for the record, like almost all big classic sci-fi, these books (dune) are remarkably bigoted and reductive. i still like space stories and political intrigue tho.
alt text: Trade Offer from Sand Worm Leto Atreides. You receive: 4000 years of planet bound subjugation. Spice, eventually. Famine. Sex ninjas from outer space. Golden Path… I recieve: Like 70 something Duncan Idahos. Gentle Hwi.
Absolutely but it still kinda fits with the story.
Mankind, all the eggs in one basket.
Some evil is coming… and mankind just tends to want to congregate
So… what they need is a truly horrible despot whose influence and power is so absolute that once they’re free of him they’ll disperse and never look back.
So… yeah… it makes a kind of odd sense… still bonkers though
Yes, “teach them a lesson they’ll feel in their bones.” Although I thought the focus of being a despot, along with the Scattering, was to teach a humanity a lesson about avoiding the “Pharaonic Disease”; to reject authoritarians.
That was one of the points, yes. The lives of almost all humans in the galaxy were reduced to the same conditions, and put under ever increasing authoritarianism, that they would all break at once and forever have a shared hatred for despots.