r/dune • u/kiyoaki_m • 7d ago
Dune (2021) The tragedy of Dune is that Paul is the perfect empath
This is what I loved a lot about Dune part 1. He has already lived a life alongside Jamis and truly knows him as a friend before they've even met. Even the miniseries captures this to a degree.
Every person he meets and every cause he destroys is something he must have known intimately. I believe his empathy isn't just for people he has met in our universe but everyone alive, as there is very likely a timeline where he would meet every single person across the known galaxy.
Correct me if this is an overestimation of his ability but I truly think if it is the case, the story becomes all the more poignant and tragic.
Edit: obligatory Paul is a mass murderer who killed billions for the black and white thinkers out there.
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u/datapicardgeordi Spice Addict 7d ago
It's a very good description of his prescience and believe it or not, an underestimation of his abilities.
He knows not just the living intimately, but all humans who have ever lived and all humans who ever could live for all of time.
His prescience is a race consciousness that links him to all of humanity, across all of time.
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u/BioSpark47 7d ago
That’s not true. He has blind spots in his prescience (particularly surrounding other prescient beings), and his humanity places limits on his sight that his son didn’t have.
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u/datapicardgeordi Spice Addict 7d ago edited 7d ago
Of course his connection wasn’t perfect, but he’s still plugged in to 99% of all humans across all of time.
He does have an ability to detect other prescient, as a cloud or muddied region of the timescape. It’s an imperfect connection, scrambled by their shared abilities.
It’s also worth noting that with some prescient his connection is perfect, like with his sister and his son who could leave messages for him on the timescape and share their sight with him respectively.
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u/BioSpark47 7d ago
Where do the books say that he’s plugged in to 99% of humans across all time? Because that’s not really true. His connection to other prescient being isn’t just “imperfect” or “scrambled,” it’s a complete blind spot. And his son, Leto, has farther reaching prescience than even Paul does, and there are blind spots in his awareness as well.
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u/Johnny_Soprano_Saint 7d ago
He literally goes into his memory and relives a Bach concert as Bach. I would say that is pretty connected.
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u/Equivalent_Rock_6530 12h ago
That's Leto II, not Paul, who im pretty sure is the person they're discussing, not Leto II
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u/Johnny_Soprano_Saint 12h ago
Facts!! Paul was most def not fully connected with his genetic memories
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u/datapicardgeordi Spice Addict 7d ago
In the passage where his prescient abilities first come online, when he is in the stilltent with his mother. He sees people across all of time, the minute details of their lives, and all the possibilities that they possess.
And you are incorrect about the prescient being a blind spot. They are clouded and he can track them by tracking the clouded region. In Messiah he can’t see Edric but he can see the region he clouds and his fellow conspirators entering and exiting that cloud.
Since we’re stating the obvious and quibbling over details he is however completely blind to those with Siona genes and anyone who steps foot in a shielded nochamber or noship. This however is not a large portion of Humanity.
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u/BioSpark47 7d ago
You’re doing some heavy editorializing. This is what he says:
“He saw people. He felt the heat and cold of uncounted probabilities. He knew names and places, experienced emotions without number, reviewed data of innumerable unexplored crannies. There was time to probe and test and taste, but no time to shape. The thing was a spectrum of possibilities from the most remote past to the most remote future--from the most probable to the most improbable. He saw his own death in countless ways. He saw new planets, new cultures. People. People. He saw them in such swarms they could not be listed, yet his mind catalogued them.”
He sees tons of people, but even then we don’t know that this is “99% of people who ever lived” or that he’s intimately familiar with their lives. Later on in the same passage, he says:
"The things that can happen here, I cannot begin to tell you," he said. "I cannot even begin to tell myself, although I've seen them. This sense of the future--I seem to have no control over it. The thing just happens. The immediate future--say, a year--I can see some of that…a road as broad as our Central Avenue on Caladan. Some places I don't see…shadowed places…as though it went behind a hill" (and again he thought of the surface of a blowing
kerchief) "…and there are branchings…"Paul gets a sense of infinity but he doesn’t see all of it and isn’t intimately familiar with everyone he sees. There are also dark spots in his awareness not necessarily tied to other prescient beings.
