In becoming the Fremen super leader he didn't actually have the power to choose their course but only to lead the Fremen on the course they would already be inclined towards. I think it's like the worm and riding it. A wormrider can steer a worm but not contrary to the worm's nature. It cannot be made to cross water, for example. I think the worms are allegorical in this way of political power and the limitations of it.
You're reading too much into it. Paul could've controlled the fremen to a large extent since they worshipped him. The Jihad was necessary since every Planet other than Arrakis still held allegiance to house corrino.
Andrew Church I always used to see this in any sort of leader, they are in charge but subject to the burden of leading that group. For example, if Kim Jung un totally renounced judge and his cult of personality, there would probably be a move against him by those under his command. (Possibly. Just my opinion..) Another example wud be how Orwell saw the "white man's burden".. He noted that the whites were in charge of their colonies, but still subject to being the oppressive overlords of their subjects, just as their subjects were bound to the colonial state of exploitation..
I would say it creates a contrast between Paul and Leto II. Paul attempts to be the benevolent leader, but in doing so, he brings about the greatest atrocity in history, while Leto sacrifices his image and becomes a ruthless tyrant, but insures humanity's success in the long run
Actually, at *no* point was Paul *ever* a benevolent ruler! Aside from the mass-murder of *billions* of people, he did absolutely *nothing* to improve the lives of the common people of the Imperium. Paul's Jihad was really about revenge on the nobility that betrayed his father and House. He didn't care about anything else. Even his firstborn son and wife were necessary sacrifices in his path to the Golden Lion Throne. But once on that throne, he really just indulged his own whims until it got so bad that even he realized he was a monster and decided that he had to end his own reign.
I have only read the first book so far, and have awareness of the general plot of the others. My reading is similar I guess. In fact, I realized listening to one of Herbert's interviews that I took from the book partly the opposite that he intended. He seemed to have wanted to create a cautionary tale about excessive trust in leaders. I took from it instead the fact that the least harmful course of action sometimes still involves a lot of harm, as with Leto II and the Golden Path. With normal human leaders, who are not prescient, one should obviously expect to see mercy. With a partially prescient one like Paul, who in a way was not supposed to become the Kwisatz Haderach, he tried to avoid the tragedy as best he could, but it did not occur to him that had he died before meeting the Fremen, that would have brought the least harm. Leto II had more perfect prescience and made the deliberate choice to rule oppressively to save mankind in the long term. I actually agree with this decision, although it applies little to our relation to leadership in the real world. It's also true that, had Paul died before meeting the Fremen, Leto II would not have been born, there would have been no Golden Path, and humanity would have finished altogether. So in a way, the way things went was the least harmful of possibilities.
@@simonedarionardella3957 - Good observations. I think that there are always many "what-if's" that one can get into when dealing with any long story, especially one that itself deals with people who can see the future. For example, what if Jessica had followed orders and had a daughter instead of a son? Would the Bene Gesserit plan to marry that daughter to Feyd and for that couple's child to have been the Kwisatz Haderach, raised by the Bene Gesserit, have gone better? The Bene Gesserit were *very* much concerned with the long-term future of humanity, which is why they were trying to breed the KH in the first place after all. If their KH had foreseen what Leto II did then they would have very likely taken steps to avert it as well. My sense has always been that Herbert's warning about authoritarian figures was still present. Any good that Paul did for humanity was more accidental than deliberate. Just because he was prescient did *not* mean that he made the best decisions for humanity rather than for himself. This is why Leto II had to completely overhaul his father's regime and even force the Fremen to interbreed with the Sardukar to create a more structured eugenic breeding program than Paul's utterly random idea of spreading Fremen genes via war rape. In this regard we are shown two similar leaders, both prescient. The first is extremely selfish and ends up being a horrible ruler. The second has to make unpleasant choices because his predecessor refused to care about the long-term. In either case, humanity suffered mostly because their destiny was being controlled by just one person, whose good intentions were not assured.
@@daniels7907 Paul actually did a lot to improve living conditions on Arrakis "as Liet taught us", only to find out that many Fremen were not on board with the results.
@@simonedarionardella3957 True but why blame Paul for not dying before he met the Fremen and not the Baron and the Emperor for forcing him into the desert in the first place. And while the Baron is disgustingly evil character, the Emperor actually had little reason to do what he did. He could have achieved a similar result minus the Fremen djihad had he made Paul his son-in-law and heir.
@@UteChewb - More specifically, Paul chose the future that would get him revenge on Emperor Shaddam IV, Baron Harkonnen and the Landsraad. The "trap" was that this future required him to unleash the Fremen on a Jihad against the Known Universe and would lead to the deaths of his firstborn son and later Chani. A lot of people suffered and died so that Paul could avenge his father and house.
Paul, and to a larger extent Leto, didn't quite see the future. They saw extended cycles of human repetition and chose the version of humanity that seemed most appropriate to thek subjectively. The "future" as an existing thing would be objective, but the prescience paul and leto displayed is definately subjective. In that sense, it reads more like "to truly know human history is to be trapped by it"
When Stilgar takes Jessica and Paul down into the water storage area at the end of Jamis' funeral rites, Paul recognizes this is a nexus of choice which could avert the Jihad but is unsure what choice to make. They leave the water storage and Paul recognizes that he missed his chance to make a choice, still unsure what it was he had a choice in. My read of that chapter is that Paul had the choice to continue Kynes and Liet-Kynes in leading the Fremen down a slow, defensive pth, paying off the Spacing Guild and doing the intergenerational work of bringing more water and more life and greenery to Arrakis. He was meant to speak there against Jessica's wishes for vengeance against the Harkonnens and for staying the course set by Liet-Kynes and Kynes before him, but he could not see it. The way that chapter ends, with Paul perceiving his mother (and the way she shaped/shapes him) as his enemy is telling.
Yeah! I also remember that at some point in this section Paul thinks that the only way to stop the jihad at this point would be for everyone in that cave to die, so there was no turning back
@@stephenkenney8290 With the power levels spoken of in Dune, Thinking machines would be less likely to survive. It is a mathematical principle of physics. You cannot extract more than 100% of the available energy out of a system. In dune, they have reached a level of technological efficiency that they are able to extract almost 100% of all available energy in any given system. Meaning, no matter how powerful the machines are, they are fighting at the exact same energy levels as humanity, and therefore unable to acquire any meaningful advantage. Thinking machines are only a threat if your civilization is unable to extract 100% of the available energy out of a system, as the machines will be able to do it first, and simply math your entire species to death. It becomes a question of who has more energy... This isn't really related to the meaning of your post, but I felt like sharing. Warhammer 40K and Dune is a good example of what peak technology looks like. At some point you reach the end of progress simply because you took everything that there is to take, and there just isn't anything left.
@@NoobNoobNews A well said response, but I'm basing my assumption on the fears of Leto II, who foresaw that the Ixians would create a self improving hunter killer that would destroy all organic life in the known universe. Without the Golden Path this was the future humanity was headed towards. Therefore it is logical to assume that thinking machines developed during the time of Paul Atreides would be superior to those present during the Butlerian Jihad, which saw the end of AI.
Paul was born with one voice and prescient love for Chani. That was it. He could've chosen the sandtrout skin but all he wanted was Chani and his corporeal life. Leto II was born of the horde, he was never a single person and all he knew was the inner lives and himself. He made a bargain and became the horde and that's all he ever was. He was the nexus between the past voices and his visions of the future. Paul, Ghanima (and Alia with the right state of mind) could've become the Kwisatz Haderach if he wanted, but he never wanted it. It's all that Leto ever knew.
I think that the sandtrout skin and apotheosis is the essence of Paul's failure to stop the Jihad. Despite the litany against fear, Paul was still afraid of the Golden Path, particularly because of the commandment, "Thou shalt not disfigure the soul." Paul couldn't do what was necessary to stop the Fremen's Jihad and force the Golden Path so he was left locked into his prescient vision where at least someone else could still take the Path.
Fremen: "I've only had Paul for a day and a half, but if anything happened to him, I would kill everyone is this universe and then myself." Paul: "Please no"
If Paul Atreides is a hero then he is a tragic one. Both Dune Messiah and Children of Dune make it clear how his own prescience had painted him into a corner. I had to reread those books a few times over the years to really understand. At the end of the first book Paul can foresee the Jihad and realize that he can't stop it but I think for some people getting intp the series those facts might be overshadowed by Paul's struggle with Shaddam IV and the Harkonnens, although I was still somewhat crest-fallen when I first read Dune Messiah and saw not only the Tleilaxu, the Bene Gesserit, and the Spacing Guild conspiring against him but other Fremen, too. It became pretty obvious that Muaddib's reign did not bring utopia of any kind to the known universe. Great video. Keep up the great work.
In interviews Herbert actually said that yes, Paul is a tragic figure, and a cautionary tale. Not a 'hero' in the sense of a wise person to be emulated. The Fremen would have been better off without him.
I'm reading Chapterhouse at the moment and seeing this video about Paul makes it feel like the first three books were eons ago. Herbert was a master even at this!
The first book was a breakout hit masterfully written to trick the reader into paying attention. The second book was a sucker punch, and hard to digest, but well written follow up, if disappointing to some because it dropped some pretenses. Children is the last masterfully executed book in an amazing trilogy, everything that comes after is still part of the same world with the same coherent story, but just isn't sublime.
Not even remotely. The prophecy of muadib was created by the Reverend mothers and used by Jessica to hand paul a fanatical army. He was the opposite of a pawn.
Wrong. The benegesserit meddling and faith building was so strong that...actually it seems like you didn't read the books....or even listen to this video....nvm you aren't worth wasting breath on.
Something I pointed out many years ago on the now-defunct dunenovels.com forum is that Paul found the Golden Path so unpalatable because he grew up as a human, from normal babyhood to an adult. Granted, he had Bene Gesserit training, but he wasn't born with a fully adult consciousness as Alia, Leto II, or Ghanima were. Leto was able to "sacrifice" his humanity because he had never really known what it was to be a normal human in the first place. God Emperor of Dune is full of passages of Leto II carrying on in a colossal self-pity party, but I don't feel sorry for him. He had access to millennia worth of Other Memory, but he hadn't really lived more than 9 years as a human and not one of those 9 years were as a real human child. Unlike Paul, Leto II never reached adulthood. There were so many things he never understood and Paul did. That's why Paul couldn't do it - he _knew_ what he would be giving up. Leto II was basically clueless.
I dont think or read it asnhe was afraid, I think he chose a "mans life" vs the golden path. Thisnis explored more in the expanded dune universe...when the clone and awaken all the original characters and paul talk to his son.
Strangely enough I was thinking of this just the other day. The sense I get from the novel is that Paul could have stopped the Jihad with a word of command. He chose not to even though he was horrified by the violence. There's several places where the book speaks of the jihad as the lesser evil. Paul believed that something even worse would happened if the jihad was not accomplished. As far as I can tell Herbert never makes it clear what that alternative evil was.
Paul was out for revenge against the Emperor, House Harkonnen and the Landsraad in general. The only army he had available was the fanatical Fremen. He was *not* a victim of his own prophecy. He used the fact that he foresaw the Jihad as an *excuse* to claim that it was unavoidable. But Leto II foresaw the extermination of humanity by thinking machines and that future was *not* inevitable despite Leto foreseeing it with his prescience. He could and *did* set out to change the future he saw. Paul just wasn't interested in loftier goals than revenge for the fall of his House and the death of his father. So he said "Screw the consequences!" and unleashed the Fremen on the Known Universe because they were all he had to fight with.
I believe that the breaking point in Paul was when Emperor launched a Sardaukar raid and killed his firstborn infant son - Leto Atreides II the Elder. After that I think that Paul only wanted for the galaxy to burn... I mean - he knew that even in his own death the Jihad will carry on, but after that, he just gave up on stopping it...
I thought he allows the Jihad because, if he doesn’t, things would ultimately get even worse for humanity. The Jihad brings him closer to the Golden path, which will, in the end, liberate humanity, and that’s why Paul permits the Jihad to rage on - even though he loses his guts later and rejects the Golden Path because he’d seen too much atrocity committed in his name by that time.
@@richcapo Paul did not complete his journey down the Golden Path because Paul had already seen that he did not complete the Journey down the Golden Path. Once again, to know the future is to be trapped by it.
@@kennethfharkin Paul saw the golden path but rejected it. At any point he could have chosen to accept the sandtrout skin but he was tired of being trapped into the path dictated by the future. And he was disgusted with how his name and image had been twisted so far from who he was and wanted to be to live like that for thousands of years. Bad enough that he was indirectly responsible for the destruction of the jihad for him to personally do the terrible things required of the god emperor were beyond him
@@Nichi-Ji This was my interpretation too. He lived on Caladan with his father. He knew what wise rule with people who loved and respected you was supposed to look and feel like. To have to be a tyrant, the very thing that caused all of his family's suffering for thousands of years was just too much for him to bare. Yes the that path ultimately would lead to the extinction of the species, but it was still too much. It was too far out of his character to do it. Lett II never grew up like that. He was always a multitude. Maybe it was easier for him since he was born to it, but it was hard even on him.
@@LeblueLegume100%. The ability to retreat into the multitude is what allowed “Leto” to mentally survive all those years of peaceful oppression. I put Leto in quotes because I’m not sure if Leto actually exists, I vaguely remember something in Children of Dune about how he basically had to sacrifice “himself” and become an amalgamation of the multitude inside him to avoid abomination possession like Alia. So what I got was that the child Leto at the beginning of the book stopped existing and instead became the physical embodiment of all the multitude. I wish we could have gotten more perspective from his sister especially towards the middle of his reign since she had a much different approach to avoid abomination
First: this was a beautiful video and thanks for sharing! Second: I think it's also important to note that Paul couldn't bring himself to take "The Golden Path" bc he knew that any deviation from his prescient knowledge of the future would result in truly devastating repercussions for the ones he loved most as well as the complete destruction of the Imperium. He couldn't live with the consequences of such an action and so rejected The Golden Path in favor of something personally terrible but with less immediately far reaching results. I think he also understood that he wasn't equipped to handle becoming The God Emperor himself, and wanted nothing more than to simply fade away and just be with Chani. There was so much nobility in his actions with just a trace of cowardice. #justmy2cents
But it is a self-inflicted trap. Knowing the future means that it factors into your thinking the same way that the past and present do. You *can* make choices (Leto II did) to choose which possible future becomes the actual future. But doing so means having to deal with all the consequences of making those choices.
