this post was submitted on 15 Jul 2025
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I believe in God Emperor he touched on the book mentality when Leto 2 talked with some Bene Jesserit about how machines made you treat people like machines, and that was the concept that was overthrown.
So, he became a biological machine to treat people like machines. Sounds like nothing was learned.
That is, perhaps, the least accurate summary of the Golden Path I've ever read.
Leto II was a biological supercomputer in his own right, who spend thousands of years crafting humanity in the same manner as the Bene Gesserit, under the hand of a totalitarian government. The methods were different, but the path was just as delusional as the religions that his father abused for his own benefit.
I don't think you can call the path "delusional". After all, it worked. Leto knew it worked because he could see the future. And in the future he saw, the Golden Path was the only way to avoid the extinction of humanity.
Leto enslaved all of humanity for thousands of years to ensure that no one would ever be able to enslave all of humanity again. He wanted humanity to rebel against his tyranny by scattering so far across the galaxies that no single force could control or destroy all of humanity - and to make humanity immune to prescience so no one could use that power to control humanity like Leto had. He didn't want to be a tyrant - he did it because it was the only way, in the long run, to defeat tyranny forever and restore humanity's free will.
And, again, it worked.
In real life, anybody who tried something similar would be delusional. But we're not talking about real life. We're talking about highly allegorical novels with warp drives and memories encoded in DNA and magic space worm poop that lets people see the future. The rules are a little different.
(Also, complaining about Leto being a biological supercomputer is kind of missing the point of the Butlerian Jihad. Mentats, who are also biological supercomputers, are introduced in like chapter 1 of book 1. The point is, instead of computers that just do what they're told without question, Dune has people, with minds and souls, who have free will to decide for themselves what is right and wrong. Which you may recall, given the lack of free will inherent in prescience, is something of a theme.)