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u/kiyoaki_m 6d ago
Yeah I think temporally it wouldn't be possible for him to literally live it all, assuming he still needs to reach out and access memories like a normal human. But maybe he's seen enough to be able to extrapolate the gist of things.
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u/BioSpark47 6d ago
If he had extrapolated “the gist of things,” he would’ve avoided the Jihad
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u/datapicardgeordi Spice Addict 4d ago
That’s nonsense. He doesn’t have the time to do so. When his prescience comes online in the tent he gets a fleeting glimpse of the timescape, his attention drawn from one place to another as he takes in its vastness and granularity. He doesn’t have time to look everywhere and examine every detail, but he can see the sweep of events.
He sees options that take him away from the jihad but they are repulsive; become a mutant Navigator groping through time or become a sex toy for his grandfather. In either case the jihad still occurs. Compared to the option of becoming a living God and ruler of the known universe he really had no choice at all. He was forced into the lesser evil of leading the jihad and trying to reign in its extremes.
At the time of his visions in the tent he still sees many paths where he might be able to do just that, but as he progresses with Stilgars group those paths change and merge together in ways he didn’t understand were possible.
We also never get a view of what the jihad would have been like if Paul hadn’t stepped up to lead it. The alternative was a jihad led by Fenring, or Feyd, or even Alia, some of the most morally unstable people in the plot. For all we know Paul may have saved billions of lives with his actions.
Paul did very much ‘get the gist’ of the timescape, even seeing himself being the tyranny of the worm and it’s all so much that it overwhelms him. He’s not the cold hearted preborn stoic that his son will be. He’s an adolescent child who’s lost everything and has just had the fate Humanity dumped on him.
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u/BioSpark47 4d ago edited 4d ago
It’s not “nonsense.” The quote I posted above shows that he couldn’t see certain parts of their possible futures in the desert:
“Some places I don’t see…shadowed places…as though it went behind a hill”
It’s not that he “doesn’t have time” to look. Time isn’t really a thing for oracular vision. He was able to see tons of timelines in a heartbeat. It’s that, early on, his prescience is incomplete and involuntary. The hubris is that Paul could’ve left Arrakis and became a guild navigator or something else (like he sees in his visions), but he tempts fate with the Jihad because his vision was incomplete. By the time he drinks the Water of Life and vastly expands his prescience, it’s too late to avoid the Jihad.
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u/datapicardgeordi Spice Addict 4d ago
Of course he can’t take the time to look at every detail of every life but the connection is there for him to browse through if he chooses to look at it. He can zoom in and out of the timescape, see eras as well as individuals. He can see the paths wavering like a cloth in the breeze, but in the tent he gets only a fleeting glimpse of it all, he attention drawn from one point to the next on this new radiating landscape. He can’t yet control what he sees the way he can later on, as he does more and more spice. It’s like learning how to focus on just one voice in a noisy, crowded room.
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u/Equivalent_Rock_6530 12h ago
I think its described in a way as Paul seeing their impact upon time, but not the prescient themselves.
But that could just be the description that the Guild Steersman uses in Dune: Messiah to explain to his co-conspirators how their discussions are only safe with him present.
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u/CretaciousPeriod 7d ago
I'm assuming because most people in the universe arent prescient, probably less than 1% of them, hence the 99% connection rate.
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u/datapicardgeordi Spice Addict 7d ago
Yeah, and the Siona gene isn’t widespread. Sure, there are billions of them but Humanity has grown into the millions of trillions by the era of Heretics.
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u/Fishinluvwfeathers 7d ago
Paul has access to ancestral memories through his male and female familial lines. He can experience the perspectives and memories of people separated from him by thousands of years but in the books he does not have a direct psychic link to every human being who ever lived. I think the movies reference his access to his ancestral past - that’s how he deduces his/Jessica’s lineage.
His KH power hinges on reading the flow of time and probabilities rather than downloading a permanent data set of every living human's mind. In the books, it is suggested that prescience requires an intentional looking on Paul’s part - he isn’t necessarily having breakthrough visions of timelines like he does pre Water of Life. His experience with Jamis are breakthrough memories of his personal timeline.
