The God Emperor of Dune represents humanity's ultimate paradox: he embodies both belief and doubt simultaneously, making it impossible to fully support or oppose him. To believe in the God Emperor is to become him, to embody that belief, but this very act also embodies doubt. To doubt the God Emperor, even to kill him, is ultimately to serve his purpose and immortalize him. This paradox exists because the God Emperor's mission is to eliminate the God Emperor, requiring both fanatical believers and passionate rebels to fulfill his grand plan. The video argues that belief and doubt are fundamentally human states that describe our relationship to higher powers, and that to be human is to embody both belief and doubt every day, choosing how we use our power to shape the future.
Do You Believe In The God Emperor?Added:
It is not only my pleasure to announce to you this morning our discovery of this marvelous storehouse containing among other things a monumental collection of manuscripts. scripts inscribed on redullian crystal paper.
But I also take pride in giving you our arguments for the authenticity of our discoveries to tell you why we believe we have uncovered the original journals of Leo II, the God Emperor.
First, let me recall to you the historical treasure which we all know by the name of the stolen journals, the volumes of known antiquity which over the centuries have been so valuable in helping us to understand our ancestors.
The repository for these journals is an undoubted Ixian artifact of such primitive and yet marvelous construction that it is sure to throw new light on the historical epic known as the scattering. As was to be expected, the storehouse was invisible. It was buried far deeper than myth and the oral history had led us to expect, and it emitted radiation and absorbed radiation to simulate the natural character of its surroundings. a mechanical mimisis which is not surprising of itself. What has surprised our engineers however is the way this was done with the most rudimentary and truly primitive mechanical skills. I can see that some of you are as excited by this as we are.
We believe we are looking at the first Ixian globe, the no room from which all such devices evolved. If it is not actually the first, we believe it must be one of the first and embodying the same principles as the first. Let me address your obvious curiosity by assuring you that we will take you on a brief tour of the storehouse presently.
We will ask only that you remain silent while within the storehouse because our engineers and other specialists are still at work there unraveling the mysteries.
Belief shapes history. In 1947, two Bedwin shepherds were watching their sheep in Kuman near the Dead Sea when one sheep wandered off. The shepherds went after the stray and stumbled upon a collection of darkened caves. Curious, one of the men threw a rock into the darkness, and he was met with the unmistakable sound of pottery shattering. The men ventured in, discovering a number of clay pots, some of which contained what would become known as the Dead Sea Scrolls. The Dead Sea Scrolls are a collection of ancient Jewish writings, including the oldest discovered fragments of the Bible. Their contents would impact the way the Bible is translated and would reveal details of history and religious tradition that were previously lost to time. As Dead Sea Scroll scholar Eugene Olrich explained it, "The Dead Sea Scrolls have done more than give us a new reading of the Bible. They've also greatly illuminated the period in which they were composed. The scrolls have shed a lot of light on the history of Judaism, showing a spectrum of Jewish belief. The God Emperor of Dune, the fourth book in Frank Herbert's Dune series, opens with an archaeological speech about a similar discovery, a storehouse of ancient writings that reveal details of human history and beliefs previously lost to time. Unlike the story of the Dead Sea Scrolls, however, this discovery takes place from our perspective as readers in 2026 in the future. Way in the future.
Belief shapes the future. Dune is a sci-fi series. It takes place in a distant future after the rise and fall of artificial intelligence. Because of the damage done by computers, humanity has outlawed all machines made in the likeness of a human mind. And our skills have adapted to fill in the gaps.
Trained sages called menntats function as human calculators, quickly running probability and solving logical problems. Guild navigators enter a psychic trance to foresee the fastest and safest route through space. A religious order of women named the Benny Jesuit can access the memories of all their female ancestors. And all of these new human skills rely on their catalyst drug, the spice. The human empire runs on the spice. Without it, there is no space travel. Lifespan decreases drastically, and we as a species become much duller, slower, and stuck. The only source of the spice is the giant sandworm of the desert planet Arachus.
Native people of the planet called Fman worship the worm who they call shy hallude. A Fman comes of age when they can successfully ride a sandworm. In the first three books, we follow Paul at trades, the son of Duke Leo at trades and his benny Jesuit lover Jessica. And let's just pause for a second and address this. I say Leo. I know the movie says Leato. I read the books before the Villouv movies. They're all madeup words. I've updated how I say Benzerit. I've updated how I say Ericus.
I've updated how I say at Treaties.
Leato. I just can't get through my head.
Okay, it's Leo to me. You know who I'm talking about. It's going to be okay.
Also, I know I'm frontloading a lot of lingo right now. Please don't get too hung up on it. I'll explain things as they come up. Just you're smart. You'll do fine. Paul, we learn, is the result of a millennialong breeding program by the Benny Jesuit. See, the BG can access the memories of their female ancestors, not the male. They only have access to half of the potential wisdom hidden in the past. the wisdom and belief that shapes the present. They have been plotting tirelessly to cross the right genes to produce a messiah called the Quizats Hatter. A male Beny Jesuit who can access the memories of all his ancestors, male and female, and see into the future. Paul's son was supposed to be the Quezats Hatter. But it seems the Messiah came a generation early. We follow Paul's life as his family moves to Arachus, the desert planet, only for their enemy clan, the Hearkinins, to launch an attack, killing Leo, and driving Paul to flee into the desert to join the Fman, ride a sandworm, and take back the throne. In his many spice transes, he sees how his actions will shape the future. A fanatical Fman following, a spreading cult of personality, and a universal holy war in his name.
>> A war in my name.
Everyone shouting my name. His actions now will shape belief and therefore shape the future. There is one alternate course Paul could take to avoid this fate, but it is too terrible to even consider. Paul has children, twins named Leo II after his father and Ganama, both of whom retain Quiz's Hatter powers of ancestral memory and future vision. As Leo comes of age, he is able to see this terrible alternative course that his father avoided. And he sees that even now it must be taken or humanity will surely die out. There is a terrible cosmic prophecy that determines this awful thing must be done. And it is awful. To ensure the survival of humanity, Leo must give up his own by allowing baby sandworm larvae to embed themselves in his skin, feeding off of his body's moisture, growing, transforming him in an awful metamorphosis. The sandworm's strength and cultural and economic importance allow Leo to capture humanity's belief, which allows him to singularly shape the future. This is the dreadful fate that Paul could not bring himself to fulfill to become the God Emperor. The God Emperor of Dune, the fourth book in the Dune series, takes place 3,500 years into Toledo's reign. What was already a series set in the future jumps so far forward that the events of the first three books are now ancient. Paul's life is the stuff of legend, myth, religion.
The beliefs of the past have formed this strange present that Leo must save. But the book doesn't open there. It jumps forward again so that Leo's reign, where the bulk of this book will take place, is now ancient as well. We are here at the archaeological site of the journals Leo kept throughout his empire. We are so far in the future that these journals are now too a religious text. To even think so far in the future from where we sit reading this is mindbending. On some level, there's a sensation that surely we won't make it that far. When we look back at the ancient world, we can only wonder if they would feel this way about us. Even just looking at the recent past, those shepherds in 1947, how would they feel about the AI generated Coke commercial or those weird humanoid robots we keep making for some reason?
let alone the authors of the scrolls.
What would they think about all this?
Abrahamic religion, the books they wrote still play a major role on the world stage through translation, interpretation, misunderstanding, intentional warping, earnest belief.
What they wrote has fractured, multiplied into myriad waring understandings, the conflicting ideologies behind some of our biggest battles, our laws, our discourse, our culture. Whether we like it or not, their beliefs shape our reality. Did they know that the future, our present would be irrevocably tied to their beliefs, the words they wrote? I mean, they couldn't have, but imagine if they could. Would they have written it differently? Then turn and look forward.
What of ours will survive? Will the mountains of Garfield's merchandise be dug up and interpreted as shrines to some ancient god? What do we leave behind? And how will the future, their present, be built on what they find? How do our beliefs now determine their reality? Leo II, the God Emperor of Dune, understands the power of belief better than anyone. He has the memories of every single one of his ancestors stretching back to the beginning of time. For all intents and purposes, he is an author of the Dead Sea Scrolls. He is the shepherd who discovered them and he's you watching this on your cracked iPhone 14. He lived the distant past and he lived digging it back up. He has witnessed every change, every cultural wave, every rise and fall and he knows how it is driven fundamentally by what we believe in. He knows the power belief has and he knows the harm it can do. Leo is a deeply paradoxical figure. On the one hand, there has in a sense never been someone more deeply human than Leo.
He contains countless human lives within his memory, and his only goal is to ensure humanity's survival, to save us.
