion that it's impossible to grasp all of humanity at once. it's this
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Mar 4, 2024 05:20
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Dunc 2 ruled
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Mar 4, 2024 05:20
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Aurubin posted:Yes these are all the in-universe reasons, but Dune and Dune Messiah were all THEMES vis a vis oil, the environment, imperialism, religion, etc. Just doesn't seem to be a consensus on what God-Emperor is trying to say. Or I'm stupid. Oh yeah it's pretty out there.
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Mar 4, 2024 05:26
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Having seen it twice now I think that if all of the film had been as good as the worm rider and Geidi Prime sequences it would have unquestionably been a masterpiece. Unfortunately the beginning and end of the movie are not as good as the middle.
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Mar 4, 2024 05:36
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Bugblatter posted:That is the in-universe explanation, but I think the question was more about the thematic justification. The first couple books were intended as warnings against the dangers of charismatic leaders. The later ones seem to have a message of "well actually, ultra hitler could be good (because of a contrived fictional situation)." The key is that Leto isn't just rendering humanity immune to prescience, but is pressuring humanity to develop reliable methods of space travel that don't rely on spice and instilling a desire to venture (far!) beyond the imperial core worlds. I don't think the book spells this out exactly, but it's promoting nomadicism against settlerism. Edit: Instead of just stating that culture heroes and dictators are bad, God Emperor is making a case as to what people could do to protect themselves from one: cultivate self sufficiency and live off the grid! If you find that answer unsatisfying, it is. Schwarzwald fucked around with this message at 06:47 on Mar 4, 2024 |
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Mar 4, 2024 05:37
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Aurubin posted:Yes these are all the in-universe reasons, but Dune and Dune Messiah were all THEMES vis a vis oil, the environment, imperialism, religion, etc. Just doesn't seem to be a consensus on what God-Emperor is trying to say. Or I'm stupid. The idea of the book is that Herbert is optimistic that the natural human condition is to be free, and to want to progress. He's showing how humans react to millennia of tyranny and stagnation, because he believes that the human impulse is to rebel against it. There's other stuff going on that are also tied to the idea of stagnation being bad, showing us what happened to Fremen culture, to House Atreides, when they stopped being real vibrant institutions but rather just caricatures of ideas. Herbert was an anti-communist, he hated the USSR. It's not hard to slot God Emperor of Dune in a Cold War context - the party might control the state, and the official organs of culture deteriorate as a result, but there are people whose minds and spirits don't accept the tyrant, and the future of humanity belongs to them. And it's told from the point of view of the tyrant, which is a bit of a mind-gently caress, but even his sympathies are with those who oppose him.
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Mar 4, 2024 05:38
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Aurubin posted:Yes these are all the in-universe reasons, but Dune and Dune Messiah were all THEMES vis a vis oil, the environment, imperialism, religion, etc. Just doesn't seem to be a consensus on what God-Emperor is trying to say. Or I'm stupid. I've never really heard anyone give a thematic answer to the question. Fans of the later books tend to just answer by describing the plot. It is a "smoke the whole pack" argument against tyrannical fascism, but the fact that it does save the race kind of makes it read as "the ends justify the means," which muddles things. Maybe if Frank had managed to finish the final arc it would have been clearer, idk. Scags McDouglas posted:I don't necessarily see Paul as a charismatic leader. You saying Chalamet has no rizz??? More seriously, I'm curious how you're defining charisma that you don't think the film or novel presents him as charismatic. You say he's not because he's a propaganda figure, but an effective propaganda figure will almost certainly be very charismatic. Bugblatter fucked around with this message at 05:49 on Mar 4, 2024 |
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Mar 4, 2024 05:41
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I don't like the Harkonnen's being entirely white, it makes them seem alien instead of human. Why would that anyone find harkonnen's attractive? The lack of spice and the Spacer's Guild make the battle for Arrakis seem not important. The link between space travel and spice is only established as critical in a few lines of dialogue in d1 and no lines of dialogue in d2. The word spice is barely mentioned in d2, Gurnny mentions that the market is good for smugglers right now, smuggling spice I get that, but why is smuggling spice so important? If you just came into Dune from d1 and then moved to d2, spice is a mcguffin that doesn’t really matter. Baron Harkkonnen is not a threat in d2 and gets chumped first by the Emperor and then slaughtered by Paul. The Harkkonnen’s did not seem like a threat in d2. The neck snapping and throat slicing seems cliché and the heart plug is sadly missed for dramatic and sci-fi reasons. Dune part 2 seems rushed for having several years between films. Maybe it is the pacing or lack of world building of the Freman. There is a scene where multiple people are riding sand worms and Paul breaks off to go to the temple to get the Water of Life. Chani is then shown arriving in a thropter. Oh neat, I didn’t know that Freman used thropters. Where did she get it? How did she know that Paul went to the temple? Do the Freman use lots of thropters? This is a small gripe really
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Mar 4, 2024 05:47
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The lack of navigators is baffling. A whole major plot point of the end of the first novel is that Paul realizes the spice comes from worms and he can kill all of the worms this crippling space travel. This causes the navigators to side with him cuz the spice must flow. Crazy that like… none of that is mentioned. It’s like the whole reason Paul becomes emperor instead of the rest of the houses rising up against him for knocking over the status quo. Com’on, at least mention CHOAM once cuz that term is so laff.
