Necessity of The Golden Path
Through prescience, Paul Atreides and his son Leto II foresaw several threats to the human species. They saw the Imperium's dependency on melange and the superhuman tasks performed by specialized groups such as the Spacing Guild, Mentats, and the Bene Gesserit as threats to any species-wide evolution. Also, because spice could be produced only on Arrakis, human development was constrained by its dependence on the planet.
They interpret this lack of exploration and growth as stagnation and an eventual threat to the survival of humanity. A much more imposing threat, known of only through prescience, was Kralizec, the mythic battle at the end of the universe, which is first directly described in God Emperor of Dune but not fully revealed to the reader until later.
Read more about this topic: Golden Path (Dune)
Famous quotes containing the words necessity of the, necessity of, necessity, golden and/or path:
“Nothing in the universe is contingent, but all things are conditioned to exist and operate in a particular manner by the necessity of the divine nature.”
—Baruch (Benedict)
“We need not have the loftiest mind to understand that here is no lasting and real satisfaction, that our pleasures are only vanity, that our evils are infinite, and, lastly, that death, which threatens us every moment, must infallibly place us within a few years under the dreadful necessity of being forever either annihilated or unhappy.”
—Blaise Pascal (1623–1662)
“He says a man may perhaps answer, that the necessity of things held by him, is not a stoical necessity, but a Christian necessity, &c. But this distinction I have not used, nor indeed have ever heard before, nor could I think any man could make stoical and Christian two kinds of necessity, though they may be two kinds of doctrine”
—Thomas Hobbes (1579–1688)
“Ah, Sun-flower, weary of time,
Who countest the steps of the Sun,
Seeking after that sweet golden clime
Where the traveller’s journey is done:
Where the Youth pined away with desire,
And the pale Virgin shrouded in snow
Arise from their graves, and aspire
Where my Sun-flower wishes to go.”
—William Blake (1757–1827)
“The path was a vague parting in the grass
That led us to a weathered windowsill.
We pressed our faces to the pane. “You see,” he said,
“Everything’s as she left it when she died....””
—Robert Frost (1874–1963)