But he's also strange, alien. He doesn't look human anymore, just a human face and arms inside the hulking segments of a giant worm. And he doesn't really seem human. He can see the future. He knows things we can never know. He understands how every minuscule action we take now will affect the future. He is godlike Eldrich in his scope and scale. He is both man and God. He is every peasant and every king. He is dictator and revolutionary and prophet and skeptic.
He is almost everyone and he knows almost everything. He is paradox and contradiction. And his grand plan, the golden path, as he calls it, is paradoxical as well. He will harness the unfathomable powers of ancestral memory, future vision, and crucially, human belief, to become the most despicable tyrant that has ever existed. He transforms the planet Arachus into a temperate biome with trees and rivers, save for a tiny patch of desert he preserves for his fortress. With the ecology of the planet transformed, the sandworms cannot survive except for him.
He is the only source of the spice in the universe, which he doss out as reward and withholds as punishment, putting all of humanity under his thumb.
He raises up a female army of fanatical religious followers called the fish speakers, who operate as a police state on every planet. He burns historians on piles of their own works when they publish untruths because he was there, at least in his memory, and he hates pretention above all else. But the purpose of this reign of terror, keeping humanity ruthlessly repressed for over 3,000 years, is to ensure that it never happens again. He will be humanity's worst and very last emperor, if he can help it. By harnessing human belief, he will produce the perfect circumstances for humanity to finally overthrow him.
His reign will scar humanity so deeply that we will never believe in a charismatic leader again. Ultimate power will rest in the hands of a terrifying tyrannical alien figure solely to eliminate that very tyranny forever.
Because of the inherent paradox of Leo's existence, belief in him is also paradoxical. If he needs his religious cult in order to keep power, then he must feed the flame of that belief. He feeds off of our belief, harnesses it to shape the future. But if the purpose of having that power is to instill humanity with doubt in charismatic leaders, then he must preserve doubt, too. If everyone believes in him undoubtingly and stays under his thumb, then his whole plan was for nothing. So believing in the God Emperor both supports and hinders him.
Being the god emperor means embodying both belief and doubt. And the rebels who doubt in Leo unwittingly believe in him more than anyone. No matter how you approach belief in the god Emperor, you are met with contradiction. How do we agree or disagree with believe in or doubt a being made up entirely of opposing polarities and paradoxes? He is the human and the inhumane, the freedom fighter and the tyrant. the past, the present, and the future. How can you ever truly fully support him? And is it possible to avoid supporting him? What does it mean to believe in the God Emperor?
We are now projecting part of an original page on the screen at your left. This is the first page of the first volume. Our translation is on the screens to the right. I call your attention to the internal evidence. the poetic vanity of the words as well as the meaning derived from the translation. The style conveys a personality which is identifiable and consistent. We believe that this could only have been written by someone who had the direct experience of ancestral memories by someone laboring to share that extraordinary experience of previous lives in a way that could be understood by those not so gifted. I have taken the liberty of inviting the well-known poet Rebecc to share the platform with us this morning and to read from this first page a short passage of our translation. It is our observation that even in translation these words take on a different character when read aloud. We want to share with you a truly extraordinary quality which we have discovered in these volumes. Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome Rebecc.
I assure you that I am the book of fate.
Questions are my enemies for my questions explode. Answers leap up like a frightened flock, blackening the sky of my inescapable memories.
Not one answer, not one suffices.
What prisms flash when I enter the terrible field of my past? I am a chip of shattered flint enclosed in a box.
The box gyates and quakes. I am tossed about in a storm of mysteries. And when the box opens, I return to this presence like a stranger in a primitive land.
Slowly, slowly, I say, I relearn my name. But that is not to know myself.
This person of my name, this leto who is the second of that calling, finds other voices in his mind. other names and other places.
Oh, I promise you as I have been promised that I answered to but a single name. If you say letto, I respond.
Sufference makes this true. Sufference and one thing more. I hold the threads.
All of them are mine. Let me but imagine a topic. say, "Men who have died by the sword, and I have them in all of their gore, every image intact, every moan, every grimace, joys of motherhood, I think, and the birthing beds are mine. Serial baby smiles and the sweet cooings of new generations.
The first walkings of the toddlers and the first victories of youths brought forth for me to share. They tumble one upon another until I can see little else but sameness and repetition.
Keep it all intact, I warn myself.
Who can deny the value of such experiences? the worth of learning through which I view each new instant.
Ah, but it's the past. Don't you understand? It's only the past.
Bitar's 2000 film, The Workmeister Harmonies, takes place in an unnamed Hungarian town falling on hard times during a total eclipse of the sun. The film opens in the town bar where kind-hearted and idealistic Yanuz, the town paper boy, explains the eclipse to the drunkards by leading them in a demonstration of the solar system.
That night, a strange circus comes into town comprised of just one unseen performer called the prince and the stuffed body of a dead whale. The display piqus Yanos's interest and he goes in reverence and awe to lay eyes on the whale. The experience moves him deeply and he tries to make sense of it with a neighbor.
>> Looking at the whale is probably the closest Yanosh can come to seeing God with his own eyes. As the biggest creature on earth, a whale is inherently otherworldly, strange, and in some way holy. It is proof to Yanosh of God's strange character, the otherness that distinguishes him from humans. How mysterious is the Lord that he amuses himself with such strange creatures.
Yanosh believes in God because he cannot understand him. Everyone in town is nervous for the prince to arrive. They say that the last towns he visited broke into riots after hearing him speak. He is something of a charismatic leader if the name the prince didn't make that clear. Yanosh returns to the strange circus later and hears the prince's speech.
>> The prince is of course the will to power, the lord of the flies. He is desperatism, tyranny, the nihilistic acquisition of power purely for power's sake. The town suddenly descends into violence. A mob rampages through town, destroying everything and everyone in sight until it suddenly stops at the sight of a frail, naked, completely helpless old man. We can't know why this in particular stops the riot. Something in the sight of the old man reaches something human in the mob. You could call it a moment of divine intervention.
We see it and we can't understand it.
All we can do is believe. The eclipse passes. Violence retreats as quickly as it came. The prince is gone, nowhere to be found, possibly onto the next town.
Our town's people are left to sit in the consequences. Deep emotion pierces everyone. They have escaped the weight of darkness. The result of that darkness is all around us. All is rubble. Every facade torn away. Interiors laid bare in the cold light of day. And this includes the whale's enclosure. In this strange raw daylight that exposes all of our folly and transgression, we are left with nothing but a rotting whale. The body of God unceremoniously beed in the middle of town square. Belief based on seeing lacks true understanding. Mono is God Emperor Leo's right-hand man. He's a former rebel who Leo turned ally by administering a spiritual test involving the spice that sensitized Mono to the golden path, Leo's grand plan. To put it simply, Mono has a vague sixth sense of whether all is going to plan without actually knowing the details. He understands that Leo is doing everything for a purpose and he has dedicated his life to supporting that mission, but he trusts Leo to lead the way with very little questioning. He knows what Leo is doing will work, but he cannot comprehend why. Because he can see the outcome, he believes in Leo without actually understanding his actions.
Belief based on seeing, lacks true understanding. Mono has a daughter, Siona, who is against her wishes in school to become a fish speaker. That is a member of Leo's religiously motivated all female royal guard. Siona is a staunch rebel opposed to Leo's reign of terror which she sees as tyranny and injustice in the purest form.
Descendants of the Atrades and the Fman, Mono and Siona share a belief in Shy Halude, the worm who is God. But this manifests in diametrically opposed takes on Leo's godhead. How have you survived with him for so long a time, father? He kills those who are close to him.
Everyone knows that.
>> No, you are wrong. He kills no one. Then how do you account for the known deaths?
>> It is the worm that kills. The worm is God. Leto lives in the bosom of God, but he kills no one.
>> Then how do you survive?
>> I can recognize the worm. I can see it in his face and in his movements. I know when Shy Halude approaches.
>> He is not Shy Halude.
>> Well, that's what they called the worm in the Fman days.
>> I've read about that. But he is not the god of the desert.
>> Be quiet, you foolish girl. You know nothing of such things. I tell you, he kills no one.
>> What's the difference? Leo or worm? They are one body now.
>> But they are two separate beings. Leto the emperor and the worm who is God.
>> You're mad >> perhaps, but I do serve God. Shy Hallude, the giant sandworm, is a visible physical god. Before Leo, anyone on Arachus could see sandworms in the wild. The Fman rode on their backs. The worms were worshiped as the creators of the spice, the true gods of the planet Arachus. Now, the only sandworm in existence is the one growing around Leo.
