Dune

And even the Golden Path isn't a guaranteed road to prevent human extinction. There are no roads he can see that avoid human extinction, so he has to get humanity off of roads entirely and make sure no one can put them on roads again to give humanity any chance to survive.

There's no winning chess strategy to save humanity. Playing chess was what got them into this mess. So Leto II flipped the board entirely and made humanity go play outside for once.

Edited by M84 on Apr 8th 2024 at 10:44:33 PM

Of course, all this is based on the assumption that long term survival of the species is a goal to strive for in the first place.

I don't really see the value in that. Like, I care about the survival of individual human beings, but I don't see why reproducing and having the species continue on after our deaths is some moral imperative.

So even if the Golden Path is the only way to prevent humanity's extinction, you can still say it's wrong for valuing humanity as an abstract concept more than it values the well-being of actual humans.

In the Dune universe, human beings (and the various species they end up creating) are the only form of intelligent life in the known universe, which extends over at least three galaxies and countless more after the Scattering.

It's a basic desire built into our biology, and Leto II is composed of an executive body of the strongest-willed ancestors from humanity's past. He's gonna want to preserve humanity, although he notes that he defines that term rather differently than we might.

It's honestly kind of hard to believe how humanity could go extinct at all at that point. We'd just evolve into different species after a while. Some would die out, but plenty would survive in their own corner of the universe.

This feels like it is not about saving humanity, but about preserving a "pure" original humanity that hasn't evolved away from that pure origin.

It's explained. Humanity's dependence on Spice and Arrakis means it will never expand and move past the institutions that revolve around the Spice trade. Unfortunately, one of the few exceptions to this are the Ixians, who will continue to push the boundaries of tech development to dangerous levels. This will eventually culminate in the creation of self-replicating prescient hunter-seekers who will turn against their creators and humanity. And humanity being stuck in their ruts will be helpless to resist.

Humanity was doomed as long as it refused to expand and diversify and was bound by prescience. All of these factors would make it easy for a single threat — especially a prescient one — to wipe them all out in one fell swoop.

Hence The Golden Path — an attempt to force humanity out of its rut and to expand and diversify past the boundaries of known space and making them immune to prescience.

Leto II isn't interested in preserving humanity in a single state. It's quite the opposite. The Golden Path was about forcing humanity to diversify, to grow and change.

Edited by M84 on Apr 9th 2024 at 5:01:29 PM

The Golden Path is one where humanity diverges instead of converges. Leto II explicitly states that it's a universe where no one could ever do what he has done — dominate all of humanity — and to accomplish that he creates a dominant genetic trait that renders its carriers invisible to prescience, based on Paul's experience with Count Fenrig back in 'Dune'.

Only where humanity diversifies endlessly can it be reasonably expected that no threat or tyrant or tedium can destroy the entire species.

And it's not as if Leto II was absolutely certain the Golden Path was the right thing to do. As I said before, he still had doubts over it and the whole God Emperor tyrant act needed to make it happen.

The Ixians' Honey Trap plot wouldn't have been nearly as successful otherwise.