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Leto II also states in God Emperor that Paul couldn't face the endless dream which would result from the final dissolution of the sandtrout skin and the new sandworms: "“Think on the price I pay,” he said. “Every descendant part of me will carry some of my awareness locked away within it, lost and helpless.” She (Hwi) put both hands over her mouth and stared at him. “This is the horror which my father could not face and which he tried to prevent: the infinite division and subdivision of a blind identity.” She lowered her hands and whispered: “You will be conscious?” “In a way . . . but mute. A little pearl of my awareness will go with every sandworm and every sandtrout—knowing yet unable to move a single cell, aware in an endless dream.”"
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Apr 24, 2019 05:54
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I can't speak for Children since it's been years since I read it, but God Emperor is a very measured and through treatise on Frank's personal philosophy, especially on the nature of politics. Frank was making a commentary on the nature of charismatic leaders and the interaction of various political systems, and I'd say he succeeded at that. I feel what's important about the "crazier" aspects of Dune is that Frank understood very well when not to explain things. We don't fully know how the sandtrout skin transformation entirely works, and that's kind of the point. What's crucial is the effects on the universe and Leto himself, and I feel it's part of why God Emperor works so well. You know just enough to understand Leto as a character and what he's going through, but not so much that it just becomes blatant pseudo-science and farcical in that way. As for Duncan, my understanding is that Duncan represents an earlier period of humanity which has been lost by Leto's 3500 year tyranny. Leto wanted to maintain it in some fashion, and Duncan was the answer. I don't believe it's a coincidence that it was Duncan who was a key figure in Leto's death, especially given how resistant he was to Leto's tyranny.
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Apr 24, 2019 06:17
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It might be better to define it as Frank's criticism of both "current" (to him, anyway) political trends, and the systems that create them. Much of what Leto is attempting to do is forcing humanity to think and act differently, to understand how these systems work and how they affect people. Ultimately, I think Frank's point is that people should be more politically aware, both of the leaders they elect or appoint, and the political systems they legitimize. "This is why I teach about tyranny in the best possible way—by example. Even though you read these words after a passage of eons, my tyranny will not be forgotten. My Golden Path assures this. Knowing my message, I expect you to be exceedingly careful about the powers you delegate to any government." Although I feel Frank knew he was fighting something of a losing battle in that regard: "...And the swarms of alienating devices (including these very words!) tend eventually to be enlisted in the argument for a return to “those better times.” I despair of teaching you other ways. You have square thoughts which resist circles."
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Apr 24, 2019 06:43
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I'm confused, aren't we already doing that? There's been numerous studies on bird intelligence, and we communicate with other animals all the time. Cats, for example, do communicate with us in specific ways that they only use with humans, and you can communicate back, you just need to do it in a way that's intelligible to the cat. I feel it's kind of problematic to anthropomorphize these animals, assuming just because they can't communicate in human language the way we do, we're somehow ignoring them.
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May 15, 2019 02:25
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Perhaps these bits from God Emperor will help clarify things on how machines work and are understood in Dune: "“And you do not fear the Ixians’ machine?” Anteac insisted. “Is automation synonymous with conscious intelligence?” he asked. ...She spoke: “The machine cannot anticipate every problem of importance to humans. It is the difference between serial bits and an unbroken continuum. We have the one; machines are confined to the other.” “You still have the power of reason,” he said. “The target of the Jihad was a machine-attitude as much as the machines,” Leto said. “Humans had set those machines to usurp our sense of beauty, our necessary selfdom out of which we make living judgments. Naturally, the machines were destroyed.” “An Ixian machine? You defy the Jihad!” “There’s a lesson in that, too. What do such machines really do? They increase the number of things we can do without thinking. Things we do without thinking—there’s the real danger."
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Jun 28, 2019 09:32
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God Emperor of Dune describes it due to the ecological changes: "...He peered upward. The sky was cloudless with a blue density which the old days of Dune had never seen. What was a desert without a cloudless sky? Too bad it could not have Dune’s silvery hue." Leto II also mentions it in his journals: "It required almost a thousand years before the dust of Dune’s old planet-wide desert left the atmosphere to be bound up in soil and water. The wind called sandblaster has not been seen on Arrakis for some twenty-five hundred years. Twenty billion tons of dust could be carried suspended in the wind of just one of those storms. The sky often had a silvery look to it then. Fremen said: “The desert is a surgeon cutting away the skin to expose what’s underneath.” The planet and the people had layers. You could see them. My Sareer is but a weak echo of what was. I must be the sandblaster today."
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May 11, 2020 23:50
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If the "Fremen fighting for ecological change" things does resonate, God Emperor of Dune (and even Children to an extent) as a movie is going to be interesting. Basically all the changes Kynes and the Fremen do to make Arrakis "better" just completely destroy the Fremen and the Arrakis way of life in general.
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Sep 3, 2020 17:12
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Leto II did write his own history books, under the name of "Noah Arkwright": "...Did you know that I wrote the books of Noah Arkwright?” She could not suppress a chuckle. “How amusing, Lord. I was required to read about his life.” “I wrote that account, too." Although it isn't talked about much in the book. The only other reference is about Arkwright's description of the ritual Fremen used to retrieve water from the dead, which seems to be accurate to the accounts in the earlier books. Leto writing his own history books is interesting, considering he burned nine historians to death for, in his own words, "lying pretentiously" and "building false accounts and standing pridefully upon them". It suggests that Leto did care about historical accuracy, to the point of writing his own books, and destroying non-accurate accounts.
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Jun 27, 2021 08:38
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| # ¿ May 21, 2024 23:28 |
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The Golden Path wasn't about ending tyranny, it was Leto's attempt to scatter humanity so they wouldn't be wiped out. It's pretty much said during Siona's testing that humanity would have been destroyed by some machine force by that point in time. As well, part of it was destroying the ability of prescience to find all of humanity, which he succeeded at with Siona as well.
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Apr 10, 2024 15:42
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