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Mar 4, 2024 05:59
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Bugblatter posted:That is the in-universe explanation, but I think the question was more about the thematic justification. The first couple books were intended as warnings against the dangers of charismatic leaders. The later ones seem to have a message of "well actually, ultra hitler could be good (because of a contrived fictional situation)." I don't think you're wrong. There are a lot of cool ideas in the sequels to the first novel, but anyone other than a dedicated apologist is going to concede they get increasingly unhinged.
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Mar 4, 2024 06:35
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I liked the end of the 1984 version more than this movie.
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Mar 4, 2024 06:41
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The lack of navigators definitely seems like a missed opportunity. Plus the idea of folding space and actual navigation through folded space could make for some pretty awesome abstract or psychedelic visual sequences. Also Paul's whole plan hinges on being able to destroy spice production and nobody in the movie seems to care about this.
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Mar 4, 2024 06:44
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Sierra Nevadan posted:I liked the end of the 1984 version more than this movie. Been thinking about that a lot lately. Lynch really did a fantastic job with it. More than people give him credit for.
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Mar 4, 2024 06:49
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Aurubin posted:Yeah, that's the plan. I just think it's not a very good one, in-universe reasons notwithstanding. Is that what Herbert is getting at? Despite Leto's omniscience, even he doesn't know if he's doing the right thing? I don't quite get what Herbert is trying to say, or, if it is the turbo-Hitler thing, don't agree with it. Plus big wormy boy. Well, Herbert died so we'll never really know, but thematically the meat of the Dune books tended to concern itself with the friction between humanity's stated desire for peace and stability and its actual desire for volatility, violence, growth, and individual action. Herbert never came down firmly on either side of the scale, but seemed to strongly hint that his belief is that there is no stable utopia, and that the only worthwhile existence lies in the interplay between these two opposing forces. To that extent I think you have to look at both the world Leto built while he was alive, and the world that came to be after his death. Leto forced humanity to smoke the whole pack, not just in terms of tyranny, but in terms of stability and stagnation. As much as Leto liked to talk himself up as the ultimate genocidal turbo-Hitler, Leto's Peace was peaceful; trillions of people existing in a perpetual state of enforced, isolated bucolic tranquility, where no one was allowed to make any choices and nothing ever changed. Everyone finally got the thing they insisted they always wanted and humanity, as a collective, hated it. Then, the Scattering. Humanity expands beyond the edge of known space, and gets up to who knows what. Leto's Golden path enlarged the known universe like an exploding bomb. A thousand years later, Leto's world, the world of the Old Imperium, the world of Bene Gesserit and Bene Tleilax and all the old cast of characters re suddenly faced with an influx of new monstrous barbarian invaders; the Honored Matres. Over the next two books the Bene Gesserit fight the invaders and defeat them, not by destroying them, but by ingesting and integrating them into their own order, accepting their new skills and tools and insights and flaws. And, in doing so, the new united Bene Gesserit Matres discover that the Honored Matres were only fleeing from an even larger barbarian horde that just smashed their own empire, and oh yeah, they were marching this way. In the bad KJA books these were the machines or whatever, and it sucks. If Frank Herbert had lived I think it would have been something more interesting, but ultimately what it amounts to is a series of endless potential threats, an unending line of barbarian invaders, each in turn invading, and then being integrated into, the core. Thesis (stability) + Antithesis (violent invasion) = Synthesis (integration). That was Leto's ultimate Golden Path: an unending Hegelian dialectic with an ever-expanding universe of new and terrible ideas. It's the ultimate antidote to prescience: a constant influx of new ideas.