The more he tried to escape the quicksand, the more he was sucked in, he could choose between good & evil, despite his prescients, its his tragedy he chose the latter.
@@daniels7907 but isnt it tragic that paut had to learn his mistakes after committing it but leto born with full control of himself not only that he could anytime turn into paul to know what mistakes he did to avoid it.
Interesting how many who are called heroes often display attributes mostly seen in villains. This can be seen in the 'heroes' of real world history and reflected in our fiction. I believe Herbert saw this trend in history and applied it to his works, straying away from our idea of the squeaky clean hero and giving his works a new depth.
Villains fight for change, hero's defend the statues quo. That seem to be the idea behind most film, not all of course (Star Wars), but most. Take Infinity War; Thanos is RIGHT in his goal but the "heroes" are opposing him because they refuse to see that what he's doing makes sense, but they are repulsed by the need to kill some to save others, unless they are the ones doing the killing.
Hero and villian are arbitrary terms based solely on one's own biases. It's the Halo effect fallacy; we tend to falsely group favorable attributes to someone/thing that has done something of relatively large magnitude toward society, or what we call great.
There is no such thing as a "villain". Even Hittler and Stalin thinks theyre right and just. You want power to fight injustice, yet you need to commit injustice to keep and grow your power. In the end a "villain" is just a good person with a lot of power.
It's amazing to see how much warhammer 40000 was inspired by Dune The Emperor, a powerful psychic super-human, leading a crusade to reunite mankind in his Imperium, using legions of super soldiers, banishing all religions and cults in favour of the "Imperial Truth", and unwillingly being seen as a God by the citizens of the Imperium.
Just finished Dune Messiah recently, I don't think Paul ever SINCERELY opposed the jihad, every time his personal feelings or humanity told him the course was headed for disaster his interests as an aristocrat won out
I think he was conflicted between vengeance and peace. He wanted to get back at the harkonnens while liberating the fremen but he couldnt do that without starting the jihad. He did everything he could to do both but after a certain point the jihad became inevitable and there was nothing he could do.
@@noidontlikeu i blame the great houses that opposed him, he was the kwizats atarach, they should have feared him, but they opposed his ascention, meanwhile they would still need spice which was in arakis, so they would still bring war to paul and the fremen, he did not have a choice but to kill them first
@@buki3009the Houses had no idea what a kwitzatz haderach was. It was a SECRET program. And he/she was NEVER meant to be an all seeing, all powerful despot. The original purpose-why the Bene Gesserit created the breeding program to begin with-was to create a being who could contest the Spacing Guild's monopoly on space travel through the use prescience to navigate space/time. That’s literally it. What they got instead changed the course of human history. Forever.
If i remember this right, it is said that by looking at the future the Kwisatz Haderach was actually creating it in a way it couldn't be changed. That's why there was a place the bene geserit didn't dare to look and people shouldn't look. And that's why Leto II needed someone who he coulnd't see, an Artreides, Siona to change the future.
The mind has limited working memory. Some things would be impossible to keep off the mind. And its because Paul was a human, and not a Kwisatz Hadaract. Because his humanity was itself only one magnitude removed from being an animal. He still belonged to humanity, so was bound by it. A human is not more than the tools that surround them. Its human feeling and instinct. Language only spreads culture from oral tradition and writing for instance. Thus it is by his upbringing he was trapped, and his cultures upbringing, and humanity' s. Therefore even the Kwisatz would still be a magnitude away from establishing true peace and lead to other terrible fates, and it would be because it would serve the Gesserit and be unable to spread wisdom like a plague.
According the book, fremen Jihad lasted for twelve years. Entire Fremen population on Arrakis was five milion people (more or less). During the Jihad, this fighting force conquered milions of planets and killed around sixty billions people. By knives... I guess... Am I the only one here, who finds these numbers little weird?
I guess fanaticism does that. And the fact that they were probably living in the harshest planet in the galaxy (with Sandworms), second only to Salusa Secundus.
No. The Fremen were the fiercest warriors in the universe. That’s why they defeated entire legions of Sardaukar in the Arrakeen Battle. It was said that each Fremen could kill between 5 and 7 Sardaukar. Shadam IV became emperor precisely because he used Sarduakar to take control of the Universe. So, if a single Fremen could kill 5 to 7 Sarduakar, -the fiercest army in the Universe- what can 5,000,000 million Fremen do? And that was before the culture of the weirding way started spreading between sietches. Remember, Paul bested a Fremen, because he had both Bene Gesserit training and formal training from Gurney and Duncan. When they were ambushed by Stilgar, Jessica bests him. So, they spare her life with the condition that she must teach them a few Bene Gesserit tricks, to which se agrees. So the Fremen, an already invincible army, received formal military training.
Recruitment and those numbers aren’t counting the young, loyal atreides men, houses loyal to the atreides, religious groups who were made to follow paul by the bene gesserits, who were likely rolled into the fremen ranks one way or another. Converts who adopted fremen ways, also super weapons as Paul didn’t really follow the standard conventions
i'm guessing the Fremens didn't do all the killings. its a religion. people who seek blood will use any excuse to justify it. killing in the name of god is not a new concept. religion can plague an entire civilization, converting millions of people that want find an inch of justification to kill.
60 billions of people, with only half or at the very least a quarter of them are military people give or take. The logic is because the number of civillians usually far more than the militaries defending them. With the prior explanations, it is very possible...
These are some awesome videos. Just finished DUNE, about half way through Dune messiah. Cant wait till I get to children of dune. Keep up the great work
Alia, Paul's sister, also had access to the future, but in a different way. This led to one of my favorite lines in the whole series: 'Of all the uses of time-vision, this was the strangest. "I have breasted the future to place my words where only you can hear them," Alia had said. ' Alia left a message a message somewhere in the futurescape where only Paul could find it!
Actually there is something that gets very and deeply overlooked about these terrible atrocities. The thing is that Paul did see the future and he saw the Golden Path, a path that needed to be taken to save the whole of Humanity from extinction due to stagnation. He understood that in order to save humanity he needed to BE the ultimate evil, and allow these horrible events to take place, and he understands that all of this is to serve what he called "Terrible Purpose". This is why when he first starts seeing the future and seeing this galactic Jihad taking place under his name, he exclaims "I am a MONSTER!". This can be seen in two ways, one, that he saw all the horrible deeds he does as the new Galactic Emperor. Two, also the fact that he was to Merge with the Sandtrout and become the god Emperor and lose all his humanity. He is horrified by this, hence he CANNOT take the path, and afraid he looked for a way out to save his humanity hence he falls into decadence before re-emerging as the Prophet. Then, in comes his son Leto II (The 3rd actually since the original Leto II was killed as a baby in DUNE) and his twin sister Ghanima. Both children Pre-born, and in a way hidden from Paul's vision because they too were Kwisatz Haderachs like him. His son is the one that takes up the place of his father, because since Pre-born are seen as not human, and in a way are not, due to being genetically altered in the womb by the Spice and Paul's own alteration (mutants in plain speech) Leto II can indeed lose his humanity and become the god Emperor that Paul saw himself having to become. The ultimate Evil of the known Universe so that people become free from the shackles of religious and political leaders and expand across the universe. This would allow the species to avoid extinction by stagnation that obviously Paul, Leto II and even Ghanima saw. Paul existing then within his Children as guide per se, would always speak to them about the Golden Path, but only Leto II could make it happen. Paul would still grieve within the god Emperor Leto II about these horrible actions but Leto II would continue on, focused but he too would hurt because this process had taken over 3,500yrs to complete and finally make the sacrifice. In essence Paul WAS the hero, but an unsung and a failed one, Leto II was also an unsung hero, seen in general as a monster along with his father, but only at the end of god Emperor of DUNE is when the Duncan Idaho Ghola and Siona are told of the entire plan that both Paul and Leto II had worked on for millennia.
Me: Scientologists are so dumb for getting caught up in the religion of a science fiction author! Also Me: please teach me everything you can about the religion in Dune!
Herbert created the Fremen's religion based on Islam, especially using the stories of what will happened in Yawm al-qiyāmah (Day of Ressurection) and Yawm ad-din (judgement day), and also the final wars before the end of days with the rise of Mahdi with the help of Isa al-Masih (Jesus Christ) to fight the Dajjal (Antichrist) with evildoers as his followers also hordes of barbaric Yajuj and Majuj (Gog and Magog) people. In this case, Paul is the Imam Mahdi with the Fremens (followers of Islam, or any scriptures of Abrahamic religions, also known as Yaumul Kitab) fighting against the Emperor (Dajjal), evildoers as his followers (The Imperium) and hordes of barbaric Harkonnens and Sardaukars (Yajuj and Majuj/Gog and Magog). TL;DR: read about islamic scriptures if you want to know about Fremens religion.
They would had killed him, ( and of course Chani and any other Fremen friends of him, too ) because would consider Paul a weak leader and make Jihad anyway!
@Bad Cattitude Aren't the Fremen Old Earth's people from Egypt and North Africa anyway? Just try to teach them our Western values... they have their own ways!
@@vladvah77 Paul was prescient but some commenters are even more prescient. No, the Fremen are not just North Africans and Western values (as if these were only Western) were not the point in Dune.
@@str.77 literally these are Islamic words (jihad/mahdi) came from Muslims culture something we believe in not like in the novel ofc but our religion says someone named el mahdi el montazer (The awaited Mahdi) and he will be from us a Muslim not a Foreigner will come at the ending of times and fight satan and his worshippers it will be the great war
Great video! I remember seeing the movie from David Lynch and years later finally deciding to read the books. And the transition from Dune to Dune Messiah was jarring! But in a way that made me want to devour the books. When the hero of the previous book becomes the villain in the next, you can bet on the fact that you are going to get surprise after surprise! One of the problems of being a "hero" is the fact that if you're not careful, as Neizche said, you could become a monster in your quest to destroy other monsters. Sometimes, the best choice is to just lay aside power and choose to do nothing. Because any path you actively choose could lead to total chaos and destruction. You could do as Paul and become a tyrant to defeat a tyranny. Or your actions could lead you to being a far more sinister being. Be thankful for all the ones who decided to live quiet lives rather than let their paths tear apart reality for "the greater good." The worst evil is usually the one that thinks it's right and good.
One of the fundamental lessons of Dune is that you should beware of the charismatic leader. No matter how noble they seem, how benign their intentions, they are not immune from betrayal or becoming corrupt. This applies to Duke Leto as well as Paul. Duke Leto was a charismatic leader who was beloved by the people of Caladan, and he always tried to see the good in people. It never occurred to him that anyone could break the conditioning imposed on the Suk doctors, so he couldn't conceive that Yueh could possibly betray him. As for Paul... oh, yeah, he became corrupted. Even while they were rag-tag fugitives on Arrakis he had to find a damn good reason for not calling Stilgar out in a duel and taking over the leadership of Sietch Tabr. The Fremen expected Paul to not only lead the Fremen, but to _think_ like the Fremen, and it disturbed them when he didn't. If he had tried to stop the Jihad, they might have turned on him and carried on with it anyway.
TheJohno95 The path of renunciation is the one Paul eventually chose but if Emperor Leto is to believed that choice was a betrayal of humanity. It's tricky to be a space messiah.
Alan: *lol* It's kind of like the old saying: "You can't win for losing." In the Lady and the Tiger, you either get the tiger....Or a lady with a knife.
I had no clue that Westwood made a version of Dune with an early iteration of it's 3d engine back in 2001. I've always loved Westwood's games, and i'm sad I missed out on it, but, watching these videos gets me so pumped to play it!
I don't know if this has really been addressed before, but if you look at what Frank has to say about oracular vision in the Dune universe, it's almost like he's talking about the collapse of the wave function. Observation (interaction) forces a particular reality. He saw it; therefore it became reality, regardless of his volition.
That's correct. To see the future in Dune is to set the future. And that was the unspoken promise of the Golden Path, to free humanity from the future Paul set - to breed humans invisible to prescience is to render their wavestate uncollapsible by an external observer.
Agreed. However, I see a potential issue. Perhaps you've thought about this and I'd like to hear your opinion. The goal of Secher Nbiw is realized in Siona, and her invisibility to prescience. Over time her gene is spread throughout humanity. This issue is, that in the post Siona universe of Heretics and Chapterhouse, how is prescience still accessible by people like Darwi Odrade, or any of the Bene Gesserit or any Kwisatz Haderach?
Except that Frank Herbert himself discarded the idea very quickly, probably because it made no logical sense. For example, Navigators would actually be *more* dangerous for space travel than they would be beneficial. If they scan ahead with their prescience and foresee a future that contains the destruction of their Heighliner, then shouldn't that future become inescapable? Likewise, Leto II foresaw that humanity would be wiped out by thinking machines. Shouldn't that have been Game Over? The answer is no. Navigators simply scan around for an alternate path that leads to their Heighliner arriving safely at it's destination. Leto scanned the possible futures and out of them came up with his Golden Path that would avert humanity's extinction. Paul did not even try. Now, it is possible that because Paul was born a generation early his prescient abilities were incomplete. Also, nobody had ever trained him to use prescience. He was entirely self-taught. Even Jessica lacked the knowledge to teach him how to handle it. But my personal suspicion is that Paul simply *chose* a future that would get him what he wanted, which was revenge on everyone who contributed to the fall of his House and the death of his father. The price of his revenge was unleashing the Fremen on the Known Universe, because they would only fight for jihad, not to avenge some duke they barely even knew.
@@daniels7907 Navigators always find a safe path because they always look at a short path. They can always find a path to Caladan, or IX, or elsewhere but they cannot see the long term implications of all those journeys and interactions. Their predictive prescience is built first and foremost about the interactions of the stars and finding the paths through them. They have some limited prescience abilities in other realms but lack the access to past lives and understanding of psychology which allows predictions of future activities with anywhere near the certainty of Paul or Leto II.
Good video. It's also hinted that Paul remained accepting of the Mahdinate because it was the least evil of all possible choices he could see, as he refused to choose the path his son Leto II would later pick. Allow the collapse of the Empire, or sacrifice his own eyes to a stone burner to reinforce his own given religious power, thus allowing him to discredit the Bureau of the Faith and truly end the Jihad?
I like how the new DUNE film showed Paul having visions of the Jihad in the future. Legions of Fremen on Caladan cheering and wielding the banner of House Atreides while Paul and Chani look on from a ship above the Fremen.
