Consider this a reminder for people currently watching Star Trek, old and new.
Logic and controlled emotion aren’t inherent to being a Vulcan. Somehow gaining Vulcan traits, or biologically transforming into a Vulcan, will not make you logical and emotionless. In fact, quite the opposite would happen.
Vulcans used to be warlike, barbaric (as Spock would describe them) and nearly wiped themselves out. It was the teaching of Surak in the philosophy of pure logic, after centuries of war, that made Vulcans what they are today. Vulcans do this by training logic and emotional control throughout their childhood and teenage years. Ultimately culminating in Kolinahr, the final stage to “purge emotion”. But Vulcans still experience emotion, and their state of control is something that requires constant maintenance through meditation and practice.
Vulcans are far more emotional and passionate than even Humans. If a Human so much as houses a portion of a Vulcan’s Katra (the mind/spirit), said Human would struggle immensely to keep their feeling under control.
I’m writing all this because I’m getting the feeling that this very important part about Vulcans is being forgotten (perhaps more-so by the current writers of Star Trek).
Kirk@startrek.website 3 weeks ago
I haven’t seen the episode yet that I think you’re alluding to, but yes Vulcans have always been presented as having a kind of Buddhist-style philosophy with the important qualification that they would literally destroy themselves as an advanced race without it. The “religion” is an important social technology to enable them to explore the cosmos.
It’s obviously alluding to humans too, if we can’t control our innate animal reactions like tribalism and greed then we too will not be able to harness our own (physical) technology without self-destructing.
CmdrShepard49@sh.itjust.works 3 weeks ago
Plus yet another data point is the fact (if my memory is correct) that Romulans and Vulcans are the same species except one split off while the other devoted themselves to logic to control their emotions.
Kirk@startrek.website 3 weeks ago
Yeah true, I suppose that kind of defeats my whole idea that Vulcans would self-destruct if they allowed emotions to control them.
setsneedtofeed@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
I’ve long seen Vulcans as something of a cautionary example of going to an extreme. Rather than living alongside their emotions and learning their appropriate uses, Vulcans just repress them until it all occasionally explodes in an uncontrolled outburst.
Trek has from the beginning framed the strict adherence to cold logic as a flaw. That’s why Spock got a bunch of people killed on the Galileo 7.