Leo's form as man within worm presents challenges for the old religion of Shyhalude. To Siona, Leo is Workmeister's prince, a fascist dictator propping up the dead body of God as a play for power, a blasphemous, disrespectful obscenity. But the very same image of man within worm in Mono's eyes is the ultimate divine form, the synthesis of man and God. Like Yanos, Mono sees God as a mysterious being whose behavior is beyond our understanding. As sacred as the worm is, it is also an unpredictable animal. It very well may be sacred because of its unpredictability. Lack of understanding is reason to believe. Mono believes that Leo's violence is always the direct result of the worm taking control of the body. To be clear, this is sometimes the case. Leo himself is a bit of an unpredictable animal. But while the violence he enacts is always in service of saving humanity, it is intentional sometimes. But Mono's apologetic theology of Leo as a human leader living inside God allows him to justify all of Leo's actions that he cannot understand.
Mono is able to fully support Leo, to tirelessly and devoutly believe because he cannot understand God. Anything resembling hypocrisy or contradiction, any unsavory action that could make Mono question can be dismissed. It wasn't Leo. It was the worm. It was God whose actions are incomprehensible to mortal minds. When we see God's actions and can't understand them, we simply believe that they must be for a reason. Lack of understanding is a reason to believe.
But sightbased belief also creates the illusion of understanding. Siona asks Mono how he protects himself from the worm's violence if it's so unpredictable. And he says, well, he can see it. That's how he protects himself from the incomprehensible whims of God.
He can just tell based on Leo's face and movements when God is about to take control. The ability to see God, no matter how incomprehensible and mysterious you know he is, also creates the illusion of understanding. While Mona knows he can't understand the worm, he does think he knows how the whole man and worm thing works because he can see both man and worm. And this belief that he can tell when the worm is in control betrays a greater lack of understanding than he's even aware of. Mono knows he doesn't understand the worm, but he is completely unaware that he doesn't understand the God Emperor. Being able to see God allows us to believe we understand, but that very belief limits our true understanding. Mono glanced at the now silent Leo. The God Emperor<unk>'s eyes were closed and a look of brooden had come over his face.
That was another of the worm signs, a bad one. Mono trembled. Leo said, >> "Do not try to force an understanding of my ways, Mono. Let understanding come of itself."
>> I will try, Lord.
>> No, do not try.
>> Mono doesn't understand the God Emperor.
The violence is not all the worms. Leo is a tyrant. The things he does are despicable. Siona is right to see him as a villain. He is Workmeister's prince if he lived inside the whale. The bigger picture of saving humanity is one that only Leo can see. To everyone else, he is simply another fascist dictator.
Humanity under Leo is in the dark, completely lacking understanding whether they're aware of it or not. Will heaven fall on us? Will the earth open up beneath us? We don't know for a total eclipse has come upon us. The only one who knows the true meaning of Leo's reign is Leo. Mono knows that Leo is necessary in some abstract sense. But he can't wrap his head around the core paradox of the God Emperor to hold humanity down hard so that we bounce back even harder. An enforcement of darkness to strengthen the light. Mono fundamentally does not understand Leo.
And where lack of understanding reveals holiness and mystique in the worm who is God, that same lack of understanding is terrifying in a political leader. So Mono's way around this uncomfortable contradiction is to pin it all on the worm. But this explanation is a forced understanding, a concession that Mono doesn't understand one thing so that he can go on believing he understands the bigger picture. Seeing God makes us think we understand that he's incomprehensible. How mysterious is the Lord that he amuses himself with such strange creatures. And the belief itself that we can understand that God is incomprehensible, i.e. can recognize the worm, is a barrier to true understanding. As Leo says, >> reality or the belief that you know a reality, which is the same thing, always sets up a ferment in the universe.
Mono's belief that he knows the reality of Leo's existence sets up a ferment in his own understanding. Because he thinks he gets it, he doesn't allow himself to truly understand. Mono believes because he cannot understand. But he cannot understand because he believes. To believe in the God Emperor is to fundamentally misunderstand what he represents, eliminating blind belief. To believe in Leo, you have to find some way to justify his totalitarian leadership, to collapse his central paradox. Without a true understanding of the golden path, you must manufacture an explanation that allows you to believe that you know reality. And that belief is what keeps you from ever actually understanding. To believe in Leo is to not believe in Leo's plan. And to believe in Leo's plan is to not believe in Leo. Functionally, you cannot believe in the god emperor. All right.
Gabby Hannah is a social media influencer and artist perhaps best known for her stint in David Dori's infamous Vlog Squad or as a recurring character in the general internet drama sphere which we won't be delving into here.
Suffice it to say, her reputation as a controversial figure haunts her digital presence, and this was certainly the case in August 2022. In the wake of her latest public saga, Gabby took a break from social media. She broke her silence two weeks later with a sudden period of absolutely prolific Tik Tok output. Over the course of approximately 72 hours, Gabby would post around 300 Tik Toks.
That's 100 a day to the internet's wrapped attention, fascination, mockery, and concern. In the now deleted videos, Gabby expresses rage and grief over babies dying in the streets, performs spoken word poetry about influence in the digital age, theorizes about God and supernatural power that could be attained through prayer, and crucially, she declares her intention to save the world. These videos sparked concern in some viewers who feared that Gabby may be experiencing mania or psychosis.
Others were outraged, seeing the videos as an insensitive stunt to promote new music. Gabby maintains that neither of these were the case. The truth is that Gabby is the only person who will ever know what this saga was, but it's clear, at least to me, that something happened to Gabby. We may never know what exactly, but she had some kind of epiphany or realization or breakthrough.
Something felt suddenly clear to her, something of dire importance and she felt a need, a responsibility to share what she felt was crucial information with the world. But whatever this sudden understanding was, it couldn't be conveyed in words. The videos themselves were cryptic. She often spoke in rhyme or free associated her own words with song lyrics or lines from movies.
Overlaid text like hieroglyphics highlighted double meaninted words.
Extrapolated spiritual truth from rearranged or capitalized letters. The something she was trying to express, whatever it was, could not be adequately expressed through basic language.
Viewers saw this strange behavior and wrote it off as nonsense. either laughably poor writing ability or the incoherent rambling of someone in crisis. The unique form that this big idea needed in order to be expressed was the very thing that kept it from being taken seriously. Let me please note that it's not my intention to feed into anyone's mental health crisis. If someone you know is going through a manic or psychotic episode, it is paramount to get them the help they need and not feed into their delusions. And I'll have more resources about this in the description. But because Gabby insists that this was not a mental health event, but a real attempt to communicate something, what interests me is how that message was lost because of its delivery and its messenger. Gabby is haunted by her reputation as a controversial figure. And I certainly do not endorse everything she's done throughout her internet career. What's interesting though is that this controversial reputation both gives and takes away her agency, her ability to save the world. She claims in the video series that she always intended to get famous enough online to use her influence for good, to acquire wealth so that she can give it to those in need.
And to her credit, she recently sold these shirts quoting the 2022 Tik Tok saga to give 100% of the funds to hunger relief in Palestine. I ordered one to wear for this section a couple months ago and it never came which is fine. I mean it's more about the donation than anything. But you know I would I would like the shirt. You know I I wouldn't I wouldn't be opposed to owning this shirt, right? I mean it's it's a little it's a little bit iconic. Is that is that is that okay? Am I am I allowed am I allowed to want the Gabby Hannah There are babies dying on the street shirt? Is is that a strange thing for me to want?
Am I Am I going to go to jail for wanting the Gabby Hannah Baby's dying on the street shirt? Is it Are you going to arrest me? Okay, important update. It's like two weeks later and it came and it's awesome. Um, so disregard, the shirt was received. Um, I'm so excited to wear this um around with no context. I'm I think it's a beautiful thing. Okay, so I did get the shirt. Thank you.
Continue. But to gain that influence, for me to even be aware of her to purchase this shirt, she had to be part of the drama, the scandals. And to be crystal clear, I don't mean that as any justification for those situations or to say it's a good thing they happened.
It's not. But it's just realistic cause and effect. Her reputation haunts her, but it also allows her to act to reach people. If her plan is to use her influence for good, then every controversy has theoretically been a necessary evil to create that opportunity. And it is because of that controversy that she is not taken seriously. Without her reputation, she wouldn't have influence. Without her influence, she can't save the world. but she can't save the world because of her reputation. Gabby wrote something in one of these videos that has genuinely stuck with me. She said, "Maybe I'm wrong, but I thought, why not try? I thought maybe the second coming was just whoever was brave enough to be." And to be clear, I am not claiming that Gabby Hannah is the second coming of Christ. And neither is she. Since this whole saga, Gabby has become an outspoken Christian. Note the Bible verse on the shirt. And beyond a basic agreement that we should all be helping those around us, she does not subscribe to this idea literally and follows the traditional understanding of Jesus's return to Earth. But what if the second coming was just whoever was brave enough to be? Could the right person with the right intentions momentarily take advantage of religious belief to gain power and save the world? Given the right plan and the right amount of time, could you build a big enough movement to get to the people in charge and I don't know, fix this?