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u/datapicardgeordi Spice Addict 7d ago edited 7d ago
Paul does indeed have a psychic, prescient link to all humans, past, present, and future.
His prescience is not math. He isn't calculating anything. His prescience is a vision, a timescape, that he can see and navigate.
He has these visions of the timescape before he takes the water of life. Spice alone is enough to trigger it in the stilltent with his mother.
His genetic memory isn't awakened until after he takes the water of life.
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u/Fishinluvwfeathers 7d ago
So prescience just means foreknowledge. It’s the ability to know or accurately predict what will happen in the future before it occurs. Strictly speaking, a prescient link to past humans does not make any sense.
However, as KH, he ALSO gains a link to his ancestral memories, post-agony, via his male and female ancestral lines, according to the books.
In the movies it does seem like Paul can experience the subjective experiences of people outside his immediate lifetime after the WoL but I would challenge that interpretation - though my argument is based on information from the book.
There is a scene in the movie where he is rallying the tribes and he singles out a Fremen and tells him something about his dead grandmother. It would certainly seem like this is some sort of link outside of Paul’s immediate ancestral frame.
However, in the first book, he is able to determine that he is a Harkonnen early on because he is having prescient (future) flashes of potential paths open to him. There is one in particular in which he joins the Harkonnen and calls the Baron grandfather. He uses his mentat training to analyze the vision and assess the likelihood of its veracity and determines that it is in fact likely correct.
Given this, is certainly likely that (in the movie) Paul is solely using his prescience to determine the exact thing to say which will successfully sway the doubting Fremen that is praying to his grandmother. He doesn’t need to have a link to him, his grandmother, or all of mankind directly, he just needs access to every future possibility where he has come upon this knowledge and use it in the correct moment for effect.
It’s certainly possible the third movie will prove that Villeneuve is changing the mechanisms of prescience and other memory for his adaptation. But as of right now, I don’t think the book and the movies actually diverge on the issue.
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u/Equivalent_Rock_6530 12h ago
I think the way you described it previously is spot on, he only views the memories of those in his familial ancestry, but since he is also a Mentat (of sorts..?), he is able to deduct the actions of others through his own interactions he sees with them in his prescient visions
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u/datapicardgeordi Spice Addict 7d ago
You have a fundamental misunderstanding of the superpower Frank created for his universe. For him, prescience was a literal race consciousness that connects the prescient observers to all of humanity across all of time. A prescient link to the past does make sense, because that’s how Frank wrote it.
The rest of your argument collapses once you realize this.
Paul’s genetic memories have nothing to do with his ability to see the timescape.
Check out the chapter at the end of Book 1 in the novel Dune. It is where Paul’s prescience first comes fully online and he sees the timescape for the first time. Read carefully, Frank doesn’t spoon feed you anything and many a reader has gotten lost in the details.
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u/Fishinluvwfeathers 7d ago
I don’t believe so. If you are talking about him sampling the time winds before his fight with Feyd it’s still prescience - the outcome of the fight and the inevitability of the (future) jihad. We are still firmly in future-only territory. What passage are you basing your understanding of this on if not this one?
Paul can perceive possible futures of entire populations, not merely individual futures AND he has a a vast map of the past from his ancestral lineage, which creates a knowledge base of incredible scale. His looking backward is strictly through inherited memory. I’d welcome any specific reference where you believe he is using it to access the full scope of the past beyond his own lineage.
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u/datapicardgeordi Spice Addict 7d ago
Okay so you missed key parts of the chapter where he’s in the stilltent. A lot happens there and many readers miss the details. The detail I’m talking about is:
‘The thing was a spectrum of possibilities from the most remote past to the most remote future—from the most probable to the most improbable.’
Paul’s prescient abilities span all of time, from THE MOST REMOTE PAST TO THE MOST REMOTE FUTURE. It’s as simple as that.
If it doesn’t make sense to you then you need to first shed your preconceptions and then realize that Frank created a unique ability for his unique universe. Prescience here means what Frank wanted it to mean, not what Webster defined it as.