Someone can explain to me how Freeman archieved that success of Jihad? There weren't that many of Freemen(more than anyone expected, but still not that many), logistics would destroy them(they lacked starships, not to mention they would need huge amounts of food, weapons etc), and they were completely unskilled in the art of war. I mean sure they were good warriors, but they never fought regular war with worthy opponents. Not to mention they lived only in the desert, disciplined army would destroy them in other environment like jungle or ice planet. I understand how they defetead Sardaukars on Arrakis - Emperor wasn't expecting that, Freemen also fought on their native terrain, they had Paul on their side and like I said element of surprise was on their side, okay. But it seems like some berber tribe crushing some english expediction in North Africa, and then in a span of 2 weeks conquering all of Europe.
I assumed that because the Freemen controlled the spice ( with the blackmail that if anyone tried to take Dune from them they would destroy the spice ) they managed to 1) Buy whatever ships and weapons they need. 2) Control the guild so that no one would have the ability to transport an army between worlds without Fremen permission. At that point it's just shooting fish in a barrel. Their enemies can only defend themselves and have no ability to counter-attack. And in the case of a sterilization they used planetary bombardment so in that case they couldn't even defend themselves.
To counter the point about the Berbers conquering Europe. TheY conquered nowadays Portugal and Spain for 70%. Image if they had the equivalent of spice of that time. So it can be done. Like how the Mongols and The Vikings did it. If the people live in a tribal and worrior culture, you don't need to outnumber or have the same number as the enemie.
Think of it this way. Before the battle of Culloden in 1746 there were (at a very conservative estimate) 30,000 armed and experienced warriors in a small corner of Scotland who did basically nothing but fight each other and steal each others and their southern neighbours cattle. If they had united, they were in easy marching distance of the capital of the greatest empire in the world at the time. They owed allegiance to nobody but their individual clan leaders (or Naibs, if you will). If they had ever united and marched south, they could've razed London to the ground without breaking a sweat. Now, when they did eventually march to war in the Jacobite rising of 1745 only about 6,000 to 8,000 actually united, with perhaps half forming into an actual army. They never reached London, but they sure as hell made the British Empire piss its britches in a big way. So much so that after the uprising was put down every effort was made to disarm the highlands and make damn sure nothing like that could ever happen again. Here's another example from history which may be even more apt. Some of the first converts to Islam were the deep desert tribes of the Arabian Peninsula, who again were very small in population but spent most of their time constantly fighting each other and making raids on their much richer neighbours (and, just like the highlanders, leaving most of the rest of the work to the women). United by Islam, they took on two of the mightiest empires of their day *at the same time* and won. All throughout history, if someone ever wanted to control the arabian peninsula, the first thing he did was get the fucking deep desert tribes on his side. Or mow them down with machine guns, but I'm pretty sure that only worked once. Now consider Paul Atreides's Fremen. They aren't just peerless fighters and survivalists right off the bat (and yes, I said survivalists. Surviving in a desert or in a jungle or in the arctic isn't really that dissimilar, all you need is the right information about what to do, the willingness to learn and the discipline to follow through, and the Fremen definetly had all those things), they also have complete control of travel throughout the galaxy thanks to the spice and the Space Guild, they have everything the Atreides had that wasn't blown up by the Harkonnens, they have an obscene amount of money to buy any attack fleet and supplies they could want (thanks to the spice), they have a ready made command system of absolute obedience to their leaders (the Naibs and Muad'dib) and they likely have a whole horde of allied houses who were either already friendly with the Atreides (remember, Atreides power and popularity was what made them a rival to the emperor in the first place) or were scared into supporting them. More would have just wanted to be on the winning side of the Jihad. TL,DR: Nah fam, Fremen OP as fuck.
Am I the only one who wishes Mel Brooks made a Dune parody-movie back in the eighties/early nineties? It would be like "Monty Python's Life of Brian" but in space.
Man you really hit a rebrand. I didn't know who this page was that I was already subbed too. Glad to see you doing stuff outside of the GOT content. Thanks for the videos!
I think Paul being unable to stop the Jihad has having more to do with the extent of his power rather than its limitations. If he eventually foresaw the Jihad as a necessary step on the "Golden Path" then, 60 billion deaths is a small price to pay for humanity's survival. In a sick way, this is the most heroic thing he's ever done. Knowing that he didn't have the stomach to do what Leto II eventually did, he at least took responsibility for the initial atrocities.
Bruh... If 60 billion was a good way, what the frack was the bad way. I'm sorry it's more the limitation of the creator not his creation. You can't make him a boy who successfully becomes the Emperor and then go psych he's a regular dumbass leader like everyone else 😅.
@@garrymugen486The alternative is humanity going extinct while being reminded that the first "Terminator" was a horror movie. Have you read the books? The new movies don't into to it but, there's a reason you don't see a single computer the entire saga.
@@similaritiesendhere I've read the first book, played the games, watched the tv shows, seen videos from Alt-Shift-X and the like who have done in depth analysis of the books. I still think there were better ways to go about it, than how it was handled especially with this particular MC and how he was introduced to us. Maybe it was time humanity died off and the age of the Shai-Hulud should have begun. Here's an honest Q, how come when it come to the Jihad and the 60 Billion it was the only way and absolute foreseen, yet then goes to show that Paul cannot see everything and things can be hidden from him, that's just bad writing and plot convenience. It's just a bunch of 180's and back tracking on characters, rules and plots that make the rest of the story that follows weak, just my humble honest opinion. I still love the first book and the universe, just wish it was handled better.
My take is that he didn't 'know the future', he only thought / imagined he did, and could see possible trends, and from that, his unconscious and traumatized arrested development teenage mind sought to use the Fremen to create a badass name for House Atreides that no one would ever fuck with. *edit, and yes I've thought about him during his 'later' phase. That could simply be explained that he'd set the course in motion and was able to handle the rather low level (by comparison with some kind of universal insight) problem of proximate interactions.
Good video, but I am not sure you answered the question. What stopped Paul from ordering that all Fremen return to Arakis? At that point, they could either obey their god or disobey. I'm not saying that he could have, but if you explained why I missed it.
It's like any social movement. Did the Crucifixion stop Jesus' teachings? Did Hitler's death stop future people from embracing nazism? We know there are neo-Nazis running around spreading hate. Some ideas are just too large to die with the originator. Paul could have ordered everyone home, but I doubt they would have obeyed. Remember that the Fremen had thousands of years of pent-up frustration before the Atreides ever got to Arrakis. They were ready for this, and nobody was going to stop them.
r0kus You're right. From my own memory of the books Paul could not oppose the jihad because he regarded it as an evolutionary necessity. Was he right? It would be interesting to know what the Bene Gesserit thought.
@Susan Stenson - But this is a *completely* different situation. Ideas spread on Earth because borders are merely a social construct. But in the Dune universe, *only* the Spacing Guild has the means to provide interstellar travel or communication. Without their services, *nobody* can travel or even send messages between worlds in different star systems. Paul basically had to threaten the Guild in order to get them to transport Fremen jihadists off of Arrakis. Had he not done so, then their ideology, religion and ability to wage war would have never extended off the planet! The *real* issue was that Paul wanted revenge against the Landsraad, especially Houses Harkonnen and Corrino, for the death of his father and the fall of House Atreides. The Fremen were the only army he had at his disposal to use against the Empire and they were not interested in fighting a secular war to avenge a bunch of people they cared nothing about. In order to us them to punish his enemies, Paul had to unleash them in a religious jihad, and he had to threaten the Spacing Guild with total destruction of the Spice to get them to transport the Fremen to other worlds.
@Gary Rives Okay, now that is interesting. This, out of so many comments, actually makes the most sense in my mind. Thanks. I hadn't considered it from this angle until just now. :)
just a metrics note . . . i'm subscribed and have notifications on. . . did not recieve notification of this video, was channel surfing and found it was up. Great job btw enjoy the vids
Hi, huge fan of your channel! My question is, why didn't Paul reprimand and persecute those who committed such atrocities in his name? He was still alive, he could have attempted more direct interventions couldn't he?
In keeping with Frank Herbert's intended message about how charismatic leaders aren't worth it, what are the odds that Paul's prescience isn't real and is just a delusion? It seems like most or all of the things he predicts are far enough in the future as to be untestable, or things that he could have inferred from his experiences of the present. The only kind of prescience in the Dune universe that seems to be dependable is the kind that let Guild navigators see where they're going even when traveling faster than light.
Every instance of prescience in the Dune universe is predicated by the use of psychoactive drugs. The argument could be made that all the visions are, in actuality, simply hallucinations. Shared hallucinations, but creations of the mind nonetheless.
No. Its real. The problem is prescience is itself a trap. Prescience from one person is a sample of one. That makes it confirmation bias, if a super accurate one if you bind yourself to a particular action. Dune Messiah shows he can see a few seconds into the future accurately. So its put to the uktimate test andis dependable when hes blind. At first. But prescience has holes, esp others with precience. Ghanima for example. Or Shaddams assassin Count Fenring. Scytale was hidden from Paul also. Paul doesnt know what he doesnt know. Paul was also NOT supposed to be the Kwisatz Haderach. It was supposed to be Alias son with Feyd Ruatha. But there is textual evidence that Feyd could have Pauls powers with BG training and lots of Spice. Paul should ve beat him instantly and Couldn't. Alia also should not have male access ancestors memories: this is another clue she is a failed Kwisatz Hederach. Had she not been preborn her powers may have exceeded paulls.
It's a weak message, tho. Story is less realistic, sees its potential diminished from it. The universe-building is much more interesting than some fashionable plebe takes of the 1960s.
Ironically, a similar scenario will play out in the Islamic faith. When the "mehdi" arrives, he will initially deny being a messiah and the people will basically forcefully pledge allegiance to him. The word "mehdi" means "The Guided One" in Arabic and it's basically what the Fremen say when Paul Atreides first comes into contact with the Fremen. Edit- Wait, I think it's spelt "Mahdi".
I can't help but feel like Herbert cheated when writing Dune: Messiah. By setting the book 12 years after the first book, he was able to simply state that things happened without ever having to show us how they happened. I can't help but feel like given just how expensive CHOAM services are, and just how much control Paul had at being able to deploy the ships, he surely could've done a lot more than he did to mitigate the Jihad's spread to only the places least likely to support his ascendency to the emperorship. I also feel like we were just robbed of so much good drama. The political machinations of Dune are mostly from the people who are interested in removing Paul, yes. But they're not people who've really suffered all that much at his hands. It's a very impersonal conflict. Honestly, the one and only time in the book I ever felt that Paul was still not the "hero" was when he was talking about how he put Hitter's body count to shame--and that just felt really out of character to me. I know that Dune is supposed to be a cautionary tale, but I must ask: what else would Herbert have had Paul do? Resign himself to die in the desert and let the comically evil Harkonnen have unfettered access to Arrakis along with probable claims to ingratiating themselves into House Corrino? Become a Fremen but somehow also refuse to help them in their fights against CHOAM and the Harkonnens? And hell, that's not even the worst part, because the only reason humanity survives is because Leto II happens to be way worse than Paul. So, what exactly is the message there? Paul is a bad guy because he wasn't sufficiently evil, like Leto II? I don't get it.
Was Paul really unable to change his destiny? I have some serious doubts. Paul comes across more as a Hamlet type figure, dithering over big decisions because of uncertainty and in the end being led by fate not because he couldn't change it, but because he took too long to make any decisions regarding the Jihad.
Paul is but one man. To rule an empire you need a bureaucracy and everyone of those men have their own desires and aspirations too. If those desires and aspirations go against their ruler's wishes, they will merely hide their deeds and go against the ruler. If he try too hard to prevent his power base from getting what they want, he might become just a figurehead with the rest of the Fremen ignoring him.
I was under the impression that he 'could' have but knew that he had to let it happen for the long term prosperity of the human race. Its kinda like how you could look at all the positive consequences in the longterm of a big war in real history.
I think it's an interesting idea - that there's this fanatical holy war around the main character that he's unable to stop - but I don't think it really makes sense. It isn't really explained properly. What are the practical reasons that Paul couldn't use his vast power to stop at least most of the killing? Especially when apparently Caladan could be spared, for some reason.
Jessica was a religious figure to the Fremen as well, and in her case she represented the mother-goddess aspect of what the Fremen held to be important. She was literally the mother of their god, and so if she said Caladan - the birthplace of their god - was to be spared, it was spared.
Hattes I agree the explanation isn't very clear. My own takeaway was that Paul believed the jihad was bound to happen for evolutionary/genetic reasons and that if he assumed leadership he could limit its destructiveness.
Hattes I don't know why Quinn didn't mention it. Maybe a video about Dune and genetics/evolution. Kind of a queasy subject but it's a big part of the novels.
>>Why Couldn't Paul Stop The Jihad? The Imperium, Landstraad, Bene Gesserit, CHOAM and Guild had been sitting on the galaxy for centuries. Many feuds, rivalries and grudges had been suppressed by Imperial power or the machinations of Great Houses. Once the Emperor and his Sadaukar were defeated, all of that rage was unleashed. Paul knew it would happen. He saw it, but it was inevitable. It was going to happen eventually.
It's almost like the book was an allegory for the whole of the 20th century...Including the "worse" path if not guided(the 100+ million deaths from communism) I don't understand why people haven't figured this out.
Paul wasn't really interested in that. Leto II was. Paul's goal was personal. Namely, revenge against the Landsraad for allowing Houses Corrino and Harkonnen to topple the Atreides and kill Paul's father. Paul didn't care about the needs of the many, just his own need for revenge.
I always perceived Paul as a pawn of a Destiny, who constantly tries and fails to change Destiny's flow. And by Destiny I don't mean some religious or mystic entity, but large System inertia with consequences of such inertia predictable and calculatable - especially by people like Paul or Leto II with their second sight. Paul gave me impression of being not fitting as a ruler of a mankind as his scope of vision and second sight was pretty limited. The question is - whether Paul foresaw events of the last two books, or only Leto II saw this? If Paul could see what Leto II saw - could it be his motivation for a stepping into a Golden Path like Leto II did?
Something that undermines the narrative that Paul was leading humanity to the best possible future within his vision for me is that he is unnecessarily brutal during his Jihad. It's tough for me to buy that he needed to do things like make drums out of the skins of his enemies (as it says in one of the Irulan book quotes in book 1) in order to stay on the same path. As in, I don't think much would be different had he not done that. This narrative paints the picture that Paul's biggest faults were not having prescience as strong as his Leto II's, but I really feel like it is more to the point of the first book that Paul bought into his own legend and allowed it to turn him into a monster. Maybe I need to reread Messiah, but I always found it tough to buy into Paul wanting what was best for humanity.