Where would you start? You're going to need a pretty wide reach. How can we make ourselves known to the most people as quickly as possible? It sounds ridiculous, but in reality, a viral Tik Tok moment isn't a bad idea. I've come to understand this strange series of videos as Gabby in her own way trying to save the world by becoming God. The problem of course is that becoming God takes a tremendous amount of self-belief. And that kind of self-belief makes you an easy target for mockery. Who are you to think you can change the world? Are you so vain or just completely delusional? It's another paradox. To save the world, that is to proliferate selflessness and understanding to be God, you first have to be confident and crazy enough to believe you can. Belief births God, brings meaningful change into being, and it kills God, creates that which can be disbelieved, doubted, mocked, and scorned. Interestingly, probably the most frequently repeated phrase throughout the Tik Toks was believe me or don't. So, we have three related ironies happening at once revolving around ideas of belief and doubt. Gabby Hannah had some kind of breakthrough idea and she had to share it with us.
The only way that idea could be expressed was through wordless interpretive codes and symbols. However, that symbolic format is what kept viewers from taking her seriously. The very thing that could convey this truth for us to believe is what made us doubt.
Gabby says her goal is to leverage her influence to save the world. However, that influence is built from a controversial reputation, which both empowers her to reach others and stops them from listening. The very thing that makes us aware of Gabby to even be able to believe in her also makes us doubt her. Gabby plans to leverage her influence by choosing to be the second coming, generating a big enough movement to create positive change. However, the self-belief required to become God also draws intense mockery and scorn, killing belief itself and making true impact impossible. This whole saga has stuck with me ever since it happened. I think about it kind of a lot and I find it hard to articulate why the internet was scandalized by it. Deeply troubled and concerned, but jeering and mocking in equal measure. Obviously, I do not agree with everything she said in these videos. And to be fair, it doesn't seem like she does either anymore. But there's something deeply compelling about how important it was for her at the time, how urgently she felt she had to get this message out. There is a tragic irony in how her reputation and her self-belief, the aspects that make her capable of spreading a message at all, were exactly what kept her from being heard. You can say this is a ridiculous example to pull from, and that's fine. But my honest truth is that watching this strange saga as it happened left me with a bizarre sense of loss of having missed something. A pang of hopelessness that this message, this undicernable and important realization Gabby had would die with this series of deleted Tik Toks never to be grasped. It feels genuinely tragic to me and I don't know why. The best and maybe the only explanation I have is that over the course of those three days we witnessed in some abstract allegorical way the birth and the death of God. The God Emperor is belief embodied. To believe in the God Emperor is to become him yourself. Embodying belief is a choice.
Leo had to decide to become God. He was born with the gifts of ancestral memory and future vision. Sure, but that does not a god make, especially in the Dune universe. His father, Paul, had the same gifts, and he too had to decide to become God. When Paul escapes to the desert in the first book, he enters a spice trance in the tent with his mom.
He sees that the way to take back the crown from their enemy clan, the hearkinins, is to harness the Fman's belief and become their messiah. He also sees the consequence of this. A holy war in my name.
>> A war in my name.
EVERYONE SHOUTING MY NAME.
>> PART OF WHAT makes Paul's story so compelling is the question of how his precence works. How much choice he has in shaping the future. Is the future set in stone the moment Paul sees it? Is he seeing what will be or does he have a choice in the matter? Is he seeing what could be? I think the answer is complicated. Let's take Jamus for example. Jamus is a Fman who Paul sees in a vision as a mentor figure. A friend who will help him.
>> A friend will help you. Follow the friend.
>> You have much to learn.
and I will show you the ways of the desert.
>> However, when Paul and Jamus actually meet, Jamus challenges Paul to a fight to the death, a Fman tradition to test his worthiness. Paul wins, proving his worth and ingratiating himself to the Fman. At the subsequent Fman funeral, right, Paul gives a short eulogy. I was a friend of Jamus. We can look at Paul's vision of Jamus in two different ways.
In one interpretation, Jamus did help Paul in a sense. His death is what allows Paul to join the Fman, and Paul does call him his friend. It's not exactly what Paul saw, but it's true, following a sort of dream logic. In this interpretation, Paul's visions are definitely what will be, but they aren't always what they seem. This gives Paul a choice in how he interprets the visions.
But no matter what he does, the result will always be the same. If this is the case, then the future is inevitable and the only choice we have is whether to believe or doubt that it will come to pass in the way that we expect. The other interpretation is that what Paul saw was a potential future where he and Jamus are actually literally friends.
It's a potential path that Paul does not take. A path that wouldn't have destroyed the hearkinins or avenged his father, but one that wouldn't lead to holy war. In this instance, the visions are more literal, but they are not inevitable. Paul always has a choice in what path he takes. Whether he chooses to believe or doubt in the future he sees determines whether it happens. In either interpretation, future vision still requires action on Paul's part to bring the future to fruition. Whether you believe he chooses which of many paths to take or that any choice he makes leads to the same inevitable future, he does still have to make that choice. The choice to believe or doubt that what he's seen will come true and the choice to do something about it.
Embodying belief or doubt is a choice.
It's revealed to us in book three, The Children of Dune, that Paul saw the God Emperor as a possibility and in fact a necessity, but he chose not to make that sacrifice. On some level, Paul did not believe in the God Emperor enough to become him. Leo did. Even if Leo was always predestined to be the God Emperor, or if Paul refusing that fate doomed Leo to it, even if there was no way out of it, Leo still saw this future and chose to believe in it and do something about it. He made the choice to embody his belief. Leo truly believed in the God Emperor and felt the personal responsibility to bring this future to fruition. So, he made the choice to become God. Like Gabby Hannah once said, "The second coming may just be whoever is brave enough to choose to be.
Embodying belief is a choice." But why is this the way? What does the God Emperor mean? Why is his existence necessary to the universe faded by whatever cosmic powers may be? To answer this, let's turn to our best resource for understanding the God Emperor, his journals. Leo's journals are the most important central object of the novel.
They're the artifacts we saw being dug up in chapter 1, the framing device for the whole novel, and each chapter opens with an excerpt from the journals.
They're a window into Leo's inner world, his deepest and most important thoughts, literally. He has a device implanted in his brain that allows him to transmit his thoughts to paper via a remote writing machine in a hidden chamber underground. Leo's journal. His words are the only chance we have at truly understanding him and his choice to become the God Emperor. Ironically, Leo's favorite topic in these journals is the absolute inadequacy of words. He writes, >> "People will try to understand me and to frame me in their words. They will seek truth, but the truth always carries the ambiguity of the words used to express it. You will not understand me. The harder you try, the more remote I will become until I finally vanish into eternal myth. A living god at last.
>> Embodied belief is wordless. We can attempt to understand what the God Emperor means or why he must exist in this way, but as soon as we try to describe it in words, we obscure it.
Consider how you would describe the crucifixion. The words you choose to express your answer will inevitably reveal something about your worldview.
Jesus died for your sins is obviously religious, whereas Jesus was tortured to death by a corrupt government comes across more secular and political.
Notice how these statements don't negate each other. They can both be true, but each one obscures the other, oversimplifies the event to a single comprehensible meaning, carrying the flavor of the words chosen to express it. Jesus's death was one of, if not the most important historical event ever.
Our historical time scale BC and AD was literally based around it. No single answer can possibly encompass its full significance to the world. The religious, the secular, the historical, the butterfly effect of culture and art and movements of people and crusades and evangelicalism and hill song and Christian teens having their first kiss at a Christian sleepaway camp and the song trees by 21 Pilots. It is beyond full expression, too big and too slippery to be fully accurately explained. As soon as you try to put it into words, you inevitably lose part of the answer. And this is true for all of reality. The words you choose to describe an event immediately separates it from its full context and meaning.
All real truth is wordless. So it is for Gabby Hannah's mysterious epiphany, and so it is for the God Emperor. So then why pretel is this book so long? Well, because Leo is kind of obsessed with words. The bulk of this book is Leo's speeches and journal entries. Wordy, confusing tiraates that upon rereading take on completely different, even opposite meanings.
>> You will know all of me soon enough.
Just remember that sun worship among our primitive ancestors was not far off the mark.
>> Sun worship? That sun which controls all the movement but which cannot be touched, that sun is death.
>> Off the top of my head, I can think of three different ways to interpret this line. Death controls all of the movement of the world but it cannot be touched because it is inevitable. That son, anything that controls all other things but cannot be touched, like a tyrannical leader is a deadly thing. The death of humanity, Leo's motivation for becoming the god emperor is the sun around which all of his movement revolves. There is a poetry to his words, room for interpretation and double meaning at crucial moments. Leo is earnestly trying to express himself while also completely eluding clear answers about his nature.
Why does he play with words like this?