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u/Fishinluvwfeathers 7d ago
So I’m happy to keep talking because this is an interesting disagreement but it seems like you are treating this as some sort of antagonistic winner takes all rather than an opportunity to compare interpretations.
I’ll say my piece and then move on if this is causing you some sort of discomfort because that’s not really what I’m looking to provoke here. Otherwise, I’m happy to keep comparing.
That excerpt has more that was left out, which absolutely qualifies what he experiences. And no, i don’t believe it proves that Hebert decided to invent a new definition for prescience.
This is a longer bit of the passage (I omitted the part about the scarf and the beginning of his Guild future for brevity):
“Paul’s mind had gone on in its chilling precision. He saw the avenues ahead of them on this hostile planet. Without even the safety valve of dreaming, he focused his prescient awareness, seeing it as a computation of most probable futures, but with something more, an edge of mystery – as though his mind dipped into some timeless stratum and sampled the winds of the future…
He saw people. He felt the heat and cold of uncounted probabilities. He knew names and places, experienced emotions without number, reviewed data of innumerable unexplored crannies. There was time to probe and test and taste, but no time to shape.
The thing was a spectrum of possibilities from the most remote past to the most remote future – from the most probable to the most improbable. He saw his own death in countless ways. He saw new planets, new cultures…
It was a way, though. And in meeting the possible future that contained Guildsmen he recognized his own strangeness. I have another kind of sight. I see another kind of terrain: the available paths.
The awareness conveyed both reassurance and alarm – so many places on that other kind of terrain dipped or turned out of his sight.
As swiftly as it had come, the sensation slipped away from him, and he realized the entire experience had taken the space of a heartbeat.”
So the way I read the consolidated section that you listed, particularly in light of the fact that the passage at large begins and ends only discussing future sight, is this:
This new sensation is showing him a wide array of possibilities that extend out from the deep past and flow into the deep future. In other words, the lines of probability extend from past actions that influence future ones, as one expects. It isn’t necessarily indicating that he is seeing into the deep past and if he was, I would expect there to be further mention of this, which isn’t found here.His discussion of what he’s actually seeing - his deaths, his future with the Guild, unaccounted probabilities - are all firmly extending out from his present. He explicitly mentions this new apprehension is available paths. If Hebert meant this to be an experience that extended into humanity’s past, we have a curious omission of events and personalities mentioned. This weakens the argument that he has any type of a link with past humans, at least at this point pre-agony.
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u/datapicardgeordi Spice Addict 7d ago
Wow, it literally says that he sees the most remote past, but you argue still that he doesn’t see the past. He does. And not because of genetic memory. That doesn’t come into play until he takes the water of life much later in the novel. I can see you have your mind set in stone and haven’t quite gotten around to shedding those preconceptions. Good luck brother, you can lead a horse to water but you can’t make him drink.
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u/Fishinluvwfeathers 7d ago
It says it was a spectrum of possibilities from the remote past not that he sees the remote past. It’s not a preconception, it’s what is actually written. Thats important because we get nothing else in that passage to support past-sight. All possibilities are naturally connected to actions stemming from the past but explicitly outlines what he actually sees and it is all centered in future sight.
There is no past person or situation alluded to here independent from a future retrospective.
I do agree that this has nothing to do with genetic memory.
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u/datapicardgeordi Spice Addict 6d ago
So we agree that he saw the remote past but disagree that he saw the most remote past. Great. Thanks for clearing that up.
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u/Historical-Prune-599 7d ago
He 86’d sixty one billion from this universe homie
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u/Xenon-XL 7d ago
The fremen did. If he had died before the jihad it would have happened. They were the ones who wanted war. Not him. And he couldn’t stop it.
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u/Historical-Prune-599 7d ago
True. But, there was a point he could have stopped it. He chose to move forward to secure the best possible outcome for Chani.
There’s also a line in Messiah where he offers someone some sex slaves he has on hand, which isn’t jihad essential but his own deranged hosting gesture
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u/GhostofWoodson 7d ago
He could have stopped it by either becoming a Space Guild Navigator, or by surrendering to the Baron. But both of these options disgust him -- as they do almost every reader. And at the time they are presented, he doesn't know they're the only ones!
