Riddle of Shai Hulud

[TMA_1]

Challenge: "Have you seen The Preacher?""

Response: "I have seen a sandworm."

Challenge: "What about that sandworm?"

Response: "It gives us the air we breathe."

Challenge: "Then why do we destroy its land?"

Response: "Because Shai-Hulud orders it."

I finished up children of Dune again and I came across this fremen riddle. It really is a cool little irony isnt it?

I mean this gets to one of the major cores of the story.

[styx]

yup it is good.

cause the thing is Paul was suppose to forfil the "golden path" but he couldn't go through with it.

[Mahdi]

Nah, he just didn't think it would succeed.  Everything about Paul was anti-golden path, from his genes to his bene gesserit and Atreides training, the Golden Path was wrong to him.  He saw its failure as being inevitable.  It wasn't that he couldn't do it, it was that he simply did not think it would work.

Leto, on the other hand, thought he could pull it off.

[TMA_1]

argh. lol not that again mahdi! ;)

We just disagree there. I tend to go with the traditional idea that styx said. I mean why dont you agree with it? You know the duniverse pretty well and maybe I just missed something.

[Mahdi]

The whole "It's Stagnation!  Death!"  quotation kinda hints at it.

[theProphet]

any of you ever disappointed with the whole golden path thing?  I kinda think that causing death 2 millions in order to save em is pretty freaking dumb when you already have all the power in the universe...just a thought.

[nemafakei]

Ah, but you have that power only for your lifetime. Thereafter, your power ceases. You must arrange things politically, socially, even genetically, to ensure that the human race will survive. Even with all the military and political power in the universe, you've still got a finite time to attempt an infinite task. And remember, it's not just a question of setting up a durable social order, or even cycles thereof - you have to ready humanity for adaption and change, else there will just be a different kind of stagnation at another point, one with no-one guiding it, and one which will lead to complete destruction.

[TMA_1]

yeah mahdi but then you completely miss Paul's problem. Of course it had to do with stagnation. People have an inherent drive to order themselves, and it got to the point when even genetically, things were stagnating because people didnt want large change. They wanted to stay where they were, eventually because of that people stayed on their own planets and this undoubtedly could warp genes if you stick a mass of people in one place for thousands of years, and stick others in their own seperate locations. Humanity was near slumber before Leto II came, and he had to awaken them, and that required a great reckoning.

But that doesnt mean that Paul didnt freak out. I mean it isnt like he is a failure, he was just a prototype of sorts. He was the taker, and was unable to be both the giver and the taker (I disagree with the miniseries when Paul says he is both the giver and the taker, that was what Leto II would become, and why I believe in later history he was called the "Divided God"). He was afraid of taking on the sandtrout suit because he wasent sure if he was the one. I believe personally that he wasent, and that fate led him not to take it on.

Still though he was afraid of the future, and became so paranoid as to almost become frozen in fear, never wanting to take drastic actions. He himself succumbed in many ways to the stagnation.

But I believe he was not both the giver and taker, he was only the taker.  Leto II would become the giver like the reverend mothers, and the taker like Paul (or one could possibly say Bene Gesserit Father, but that is kinda dangerous to say).

[theProphet]

Ok...i Know this is a sci-fi thing and as a fan brought in my the Mini-Series, I yield to the knowledge of you hardcore dune fans...But as a Soldier in the US army...I can pretty much tell u how inefficent war is even when it is the only solution.  I would think Paul could have...with his prescience, and his virtues and codes handed down to him by his father and mother, come up with a better way to save the human race without killing off half of it.  I mean forgive me if im dense here...but couldnt he have just ordered his heirs to continue in his mission to make sure humanity stays creative and productive without violence.  He was the emporer of the universe...The Atredies family has always been noble and would follow whats best for mankind...I myself, if I were pall, would say *#@! the Golden path...lets follow MY path.  I would try and make such concerns of humanity known throughout the empire, to the Guild, BG, and the Houses...Thus assuring that at least u shall be remembered as one who was a visionary...Yet Leto II insured that all his noble forbearers basically be branded as tyrants as he.  Forgive me, but is this whole FH story for lack of better term "whack" or am I missing something.  I yield to the knowledge of you illuminaries!!

[TMA_1]

hmm, I know this is an extremely generalistic answer, and I felt the same too about that by the way, but it would just take too darn long to preach by peace and or by politics. War is a quickening of the way in many cases. I do not know what war or the preperation of war is like, but I bet it is nerve racking and horrible. That doesnt take away from the reality of the fact that those in higher positions than others feel that those that are lower are in many  cases expendable. This is the double-edged sword of politics, and one of the banes of life.

[SpiceGuid]

Another really interesting TMA thread.

CoD is the novel i understand the least.

and to be honest i could not read it entirely.

some day i will give another try.

as little as i understand CoD my fragile opinion is:

* interesting, the "Riddle of Shai Hulud" sounds circular, and a hint for ChapterHouse

* i sense that only a Fremen KH can take the Golden-Path. i also sense The Preacher is still prisonned by some BG conditioning, he lived to serve, LetoII doesn't. but my ideas about that are nor mature nor definitive.

* i am gentle with the miniseries: Paul is the giver and the taker in the sense he gives the water (which is life) and the Jihad (which is death)

* i think "Divided god" means he's neither monotheism nor polytheism, he's one god but divided in many sandtrouts

* your different point of view is severe with Paul and more indulgent with LetoII, but certainly well funded, and you better know CoD than i do

@theProphet

like you say it's sci-fi, there is a conflict between ontological and opposite forces that should be equilibrated. let's say "freedom" (change) and "determinism" (prescience) to be simplistic, but you can imagine something totally different if you wish . and the opposition is more intellectual than physical. actually you can read it as it please you the most.

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thinking it twice, Paul story is how he escapes the BG conditioning, so there is something else The Preacher sees about the Golden-Path but i can't decipher what.