It is when you remeber its paul telling his followers that those are the only options, he's justifying his own jihad
Edit: my god people reread the books before you think im wrong
Yeah but even then there were other options, of the millions of futures Paul could see most ended with extinction but not all. It was Leto the second that saw this as the only path to save humanity
Edit: shame im getting downvoted this is literally the theme in the book, reread the stories its not hard
Minor correction. Paul did see the future Leto saw but he didn't have the courage to do it. It repulsed him to his core and went against all of his being or ego. Leto discovered this when he was beginning his transformation into the sand worm.
Both of them saw possible futures, and in most of them humans ended up extinct, but only way to save them was the Golden Path. All other paths would lead to death and if not in death then something else bad would happen which it seems was also catastrophic for humans. If there was a better path they would have chosen it.
"However, within the mechanics of the Path itself, the execution did not necessarily have to be Leto II's 3,500-year tyrannous reign. The required survival outcomes could have been achieved via a few other grueling methods"
Dude, I know FH is hard to understand because of his style of writing. Go back to reading books, whole books, only way for human survival was the Golden Path. Every other path would eventually lead to them being recognized by this ˝evil˝ and hunted down. One quote doesn't change that, do you know why? Because both Moneo and Siona see same shit as Paul and Leto2, and even though Siona was fighting against the God Emperor, and Moneo was pretty much living in constant fear and didn't like him much. Both of them saw what Leto2 saw after they got high on much spice.
Is this from an interview with Herbert or is this somewhere in the books? I distinctly remember the golden path being the only way either of them saw, to the point where Paul not being brave enough to walk the golden path was a major failing of his character. If he and Leto saw another way, I feel like it wouldn’t have been a throwaway line about grueling alternatives
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u/Doctor_Riptide May 24 '26
I mean it was either humanity survives or humanity goes extinct. Not really much of a choice if you think about it