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Mar 4, 2024 07:04
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Do they ever go into what’s going on back on the Atreides home world post-Leto regicide? Is it under Harkonnen rule?
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Mar 4, 2024 07:15
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No Luck Needed posted:I don't like the Harkonnen's being entirely white, it makes them seem alien instead of human. Why would that anyone find harkonnen's attractive? I AM SMOOTH AS A PORPOISE FOR YOU
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Mar 4, 2024 07:21
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Movie has distinct lack of Toto Arglebargle III posted:That's a plot hole in the books, too. If everyone has easy access to nuclear weapons then why are they not using them against the tiny minority ruling class? Some peasant could simply blow up the Baron and everyone else in the arena on Geidi Prime after being issued his lasgun and shield. It was honestly the first thing I thought of when I read it
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Mar 4, 2024 07:23
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Bright Bart posted:Oh man, I am looking forward to seeing this when I feel better. Btw sorry earlier I said no but others have replied with more detail so I was wrong on that
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Mar 4, 2024 07:24
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ruddiger posted:Do they ever go into what’s going on back on the Atreides home world post-Leto regicide? Is it under Harkonnen rule? I'm reaching into some incredibly muggy fog but I believe one of the conspirators against Paul lost his interest in the jihad after having a spiritual moment by submerging himself in water at a world that was alien to his own. I don't think it was the Atreides planet but it's the best I have for ya.
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Mar 4, 2024 07:27
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ruddiger posted:Do they ever go into what’s going on back on the Atreides home world post-Leto regicide? Is it under Harkonnen rule? In Messiah I believe Jessica goes back there, and the Fremen aren't allowed to go there
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Mar 4, 2024 07:34
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Bugblatter posted:You saying Chalamet has no rizz??? Mucho apologies, I didn't see the edit. You're more than welcome to disagree with me, and for all I know maybe you're right. What I mean is that there's inspirational charisma vs charisma by coercion. Leto had a target on his back through popularity, and the fact that the two best fighters in the imperium (Idaho, Halleck) are throwing in with the least sucky house. Paul is following a script that even he himself sees, so he's basically leveraging Hitler charisma which achieves his goals but it doesn't perform the same way. For instance, he is powerless to stop the jihad. If he had true charisma, he could have stopped them. Thank you for tolerating my essay.
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Mar 4, 2024 07:36
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I really wanted a toddler horrifying an old bald lady and telling her to shut the hell up.