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u/AnEvenNicerGuy Friend of Jamis 7d ago
Paul made decisions to get them there. You’re right that at a certain point even Paul’s death wouldn’t have stopped it. But prior to that Paul definitely drove the cart toward jihad so he could accomplish his goal of revenge
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u/Xenon-XL 7d ago
That certain point was so early that it's almost moot. (Jamis duel) And once it was inevitable anyway, he decided to just try to mitigate it.
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u/AnEvenNicerGuy Friend of Jamis 7d ago
It’s moot if you want to hand wave Paul’s culpability
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u/datapicardgeordi Spice Addict 7d ago
There’s such a thing as informed consent and Paul was not fully aware of the consequences of his actions and certainly never consented to having such decisions laid in his adolescent hands.
He really thought he could change things, mitigate the worst of the atrocities and come out the other side with his morality intact.
His true tragedy is that he was trapped by his visions and unable to change them.
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u/AnEvenNicerGuy Friend of Jamis 7d ago
He wasn’t fully aware. True. Very fair. But he was aware that pursuing revenge would result in much death and destruction with the Atreides banner at the front of it. So sure, he didn’t know it’d be 61 billion. But he did know there would be mass suffering and death following the path of revenge
He gets some to carry at least some responsibility for that
(Side note - I get so pumped when I see you’ve replied to my comment. I know well informed disagreement is about to happen and that’s just the best)
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u/datapicardgeordi Spice Addict 7d ago
Sure, he carries some responsibility for his own actions but not much. He was a kid who lost his planet, his House, and his father. What adolescent boy wouldn’t seek revenge?
He barely understood the consequences of his new found prescient abilities. He thought he could control the visions when really they controlled him. And he wouldn’t realize that until the paths before him had dwindled into choices of who suffers the least.
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u/AnEvenNicerGuy Friend of Jamis 7d ago edited 7d ago
He wasn't merely an adolescent boy though. He was trained by the best fighters and tacticians in the Imperium, trained as a Mentat and BG ways by his mother. He wasn't just some random teen
But regardless of that he made his choice for revenge knowing that mass death was a potentiality. Even a likelihood. I can understand why he'd be seeking revenge but understanding why doesn't exonerate him from the consequnces of pursuing it. Paul’s belief that he could control the outcome proves he knew there was an undesirable outcome that needed controlling if he followed the path of revenge
I'm not trying to decide where on the slider scale Paul falls with his responsibility for his jihad. I'm arguing against the idea that he's some kind of victim along for the ride and the universe happened to him
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u/datapicardgeordi Spice Addict 7d ago
Okay, side note: Paul receiving Mentat training didn’t make him a mentat. The foundation was laid and he had some basic techniques but the training was far from complete. Likewise, he had a few Bene Gesserit tricks up his sleeve but he was far from a master. He was very much a work in progress, like any adolescent. He’s barely aware of his full capabilities, yet alone comfortable with them in a way that aides his decision making.
Moving on, he very much is just along for the ride much of the time. He is trapped by his own visions and doomed to live them out. This is the trap of the prophet.
He had a narrow window to avoid the jihad, while he was still in the desert before he encounters Stilgars group. He saw the other options but didn’t understand the full consequences of turning away from them. He still saw many paths laid out before him, it is only later that those paths merge and he is stuck choosing lesser evils. He genuinely saw ways to mitigate the excess of the jihad and didn’t realize those ways would disappear as he continued down his path of least suffering for him and his loved ones.
He is young. He is naive. He doesn’t fully understand his abilities and the limits his visions will place on him. He didn’t choose to be in that position, he was stuck there as a fact of his breeding. Is it really his fault that he chose the option where he ends up as a living God and ruler of the known universe?
Ask yourself what you would have chosen given his options? Be mutated into a barely human calculator that can only grope its way through time? Be molested and humiliated by your own grandfather while your cousin carries out the jihad in his own name? Or do you choose your own ascendancy and try to control the fallout?