It's precisely because it's impossible to explain the god emperor with words.
Leo is contradiction and irony, but he also hates pretension above all else. If he could, he would speak as clearly and bluntly as I am now, but any clear and concise explanation would obscure his real meaning. So, the closest he can get is to exploit the inadequacy of words to his advantage. Being the God Emperor is so contradictory and complex that it can only be expressed through double meaning, contradiction, and poetry.
Jesus is known for telling parables, short stories that don't explicitly tell us what to do, but use allegory to point towards something. Matthew 13, yeah, crack open your Bible at home. Matthew 13 says, "The disciples came to him and asked, why do you speak to the people in parables?" He replied, "Because the knowledge of the secrets of the kingdom of heaven has been given to you, but not to them. Whoever has will be given more, and they will have an abundance. Whoever does not have, even what they have will be taken from them." This is why I speak to them in parables. Though seeing they do not see, though hearing they do not hear or understand. Basically, if you get it, you get it. And if you don't, you don't. The advantage of using words this way is that ambiguity can convey meaning in a more emotionally vivid and truthful way than concise statements.
Show don't tell, right? Which of these lyrics makes you feel Taylor Swift's romantic situation more? You can call me honey if you want because I'm the one you want. It's concise. It's clear we all know what she's talking about and can't possibly misinterpret it. Or the more ambiguous and elusive, two headlights shine through the sleepless night and I will get you get you alone.
There's no contest, right? Ambiguous poetic words elicit a stronger emotional response, helping us believe in the meaning behind them, even if we can't fully explain it. The disadvantage of this intentional ambiguity is that it prevents anyone from understanding Leo.
Though seeing, they do not see. Though hearing, they do not hear. If you get it, you get it. But if you don't, you don't. Think back on Monao. Even when his god is literally telling him not to force understanding, Mono cannot get his message. Gabby Hannah's cryptically worded Tik Toks were inexplicably compelling to me. But to others, they were simply a display of either laughably poor writing ability or deranged nonsense. The ambiguity that makes these messages sharable, believable, also makes them impossible to understand, easy to doubt and discard offhand. To be the God Emperor is to embody belief, and embodied belief is wordless. So the only way the God Emperor can express himself is what will keep him from ever being understood.
Becoming the God Emperor also requires that tremendous self-belief that draws both supporters and opposition. Embodied belief is both self-replicating and self-destructive. To be the God Emperor is to create a reputation that simultaneously fuels and hinders you.
We've already discussed at length the ironic nature of Leo's plan to set humanity back so far that they spring forward to be so tyrannical as to eliminate tyranny once and for all. This plan, of course, creates both fanatic followers and passionate rebels. That divisive reputation is crucial to the plan. We need the believers to believe to keep power so that the rebels must reach maximum strength to overthrow Leo and save humanity. Leo's reputation, his godhead, his ultimate power makes him powerless on three levels. His grand plan, his personhood, and his legacy.
Leo's godhead grants him ultimate power to unfold his grand plan while also threatening that plan. The more he is worshiped, believed in, the less likely it seems that he will ever be overthrown by the doubters, his true goal. Like Mono, the believers see and follow Leo without understanding his real purpose.
The power they assign him as a god is ironically what keeps his plan from succeeding. Leo's reputation both grants and limits his agency, his ability to carry out his plan. Embodied belief is both self-replicating and self-destructive. Beyond the grand plan, Leo's reputation is also isolating on a personal level. With his strange physical form and supernatural abilities, it can be easy to forget that Leo is a human with feelings, too. A key subplot in the novel is the introduction of an ambassador from the planet Ix named Queen Nori, who was bred and raised to essentially be Leo's dream girl. The Ixians hope to use Leo's weakness, his human capacity to love, to bring him down. What makes Huis so perfect for Leo is her empathy and her capacity to understand. She is the only character in the entire novel who actually understands what Leo is doing and she recognizes his humanity. Leo asks her to marry him and she agrees not because she feels romantically towards him but to serve the greater good like like a none marrying Jesus. A side note here, Hi is a fascinating character as is Siona who I've mentioned before and will mention again. For the purposes of this video, I've had to greatly simplify both of their stories. Part of why this video has taken over four years to make is that I just kept trying to summarize everything and I'm starting to think that's just not possible for God Emperor, but I love them dearly, just as I do Aaliyah and Gurnie, and I also didn't have time to mention them. Let's have some auxiliary discussions in the comments, please and thank you. As Leo ruminates on Hi one night, for a moment, he genuinely regrets becoming the god emperor. He thought desperate thoughts.
Could this terrible metamorphosis be reversed? Could he return to a human state?
>> Not possible.
>> And what of the golden path while he indulged in such selfish goals?
>> To hell with the golden path. Have these folly bound idiots ever thought of me once? Not once.
>> But that was not true. Que of him.
>> What am I? The ultimate loner forced to look at what might have been. Every day I look at it. And now we >> Leo knew then that he had encountered a condition for which no antidote existed, past, present, or future. His great body trembled and shivered in the gloom of his audience chamber. At the portal, one fish speaker guard whispered to another, "Is God troubled?" And her companion replied, "The sins of this universe would trouble anyone." Leo heard them and wept silently. Being God is desperately lonely. No one can understand you, only believe in or doubt you. Qui understands him, yes, but she is one exception to an otherwise unbroken rule. And her capacity to understand Leo hurts and isolates him even more because he can never be with her as a fully human man could. The more you are woripped and deified, the more power you are thought to have, the more powerless and alone you truly feel.
Leo's religion, the force that gives him power, strips him of personhood. So, not only does his reputation as God simultaneously give and remove his political power, but he gives and removes his humanity, his ability to connect with others. Embodied belief is both self-replicating and self-destructive. Then there's a third layer. Leo's legacy, his reputation as it extends into the future beyond him.
Part of why Leo keeps his journals is for future generations to know what he did for them. He regrets the thought of historians seeing only his reputation.
>> To my certain knowledge, when I am no longer consciously present here among you, when I am here only as a fearsome creature of the desert, many people will look back upon me as a tyrant. Fair enough. I have been tyrannical, a tyrant. Not fully human, not insane, merely a tyrant. But even ordinary tyrants have motives and feelings beyond those usually assigned them by fasile historians. They will think of me as a great tyrant. Thus, my feelings and motives are a legacy. I would preserve less. History distort them too much.
History is a way of magnifying some characteristics while it discards others.
>> This is the plan. He must be a tyrant.
He must cultivate a horrible legacy for himself. But he wants someone to know why. To understand the man behind the myth. Leo's reputation as tyrant and god prevents this understanding. But it also creates a future where we can understand. If humanity survives, they can find his journals and maybe then they'll get it. For all the years of oppressing humanity, for as horrible as his legacy will surely be, he wants us to know that it was ultimately a sacrifice made for our sake. He wants just one person to understand that he wasn't just a tyrannical dictator or even a benevolent god, but a human who made the difficult choice to become the god emperor for the sake of humanity. He wants to for once be neither believed in nor doubted but simply understood.
Essentially, he wants to share what he believes in. He believes in belief, which is to believe in doubt. Embodied belief is both self-replicating and self-destructive because belief is doubt. Throughout this section, we've seen how belief can only exist alongside doubt. Leto's choice to become the god emperor to embody belief is a choice between belief and doubt in a possible future. The wordless nature of embodied belief is reason to believe for some and reason to doubt for others. Leo's godhead harnesses belief to stay in power in order to create doubt. The God Emperor's mission is to eliminate the God Emperor. So belief and doubt are Leo's most central paradox. Because the God Emperor is the embodiment of both belief and doubt, to believe in the God Emperor is to both believe in and doubt him. Let's return to our central question. What does it mean to believe in the God Emperor? To see the God Emperor is to believe, but it lacks understanding. We believe because we do not understand, and we cannot understand because we believe. To believe in the God Emperor is to become him, to embody that belief. But in every instance, embodying belief is also inevitably embodying doubt. So believing in the God Emperor is both believing and doubting in him. So then what does it mean to doubt the God Emperor? Doubting the God Emperor, even killing the God Emperor is to believe in him.
Jesus Christ Superstar is Andrew Lloyd Weber and Tim Rice's rock opera retelling of The Passion of the Christ.
There are countless depictions of The Passion I could refer to here. I could even crack open the Bible and read to you straight from the source. But what makes JCS so exceptional is how thoroughly it humanizes its characters.
And I mean humanized in the most literal sense. JCS's Jesus has what Bible scholars would refer to as a very low christologology. We don't see him perform any miracles. We don't get any proof that he is the son of God or even a prophet. No, JCS's Jesus is more like a rock star or celebrity caught up in his own hype, high on his own supply.
THIS TALK OF GOD is true.