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Mar 4, 2024 07:42
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Aurubin posted:Yes these are all the in-universe reasons, but Dune and Dune Messiah were all THEMES vis a vis oil, the environment, imperialism, religion, etc. Just doesn't seem to be a consensus on what God-Emperor is trying to say. Or I'm stupid. The thesis statement is that the world of Dune found itself in a conflict around increasing technological development and the effect this had on their culture, and they radically turned away from it. Now depending on whose notes you believe and what the intent was going forward? We can debate exactly what that was. In general we can envision it as emotionless machine logic dictating how things should be. People devaluing their own humanity and needs in the face of an abstract ideal of functional perfection [Not like big evil robot people, ha ha, that would be stupid Kevin]. The idea that thinking machines train people to think like machines, would be the bottom line. The response to this is the total reordering of all human society, the rejection of most higher forms of technology, a new era of religious cooperation [Which is how you get something called "The Orange Catholic Bible" referencing the majority of Earth religions], and an embrace of the nascent genetic alteration movement. Many of the figures around at that time were the great powers of the "Modern" Dune era. The Spacing Guild, the Bene Gesserit, the Corrino Empire starts around then, everything. All of it right in this moment. So highly advanced human computers, psychically gifted ship navigators, women who can control their own biology and the wills of others, genetic engineers so advanced they have effectively eliminated death. Oooh. Ahhh. So what's the problem? The problem is it's ten thousand years after that point and humanity has taken not one step forward. The same people are running the same race for no particular reason. Humanity is dying. Slowly, but it's dying. It's dying because it can't actually be bothered to live. The story of Dune is a lot of people being told exactly what is going to happen to them, and being completely incapable of doing anything about it. Humanity has stopped advancing, and it's killing them. So how do you change that? There's the fictional answer of "A giant penis monster", an adversary so far beyond the norm that people can not just acquiesce and accept it. They are forced to fight back, and he pushes them to fight in all the ways that make them strong enough to thrive. Non-fictionally, what the hell is Herbert going for: Letting the innate human drive for exploration and self-development die is the end for a culture, and for humanity in general. People need to constantly push themselves to engage in new things and explore new places, or they risk being trapped in dogmatic loops and a choking status quo. The age of thinking machines was wrong because it robbed humanity of that passion through unfeeling logic, but the age that followed was wrong because it put itself in a bubble and never ventured out again. Insomuch as we see the step after that, it's the evolution of all these forces that endured in stasis for thousands of years, and how they deal with what comes next. But, well, he died before that was about to really kick off so nobody can actually say what the point would have been.
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Mar 4, 2024 07:51
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Scags McDouglas posted:Mucho apologies, I didn't see the edit. The fundamental argument of dune is that no he could not, you can disagree with that but it's what the book says very explicitly
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Mar 4, 2024 08:11
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Sierra Nevadan posted:In Messiah I believe Jessica goes back there, and the Fremen aren't allowed to go there I rewatched Dunc 1 last week and had forgotten that there was a scene showing the Fremen on Caladan in one of Paul's visions. I've never read Messiah--does that vision not actually come to pass in the books?
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Mar 4, 2024 08:11
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MeinPanzer posted:I rewatched Dunc 1 last week and had forgotten that there was a scene showing the Fremen on Caladan in one of Paul's visions. I've never read Messiah--does that vision not actually come to pass in the books? I literally rewatched Dunc1 yesterday and apparently I totally missed that, when does it happen?
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Mar 4, 2024 08:14
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Xenomrph posted:I literally rewatched Dunc1 yesterday and apparently I totally missed that, when does it happen? When Paul and Jessica are in the tent after they escape from the Harkonen ornithopter
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Mar 4, 2024 08:20
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disposablewords posted:"Metaphor," "ideology," and "belief" aren't all the same word. Of course it's not a literal road made of metal, you're just misrepresenting what I said. Of course not? Sorry, not doing it on purpose. Just seems pretty obvious to me that most dune characters qualify as religious fundies 
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Mar 4, 2024 08:46
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Regarding the Scattering, I *think* eventually after thousands of years people start coming back to the core worlds and not all of them are running from previously unkown threats. Some are just bored having found nothing cool out in the darkness of space, and are willing to give up freedom for being with others and stable rule.Bugblatter posted:but the fact that it does save the race kind of makes it read as "the ends justify the means," That's what I keep thinking about. Maybe not that ends justify means in all cases. But that specifically, ensuring the survival of humans can justify pretty much all means that lead to terrible things along the way. I guess Leto could believe that it does while we aren't so sure. In university, I'm also not sure that human life is put up on a pedestal. Individual life doesnt seem so sacred. There's the idea of not making machines in the image of human minus, but this seems more like a practical command than coming from a spiritual belief. There is the chance that Leto looks at humanity's own stated goals for itself re: unity, life without thinking machines, a strong social hierarchy etc. etc. and with his huge brain starts shouting to himself that none of this matters is everyone is dead.
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Mar 4, 2024 08:58
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Yes it is better explained in the novel - Yueh knows his wife is already dead, and he's gonna be killed, but it's the best shot at revenge that he can think of. He knows the baron won't be able to resist gloating to Leto's face. It's a near miss! Adaptations tend to dumb him down even more, whatchagonnado?
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Mar 4, 2024 08:59
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