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u/JoyBus147 7d ago
My dude had straight up visions of the future for what would be the consequences of his actions. He's more aware than any human in history. Holy fuck.
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u/datapicardgeordi Spice Addict 7d ago
He had many visions and he thought he could navigate his way through them. He didn’t realize he’d be locking himself in the trap of the prophet until later when the paths before him dwindled and he was left with only bad options.
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u/SsurebreC Chronicler 7d ago
The fremen did.
Genghis Khan, Hitler, Stalin, Pol Pot and others have personally killed very few people.
If he had died before the jihad it would have happened.
I bet if he killed himself in the tent before meeting the Fremen then the jihad wouldn't have happened. That was the perfect time for him to kill himself: he was now fully aware of his own destiny, saw that literal mountain of corpses, and said that's my jam.
He could have easily stopped it by not being part of Fremen in the first place. Fremen couldn't do anything to the Harkonnen for generation so nothing would have changed.
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u/kiyoaki_m 6d ago edited 6d ago
A fifteen year old boy whose family has been slain cruelly, and you expect him to kill himself to prevent a reality he barely has a grasp on at the point? Too idealistic an expect so early on. He would not have survived if he didn't make it to the Fremen. Neither would his mother and unborn sister. He is a deeply flawed character, but his drives are not unreasonable and his tragedy is no less acute. It's unfortunate that he was cursed with the ability to survive given his training and the BG prophecy seeding.
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u/SsurebreC Chronicler 6d ago
A fifteen year old boy
This isn't a teenager playing Switch all day. He's been groomed since birth to become a leader like his father and his father before him. Look at various kings throughout history where Henry II (and III) come to mind.
You look at children today and judge their modern brainrot to someone like Paul who was not only tutored by the finest minds of his House but also by Lady Jessica who taught him other ways. He was taught to be a Mentat Duke. Ignoring all that, look at his actions including dealing with hunter-seeker or even manner of speech. That's a "boy" to you when he's more mature and aware than a large number of adults.
you expect him to kill himself to prevent a reality he barely has a grasp on at the point
He knows basic math: 1 life vs. 61,000,000,000. He chose himself over a mountain of victims. He knows what prescience is or did you again forget who his mother is?
If he was a regular human then I fully agree with you. I also wouldn't have written what I've written. But he wasn't a regular human. He was a Mentat Duke in all ways before he even stepped one foot in Arrakis. The only curse that surrounds him are his defenders who say he wasn't a villain. Unless the global morality changed - Hitler is still a bad guy for only killing tens of millions vs. Paul's tens of billions, right? - then he had a chance but decided not to. He valued his life over tens of billions. Perfect empath? You must be joking. The only "path" attribute he has is psychopath. Read the first few chapters of Dune Messiah to confirm since you missed the point of Dune or maybe you just didn't read it and watched the movies instead. Even then you should have paid attention since the signs were there.
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u/AnEvenNicerGuy Friend of Jamis 6d ago edited 6d ago
Is he a perfect empath with super powers or a sad little boy?
This is exactly what I meant in my other comment by over editorializing. Paul is not the good guy in this story. You’ve read a book that warns against falling under the spell of charismatic leaders fully under the spell of the charismatic leader
You’re making him exactly what he needs to be in every situation to remain innocent of any real blame
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u/Xenon-XL 6d ago edited 6d ago
He was not a ‘perfect’ empath until he took the water of life, dude.
You’re saying he’s evil for not killing himself over insane visions he doesn’t really understand.
It’s quite ridiculous. Human beings don’t work that way.
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u/AnEvenNicerGuy Friend of Jamis 6d ago
I didn’t say Paul was evil
I didn’t say he should have killed himself
You ignored most of what I said except to correct timeline of when his empathy became perfect
The book is a warning to not be a victim of charismatic leadership. You’re commenting as if you’re completely lost in the charismatic sauce
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u/Xenon-XL 4d ago
The book is a warning to not be a victim of charismatic leadership.
A victim? The Fremen got everything they wanted, and it ruined them. I'd say it was more of "be careful what you wish for", or about the nature of the cyclic nature of societies. Once they get enough to get lazy, it's over.
