Questions on "God Emperor of Dune" (contains spoil

[Kreshna Aryaguna Nurzaman]

Alright, I didn't get it. Why the God Emperor bans space travel? WTF is "Golden Path" all about? He mentioned something about "inducing desires to travel" among the population. He also made spice more difficult to obtain.

It is because he want to educate the people to stop loathing the computers? Dune population totally disuse computers after the Butlerian Jihad; hence the importance of Spice (for example to enable the Navigators to guide space travels). So he want people to use computers and technologies again?

[Josh]

Actually, my take on it was that he brought peace at the price of freedom. With travel totally disabled beyond government functions, people lived confined to villages and backwaters, under the control of Leto.

[Kreshna Aryaguna Nurzaman]

Actually, my take on it was that he brought peace at the price of freedom. With travel totally disabled beyond government functions, people lived confined to villages and backwaters, under the control of Leto.

It is the short-time effects (including the castration of Bene Gesserit. Oh, wait... ), but I remember Leto said about arousing the desire of freedom and space travels among the population by denying them such thing.

He seems to be promoting Ixian machines as well, although such thing is commonly loathed among the population.


My guess is he's trying to change the people views on loathing the computers, which is common Dune culture since the Butlerian Jihad:

(1) He denied people space travels and freedom in order to arouse such desire among the population. By banning space travels, people would feel confined and imprisoned, and starts to desire space travels more than anything else (IIRC he mentioned such things to Siona).

(2) He caused a shortage of Spice (some sort of hydraulic despotism or such), which is essential to space travel. In fact, it is the way he denied people space travel.

(3) IIRC he kept telling the people to "not to be afraid of Ixian machines".

However, I still wonder: is it the Golden Path he kept talking about? So humans should stop their overdepency on Spice and start using computers?

And yes, there are some theory about the Golden Path on wikipedia.Still, nothing of them satisfy my curiousity. Most of them are too "sci-fi cliche" like the return of the thinking machines and such. I guess it woud be interesting if we could discuss this "Golden Path" in sosio-cultural context. Is Dune culture (before and during Leto's reign) self-destructive? The over-depencendy to Spice, the role of Bene Gesserit, the aversion to computers, and such.

Probably Leto thought that the overall Dune culture is too rigid, and he wanted to change the whole things? (apparently by using "reverse psychology")

[frigidmagi]

It was once explained to me that he foresaw a terrible despotism and wished to avoid it. His method was becoming a tyrant himself in order to force the people of the galaxy to want and in the end be willing to fight for their freedoms.