His best friend Judas, his right-hand man from the very beginning, doesn't recognize his close friend anymore. They used to carry this revolution together, believe in the same things. But the fame has changed Jesus. And it seems like Judas is the only one who sees this change.
>> Listen Jesus, I don't like what I see.
All I ask is >> their nation is occupied. They are being followed by Roman authorities who want to kill them. And Jesus continues to draw attention. JCS's Judas fundamentally agrees with Jesus's message, but he quite understandably thinks that its figurehead is going a bit too far.
>> He chafes against the religious fanaticism forming around his human friend. He sees it as detrimental to their cause, hypocritical even. JCS's Judas is the voice of human doubt. And it's this overwhelming doubt that leads him to the decision that this fanatical movement must be stopped. And we all know the story from there. Judas goes to the high priests. They give him silver blood money. He kisses Jesus on the cheek. Someone's ear gets cut off. He who lives by the sword dies by the sword. If you're reading Mark, there's a guy who runs away so fast his undergarment falls off. Punches Pilate, the pillar, the crown of thorns, the cross, the crucifixion. While JCS humanizes Jesus in the literal sense, that is asserts his humanity as opposed to his godhood, it also humanizes Judas in the traditional sense, empathizes with him. Judas sees Jesus, his best friend, being beaten and runs off to the high priests, frantic and full of remorse.
>> You beat him so hard that HE WAS DONE LAME. AND I KNOW WHO EVERYBODY'S going to blame. I don't believe he knows I acted for our good. I'd save HIM ALL HIS SUFFERING IF I COULD.
>> Judas proceeds to, for lack of a better term, lose his mind. He breaks down in overwhelming guilt and for a moment seems to become aware of his future reputation. I have been spattered with innocent blood. I shall be dragged through the slime and the mud.
>> As he spirals, Judas comes to the conclusion that not only has he in fact killed God, but that he was effectively God's pawn, created for this very purpose.
>> God, I'm sick.
I've been used God. God, I'll never know why you chose me.
you're trying.
>> If it was God's plan for Jesus to die, then didn't Judas have to betray him?
Was Judas born simply to be damned? Or if this was his purpose, didn't he do exactly what God asked of him? The Judas of Jesus Christ Superstar is dedicated to Jesus's revolution, but sees what he believes to be the rise of yet another emperor taking advantage of his fellow man's belief. a voice of human doubt.
Judas believes that Jesus's unquestioned leadership has gotten out of control. If the good message of the revolution is to succeed, Judas thinks Jesus's myth must be stopped. However, Judas realizes all too late. Killing Jesus is the most surefire way to forever immortalize him.
Doubt leads Judas to kill God. But killing God is the only thing that can make Judas believe and in fact the only way to guarantee God lives on. There is an existential horror here that it's actually impossible not to follow God.
In Judas's case, the attempt to rebel, to reject Jesus's godhood only solidifies the very myth he sought to destroy. No matter how we may try to escape it, we always help God's cause.
To doubt the God Emperor, even to kill him, is ultimately to believe in him and to serve his purpose. Duncan Idaho is an exceptional fighter and loyal assistant to the House of Trades. You can think of him like a knight. He's honorbound to help the Atrades lineage because they saved his life. If you've seen the Dune movies, you may recognize this name.
It's Jason Mimoa's character. I'm not sure when I'll finish this video, so you may or may not know this yet, but after he dies in battle, he's brought back to life as a sort of clone called a gola.
Golas are made from the cells of the original person, and then their memories are reawakened by putting them under certain psychological duress. For all intents and purposes, once reawakened, it's the same guy. A lot of Dune fans have kind of a pet theory that Frank Herbert invented the whole Gola thing because he just really really liked Duncan and instantly regretted killing him off in the first book. There's probably some truth to Duncan Idaho being Frank Herbert's favorite character. All six books have a Duncan Idaho and he is the only character to appear in every book in the series. Leo shares Frank Herbert's fondness for Duncan and horrifically has had a non-stop line of consecutive Duncan Idaho golas throughout his reign. Every time Duncan dies, Leo has a new one made. To be clear, the Golas can't remember any of their previous Gola lives, only the original bodily life. So from Duncan's perspective, he's out in the desert fighting off hearkinins to save Paul and Jessica's lives. Then something happens and suddenly it's 3,500 years later. Dune isn't a desert anymore. A giant worm with a man's face rules the entire universe. And there's been countless previous versions of him whose lives he cannot remember. By the time we start the novel, Leo has gone through the Duncan reawakening so many times, he knows the exact beats each Duncan will follow.
>> They have copied me many times. Many.
It's time you ask how many, Duncan.
>> How many of me?
>> I will let you see the records for yourself. And so it starts.
>> Leo thought, >> there is an important reason for all the Golas, for every Dune book to have a Duncan Idaho. Beyond Frank Herbert's favoritism, Duncan Idaho is the essential human man. He's the archetypal knight, a chivalous, loyal warrior with strong principles and a sense of right and wrong. And when something strikes Duncan as wrong, he will question and he will doubt incessantly.
>> We said she served the god emperor now.
I didn't believe her, of course.
>> But you should believe her.
>> Why?
>> Ah, yes. I forgot that you once doubted even my grandmother, the lady Jessica.
>> I had good reason.
>> Do you also doubt Siona?
>> I'm beginning to doubt everyone.
>> And you say you don't know your value to me.
>> Duncan is the personification of human doubt. The reason Leo keeps resurrecting him is that doubt is essential to carrying out his plan. Leo needs him. We need him because doubt is crucial to humanity's survival. To believe in the God Emperor is to doubt him because belief is doubt. It is humanity. And to kill the God Emperor is to serve him. To doubt God is to have conviction in your own beliefs. Just like JCS's Judas, Duncan always starts out on Leo's side.
Idaho turned his back on Siona.
>> "You don't know anything for sure," >> he said.
>> "Bits and pieces, rumors."
>> Siona did not respond.
>> "He's in a trades," >> Idaho said.
>> "He's the worm," >> Siona said, and the venom in her voice was almost palpable. "You still trust him," she said. "That will change."
Duncan's most deeply held belief is the Atrades family morality, the code of honor he has sworn his life to diplomacy, justice, and empathy. Because Leo is an atrades, Duncan trusts him implicitly. But as Duncan learns more about Leo's empire, he realizes that the God Emperor's actions do not align with Atrades values. For example, Leo has a failed assassin publicly foggged as punishment. Duncan sees this and furiously asks Mono for answers. Mono reports the interaction to Leo.
>> Now tell me what it was that Duncan demand of you as you entered.
>> He wished to know if you had ever before had someone flogged.
>> And you replied >> that there was no record of nor had I ever before witnessed such a punishment.
>> His response, >> this is not atradities. The tools of Leo's empire, oppression, violence, cruelty, are completely contradictory to the Atrades family morality. We know that this is all ultimately in service of those values. But Duncan does not, and he rightfully takes issue with the injustice around him. The measure of that injustice for Duncan is how much it conflicts with his at trades moral code.
Duncan's doubt in Leo is the direct result of his deep belief in Atrades values. In doubting Leo, Duncan is actually believing in something else.
The Atrades morality, his own code of ethics, his human intuition of right and wrong. To doubt God is to believe. To doubt God is also to be human. Like Monao, Duncan doesn't get what Leo's doing. But unlike Mono, lack of understanding is not a reason to believe. For Duncan, lack of understanding is reason to doubt. The otherness and incomprehensibility that makes Leo holy to Mono makes him alien and threatening to Duncan.
>> Us against you, >> Leo thought >> that Duncan's always choose the human side.
>> Doubt here is an act of allegiance to humanity where belief is an act of allegiance to God. JCS's Judas turns Jesus in to protect the people of his country from the Romans. His actions stem from a protectiveness of humans rather than a deference to God. Like JCS's Judas, Duncan always chooses the human side where Mono always chooses God's side. In this way, Mono and Duncan show us two ways to be human in relation to God. In Mono's method, belief, we place our faith in a higher power and suspend our disbelief because we are mere mortals who can never truly understand that power. But at the same time, we think we know that that power, though incomprehensible, is acting for our good. This illusion of understanding blocks true learning, which keeps us vulnerable to that higher power. Belief is a posture of smallalness next to God.
We feel powerful because we have a higher power caring for us. The problem arises when that power does not have our best interest at heart. In Duncan's method, doubt, we create our own code of ethics and demand that any higher power meet them. We know that humanity deserves better and we hold the powers that be accountable. We do not understand these higher powers and we know this. That is not a comfort to us but reason to question more. which ensures that we never block our own understanding. It gives us strength.
Doubt is a recognition of our bigness next to God and a demand that the powers we serve act on our behalf. If that power does not have our best interest at heart, we will find out and we will take its power away. Doubt and belief are so similar because they're both inherently human states. They describe our relationship as humans to a higher power. In the case of the God Emperor, each of these positions has an ironic effect. Blind belief in the God Emperor goes against his mission where doubting the God Emperor, taking power back from him is exactly what he wants us to do.