It was the inevitability of it, and the need for it to eventually cause the scattering being unavoidable. He saw not only the brutality of the Jihad, but the worse scenarios that would have happened if he did stop it completely, the end of the human race through stagnation and being too centralised to face an outside threat or survive cataclysmic civil wars. Its not that he WANTED to stop it, he knew it had to happen, it was the guilt of not wanting to be personally responsible for it that drove him. If you could see the future, and knew World War III had to happen to save mankind, would any of us have the moral strength to start a war we knew would kill a vast swathe of the world and wipe entire countries and religions from existence for a long-term 'greater good' that would eventually save our entire civilisation more than a thousand years after our deaths?
The line of events stretches from Old Earth to Dune. So changing one or more events will change everything. And later the destruction of humanity... By the old enemy...
That really bothered me. Paul just sorta gave up. Like, even if you believe it is inevidable, you should at least still TRY to stop it. What else are you going to do?
Paul wanted to use the Fremen as an army to get revenge on the Landsraad for the death of his father. There was no way to use them for a secular purpose, so he needed to start a religious jihad instead. He not only didn't try to stop it, he *allowed* it because it was part of his revenge.
John Hurley - That's called rationalization. The *only* thing that made the Jihad possible was Paul gaining effective control over the Spacing Guild by threatening to destroy the Spice cycle and using this as leverage to seize the Golden Lion Throne. If Paul had not done this, then there would have been no Jihad because the Fremen had no means of leaving Arrakis except for the Guild. What Paul was angsting over was the problem that he could not get his revenge *and* avert the Jihad. If he got what he wanted, then the Jihad became inevitable. But if he had abandoned his quest for vengeance then there would have been no Jihad. Try to remember that Paul was not actively prescient until he underwent the Spice Agony. Before that he merely had dreams about the future. And even though Paul was not trained to survive the Spice Agony, he took the risk anyway because he needed to become the messiah of the Fremen in order to use them as an army. Using them as an army caused the Jihad.
Daniel S So you're saying Paul *wanted* to start the Jihad to get revenge for his father? I could see that especially since he refused to let his army attack Kalidan.
Well, when your army consists of a horde of bloodthirsty religious fanatics indigenous to a planet with an unspeakably harsh environment, you really can't let them out of their pen without expecting massive loss of life. Paul wanted to punish the Landsraad. The Fremen wanted to go on Jihad. In order for Paul to get what he wanted, he had to allow the Fremen to do what they wanted.
I haven’t read the Dune books in nearly twenty years, but for some reason I recall Paul has to allow the Jihad to happen because, if he doesn’t, things would ultimately turn out worse for humanity. He grows sick of the atrocities his prescience shows him he has to commit, so he gives up on them and escapes to the desert, leaving the Golden Path - which would see even worse atrocities committed by House Atreides - to be traveled by his son. That’s how I recall it at least. I could be wrong, though.
I remember reading dune massiah and before the book begins there is a part in which an observer is being tortured by fremen... He asked the torturers if muadib knows what they are doing to him and they replied that they do not inform muadib of such things... The moral of dune is not to rely on heroes and better to rely on your own morality and judgment and the fatal mistakes that can be committed by the leader or by the leaders name... For example from real life do you think that jesus would approve of the crusades that was done in his name?
Just finished Dune Messiah and my emotions are all over the place. I know is not the most popular book of the series but I loved it. So in love with Dune
I don't understand how the fremen were so unstoppable and so many. They barely even had space travel at the start of the series and they only know how to fight on desert wastelands.
The Fremen were basically like the Saudakar, intense fighters born on unforgiving planets. This made them a nuisance but managable on one world. What allowed them to be unstoppable was the training from Paul and Jessica to each become super human.
How does the Weirding Way protect one from missiles and airstrikes? For example, House Atreides ruled Caladan through naval and air power because the planet had more ocean than land, thus limiting the options for infantry. On planets that were not deserts, the Fremen should have been at a disadvantage. What would a desert-dwelling Fremen know about fighting in a forest or jungle, at sea, in frozen climates, etc.? They also relied on sandworms for transportation, so not many of them would have been familiar with piloting and aerial combat. How could Paul and Jessica, in just *two years* , not only train *millions* of Fremen in the Weirding Way, but also in technological warfare in a variety of biomes? Plus, where did they get things like weapons and vehicles? The original Islamic jihad, which Herbert based this on, took more than a *century* and failed to penetrate further into Europe than the Iberian Penninsula despite heavy use of cavalry.
The way i understood it the first time i read Dune was that it was all basically a matter of pride and revenge, he wanted revenge against the Harkonnens and the Emperor for the death of his father and the destruction of House Atreides. He most likely would have been able to avoid the Jihad if he had let go of his hatred and thirst for revenge, if he had become just another Fremen living a normal life, but his pride didn't allow him to let go, he had to avenge his father, even though he was aware that by going through that path he would make the Jihad inevitable. He had to get even and make everyone pay and if the death of millions was the price to pay to get his revenge then so be it.
wrong. Think about what was going on at the time he wrote the book and had been going on for 70 years and you'll see what Herbert was taking inspiration from. in other words, go to a library and read a history book.
What would've happened if Paul told the Fremen legions to stand down, to not attack any of the other worlds? I can understand that the other Landsraad houses might've then attacked and tried to destroy Paul and the Fremen first, but I don't understand why Paul, feeling so awful about the jihad, never tried much to stop it. And If Jessica could've kept the Fremen from Calladan, why not from other planets? I understand this is fiction and things are the way Frank Herbert created them, but it doesn't seem like real human nature or history to me. I know Herbert wanted Dune to show people that reliance on messianic figures is bad; it just leads to dictatorship and atrocity, but the thing that never makes sense to me is saying Paul is not the messiah, he's not a God, but every single indication in the book says he in fact is. There's nothing that happens before Paul becomes the kwisatz haderach that indicates he might be a fake, or that him becoming what he was chosen to be is a bad thing. It's like Herbert writing that Hitler was destined to be what he became, that there were religious signs and it was all prophesied, by positive prophecies that the people longed to see fulfilled. Lastly, I would have loved to see where David Lynch was planning on taking Paul after he had made it rain on Dune. Was he going to have Paul turn around and say 'I'm not a God' and then basically just walk away?
Yeah I feel like we got a REALLY biased perspective on Muad'Dib's reign. Paul is surrounded by sycophants in a religious cult of personality. Throughout the books, Paul keeps insisting the Jihad is not his fault- because "reasons" we're never allowed to know. Truthfully- I think Paul got was corrupt and in denial about it. Even his "sacrifice" at Messiah was just an excuse to flee his responsibilities and go back to being a charismatic fremen stirring chaos as the Preacher which is what he loved most. Paul spends most of messiah throwing himself a pity party while he lives it up as Emperor. He's more concerned about his wife's nagging or whether or not he can trust his zombie best friend than the Jihad itself. Anything happening outside Arrakis- let alone his palace is rarely dwelled upon. His enemies are largely rich and powerful leaders themselves, mainly interested in seizing the throne. Only Edric seems bothered or motivated by the Jihad. And he's called a fool for not worshipping the ground Muad'dib walks on. His "I'm worse than Hitler" scene in Messiah is a major disconnect from the rest of the books. Because its the only scene that highlights the scale of his tyranny. Duncan resigning in CoD to some extent does this as well.
His mother decided on her own to have Paul a head of the full plan. Just imagine how if the plan would have come to be. Selfishness caused Paul's pain.
Paul could have stop everything by just saying it, due to the fremen’s own fanaticism they would have march directly into the mouth of a sandworm if paul tells them too. Paul wanted all of it to happen.
This is my biggest problem with Dune. None of this is explained. Who and what caused the spark for the Jihad? And literally who is fighting? Just the Freman vs the entire Galaxy? How on earth does that make any logical sense? How did they get anything actually done? It'd be like one tribe from on planet, rising up and taking down a galaxy of Imperials.And yes it's happened in Star Wars, but that was shown and explained. This Jihad is just stated as having started and never given any context
A small sidenote for clarification: while there was no fighting on Dan, Atreide's old forces from Dan joined the Fremen forces in the jihad - Stilgar himself worked with soldiers from Dan
I always felt this was Dune’s biggest problem. Like all Paul had to do was not be a leader. Like, sit down and chill out. Sleep in. Idk, make it your life’s mission to get off Dune and go elsewhere. He totally made the Jihad happen on his own because he’s a dickhead. Just my opinion, still like the books
@@DangNguyen-jw9fl Agree. Especially as the Fremen need the cooperation of The spacing Guild and Paul. Who is waging this Jihad? And Why if Paul is the ruler of the known Universe? Did Pauls plan actually fail, did the Great Houses and the guild fight him? Did he need to conquer the universe?
I think it had to do with the whole messiah prophecy that the Benne Gesserit planted on arrakis beforehand. Thats why it was set into motion immediately when Paul arrived. The religious fervor of the Fremen was unpreventable, and the Jihad would happen with our without him. I believe that the jihad was necessary to ensure that the golden path was followed too, although he chose not to continue it afterwards
The major point you're missing is that Paul is not a conventional leader. He is not only a god, but like Leto II says, he's bound by prescience. Paul was too afraid to take the path that Leto II does because of the evils that it required and also because he was limited by his own morality and prescience to see the end results that truly demanded that path. Paul ends up hoping that he can mitigate and control the situation by following the "golden path" AKA doing things that he did not see himself doing. His failure is not one of "Just saying no", as it's explained this simply would not work to control the situation, but rather one of trying to mitigate short-term evils. Paul is crushed by the burden of prescience, especially the emotional one. He's crushed by his own morality and by his lack of wisdom, which Leto II has aplenty due to pre-lives. He's confined into the limitations of prescience, he can't truly live or lead because he already knows the results of his actions and because he's an Emperor AND a god these actions all have horrific consequences for the human race that Paul simply can't manage. So he takes the path of passiveness with only the few actions he did not foresee being ones he could take. It's the easiest to rationalize and justify.
In becoming the Fremen super leader he didn't actually have the power to choose their course but only to lead the Fremen on the course they would already be inclined towards. I think it's like the worm and riding it. A wormrider can steer a worm but not contrary to the worm's nature. It cannot be made to cross water, for example. I think the worms are allegorical in this way of political power and the limitations of it.
You're reading too much into it. Paul could've controlled the fremen to a large extent since they worshipped him.
The Jihad was necessary since every Planet other than Arrakis still held allegiance to house corrino.
Andrew Church I always used to see this in any sort of leader, they are in charge but subject to the burden of leading that group. For example, if Kim Jung un totally renounced judge and his cult of personality, there would probably be a move against him by those under his command. (Possibly. Just my opinion..) Another example wud be how Orwell saw the "white man's burden".. He noted that the whites were in charge of their colonies, but still subject to being the oppressive overlords of their subjects, just as their subjects were bound to the colonial state of exploitation..
James Livingston Do you mean Orwell or Kipling?
James Livingston
The tag,
" I am their leader, I must follow them", is attributed to the leader of the French reds in 1848. Applies to Paul as well.
Joe Blow
He's talking about Orwell's story Shooting an Elephant. Well worth checking out.
I would say it creates a contrast between Paul and Leto II. Paul attempts to be the benevolent leader, but in doing so, he brings about the greatest atrocity in history, while Leto sacrifices his image and becomes a ruthless tyrant, but insures humanity's success in the long run
Actually, at *no* point was Paul *ever* a benevolent ruler! Aside from the mass-murder of *billions* of people, he did absolutely *nothing* to improve the lives of the common people of the Imperium. Paul's Jihad was really about revenge on the nobility that betrayed his father and House. He didn't care about anything else. Even his firstborn son and wife were necessary sacrifices in his path to the Golden Lion Throne. But once on that throne, he really just indulged his own whims until it got so bad that even he realized he was a monster and decided that he had to end his own reign.
I have only read the first book so far, and have awareness of the general plot of the others. My reading is similar I guess. In fact, I realized listening to one of Herbert's interviews that I took from the book partly the opposite that he intended. He seemed to have wanted to create a cautionary tale about excessive trust in leaders. I took from it instead the fact that the least harmful course of action sometimes still involves a lot of harm, as with Leto II and the Golden Path.
With normal human leaders, who are not prescient, one should obviously expect to see mercy. With a partially prescient one like Paul, who in a way was not supposed to become the Kwisatz Haderach, he tried to avoid the tragedy as best he could, but it did not occur to him that had he died before meeting the Fremen, that would have brought the least harm.
Leto II had more perfect prescience and made the deliberate choice to rule oppressively to save mankind in the long term. I actually agree with this decision, although it applies little to our relation to leadership in the real world.
It's also true that, had Paul died before meeting the Fremen, Leto II would not have been born, there would have been no Golden Path, and humanity would have finished altogether. So in a way, the way things went was the least harmful of possibilities.
@@simonedarionardella3957 - Good observations. I think that there are always many "what-if's" that one can get into when dealing with any long story, especially one that itself deals with people who can see the future.
For example, what if Jessica had followed orders and had a daughter instead of a son? Would the Bene Gesserit plan to marry that daughter to Feyd and for that couple's child to have been the Kwisatz Haderach, raised by the Bene Gesserit, have gone better?
The Bene Gesserit were *very* much concerned with the long-term future of humanity, which is why they were trying to breed the KH in the first place after all. If their KH had foreseen what Leto II did then they would have very likely taken steps to avert it as well.
My sense has always been that Herbert's warning about authoritarian figures was still present. Any good that Paul did for humanity was more accidental than deliberate. Just because he was prescient did *not* mean that he made the best decisions for humanity rather than for himself. This is why Leto II had to completely overhaul his father's regime and even force the Fremen to interbreed with the Sardukar to create a more structured eugenic breeding program than Paul's utterly random idea of spreading Fremen genes via war rape.
In this regard we are shown two similar leaders, both prescient. The first is extremely selfish and ends up being a horrible ruler. The second has to make unpleasant choices because his predecessor refused to care about the long-term. In either case, humanity suffered mostly because their destiny was being controlled by just one person, whose good intentions were not assured.
@@daniels7907 Paul actually did a lot to improve living conditions on Arrakis "as Liet taught us", only to find out that many Fremen were not on board with the results.