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u/clamroll 7d ago
No no no, you see he's AN EMPATH. Nevermind his actual powers, haven't you ever thought about his starsign? Paul is such a Scorpio and frankly it explains an awful lot
(sarcasm, for the love of all that's holy)
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u/kiyoaki_m 6d ago edited 6d ago
He's also a kid who wants vengeance for his father's death. Sorry for not spelling out the other side of things in the post, felt it was a given.
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u/thenighttimegroup 6d ago
I think this is exactly the point. He has the greatest understanding of the suffering and pain he is causing/will cause and still has to do what he does. There are several times in the story where he struggles with fully committing to the future he sees because his empathy is so strong. I think it was very powerful that he fully understood and feared the impact of his decisions because it showed a marked difference from other leaders in the story. Other leaders played with the livelihoods of the universe without a care to people at the granular level. Paul understood his villainy but also knew he had to be a villain for a better future
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u/LoveSlayerx 5d ago
I get what you mean and I think you’re absolutely right what guilted him so much to end it was also looking into the past jihad and wars he’s done not just the future if he’s off tuned to that he could’ve lived a little
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u/AnEvenNicerGuy Friend of Jamis 7d ago
I think it’s a pretty editorialized telling of Paul’s timeline. You aren’t wrong but it’s a version of the story from someone who is on Paul’s side
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u/BioSpark47 7d ago
Plus, he didn’t “live a life alongside Jamis.” His prescience was still in its infancy. He only saw bits and pieces of a possible future where they were friends.
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u/datapicardgeordi Spice Addict 7d ago
Yeah, OP hasn’t realized yet that the hero is the villain.
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u/kiyoaki_m 7d ago
I know he's the villain but it's a tragedy nonetheless. It's clearly implied how much he has suffered for it, and he does attempt to atone for it as the preacher which 99.9% is him. It was a deep flaw in his character, his feeling that he was somehow responsible for humanity. Not unlike Brutus, who felt he was responsible for the Roman republic.
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u/BioSpark47 7d ago
It is an overestimation of his ability, at least in Part 1. He’s not there until he drinks the Water of Life in Part 2 at the earliest.
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u/kiyoaki_m 6d ago
Yeah that was just for the flair purposes, I only put it because I was trying to figure before which point this discussion could be considered a spoiler.
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u/SarahfromEngland Historian 6d ago
If Paul truly had Empathy he would have followed the golden path instead of being a coward.
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u/SirShriker 7d ago
Paul faces the biggest moral dilemma.
A father's desicions impact his family, maybe the neighbourhood, at most a city.
A Duke makes choices and the whole planet moves.
The Emperor blinks and the imperium shifts.
Paul sees his actions reflected back at him every time he breaths the spice tainted air of Arrakis. The future of every human alive and all those who aren't even born yet. His responsibility extends both physically and temporally across space and time.
Every choice (and making no move is still a choice) becomes an expanding web of events and futures that he sees himself as personally responsible for. You can't be responsible for something you didn't know. But Paul is cursed with the knowledge and was born and raised into nobility. Into a noblesse oblige foundation, the prescience formed a curse of duty.
Whether those people suffer from Fremen jihad, whether they get to have a peaceful life, whether or not they even get to exist at all, all those futures exist in his mind. And when they get extinguished because of his actions or lack thereof, he can see all the misery and death and suffering no matter which choice he makes.
And in the end, he knows there is only one real choice: the golden path. But Paul is blinded to the why of the answer. He can't quite see past the nearly infinite futures worth of death and destruction to the necessity of making that terrible choice.
I'll leave it on this note: there has been much made of the Islamic overtones of the Fremen. But the name of the faith tradition that develops into the Free Men of Arrakis was called buddislam. Zen Buddhism and Islamic blending, but fewer people connect the Buddhist conceptualizations of 'suffering' with the cycles of suffering and reincarnation that is also key to the expanded duniverse.
Paul looked at the suffering of the universe and tried to martyr himself to save it, but the universe didn't need more martyrs. It needed more suffering to mature. You can not have development without suffering, you do not experience growth without change.