To kill the God Emperor is to serve his purpose. Like JCS's Judas, no matter how we try to rebel against God, we can never actually go against his plan. This is obviously the case for Leo's death.
But before we get there, let's look at one more example. Leo's design is for Duncan to breed with Siona, Mono's daughter. Siona is the result of Leo's breeding program. He's been crossing specific genes, controlling certain bloodlines for generations to produce a human invisible to precence, future vision. Leo cannot see Siona with his future vision, and she is the first human ever to have this ability. He cannot predict her. This is another of Leo's gifts to humanity to free us from the so-called preient trap, from surveillance, from being locked into a future or hunted down by a more psychically powerful being to shield us from God. Lita wants Duncan and Siona to be a new sort of Adam and Eve, to combine Siona's God shield gene and Duncan's doubt to create a humanity completely unbeholdened to higher powers. Duncan, unaware of the reasoning behind this genetic matchup, absolutely abhores the idea, and he's right to. His body has been resurrected countless times over the last few thousand years, and he has no idea why, and no memory of any of it. Is he just here to get pimped out over and over again? He feels robbed of agency, resurrected against his will for purposes he doesn't agree with. In an act of rebellion, Duncan goes behind Leo's back and shares a daliance with Hi Norrii, Leo's fiance. While Hi is dedicated to marrying Leo for the greater good, she has very real romantic feelings for Duncan. And the two share a quick trrist before she officially marries Leo.
>> What will we do?
>> We'll cherish this for as long as we live.
>> You sound so final.
>> I am.
>> But we'll see each other every >> Never again like this.
>> We How can you marry him?
Dear Duncan, have you not seen that he needs me more than you do?
>> I'm a hostage.
>> He said, "You've made me fearful. The the two of you together.
>> I never thought it would be easy to serve God."
>> She said, "I just didn't think it would be this hard."
>> This is the final straw for Duncan. On top of the violence, cruelty, and depression, everything Leo does that betrays Duncan's at trades morality, the torture of never being with pushes Duncan over the edge, and he finally decides to take Leo down once and for all. To do this, he teams up with Siona, who has been planning her own rebellion for years now. Unfortunately for Duncan, the opportune moment to strike is during Leo and Que's wedding processional.
They're crossing over a river when Duncan and Siona destroy one end of the long bridge, sending Mono, Leo, and Hi barreling down into the ravine below.
And we'll talk much more about Leo's death in just a moment. But importantly for Duncan, Hi is gone. Siona comforts him in his grief, and the two become responsible for rebuilding the world without a god emperor. Duncan and Siona are a comfort to each other, the only two people who can relate to having to start a new world, and they go on to organically kindle their own connection, which is exactly what Leo wanted. The Duncan, Leo love triangle and Leo's plan for Siona and Duncan to breed are a microcosm of the God Emperor's power. No matter how we try to rebel against God, we always end up serving his purpose.
Duncan finally decides to kill Leo when he realizes he cannot be with Hi. But killing Leo kills Hi as well, which brings Fiona and Duncan closer. In the end, Leo and we die together and Siona and Duncan have children. In trying to foil Leo's plans, Duncan only guarantees they come true. The most important example of this is, of course, Leo's death itself. In killing Leo, Duncan fulfills Leo's plan. The God Emperor's mission is to eliminate the God Emperor, but he can't do it himself. He needs our help. Believers like Mono must help Leo pull the pendulum in one direction so that doubters like Duncan can send us as far in the opposite direction as possible. Duncan thinks he's destroying Leo's godhead. But in doing so, he only proves Leo's wisdom, solidifies his mythic status, and reveals his grand plan. In killing the God Emperor, we immortalize him. This is the horror that JCS's Judas faces. I was used. No matter how we may try to rebel against God, to do the opposite of his will, we can only ever follow it. To doubt the God Emperor is to believe in him. Duncan's doubt in Leo is a belief in the Atrades moral code and an allegiance to humanity. What Duncan cannot understand is that Leo actually agrees with him and the whole purpose of his reign of terror is to instill his rebels with these very values. Duncan is right where Leo wants him. Even in killing Leo, Duncan's rebellion comes from agreement with Leo and unwitting obedience to his plan.
Unbeknownst to Duncan, every aspect of his doubt is actually belief in Leo.
Functionally, you cannot avoid believing in the god emperor.
Siona and Duncan kill by destroying the bridge as he and his whole entourage cross it, including Hi and Mono. Before they even get to the bridge, Mono seems to have a premonition of their place within history.
>> We are not people passing this way.
We are primal elements linking one piece of time to another.
And when we have passed, everything behind us will drop off into no sound. Yet never again the same as it was before we came. This is a strange and sudden moment of awareness from Mono, who up until now we've known for his blind belief and lack of awareness.
As a reminder, Mono has a vague sixth sense of the golden path, but he can't see the future. Perhaps it's the momentous occasion of Hi and Leo's wedding that brings Mono to this place of introspection. Or maybe it's exhaustion from planning these events.
But something about this long walk to the wedding location opens Mono up to a bigger picture of his existence. He's in the same dreamy state when the bridge collapses. Mono sees Leo sliding off the bridge in his royal cart with him and wonders why Leo doesn't activate the cart's levitation devices. As soon as he wonders this, the devices explode. As Mono's hands slipped from the cable severed end, he saw lancing flames strike the cart's dispenser bubbles, piercing one after another in eruptions of golden smoke. Mono stretched his hand over his head as he fell.
>> The smoke. The golden smoke. His robe whipped upward, turning him until his face was directed downward into the abyss. With his gaze on the depths, he recognized a maelstrom of boiling rapids there, the mirror of his life.
Precipitous currents and plunges, all movement gathering up all substance.
Leo's words wound through his mind on a path of golden smoke.
>> Caution is the path to mediocrity.
Gliding passionless mediocrity is all that most people think they can achieve.
>> Mono fell freely then in the ecstasy of awareness. The universe opened for him like clear glass. everything flowing in no time.
>> The golden smoke. LEO, >> HE SCREAMED.
>> SEE, I BELIEVE.
>> THE robe tore away from his shoulders.
Then he turned in the wind of the canyon. One last glimpse of the royal cart tipping, tipping from the shattered roaded. The god emperor slid out of the open end. Something solid smashed into Mono's back. His last sensation. CA knock is the name of Leo's one and only religious ritual that he practices with his followers, the fish speakers. It's a mimic of the Catholic Eucharist. This is my body which will be given up for you.
In line with Leo's love of ambiguous words, CA has many meanings. Among them is a quote I've already used in this video all the way back in Mono's section. Reality or the belief that you know a reality which is the same thing always sets up a ferment in the universe. In Mono's final moments, surrounded by a golden smoke which symbolizes the golden path, he briefly experiences and understands CA. As he stares down at the ravine that will take his life, the endlessly flowing river that mimics the endless continuation of humanity in the golden path. He is aware for a single moment of the greater plan, of his foolishness, his mediocrity, his importance, his failure, and his triumph. For a single moment, he gets it. And for a single moment, he truly, fully, without misunderstanding, believes in the God Emperor. Upon hitting the water, the sandworm skin around Leo dissolves and disperses. The sandworm cannot survive in water, which is why they thrived on Dune when it was a desert. The water returns the sandworm to its laral form. Dozens of baby sandworms scattering from Leo's melting body. Each of these will in time help destroy the terraformed moisture on Arachus, returning it to a desert where they can thrive and produce the spice freely once again. But the worm's intertwined existence with Leo didn't just change Leo, it also changed the worm. Each worm will contain a pearl of awareness. They won't be conscious, but Leo's ancestral memories and his dreams will be in some way preserved within each worm. This sets up the events of the following Dune books, which will include many attempts at worm communication. Siona and Duncan repel down to the river and witness Leo's final moments.
>> Why did you do it?
>> Idaho whispered.
>> My gift, >> Leo said.
>> Nobody will find the descendants of Siona. The oracle cannot see her.
>> What?
>> They spoke in unison, leaning close to hear his fading voice.
>> I give you a new kind of time without parallels. He said, >> "It will always diverge. There will be no concurrent points on its curves. I give you the golden path. That is my gift. Never again will you have the kinds of concurrence that once you had."
>> In Leo's final moments, he reveals the long game, finally able to express himself in his gift to humanity. To shield Siona and Duncan's descendants from future vision, to free humanity from absolute rule. His belief in humanity drove him to become the God Emperor, which has finally allowed him to eliminate the God Emperor once and for all. In this moment, his death, Leo's belief in the God Emperor is finally vindicated and fulfilled. As Leo loses his body, his embodied belief is released in the sandworms and in humanity to live on forever in the golden path. Duncan is the last to witness Leo. His gross dissolving form is too much for Siona, who turns away.