@@simonedarionardella3957 True but why blame Paul for not dying before he met the Fremen and not the Baron and the Emperor for forcing him into the desert in the first place. And while the Baron is disgustingly evil character, the Emperor actually had little reason to do what he did. He could have achieved a similar result minus the Fremen djihad had he made Paul his son-in-law and heir.
"To know the future, is to be trapped by it."
Depends if you know the one true future or just one of many possible ones.
@@artembentsionov, Paul knew many futures. He chose what he thought was the best. That was his weakness which was used against him.
@@UteChewb - More specifically, Paul chose the future that would get him revenge on Emperor Shaddam IV, Baron Harkonnen and the Landsraad. The "trap" was that this future required him to unleash the Fremen on a Jihad against the Known Universe and would lead to the deaths of his firstborn son and later Chani. A lot of people suffered and died so that Paul could avenge his father and house.
Paul, and to a larger extent Leto, didn't quite see the future. They saw extended cycles of human repetition and chose the version of humanity that seemed most appropriate to thek subjectively.
The "future" as an existing thing would be objective, but the prescience paul and leto displayed is definately subjective.
In that sense, it reads more like "to truly know human history is to be trapped by it"
Paul Holland i was coming here to write this
When Stilgar takes Jessica and Paul down into the water storage area at the end of Jamis' funeral rites, Paul recognizes this is a nexus of choice which could avert the Jihad but is unsure what choice to make. They leave the water storage and Paul recognizes that he missed his chance to make a choice, still unsure what it was he had a choice in.
My read of that chapter is that Paul had the choice to continue Kynes and Liet-Kynes in leading the Fremen down a slow, defensive pth, paying off the Spacing Guild and doing the intergenerational work of bringing more water and more life and greenery to Arrakis. He was meant to speak there against Jessica's wishes for vengeance against the Harkonnens and for staying the course set by Liet-Kynes and Kynes before him, but he could not see it. The way that chapter ends, with Paul perceiving his mother (and the way she shaped/shapes him) as his enemy is telling.
That's a great insight
Yeah! I also remember that at some point in this section Paul thinks that the only way to stop the jihad at this point would be for everyone in that cave to die, so there was no turning back
About the only force in the universe that could possibly have stopped the Fremen after the start of the jihad would be thinking machines.
@@stephenkenney8290 With the power levels spoken of in Dune, Thinking machines would be less likely to survive. It is a mathematical principle of physics. You cannot extract more than 100% of the available energy out of a system. In dune, they have reached a level of technological efficiency that they are able to extract almost 100% of all available energy in any given system. Meaning, no matter how powerful the machines are, they are fighting at the exact same energy levels as humanity, and therefore unable to acquire any meaningful advantage.
Thinking machines are only a threat if your civilization is unable to extract 100% of the available energy out of a system, as the machines will be able to do it first, and simply math your entire species to death.
It becomes a question of who has more energy... This isn't really related to the meaning of your post, but I felt like sharing.
Warhammer 40K and Dune is a good example of what peak technology looks like. At some point you reach the end of progress simply because you took everything that there is to take, and there just isn't anything left.
@@NoobNoobNews A well said response, but I'm basing my assumption on the fears of Leto II, who foresaw that the Ixians would create a self improving hunter killer that would destroy all organic life in the known universe. Without the Golden Path this was the future humanity was headed towards. Therefore it is logical to assume that thinking machines developed during the time of Paul Atreides would be superior to those present during the Butlerian Jihad, which saw the end of AI.
Paul was born with one voice and prescient love for Chani. That was it. He could've chosen the sandtrout skin but all he wanted was Chani and his corporeal life. Leto II was born of the horde, he was never a single person and all he knew was the inner lives and himself. He made a bargain and became the horde and that's all he ever was. He was the nexus between the past voices and his visions of the future. Paul, Ghanima (and Alia with the right state of mind) could've become the Kwisatz Haderach if he wanted, but he never wanted it. It's all that Leto ever knew.
I think that the sandtrout skin and apotheosis is the essence of Paul's failure to stop the Jihad. Despite the litany against fear, Paul was still afraid of the Golden Path, particularly because of the commandment, "Thou shalt not disfigure the soul." Paul couldn't do what was necessary to stop the Fremen's Jihad and force the Golden Path so he was left locked into his prescient vision where at least someone else could still take the Path.
@@vindik8ordope
Fremen: "I've only had Paul for a day and a half, but if anything happened to him, I would kill everyone is this universe and then myself."
Paul: "Please no"
lmao
oh my god
lol
420th and lmao
Rosa would love Dune
If Paul Atreides is a hero then he is a tragic one. Both Dune Messiah and Children of Dune make it clear how his own prescience had painted him into a corner. I had to reread those books a few times over the years to really understand. At the end of the first book Paul can foresee the Jihad and realize that he can't stop it but I think for some people getting intp the series those facts might be overshadowed by Paul's struggle with Shaddam IV and the Harkonnens, although I was still somewhat crest-fallen when I first read Dune Messiah and saw not only the Tleilaxu, the Bene Gesserit, and the Spacing Guild conspiring against him but other Fremen, too. It became pretty obvious that Muaddib's reign did not bring utopia of any kind to the known universe. Great video. Keep up the great work.
In interviews Herbert actually said that yes, Paul is a tragic figure, and a cautionary tale. Not a 'hero' in the sense of a wise person to be emulated. The Fremen would have been better off without him.
@@paxnorthwilliamson2689 great points.
You can't build paradise with stupid people.
It would have been more subversive if he had brought an utopia to the Dune universe. No more stakes but still subversive.
@@paxnorthwilliamson2689no, they would be dead without him. No Paul, no golden path, no Leto II, no humanity.
I'm reading Chapterhouse at the moment and seeing this video about Paul makes it feel like the first three books were eons ago.
Herbert was a master even at this!
There was about 5000 years between Dune and Chapterhouse.
The series sucks after Children of Dune in my opinion
I just finished Dune Messiah. Frank Herbert was a genius
@@FoxWolfWorldI actually don’t mind the overarching plot of the later books, but the writing style and execution are not at all to my taste
The first book was a breakout hit masterfully written to trick the reader into paying attention. The second book was a sucker punch, and hard to digest, but well written follow up, if disappointing to some because it dropped some pretenses. Children is the last masterfully executed book in an amazing trilogy, everything that comes after is still part of the same world with the same coherent story, but just isn't sublime.
Dune in two phrases: "Don't follow leaders; watch your parking meters"
"How many future you have seen?"
"14,000,605."
"How many did humanity survive?
"One."
To be fair, no they didn't, they just survived long enough to become invisible to his sight.
@@LibertyMonkstill better than the countless possible futures where he saw humanity go completely extinct
Paul was a pawn in the hand of destiny. A "King pawn" with self-awareness (needed to win the chess game) but still a pawn.
As Stephen King would say : if Ka blows nobody can stop it's flow!
Not even remotely. The prophecy of muadib was created by the Reverend mothers and used by Jessica to hand paul a fanatical army. He was the opposite of a pawn.
@@cdreid99999kwizats isn’t fake
Wrong. The benegesserit meddling and faith building was so strong that...actually it seems like you didn't read the books....or even listen to this video....nvm you aren't worth wasting breath on.
Imagine watching something happen knowing it's "in your name" but not being able to control it at all. That so tragic. So interestingly written!
The Fremen were their own worst enemy. Their dream would have always destroyed them, as well as the Sand Worms.
This is almost always the case with dreams of any sort.
He was the victim of his own prophecy and he was afraid to walk the golden path. That's why he waited for his son to make the sacrifices...
Something I pointed out many years ago on the now-defunct dunenovels.com forum is that Paul found the Golden Path so unpalatable because he grew up as a human, from normal babyhood to an adult. Granted, he had Bene Gesserit training, but he wasn't born with a fully adult consciousness as Alia, Leto II, or Ghanima were.
Leto was able to "sacrifice" his humanity because he had never really known what it was to be a normal human in the first place. God Emperor of Dune is full of passages of Leto II carrying on in a colossal self-pity party, but I don't feel sorry for him. He had access to millennia worth of Other Memory, but he hadn't really lived more than 9 years as a human and not one of those 9 years were as a real human child. Unlike Paul, Leto II never reached adulthood. There were so many things he never understood and Paul did.
That's why Paul couldn't do it - he _knew_ what he would be giving up. Leto II was basically clueless.
I think he'd done it had he not lost Chani and Leto II.
I dont think or read it asnhe was afraid, I think he chose a "mans life" vs the golden path. Thisnis explored more in the expanded dune universe...when the clone and awaken all the original characters and paul talk to his son.
Strangely enough I was thinking of this just the other day. The sense I get from the novel is that Paul could have stopped the Jihad with a word of command. He chose not to even though he was horrified by the violence. There's several places where the book speaks of the jihad as the lesser evil. Paul believed that something even worse would happened if the jihad was not accomplished. As far as I can tell Herbert never makes it clear what that alternative evil was.
Paul was out for revenge against the Emperor, House Harkonnen and the Landsraad in general. The only army he had available was the fanatical Fremen. He was *not* a victim of his own prophecy. He used the fact that he foresaw the Jihad as an *excuse* to claim that it was unavoidable. But Leto II foresaw the extermination of humanity by thinking machines and that future was *not* inevitable despite Leto foreseeing it with his prescience. He could and *did* set out to change the future he saw. Paul just wasn't interested in loftier goals than revenge for the fall of his House and the death of his father. So he said "Screw the consequences!" and unleashed the Fremen on the Known Universe because they were all he had to fight with.
I believe that the breaking point in Paul was when Emperor launched a Sardaukar raid and killed his firstborn infant son - Leto Atreides II the Elder. After that I think that Paul only wanted for the galaxy to burn... I mean - he knew that even in his own death the Jihad will carry on, but after that, he just gave up on stopping it...
I thought he allows the Jihad because, if he doesn’t, things would ultimately get even worse for humanity.
The Jihad brings him closer to the Golden path, which will, in the end, liberate humanity, and that’s why Paul permits the Jihad to rage on - even though he loses his guts later and rejects the Golden Path because he’d seen too much atrocity committed in his name by that time.
@@richcapo Paul did not complete his journey down the Golden Path because Paul had already seen that he did not complete the Journey down the Golden Path. Once again, to know the future is to be trapped by it.
@@kennethfharkin Paul saw the golden path but rejected it. At any point he could have chosen to accept the sandtrout skin but he was tired of being trapped into the path dictated by the future. And he was disgusted with how his name and image had been twisted so far from who he was and wanted to be to live like that for thousands of years. Bad enough that he was indirectly responsible for the destruction of the jihad for him to personally do the terrible things required of the god emperor were beyond him
@@Nichi-Ji This was my interpretation too. He lived on Caladan with his father. He knew what wise rule with people who loved and respected you was supposed to look and feel like. To have to be a tyrant, the very thing that caused all of his family's suffering for thousands of years was just too much for him to bare.
Yes the that path ultimately would lead to the extinction of the species, but it was still too much. It was too far out of his character to do it. Lett II never grew up like that. He was always a multitude. Maybe it was easier for him since he was born to it, but it was hard even on him.
@@LeblueLegume100%. The ability to retreat into the multitude is what allowed “Leto” to mentally survive all those years of peaceful oppression. I put Leto in quotes because I’m not sure if Leto actually exists, I vaguely remember something in Children of Dune about how he basically had to sacrifice “himself” and become an amalgamation of the multitude inside him to avoid abomination possession like Alia. So what I got was that the child Leto at the beginning of the book stopped existing and instead became the physical embodiment of all the multitude. I wish we could have gotten more perspective from his sister especially towards the middle of his reign since she had a much different approach to avoid abomination
First: this was a beautiful video and thanks for sharing!
Second: I think it's also important to note that Paul couldn't bring himself to take "The Golden Path" bc he knew that any deviation from his prescient knowledge of the future would result in truly devastating repercussions for the ones he loved most as well as the complete destruction of the Imperium. He couldn't live with the consequences of such an action and so rejected The Golden Path in favor of something personally terrible but with less immediately far reaching results. I think he also understood that he wasn't equipped to handle becoming The God Emperor himself, and wanted nothing more than to simply fade away and just be with Chani. There was so much nobility in his actions with just a trace of cowardice. #justmy2cents
To quote Frank Herbert, " To know the future, is to be trapped by it."
But it is a self-inflicted trap. Knowing the future means that it factors into your thinking the same way that the past and present do. You *can* make choices (Leto II did) to choose which possible future becomes the actual future. But doing so means having to deal with all the consequences of making those choices.
The more he tried to escape the quicksand, the more he was sucked in, he could choose between good & evil, despite his prescients, its his tragedy he chose the latter.
@@daniels7907 but isnt it tragic that paut had to learn his mistakes after committing it but leto born with full control of himself not only that he could anytime turn into paul to know what mistakes he did to avoid it.
Interesting how many who are called heroes often display attributes mostly seen in villains. This can be seen in the 'heroes' of real world history and reflected in our fiction. I believe Herbert saw this trend in history and applied it to his works, straying away from our idea of the squeaky clean hero and giving his works a new depth.
Villains fight for change, hero's defend the statues quo. That seem to be the idea behind most film, not all of course (Star Wars), but most. Take Infinity War; Thanos is RIGHT in his goal but the "heroes" are opposing him because they refuse to see that what he's doing makes sense, but they are repulsed by the need to kill some to save others, unless they are the ones doing the killing.
It touches on the subjective nature of "heroism". As the saying goes: "History is written by the winners".
Hero and villian are arbitrary terms based solely on one's own biases. It's the Halo effect fallacy; we tend to falsely group favorable attributes to someone/thing that has done something of relatively large magnitude toward society, or what we call great.
There is no such thing as a "villain". Even Hittler and Stalin thinks theyre right and just. You want power to fight injustice, yet you need to commit injustice to keep and grow your power. In the end a "villain" is just a good person with a lot of power.
Folker46 ! No thanos makes no fucking sense whatsoever but everything else you said is right.
It's amazing to see how much warhammer 40000 was inspired by Dune
The Emperor, a powerful psychic super-human, leading a crusade to reunite mankind in his Imperium, using legions of super soldiers, banishing all religions and cults in favour of the "Imperial Truth", and unwillingly being seen as a God by the citizens of the Imperium.
Which is ironic since the truth is gods do exist and they hate you
@@garyoakham9723 Was that really necessary?
