Is the idea to have no emotion affect your decisions at all, almost a Jedi thing but worse? To be without earthly attachment?... Or is it to accept and control the emotions, acknowledging them while outwardly stifling them so no one knows what's actually driving you?
This is my vision: your emotions never go away. They flow underneath all of your decisions like a river. You know they are there, but you choose not to act on them. While humans' response to emotion is to try to satisfy them, Vulcans' response is always to seek serenity in logic instead. I don't think it's just about "outwardly stifling" them to keep up appearances because I don't think Vulcans want to be driven by emotion at all - they want to be driven by logic. As they become better disciples of logic, the amount of emotion they experience diminishes and therefore becomes easier to control, maybe even unnoticeable -- kind of like the difference between choosing not to scratch a hideously itchy case of chicken pox that's spread all over your body vs. the difference between choosing not to scratch a single mosquito bite that's healing anyway. In my mind, that's what Spock is aiming for, but it's unattainable for him because he is partly human.
That said, I don't think emotion can be avoided entirely. I think personal inclination, which is a kind of muted emotion, plays a role in decision-making, even if it is a low priority. For example, I imagine choosing a career is like this: 1. What do I have an aptitude for? 2. Are there viable job prospects in these fields? 3. If not, is my aptitude so strong that I would survive a competitive job environment? 4. If I am equally suited to several jobs, each of which has equally good job prospects, which would I most like to do?
How do they choose what color of towels they buy at the store? How do they know if they prefer broccoli over spinach? Blue pen or black pen? How do they decide between jelly donut and sprinkled?
Okay, this brings out my debate coach/philosophy student side, but anyway...there's this moral philosopher Kant who says that you can never, ever consider consequences when you make decisions. (little Spock actually quotes him in the movie, by the way, so maybe I'm not being psycho in bringing him up.) Consequences are unpredictable and subject to our individual evaluation of their desirability, therefore, if we make moral decisions based on them, we will live in a society with no principles. Instead, he wants us to use logic to create a set of inviolable moral principles by searching for actions whose rationale contains no logical contradictions. BUT he has one important exception for the rule: when morality is not at stake, you're free to consider consequences, like when you decide what shoes you want to wear.
How does this apply to Vulcans? I imagine that if it's a very small decision with no logical consequences either way, you can follow your personal inclination. The difference is that you wouldn't feel pissed off or dissatisfied if you really prefer blue pens but the store is out.
However, I also think that Vulcan society would have fewer of these miniscule choices. For example, instead of making bathroom towels in every color of the rainbow, stores would sell towels in the shades of whatever natural dyes are easily obtained in the area. It's not logical for anyone to devote their interest to searching for purple dye on a planet that's mostly red, figuring out how to ship it across the world, cleaning harmful chemical dyes from the river, etc. etc.
I also think it's important to note that a lot of these choices seem driven by a desire for serenity. If you just hear "Vulcans have no emotions," you might expect every building on the planet to be a grey concrete cubicle. Instead, all the buildings we see there are spacious and beautiful. I think the goal is to surround yourself with this restrained elegance and beauty that harmonizes with your natural surroundings and thereby soothes your emotions.
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Date: 2009-05-30 02:22 pm (UTC)This is my vision: your emotions never go away. They flow underneath all of your decisions like a river. You know they are there, but you choose not to act on them. While humans' response to emotion is to try to satisfy them, Vulcans' response is always to seek serenity in logic instead. I don't think it's just about "outwardly stifling" them to keep up appearances because I don't think Vulcans want to be driven by emotion at all - they want to be driven by logic. As they become better disciples of logic, the amount of emotion they experience diminishes and therefore becomes easier to control, maybe even unnoticeable -- kind of like the difference between choosing not to scratch a hideously itchy case of chicken pox that's spread all over your body vs. the difference between choosing not to scratch a single mosquito bite that's healing anyway. In my mind, that's what Spock is aiming for, but it's unattainable for him because he is partly human.
That said, I don't think emotion can be avoided entirely. I think personal inclination, which is a kind of muted emotion, plays a role in decision-making, even if it is a low priority. For example, I imagine choosing a career is like this:
1. What do I have an aptitude for?
2. Are there viable job prospects in these fields?
3. If not, is my aptitude so strong that I would survive a competitive job environment?
4. If I am equally suited to several jobs, each of which has equally good job prospects, which would I most like to do?
How do they choose what color of towels they buy at the store? How do they know if they prefer broccoli over spinach? Blue pen or black pen? How do they decide between jelly donut and sprinkled?
Okay, this brings out my debate coach/philosophy student side, but anyway...there's this moral philosopher Kant who says that you can never, ever consider consequences when you make decisions. (little Spock actually quotes him in the movie, by the way, so maybe I'm not being psycho in bringing him up.) Consequences are unpredictable and subject to our individual evaluation of their desirability, therefore, if we make moral decisions based on them, we will live in a society with no principles. Instead, he wants us to use logic to create a set of inviolable moral principles by searching for actions whose rationale contains no logical contradictions. BUT he has one important exception for the rule: when morality is not at stake, you're free to consider consequences, like when you decide what shoes you want to wear.
How does this apply to Vulcans? I imagine that if it's a very small decision with no logical consequences either way, you can follow your personal inclination. The difference is that you wouldn't feel pissed off or dissatisfied if you really prefer blue pens but the store is out.
However, I also think that Vulcan society would have fewer of these miniscule choices. For example, instead of making bathroom towels in every color of the rainbow, stores would sell towels in the shades of whatever natural dyes are easily obtained in the area. It's not logical for anyone to devote their interest to searching for purple dye on a planet that's mostly red, figuring out how to ship it across the world, cleaning harmful chemical dyes from the river, etc. etc.
I also think it's important to note that a lot of these choices seem driven by a desire for serenity. If you just hear "Vulcans have no emotions," you might expect every building on the planet to be a grey concrete cubicle. Instead, all the buildings we see there are spacious and beautiful. I think the goal is to surround yourself with this restrained elegance and beauty that harmonizes with your natural surroundings and thereby soothes your emotions.