But Duncan, Leo's most ardent doubter and assassin, stays with him till the end. There was a long silence. Then Siona's voice.
>> Don't listen to him. He was mad.
>> Of course, >> Leo said.
>> Madness in method. That is genius.
>> Siona, do you understand this?
>> Idaho asked.
>> How plain to Aola voice. She understands. Leto said, >> "It is human to have your soul brought to a crisis you did not anticipate.
That's the way it always is with humans." Mono understood at last.
>> I wish he'd hurry up and die.
>> Siona said, >> "I am the divided god, and you would make me whole."
>> Leo said, >> "Duncan, I think of all my Duncan, I approve of you the most." Leo is aware of how Mono's final moments finally forced him to face his true reality. And he's aware of Siona and Duncan's impending crisis when they realize their new responsibility. With Leo gone, it's Siona and Duncan's job to rebuild humanity. The final line from Leo is another of his poetic double meanings.
>> I am the divided god and you would make me whole.
>> We can read this in two ways. One, I am the divided god and you would rather me be whole. Siona, like Mono, wants to collapse Leo's paradox, but in the opposite direction. She wants to view him as a villain, as a single, understandable thing, but he's all of it. He is humanity. Two, I am the divided god, and only you can fulfill me. Make me whole. Siona and Duncan are the final piece of Leo's plan. All of Leo's paradoxes, his internal divisions, his empire, his rule, and now his death have led to this very moment. And only Siona and Duncan's new humanity can fulfill his purpose. Both of these interpretations are true to the moment, a final wordless truth from Leo. And he concludes with his explicit approval of Duncan.
>> Duncan, I think of all my Duncan, I approve of you the most. In successfully killing Leo, this Duncan has become Leo's favorite by fulfilling his plan.
Duncan's rebellion only served Leo's purpose, and in this moment, the hollowess of his success becomes clear to him. Of all the Duncan, Leo approved of him the most. He never really opposed Leo at all. In Leo's final moments, Duncan becomes aware that he has always believed in the God Emperor.
here with the minority report.
We will of course comply with the majority decision to apply a careful screening, editing and censorship to the journals from Darus Balot. But our arguments must be heard now that all of the journals are in our hands.
authenticated and translated, the clear shape of the Atrades design emerges. We know that the visionaries cannot see us nor predict our decisions. No death can find all of humankind. Surely no reasoning human can escape the journal's revelations in this regard. Just as the primitive machine with which Leo II concealed his journals can only teach us about the evolution of our machines, just so that ancient awareness must be allowed to speak to us. It would be a crime against both historical accuracy and science for us to abandon our attempts at communication with those pearls of awareness which the journals have located. Is Leo II lost in his endless dream? Or could he be reawakened to our times, brought to full consciousness as a storehouse of historical accuracy? For the minority, we have no doubt that historians must listen to that voice from our beginnings. If it is only the journals, we must listen. We must listen across at least as many years into our future as those journals lay hidden in our past.
We will not try to predict the discoveries yet to be made within those pages. We say only that they must be made. How can we turn our backs on our most important inheritance? As the poet Lon Bramless has said, we are the fountain of surprises.
Our belief shapes the future. The movements and leaders we follow, the ideals we choose to embody, even the doubts we harbor, and the ways we rebel are all facets of the complex, slippery force we call belief. When it comes to the God Emperor, to see him and believe is to completely misunderstand him. To be the God Emperor is to embody a belief in both belief and doubt. And to doubt the God Emperor, to kill him, is to immortalize him, to fulfill his mission.
The God Emperor is a figure comprised of paradox and contradiction. To support him is to hurt him, and to oppose him is to serve him. Being the God Emperor is a choice, a sacrifice that looks more like a triumph, and no one will ever understand him while he's alive. But his plan saves us, creates a future where we may one day neither believe in his godhood nor doubt his leadership, but simply understand his humanity. The God Emperor is both belief and doubt because he is human. He is all of us. He's our greatest fear and our only hope. He's our distant past and our imminent future. The God Emperor is humanity in its highest highs and lowest lows. Its beauty and kindness and terror and hatred. And we are all the God Emperor.
To be human is to embody belief and doubt every single day to choose how we use our power to shape the future. To be human is to be misunderstood, to care, to be contradictory and ironic and earnest and wrong. It is both the most destructive and constructive act anyone could ever do. To believe, to doubt, to be human. Jonathan Glazer's 2023 film, The Zone of Interest, follows a Nazi commandant and his family living in a nice house right next to Ashvitz. The comedant is good at his job, a high-ranking official who really believes in the Nazi mission. The family goes about their business, living an idyllic lifestyle with the barbed wire walls and smoke stacks of the camp looming in the background. It's normal to them, simply set dressing, not worth questioning or doubting. At the end of the movie, the common is walking down a set of stairs at his office when he stops for a moment and suddenly vomits.
The movie cuts suddenly to modern-day footage of a custodial crew cleaning the Ashvitz museum. The only time in the entire film we actually see the inside of the camp. When we return to the common dot, he's staring off down the hallway in a days. He pauses for a moment and then continues down the stairs. If the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls was a glimpse of the past, then the zone of interest lets us imagine a glimpse into the future. Of course, the commodant couldn't see the Ashvitz museum like we could, but he knows what he's doing. He knows what he believes in now, how it drives his actions every day. And in this scene, it seems on some subconscious level, he's aware of the harm he inflicts. His belief, his doubt right here in the present has the power to shape, to change the future. But unlike Leo, who had a vision of the future and gave everything he had to change it, the commonant shrugs it off and continues on his way down. Belief shapes history. The beliefs of the past shape our present, and our beliefs now shape the future. So, what should we believe in? Where should we place our energy and our loyalty if our survival depends on it? How do we make sense of the beliefs that came before us, shaped us? And how can we change them for the better, create a better future for humanity? How do we know when to believe, when to doubt, when they're the same thing? If belief and doubt are both fundamentally human and necessary, then what difference does it make? Why should we even care about humanity's future if it'll outlive us? What is there to believe in?
>> We carry all of our ancestry forward like a living wave. All of the hopes and joys and griefs, the agonies and the exaltations of our past, nothing within those memories remains completely without meeting our influence. Not as long there is a humankind somewhere. We have that brief infinity all around us.
The golden path of forever to which we can continually pledge our puny but inspired allegiance.
>> Do you believe in the God Emperor?
Holy crap. I cannot believe this is done and ready to be put out. I real ones know this has been four years in the works. This was supposed to be my first ever video. Um it existed in a very different form then. This is like I started over from scratch.
I'm so happy that this is that this is complete. I'm so proud of this is my best video. I am so proud of this. I hope you guys love it as much as I do because I have not I've never been prouder of a video. Um, wow.
Wow. Holy crap. As these credits and Patreon names roll, uh, it is everybody's favorite time, which is the Patreon question of the video. Today we have one from TCMF123 who asks, "If you could write your dream always sunny episode, not a fixing episode, but just your dream episode, what would it be and what would happen?"
I love episodes like um The Gang Gets Trapped. I love episodes like The Great Recession. I just like when the gang pals around and has a good time.
Honestly, I would love to see more Charlie and D shenanigans. That one where the two of them do deaf poetry and they go to the chicken place and he wants to get the beak on the side. She's like, "You don't have to get beak at all." That is a classic. I like when that is a pairing and that rarely happens these days. So, I guess I would do sort of a Charlie D episode. Um, they could do deaf poetry again or I don't know. I like when Charlie makes, you know, music and plays. Like, if the two of them could get in on some kind of creative endeavor together, that would be fun. And then maybe Dennis and Mac then have a pairing because, you know, those two are great together when they're not um hating each other and being horrible. Also, the idea I had in my original video for like a drag themed episode, I feel like that would be really great. Um so yeah, a combination of that. Anyway, thank you so much for watching this. Follow me on all the things. Um join my Patreon to get bonus videos. You could have seen this video two weeks earlier if you were on my Patreon. Um, and they also get bonus videos, a extra bonus video every month.
They're really fun. I made one about Fallout Boy.
>> I'll stop wearing black when they make a darker color.
>> I made one about um a show called Ugliest House in America, which was pretty fun.
>> Pit to hell. Pitch black. Can't even see the bottom. Spiders filled with spiders.
Um, I think it's pretty awesome. But yeah, I'm just watch this video. Watch it again. Send it to three friends. have them watch it. Like, I just want people to see this. I'm so happy. I can't even talk. I'm so happy and proud of this video and I hope that um people uh watch it. So, um yeah, thank you so much. Um read Dune, read God Emperor. I have the book right here.
I did it. I did it.
Thank you. Bye.
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