@@garyoakham9723 Lorgar, is that you? ;)
@@garyoakham9723 just like Fullmetal alchemist reference
Warhammer 40k steals from all sci-fi/fantasy in existence. They literally just put them all in a blender and puked out the Warhammer franchise…
Just finished Dune Messiah recently, I don't think Paul ever SINCERELY opposed the jihad, every time his personal feelings or humanity told him the course was headed for disaster his interests as an aristocrat won out
I think he was conflicted between vengeance and peace. He wanted to get back at the harkonnens while liberating the fremen but he couldnt do that without starting the jihad. He did everything he could to do both but after a certain point the jihad became inevitable and there was nothing he could do.
@@JBoxy7 his options were to either be history's greatest coward and fraud or it's greatest tyrant
@@noidontlikeu i blame the great houses that opposed him, he was the kwizats atarach, they should have feared him, but they opposed his ascention, meanwhile they would still need spice which was in arakis, so they would still bring war to paul and the fremen, he did not have a choice but to kill them first
The BG who also had powere over the houses wanted to "Put the genie back in the bottle" that's why thehouses didn't submit.@@buki3009
@@buki3009the Houses had no idea what a kwitzatz haderach was. It was a SECRET program.
And he/she was NEVER meant to be an all seeing, all powerful despot.
The original purpose-why the Bene Gesserit created the breeding program to begin with-was to create a being who could contest the Spacing Guild's monopoly on space travel through the use prescience to navigate space/time.
That’s literally it.
What they got instead changed the course of human history. Forever.
Man, this is a really great channel. If I may say so, I think Frank would appreciate the exposure you're providing his work.
If i remember this right, it is said that by looking at the future the Kwisatz Haderach was actually creating it in a way it couldn't be changed. That's why there was a place the bene geserit didn't dare to look and people shouldn't look. And that's why Leto II needed someone who he coulnd't see, an Artreides, Siona to change the future.
reminds me of stein's gate
@@cjcj7387 You can't just fool yourself by looking into the future. You have to change the past for that to happen
The mind has limited working memory. Some things would be impossible to keep off the mind. And its because Paul was a human, and not a Kwisatz Hadaract. Because his humanity was itself only one magnitude removed from being an animal. He still belonged to humanity, so was bound by it. A human is not more than the tools that surround them. Its human feeling and instinct. Language only spreads culture from oral tradition and writing for instance. Thus it is by his upbringing he was trapped, and his cultures upbringing, and humanity' s. Therefore even the Kwisatz would still be a magnitude away from establishing true peace and lead to other terrible fates, and it would be because it would serve the Gesserit and be unable to spread wisdom like a plague.
Love these videos. They make me feel like the story is still being told. The spice must flow...
According the book, fremen Jihad lasted for twelve years. Entire Fremen population on Arrakis was five milion people (more or less). During the Jihad, this fighting force conquered milions of planets and killed around sixty billions people.
By knives... I guess...
Am I the only one here, who finds these numbers little weird?
I guess fanaticism does that. And the fact that they were probably living in the harshest planet in the galaxy (with Sandworms), second only to Salusa Secundus.
No. The Fremen were the fiercest warriors in the universe. That’s why they defeated entire legions of Sardaukar in the Arrakeen Battle. It was said that each Fremen could kill between 5 and 7 Sardaukar. Shadam IV became emperor precisely because he used Sarduakar to take control of the Universe. So, if a single Fremen could kill 5 to 7 Sarduakar, -the fiercest army in the Universe- what can 5,000,000 million Fremen do? And that was before the culture of the weirding way started spreading between sietches. Remember, Paul bested a Fremen, because he had both Bene Gesserit training and formal training from Gurney and Duncan. When they were ambushed by Stilgar, Jessica bests him. So, they spare her life with the condition that she must teach them a few Bene Gesserit tricks, to which se agrees. So the Fremen, an already invincible army, received formal military training.
Recruitment and those numbers aren’t counting the young, loyal atreides men, houses loyal to the atreides, religious groups who were made to follow paul by the bene gesserits, who were likely rolled into the fremen ranks one way or another. Converts who adopted fremen ways, also super weapons as Paul didn’t really follow the standard conventions
i'm guessing the Fremens didn't do all the killings. its a religion. people who seek blood will use any excuse to justify it. killing in the name of god is not a new concept. religion can plague an entire civilization, converting millions of people that want find an inch of justification to kill.
60 billions of people, with only half or at the very least a quarter of them are military people give or take. The logic is because the number of civillians usually far more than the militaries defending them. With the prior explanations, it is very possible...
These are some awesome videos. Just finished DUNE, about half way through Dune messiah. Cant wait till I get to children of dune. Keep up the great work
Alia, Paul's sister, also had access to the future, but in a different way. This led to one of my favorite lines in the whole series:
'Of all the uses of time-vision, this was the strangest. "I have breasted the future to place my words where only you can hear them," Alia had said.
' Alia left a message a message somewhere in the futurescape where only Paul could find it!
Actually there is something that gets very and deeply overlooked about these terrible atrocities.
The thing is that Paul did see the future and he saw the Golden Path, a path that needed to be taken to save the whole of Humanity from extinction due to stagnation. He understood that in order to save humanity he needed to BE the ultimate evil, and allow these horrible events to take place, and he understands that all of this is to serve what he called "Terrible Purpose".
This is why when he first starts seeing the future and seeing this galactic Jihad taking place under his name, he exclaims "I am a MONSTER!". This can be seen in two ways, one, that he saw all the horrible deeds he does as the new Galactic Emperor. Two, also the fact that he was to Merge with the Sandtrout and become the god Emperor and lose all his humanity. He is horrified by this, hence he CANNOT take the path, and afraid he looked for a way out to save his humanity hence he falls into decadence before re-emerging as the Prophet. Then, in comes his son Leto II (The 3rd actually since the original Leto II was killed as a baby in DUNE) and his twin sister Ghanima. Both children Pre-born, and in a way hidden from Paul's vision because they too were Kwisatz Haderachs like him. His son is the one that takes up the place of his father, because since Pre-born are seen as not human, and in a way are not, due to being genetically altered in the womb by the Spice and Paul's own alteration (mutants in plain speech) Leto II can indeed lose his humanity and become the god Emperor that Paul saw himself having to become. The ultimate Evil of the known Universe so that people become free from the shackles of religious and political leaders and expand across the universe. This would allow the species to avoid extinction by stagnation that obviously Paul, Leto II and even Ghanima saw.
Paul existing then within his Children as guide per se, would always speak to them about the Golden Path, but only Leto II could make it happen. Paul would still grieve within the god Emperor Leto II about these horrible actions but Leto II would continue on, focused but he too would hurt because this process had taken over 3,500yrs to complete and finally make the sacrifice. In essence Paul WAS the hero, but an unsung and a failed one, Leto II was also an unsung hero, seen in general as a monster along with his father, but only at the end of god Emperor of DUNE is when the Duncan Idaho Ghola and Siona are told of the entire plan that both Paul and Leto II had worked on for millennia.
This was a really nice reading. Very well elaborated.
@@anxiouslycalm2929 If sincerely, then thanks :)
Paul couldn't stop the Jihad because every time he tried, mundanematt would flag his videos.
haha, got his assssssss
lol
*LULZ* funny becuz its true.
Bahahahahahaha
I noticed the artwork from Fallout 3's capitol wasteland in your video. It fits.
Me: Scientologists are so dumb for getting caught up in the religion of a science fiction author!
Also Me: please teach me everything you can about the religion in Dune!
The difference being that Hubbard wanted to make money from other people and Herbert wanted to warn people of its danger.
Herbert created the Fremen's religion based on Islam, especially using the stories of what will happened in Yawm al-qiyāmah (Day of Ressurection) and Yawm ad-din (judgement day), and also the final wars before the end of days with the rise of Mahdi with the help of Isa al-Masih (Jesus Christ) to fight the Dajjal (Antichrist) with evildoers as his followers also hordes of barbaric Yajuj and Majuj (Gog and Magog) people. In this case, Paul is the Imam Mahdi with the Fremens (followers of Islam, or any scriptures of Abrahamic religions, also known as Yaumul Kitab) fighting against the Emperor (Dajjal), evildoers as his followers (The Imperium) and hordes of barbaric Harkonnens and Sardaukars (Yajuj and Majuj/Gog and Magog).
TL;DR: read about islamic scriptures if you want to know about Fremens religion.
Battlefield Earth is good fiction also I don't mind Tom Cruise
Jihad me at 'hello'.
A rare Jerry Maguire/Dune crossover reference Nicely done. lol
Very underrated comment
If Paul tried to tell the Fremen to just not shed blood he'd lost respect, not be seen as Fremen and forces would've aligned against him sooner.
They would had killed him, ( and of course Chani and any other Fremen friends of him, too ) because would consider Paul a weak leader and make Jihad anyway!
@Bad Cattitude Aren't the Fremen Old Earth's people from Egypt and North Africa anyway? Just try to teach them our Western values... they have their own ways!
@@vladvah77 Paul was prescient but some commenters are even more prescient.
No, the Fremen are not just North Africans and Western values (as if these were only Western) were not the point in Dune.
@@str.77 literally these are Islamic words (jihad/mahdi) came from Muslims culture something we believe in not like in the novel ofc but our religion says someone named el mahdi el montazer (The awaited Mahdi) and he will be from us a Muslim not a Foreigner will come at the ending of times and fight satan and his worshippers it will be the great war
@@jinxer7750 Your point being?
Thanks, men.
Your videos keep me on the journey through the lore after that ending on book 6...
I love this series of videos, keep it up!
Great video! I remember seeing the movie from David Lynch and years later finally deciding to read the books. And the transition from Dune to Dune Messiah was jarring! But in a way that made me want to devour the books. When the hero of the previous book becomes the villain in the next, you can bet on the fact that you are going to get surprise after surprise! One of the problems of being a "hero" is the fact that if you're not careful, as Neizche said, you could become a monster in your quest to destroy other monsters. Sometimes, the best choice is to just lay aside power and choose to do nothing. Because any path you actively choose could lead to total chaos and destruction. You could do as Paul and become a tyrant to defeat a tyranny. Or your actions could lead you to being a far more sinister being. Be thankful for all the ones who decided to live quiet lives rather than let their paths tear apart reality for "the greater good." The worst evil is usually the one that thinks it's right and good.
One of the fundamental lessons of Dune is that you should beware of the charismatic leader. No matter how noble they seem, how benign their intentions, they are not immune from betrayal or becoming corrupt. This applies to Duke Leto as well as Paul. Duke Leto was a charismatic leader who was beloved by the people of Caladan, and he always tried to see the good in people. It never occurred to him that anyone could break the conditioning imposed on the Suk doctors, so he couldn't conceive that Yueh could possibly betray him.
As for Paul... oh, yeah, he became corrupted. Even while they were rag-tag fugitives on Arrakis he had to find a damn good reason for not calling Stilgar out in a duel and taking over the leadership of Sietch Tabr. The Fremen expected Paul to not only lead the Fremen, but to _think_ like the Fremen, and it disturbed them when he didn't.
If he had tried to stop the Jihad, they might have turned on him and carried on with it anyway.
Very, very true! At Leto's, and Paul's, level, you have to follow the motto of DTA. Don't Trust Anyone. At least not completely.
TheJohno95
The path of renunciation is the one Paul eventually chose but if Emperor Leto is to believed that choice was a betrayal of humanity. It's tricky to be a space messiah.
Alan: *lol* It's kind of like the old saying: "You can't win for losing." In the Lady and the Tiger, you either get the tiger....Or a lady with a knife.
Well said.
I had no clue that Westwood made a version of Dune with an early iteration of it's 3d engine back in 2001. I've always loved Westwood's games, and i'm sad I missed out on it, but, watching these videos gets me so pumped to play it!
Back before EA bought them out and destroyed the franchise.
@@BlackEpyon a tale as old as time
I don't know if this has really been addressed before, but if you look at what Frank has to say about oracular vision in the Dune universe, it's almost like he's talking about the collapse of the wave function. Observation (interaction) forces a particular reality. He saw it; therefore it became reality, regardless of his volition.
That's correct. To see the future in Dune is to set the future. And that was the unspoken promise of the Golden Path, to free humanity from the future Paul set - to breed humans invisible to prescience is to render their wavestate uncollapsible by an external observer.
Agreed. However, I see a potential issue. Perhaps you've thought about this and I'd like to hear your opinion. The goal of Secher Nbiw is realized in Siona, and her invisibility to prescience. Over time her gene is spread throughout humanity. This issue is, that in the post Siona universe of Heretics and Chapterhouse, how is prescience still accessible by people like Darwi Odrade, or any of the Bene Gesserit or any Kwisatz Haderach?
Except that Frank Herbert himself discarded the idea very quickly, probably because it made no logical sense. For example, Navigators would actually be *more* dangerous for space travel than they would be beneficial. If they scan ahead with their prescience and foresee a future that contains the destruction of their Heighliner, then shouldn't that future become inescapable? Likewise, Leto II foresaw that humanity would be wiped out by thinking machines. Shouldn't that have been Game Over?
The answer is no. Navigators simply scan around for an alternate path that leads to their Heighliner arriving safely at it's destination. Leto scanned the possible futures and out of them came up with his Golden Path that would avert humanity's extinction.
Paul did not even try. Now, it is possible that because Paul was born a generation early his prescient abilities were incomplete. Also, nobody had ever trained him to use prescience. He was entirely self-taught. Even Jessica lacked the knowledge to teach him how to handle it. But my personal suspicion is that Paul simply *chose* a future that would get him what he wanted, which was revenge on everyone who contributed to the fall of his House and the death of his father. The price of his revenge was unleashing the Fremen on the Known Universe, because they would only fight for jihad, not to avenge some duke they barely even knew.
@@daniels7907 Navigators always find a safe path because they always look at a short path. They can always find a path to Caladan, or IX, or elsewhere but they cannot see the long term implications of all those journeys and interactions. Their predictive prescience is built first and foremost about the interactions of the stars and finding the paths through them. They have some limited prescience abilities in other realms but lack the access to past lives and understanding of psychology which allows predictions of future activities with anywhere near the certainty of Paul or Leto II.
yep, other time travel shows/movies use this as well (steins gate for example)
Good video. It's also hinted that Paul remained accepting of the Mahdinate because it was the least evil of all possible choices he could see, as he refused to choose the path his son Leto II would later pick. Allow the collapse of the Empire, or sacrifice his own eyes to a stone burner to reinforce his own given religious power, thus allowing him to discredit the Bureau of the Faith and truly end the Jihad?
