Prescience in Dune pt. 1 — Paul Atreides
Audio Recording of this Theory
Prescience. The not-so-simple ability to see the future, this power is the intentionally obscure key-log of the Dune universe. Part 1 looks at the introduction and use of prescience in the original protagonist of the Dune series Paul Atreides. And if the first Dune book outlines the rise of the prescient ability of the Kwisatz Haderach manifest in Paul Atreides and how it can lead to glorious success, the second book in the series, Dune Messiah, openly questions the value of prescience and the prescient over and over again. Put together, the two books outline the famous Herbert quote well “charismatic leaders ought to come with a warning label on their forehead: May be dangerous to your health.” Trained as Paul Atreides was, both charisma and confidence of character enthrall the universe, and his reliance on prescience gave him that same false confidence to overcome his own doubts until it was too late.
But this essay is about that unique characteristic of prescience, achieved by few yet coveted by many in the Dune universe. The first long expository explanation of prescience in the Dune universe comes in one of the first throne room scenes in Dune Messiah. Stillgar, Paul’s right hand man, has been troubled by recent events and essentially asks Paul if he can’t just “see” into the future to find the best course of action. Paul responds internally first — “how could he express the limits of the inexpressible? Should he speak of fragmentation, the natural destiny of all power? How could someone who has never experienced the spice change of prescience conceive an awareness that conceived no localized spacetime? No personal image vector, or associated sensory captives.” Eventually he said “the uninitiated perceive presence as obeying a natural law. But it would be just as correct to say it’s heaven speaking to us. Being able to read the future is a harmonious act of man’s being. In other words prediction is a natural consequence in the wave of the present. It wears the guise of nature, but such powers can’t be used from an attitude that prestates aims and purposes. Does a ship caught in a wave say where it’s going? There’s no cause and effect in the oracle. Causes become occasions of convections and confluences. Places where the currents meet. Accepting presence, you fill your being with concept repugnant to the intellect. Your intellectual consciousness therefore rejects them. In rejecting, intellect becomes a part of the processes and is subjugated.”
Intentionally dense, intentionally obscure, intentionally unavailable to us, the way I think about it is that key middle line about the ‘ship caught in a wave say where its going.’ As Irulan exclaims after this diatribe, “It’s chaos! There’s no consistency!” To Paul, he sees time unfold before him in so many threads he can’t keep up with them all. Moment to moment in Dune Messiah, he is constantly checking how the events unfolding match what he has seen as potential futures. He can see certain paths, like killing Bijaz or unveiling the tlailaxu plot he knows is going on, or even saving Chani’s life as options he cannot pursue as he knows they lead to the ruin of humanity. As he drifts through the choices others make and the world presented to him, he is constantly trying to steer a ship that he doesn’t have control over, just like the rest of us. The main difference is that he can see ahead where each direction may lead, even if it’s just seeing it “lead” into darkness. But that sight is in real time, as we live our lives, it doesn’t seem that he can access it at will. He can ‘remember’ his precinct moments in the same way he can remember any ordinary memory happening to him.
This actually is quite a limit on prescience, and Paul often clings desperately to a future he can barely see with confidence. Often his decisions are ‘simply’ the result of the rigorous bene gesserit and mentat training he was put through during his youth. What his believers and council often take for prescience can often be attributed to those training sources, a fact which Paul does not do much to dispel, only increasing his mysticism.
We get this picture in Dune Messiah with the many times Paul cannot see imminent futures he “should” be able to. The hard lines established are that prescience absolutely does not work when there is another oracle or prescient one involved, something paul says anyone can do and a device used throughout the dune series to attack prescient ones. He doesn’t see many ruinous events coming — the death of his firstborn son, whether the Landsraat will ally with the Imperium after he uses atomics on the original emperor’s shield wall (as the charter says they cannot be used against humans), he doesn’t foresee Alia being captured by that force, nor Feyd Ratha or Count Fenring essentially at all. These limits greatly disturb the faithful, as when Stillgar realizes once that Paul could not see their enemies taking a sandworm offworld he had the “overwhelming sensation his idols admitted blasphemous weakness.”
During the fighting of Dune Messiah, his enemies use a device called a Stone Burner, an atomic bomb type of weapon that had the effect of blinding anyone in the area. This also acted as a rhetorical device to show the exactitude of Muad’dib’s prescience. He could “see” everything as it happened, down the dirt on clothes, placement of fingers or individual papers, turns and rocks and things to trip him up while walking, and more. Knowing what we do about prescience, I think what we are seeing here is that Paul Muad’dib can still follow paths that he can see and understand, so he sticks to those paths when he is blind for much of Dune Messiah. Combine that experience with the memory capabilities of Bene Gesserit training, mentat style computational awareness, and buckets of the Spice Melange, Paul Muad’dib ends up with a fairly clear picture of every event as it happens.
His peak capability still does rely on a first view through the “eyes” of prescience, and as Paul said about the Guild Navigators abilities, “one cannot see past a decision that one does not understand.” As paul tries to remake the universe in his image, he comes up against the raw complexity of the systems he keeps trying to fit into neat boxes. A “snap back” force he cannot contend. He could understand his actions while a threat was present, but as he worked beyond that threat he could not understand the next move for his empire. Seeing only a prescient future of destruction, he resolves to follow the path of blind into the desert. A fully regained Duncan Idaho, no longer the blank ghola Hayt, looks out at the sand where Paul Atreides has disappeared into the night, realizing what he had just accomplished: “Paul had set in motion a whirling vortex and nothing could stand in its path. The Bene Tlailax and the Guild had overplayed their hands and had lost; were discredited. The quizarat was shaken by the treason of Korba and others high within it. And Paul’s final voluntary act — his ultimate acceptance of their customs (by walking into the desert when blind) had ensured the loyalty of the Fremen to him and to his house. He was one of them forever now.”
Despite becoming blind because he did not know what would happen next, and seeing only part of Leto’s Golden Path at this point, he is unwilling to continue the next steps of that Golden Path himself and so walks blindly into the desert and away from his religious hegemony in an attempt to seal his legacy. Paul Muad’dib, by having descendents with their own prescient ability, had set the stage for a new kind of conflict that is not fully realized until Children of Dune, but think about if you had two prescient people, vying for authority. The Zensunni Long Koan wrote that “In the one act of predicting an accurate future, Muad’dib introduced an element of development and growth into the very prescience through which he saw human existence. By this, he brought uncertainty onto himself. Seeking the absolute of orderly prediction, he amplified disorder, distorting prediction.
If you can predict the stock market thats one thing, but if everyone can predict the stock market then the pre-emptory changes they make will mess with your prediction.
In Part 2 we will see how these powers are heightened by the Leto Atreides the second and the unveiling of the Golden Path.