I love your content! So damned good on every level. Keep up the excellence. It’s sorely need in this day and age.
"Everywhere, there is peace. Everywhere....except in the heart of Muad'dib."
Paul Atreides got demonetized by the CHOAM.
🤣🤣🤣🤣👍
I like how the new DUNE film showed Paul having visions of the Jihad in the future. Legions of Fremen on Caladan cheering and wielding the banner of House Atreides while Paul and Chani look on from a ship above the Fremen.
Someone can explain to me how Freeman archieved that success of Jihad? There weren't that many of Freemen(more than anyone expected, but still not that many), logistics would destroy them(they lacked starships, not to mention they would need huge amounts of food, weapons etc), and they were completely unskilled in the art of war. I mean sure they were good warriors, but they never fought regular war with worthy opponents. Not to mention they lived only in the desert, disciplined army would destroy them in other environment like jungle or ice planet. I understand how they defetead Sardaukars on Arrakis - Emperor wasn't expecting that, Freemen also fought on their native terrain, they had Paul on their side and like I said element of surprise was on their side, okay. But it seems like some berber tribe crushing some english expediction in North Africa, and then in a span of 2 weeks conquering all of Europe.
That's WHY even the greatest SF literature is just SF :-)
Because Paul completely supported the jihad. He only pretended not to.
I assumed that because the Freemen controlled the spice ( with the blackmail that if anyone tried to take Dune from them they would destroy the spice ) they managed to
1) Buy whatever ships and weapons they need.
2) Control the guild so that no one would have the ability to transport an army between worlds without Fremen permission.
At that point it's just shooting fish in a barrel. Their enemies can only defend themselves and have no ability to counter-attack. And in the case of a sterilization they used planetary bombardment so in that case they couldn't even defend themselves.
To counter the point about the Berbers conquering Europe. TheY conquered nowadays Portugal and Spain for 70%. Image if they had the equivalent of spice of that time. So it can be done. Like how the Mongols and The Vikings did it. If the people live in a tribal and worrior culture, you don't need to outnumber or have the same number as the enemie.
Think of it this way. Before the battle of Culloden in 1746 there were (at a very conservative estimate) 30,000 armed and experienced warriors in a small corner of Scotland who did basically nothing but fight each other and steal each others and their southern neighbours cattle. If they had united, they were in easy marching distance of the capital of the greatest empire in the world at the time. They owed allegiance to nobody but their individual clan leaders (or Naibs, if you will). If they had ever united and marched south, they could've razed London to the ground without breaking a sweat.
Now, when they did eventually march to war in the Jacobite rising of 1745 only about 6,000 to 8,000 actually united, with perhaps half forming into an actual army. They never reached London, but they sure as hell made the British Empire piss its britches in a big way. So much so that after the uprising was put down every effort was made to disarm the highlands and make damn sure nothing like that could ever happen again.
Here's another example from history which may be even more apt. Some of the first converts to Islam were the deep desert tribes of the Arabian Peninsula, who again were very small in population but spent most of their time constantly fighting each other and making raids on their much richer neighbours (and, just like the highlanders, leaving most of the rest of the work to the women). United by Islam, they took on two of the mightiest empires of their day *at the same time* and won. All throughout history, if someone ever wanted to control the arabian peninsula, the first thing he did was get the fucking deep desert tribes on his side. Or mow them down with machine guns, but I'm pretty sure that only worked once.
Now consider Paul Atreides's Fremen. They aren't just peerless fighters and survivalists right off the bat (and yes, I said survivalists. Surviving in a desert or in a jungle or in the arctic isn't really that dissimilar, all you need is the right information about what to do, the willingness to learn and the discipline to follow through, and the Fremen definetly had all those things), they also have complete control of travel throughout the galaxy thanks to the spice and the Space Guild, they have everything the Atreides had that wasn't blown up by the Harkonnens, they have an obscene amount of money to buy any attack fleet and supplies they could want (thanks to the spice), they have a ready made command system of absolute obedience to their leaders (the Naibs and Muad'dib) and they likely have a whole horde of allied houses who were either already friendly with the Atreides (remember, Atreides power and popularity was what made them a rival to the emperor in the first place) or were scared into supporting them. More would have just wanted to be on the winning side of the Jihad.
TL,DR: Nah fam, Fremen OP as fuck.
I really enjoy these IdeasofIceand Fire vids! Keep up the great work!
Am I the only one who wishes Mel Brooks made a Dune parody-movie back in the eighties/early nineties? It would be like "Monty Python's Life of Brian" but in space.
lmfao! Thanks. I needed that.
Man you really hit a rebrand. I didn't know who this page was that I was already subbed too. Glad to see you doing stuff outside of the GOT content. Thanks for the videos!
I think Paul being unable to stop the Jihad has having more to do with the extent of his power rather than its limitations.
If he eventually foresaw the Jihad as a necessary step on the "Golden Path" then, 60 billion deaths is a small price to pay for humanity's survival.
In a sick way, this is the most heroic thing he's ever done. Knowing that he didn't have the stomach to do what Leto II eventually did, he at least took responsibility for the initial atrocities.
Bruh... If 60 billion was a good way, what the frack was the bad way. I'm sorry it's more the limitation of the creator not his creation. You can't make him a boy who successfully becomes the Emperor and then go psych he's a regular dumbass leader like everyone else 😅.
@@garrymugen486The alternative is humanity going extinct while being reminded that the first "Terminator" was a horror movie.
Have you read the books? The new movies don't into to it but, there's a reason you don't see a single computer the entire saga.
@@similaritiesendhere I've read the first book, played the games, watched the tv shows, seen videos from Alt-Shift-X and the like who have done in depth analysis of the books.
I still think there were better ways to go about it, than how it was handled especially with this particular MC and how he was introduced to us.
Maybe it was time humanity died off and the age of the Shai-Hulud should have begun.
Here's an honest Q, how come when it come to the Jihad and the 60 Billion it was the only way and absolute foreseen, yet then goes to show that Paul cannot see everything and things can be hidden from him, that's just bad writing and plot convenience. It's just a bunch of 180's and back tracking on characters, rules and plots that make the rest of the story that follows weak, just my humble honest opinion. I still love the first book and the universe, just wish it was handled better.
My take is that he didn't 'know the future', he only thought / imagined he did, and could see possible trends, and from that, his unconscious and traumatized arrested development teenage mind sought to use the Fremen to create a badass name for House Atreides that no one would ever fuck with.
*edit, and yes I've thought about him during his 'later' phase. That could simply be explained that he'd set the course in motion and was able to handle the rather low level (by comparison with some kind of universal insight) problem of proximate interactions.
Good video, but I am not sure you answered the question. What stopped Paul from ordering that all Fremen return to Arakis? At that point, they could either obey their god or disobey. I'm not saying that he could have, but if you explained why I missed it.
It's like any social movement. Did the Crucifixion stop Jesus' teachings? Did Hitler's death stop future people from embracing nazism? We know there are neo-Nazis running around spreading hate.
Some ideas are just too large to die with the originator.
Paul could have ordered everyone home, but I doubt they would have obeyed. Remember that the Fremen had thousands of years of pent-up frustration before the Atreides ever got to Arrakis. They were ready for this, and nobody was going to stop them.
r0kus
You're right. From my own memory of the books Paul could not oppose the jihad because he regarded it as an evolutionary necessity. Was he right? It would be interesting to know what the Bene Gesserit thought.
@Susan Stenson - But this is a *completely* different situation. Ideas spread on Earth because borders are merely a social construct. But in the Dune universe, *only* the Spacing Guild has the means to provide interstellar travel or communication. Without their services, *nobody* can travel or even send messages between worlds in different star systems. Paul basically had to threaten the Guild in order to get them to transport Fremen jihadists off of Arrakis. Had he not done so, then their ideology, religion and ability to wage war would have never extended off the planet!
The *real* issue was that Paul wanted revenge against the Landsraad, especially Houses Harkonnen and Corrino, for the death of his father and the fall of House Atreides. The Fremen were the only army he had at his disposal to use against the Empire and they were not interested in fighting a secular war to avenge a bunch of people they cared nothing about. In order to us them to punish his enemies, Paul had to unleash them in a religious jihad, and he had to threaten the Spacing Guild with total destruction of the Spice to get them to transport the Fremen to other worlds.
@Gary Rives Okay, now that is interesting. This, out of so many comments, actually makes the most sense in my mind. Thanks. I hadn't considered it from this angle until just now. :)
just a metrics note . . . i'm subscribed and have notifications on. . . did not recieve notification of this video, was channel surfing and found it was up. Great job btw enjoy the vids
Hi, huge fan of your channel!
My question is, why didn't Paul reprimand and persecute those who committed such atrocities in his name? He was still alive, he could have attempted more direct interventions couldn't he?
Quinn you are the man! Inspired me to keep reading the rest of the dune books after the first.
In keeping with Frank Herbert's intended message about how charismatic leaders aren't worth it, what are the odds that Paul's prescience isn't real and is just a delusion? It seems like most or all of the things he predicts are far enough in the future as to be untestable, or things that he could have inferred from his experiences of the present. The only kind of prescience in the Dune universe that seems to be dependable is the kind that let Guild navigators see where they're going even when traveling faster than light.
Every instance of prescience in the Dune universe is predicated by the use of psychoactive drugs. The argument could be made that all the visions are, in actuality, simply hallucinations. Shared hallucinations, but creations of the mind nonetheless.
No. Its real. The problem is prescience is itself a trap. Prescience from one person is a sample of one. That makes it confirmation bias, if a super accurate one if you bind yourself to a particular action. Dune Messiah shows he can see a few seconds into the future accurately. So its put to the uktimate test andis dependable when hes blind. At first. But prescience has holes, esp others with precience. Ghanima for example. Or Shaddams assassin Count Fenring. Scytale was hidden from Paul also. Paul doesnt know what he doesnt know. Paul was also NOT supposed to be the Kwisatz Haderach. It was supposed to be Alias son with Feyd Ruatha. But there is textual evidence that Feyd could have Pauls powers with BG training and lots of Spice. Paul should ve beat him instantly and Couldn't. Alia also should not have male access ancestors memories: this is another clue she is a failed Kwisatz Hederach.
Had she not been preborn her powers may have exceeded paulls.
It's a weak message, tho.
Story is less realistic, sees its potential diminished from it.
The universe-building is much more interesting than some fashionable plebe takes of the 1960s.
I say the houses also forced his hands, so no, there’s no way to stop this
Paul: I'm not the messiah
Freeman people: he is the messiah
Ironically, a similar scenario will play out in the Islamic faith. When the "mehdi" arrives, he will initially deny being a messiah and the people will basically forcefully pledge allegiance to him. The word "mehdi" means "The Guided One" in Arabic and it's basically what the Fremen say when Paul Atreides first comes into contact with the Fremen.
Edit- Wait, I think it's spelt "Mahdi".
Love your videos,brother. Keep them coming!!
This is the best damn channel
I can't help but feel like Herbert cheated when writing Dune: Messiah. By setting the book 12 years after the first book, he was able to simply state that things happened without ever having to show us how they happened. I can't help but feel like given just how expensive CHOAM services are, and just how much control Paul had at being able to deploy the ships, he surely could've done a lot more than he did to mitigate the Jihad's spread to only the places least likely to support his ascendency to the emperorship.
I also feel like we were just robbed of so much good drama. The political machinations of Dune are mostly from the people who are interested in removing Paul, yes. But they're not people who've really suffered all that much at his hands. It's a very impersonal conflict. Honestly, the one and only time in the book I ever felt that Paul was still not the "hero" was when he was talking about how he put Hitter's body count to shame--and that just felt really out of character to me.
I know that Dune is supposed to be a cautionary tale, but I must ask: what else would Herbert have had Paul do? Resign himself to die in the desert and let the comically evil Harkonnen have unfettered access to Arrakis along with probable claims to ingratiating themselves into House Corrino? Become a Fremen but somehow also refuse to help them in their fights against CHOAM and the Harkonnens?
And hell, that's not even the worst part, because the only reason humanity survives is because Leto II happens to be way worse than Paul. So, what exactly is the message there? Paul is a bad guy because he wasn't sufficiently evil, like Leto II? I don't get it.
Really looking forward to seeing how Denis Villenueve portrays Paul in the upcoming film.
This aged well.
This has indeed aged well dune 2 was great
@@mariajosehurtado8896indeed indeed
Another great video. You always have interesting ideas and you state them well!
Was Paul really unable to change his destiny? I have some serious doubts. Paul comes across more as a Hamlet type figure, dithering over big decisions because of uncertainty and in the end being led by fate not because he couldn't change it, but because he took too long to make any decisions regarding the Jihad.
read the books again.
@@cjcj7387 No, OP is right. I’ve read the books multiple times, and I strongly believe Paul could have stopped the Jihad if he really wanted to.
Early congrats on getting 100k subs. Keep with the quality content.
Paul could not stop the jihad because its' plot armor was too strong
Thank you for another amazing video.
Paul is but one man. To rule an empire you need a bureaucracy and everyone of those men have their own desires and aspirations too. If those desires and aspirations go against their ruler's wishes, they will merely hide their deeds and go against the ruler. If he try too hard to prevent his power base from getting what they want, he might become just a figurehead with the rest of the Fremen ignoring him.
Thank you soooooo much for the videos!!!!!
I was under the impression that he 'could' have but knew that he had to let it happen for the long term prosperity of the human race. Its kinda like how you could look at all the positive consequences in the longterm of a big war in real history.
Keep doing the good work. Love your Dune videos.
I think he could have done more to keep his fremen in check. Even if it mean't sending the Feydakin to crush them for not obeying his will.
I think it's an interesting idea - that there's this fanatical holy war around the main character that he's unable to stop - but I don't think it really makes sense. It isn't really explained properly. What are the practical reasons that Paul couldn't use his vast power to stop at least most of the killing? Especially when apparently Caladan could be spared, for some reason.
Jessica was a religious figure to the Fremen as well, and in her case she represented the mother-goddess aspect of what the Fremen held to be important. She was literally the mother of their god, and so if she said Caladan - the birthplace of their god - was to be spared, it was spared.
Susan Stenson that kind of underlines the problem though. If Jessica was able to protect Caladan, surely Paul could have protected the rest?
Hattes
I agree the explanation isn't very clear. My own takeaway was that Paul believed the jihad was bound to happen for evolutionary/genetic reasons and that if he assumed leadership he could limit its destructiveness.
Alan Pennie right, there is that as well. I had forgotten about that :). Should have been brought up more in the video though.
Hattes
I don't know why Quinn didn't mention it. Maybe a video about Dune and genetics/evolution. Kind of a queasy subject but it's a big part of the novels.
Once again, excellent presentation, keep it up
>>Why Couldn't Paul Stop The Jihad?
The Imperium, Landstraad, Bene Gesserit, CHOAM and Guild had been sitting on the galaxy for centuries. Many feuds, rivalries and grudges had been suppressed by Imperial power or the machinations of Great Houses. Once the Emperor and his Sadaukar were defeated, all of that rage was unleashed. Paul knew it would happen. He saw it, but it was inevitable. It was going to happen eventually.
It's almost like the book was an allegory for the whole of the 20th century...Including the "worse" path if not guided(the 100+ million deaths from communism) I don't understand why people haven't figured this out.
Great commentary as always!
The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few. But what were the needs of the many exactly?
Paul wasn't really interested in that. Leto II was. Paul's goal was personal. Namely, revenge against the Landsraad for allowing Houses Corrino and Harkonnen to topple the Atreides and kill Paul's father. Paul didn't care about the needs of the many, just his own need for revenge.
@@daniels7907 not to mention the murder of his first son
@@user-lp7tx1fe6t - Kids can be replaced. But the plan needed to play out the way that he foresaw it. If he changed anything, he might not win.
I could listen to Quinn talk about dune for hours
I came back to this video and saw my old comment. Hi me from the past
@@Neo-cj1im Hi
I always perceived Paul as a pawn of a Destiny, who constantly tries and fails to change Destiny's flow. And by Destiny I don't mean some religious or mystic entity, but large System inertia with consequences of such inertia predictable and calculatable - especially by people like Paul or Leto II with their second sight. Paul gave me impression of being not fitting as a ruler of a mankind as his scope of vision and second sight was pretty limited. The question is - whether Paul foresaw events of the last two books, or only Leto II saw this? If Paul could see what Leto II saw - could it be his motivation for a stepping into a Golden Path like Leto II did?
Something that undermines the narrative that Paul was leading humanity to the best possible future within his vision for me is that he is unnecessarily brutal during his Jihad. It's tough for me to buy that he needed to do things like make drums out of the skins of his enemies (as it says in one of the Irulan book quotes in book 1) in order to stay on the same path. As in, I don't think much would be different had he not done that. This narrative paints the picture that Paul's biggest faults were not having prescience as strong as his Leto II's, but I really feel like it is more to the point of the first book that Paul bought into his own legend and allowed it to turn him into a monster. Maybe I need to reread Messiah, but I always found it tough to buy into Paul wanting what was best for humanity.
It was the inevitability of it, and the need for it to eventually cause the scattering being unavoidable. He saw not only the brutality of the Jihad, but the worse scenarios that would have happened if he did stop it completely, the end of the human race through stagnation and being too centralised to face an outside threat or survive cataclysmic civil wars.
Its not that he WANTED to stop it, he knew it had to happen, it was the guilt of not wanting to be personally responsible for it that drove him. If you could see the future, and knew World War III had to happen to save mankind, would any of us have the moral strength to start a war we knew would kill a vast swathe of the world and wipe entire countries and religions from existence for a long-term 'greater good' that would eventually save our entire civilisation more than a thousand years after our deaths?
That depends how certain are you of the need for it to happen?
The line of events stretches from Old Earth to Dune. So changing one or more events will change everything. And later the destruction of humanity... By the old enemy...
"Le wild Fallout 3 artwork appears" ❤️
Your videos are brilliant and incredibly insightful. Thank you for your hard work, you got me into Dune.
That really bothered me. Paul just sorta gave up. Like, even if you believe it is inevidable, you should at least still TRY to stop it. What else are you going to do?
Paul wanted to use the Fremen as an army to get revenge on the Landsraad for the death of his father. There was no way to use them for a secular purpose, so he needed to start a religious jihad instead. He not only didn't try to stop it, he *allowed* it because it was part of his revenge.
Daniel S That's rediculous. At every point in the book, his goal was to stop the jihad. He said that he needed to avoid the jihad at all cost.
John Hurley - That's called rationalization. The *only* thing that made the Jihad possible was Paul gaining effective control over the Spacing Guild by threatening to destroy the Spice cycle and using this as leverage to seize the Golden Lion Throne. If Paul had not done this, then there would have been no Jihad because the Fremen had no means of leaving Arrakis except for the Guild. What Paul was angsting over was the problem that he could not get his revenge *and* avert the Jihad. If he got what he wanted, then the Jihad became inevitable. But if he had abandoned his quest for vengeance then there would have been no Jihad.
Try to remember that Paul was not actively prescient until he underwent the Spice Agony. Before that he merely had dreams about the future. And even though Paul was not trained to survive the Spice Agony, he took the risk anyway because he needed to become the messiah of the Fremen in order to use them as an army. Using them as an army caused the Jihad.
Daniel S So you're saying Paul *wanted* to start the Jihad to get revenge for his father? I could see that especially since he refused to let his army attack Kalidan.
Well, when your army consists of a horde of bloodthirsty religious fanatics indigenous to a planet with an unspeakably harsh environment, you really can't let them out of their pen without expecting massive loss of life. Paul wanted to punish the Landsraad. The Fremen wanted to go on Jihad. In order for Paul to get what he wanted, he had to allow the Fremen to do what they wanted.
I haven’t read the Dune books in nearly twenty years, but for some reason I recall Paul has to allow the Jihad to happen because, if he doesn’t, things would ultimately turn out worse for humanity.
He grows sick of the atrocities his prescience shows him he has to commit, so he gives up on them and escapes to the desert, leaving the Golden Path - which would see even worse atrocities committed by House Atreides - to be traveled by his son.
That’s how I recall it at least. I could be wrong, though.
I remember reading dune massiah and before the book begins there is a part in which an observer is being tortured by fremen... He asked the torturers if muadib knows what they are doing to him and they replied that they do not inform muadib of such things... The moral of dune is not to rely on heroes and better to rely on your own morality and judgment and the fatal mistakes that can be committed by the leader or by the leaders name... For example from real life do you think that jesus would approve of the crusades that was done in his name?
Just finished Dune Messiah and my emotions are all over the place. I know is not the most popular book of the series but I loved it. So in love with Dune
I don't understand how the fremen were so unstoppable and so many. They barely even had space travel at the start of the series and they only know how to fight on desert wastelands.
Ana Vargas They were trained by Paul and Jessica.
you must read the books to understand this better.
the dont need space travel...because of the guild.
The Fremen were basically like the Saudakar, intense fighters born on unforgiving planets. This made them a nuisance but managable on one world. What allowed them to be unstoppable was the training from Paul and Jessica to each become super human.
In other words, what made the unstoppable was the Wierding Way
How does the Weirding Way protect one from missiles and airstrikes? For example, House Atreides ruled Caladan through naval and air power because the planet had more ocean than land, thus limiting the options for infantry. On planets that were not deserts, the Fremen should have been at a disadvantage. What would a desert-dwelling Fremen know about fighting in a forest or jungle, at sea, in frozen climates, etc.? They also relied on sandworms for transportation, so not many of them would have been familiar with piloting and aerial combat. How could Paul and Jessica, in just *two years* , not only train *millions* of Fremen in the Weirding Way, but also in technological warfare in a variety of biomes? Plus, where did they get things like weapons and vehicles?
The original Islamic jihad, which Herbert based this on, took more than a *century* and failed to penetrate further into Europe than the Iberian Penninsula despite heavy use of cavalry.
The way i understood it the first time i read Dune was that it was all basically a matter of pride and revenge, he wanted revenge against the Harkonnens and the Emperor for the death of his father and the destruction of House Atreides. He most likely would have been able to avoid the Jihad if he had let go of his hatred and thirst for revenge, if he had become just another Fremen living a normal life, but his pride didn't allow him to let go, he had to avenge his father, even though he was aware that by going through that path he would make the Jihad inevitable. He had to get even and make everyone pay and if the death of millions was the price to pay to get his revenge then so be it.
wrong. Think about what was going on at the time he wrote the book and had been going on for 70 years and you'll see what Herbert was taking inspiration from. in other words, go to a library and read a history book.
What would've happened if Paul told the Fremen legions to stand down, to not attack any of the other worlds? I can understand that the other Landsraad houses might've then attacked and tried to destroy Paul and the Fremen first, but I don't understand why Paul, feeling so awful about the jihad, never tried much to stop it.
And If Jessica could've kept the Fremen from Calladan, why not from other planets?
I understand this is fiction and things are the way Frank Herbert created them, but it doesn't seem like real human nature or history to me. I know Herbert wanted Dune to show people that reliance on messianic figures is bad; it just leads to dictatorship and atrocity, but the thing that never makes sense to me is saying Paul is not the messiah, he's not a God, but every single indication in the book says he in fact is. There's nothing that happens before Paul becomes the kwisatz haderach that indicates he might be a fake, or that him becoming what he was chosen to be is a bad thing. It's like Herbert writing that Hitler was destined to be what he became, that there were religious signs and it was all prophesied, by positive prophecies that the people longed to see fulfilled.
Lastly, I would have loved to see where David Lynch was planning on taking Paul after he had made it rain on Dune. Was he going to have Paul turn around and say 'I'm not a God' and then basically just walk away?
that last image of you in the 3 outfits is really dope btw :)
Yeah I feel like we got a REALLY biased perspective on Muad'Dib's reign. Paul is surrounded by sycophants in a religious cult of personality. Throughout the books, Paul keeps insisting the Jihad is not his fault- because "reasons" we're never allowed to know. Truthfully- I think Paul got was corrupt and in denial about it. Even his "sacrifice" at Messiah was just an excuse to flee his responsibilities and go back to being a charismatic fremen stirring chaos as the Preacher which is what he loved most.
Paul spends most of messiah throwing himself a pity party while he lives it up as Emperor. He's more concerned about his wife's nagging or whether or not he can trust his zombie best friend than the Jihad itself. Anything happening outside Arrakis- let alone his palace is rarely dwelled upon. His enemies are largely rich and powerful leaders themselves, mainly interested in seizing the throne. Only Edric seems bothered or motivated by the Jihad. And he's called a fool for not worshipping the ground Muad'dib walks on.
His "I'm worse than Hitler" scene in Messiah is a major disconnect from the rest of the books. Because its the only scene that highlights the scale of his tyranny. Duncan resigning in CoD to some extent does this as well.
Yup just bad plot to cover up bad plot, I just enjoy staying on Arrakis till Paul gets his revenge, after that it becomes a farce of something great.
@@garrymugen486 Right, so you just wanted some generic savior and revenge story lol?
His mother decided on her own to have Paul a head of the full plan. Just imagine how if the plan would have come to be. Selfishness caused Paul's pain.
I love Dune, but like most sci fi, it's an allegory of the present, not the future.
Because the future is way worse and no one wants to read that.
Paul could have stop everything by just saying it, due to the fremen’s own fanaticism they would have march directly into the mouth of a sandworm if paul tells them too. Paul wanted all of it to happen.
This is my biggest problem with Dune. None of this is explained. Who and what caused the spark for the Jihad? And literally who is fighting? Just the Freman vs the entire Galaxy? How on earth does that make any logical sense? How did they get anything actually done? It'd be like one tribe from on planet, rising up and taking down a galaxy of Imperials.And yes it's happened in Star Wars, but that was shown and explained. This Jihad is just stated as having started and never given any context
Paul didnt have the cobbles, he just did what he could to make sure his son follows the golden path.
Paul was prescient but not omniscient, omnipresent, or omnipotent!
This has been my favorite of your Dune related videos. Great work!
A small sidenote for clarification: while there was no fighting on Dan, Atreide's old forces from Dan joined the Fremen forces in the jihad - Stilgar himself worked with soldiers from Dan
Its Caladan man, Caladan! Keep to the era! Don't fall to the changes that occurred from the Tyrant's reign.
- Bene Gesserit Other Memories
"Dan" did not exist during Stilgar's time. The planet was called Caladan, and future generations got lazy and shortened the name.
"Dan" really sounds like the typical American dumbifying like "Nam" or, as FH even wrote it in Dune"', "Stil".
Another amazing video!!!
I always felt this was Dune’s biggest problem. Like all Paul had to do was not be a leader. Like, sit down and chill out. Sleep in. Idk, make it your life’s mission to get off Dune and go elsewhere. He totally made the Jihad happen on his own because he’s a dickhead. Just my opinion, still like the books
True. The book never explain in detail how he couldn't stop it. It's kinda lazy writing about that part
@@DangNguyen-jw9fl Agree. Especially as the Fremen need the cooperation of The spacing Guild and Paul. Who is waging this Jihad? And Why if Paul is the ruler of the known Universe? Did Pauls plan actually fail, did the Great Houses and the guild fight him? Did he need to conquer the universe?
I think it had to do with the whole messiah prophecy that the Benne Gesserit planted on arrakis beforehand. Thats why it was set into motion immediately when Paul arrived. The religious fervor of the Fremen was unpreventable, and the Jihad would happen with our without him. I believe that the jihad was necessary to ensure that the golden path was followed too, although he chose not to continue it afterwards
The major point you're missing is that Paul is not a conventional leader. He is not only a god, but like Leto II says, he's bound by prescience. Paul was too afraid to take the path that Leto II does because of the evils that it required and also because he was limited by his own morality and prescience to see the end results that truly demanded that path. Paul ends up hoping that he can mitigate and control the situation by following the "golden path" AKA doing things that he did not see himself doing. His failure is not one of "Just saying no", as it's explained this simply would not work to control the situation, but rather one of trying to mitigate short-term evils. Paul is crushed by the burden of prescience, especially the emotional one. He's crushed by his own morality and by his lack of wisdom, which Leto II has aplenty due to pre-lives. He's confined into the limitations of prescience, he can't truly live or lead because he already knows the results of his actions and because he's an Emperor AND a god these actions all have horrific consequences for the human race that Paul simply can't manage. So he takes the path of passiveness with only the few actions he did not foresee being ones he could take. It's the easiest to rationalize and justify.
Shit, Muhammad died and the arabs still took on the byzantines and the persians at the same time and won.