A much needed, but probably rote, discussion on Vulcan emotions in Star Trek

[timepiececlock]

I feel like I can't write Spock's POV until I get this, and there's something fundamental about the whole thing that is escaping me.



So, in the movie, young Spock talks about a Kolinar ceremony to "purge all emotion". I looked it up and it seems TOS Spock almost took it in the first movie (the only one I haven't seen), but didn't. We know the new Spock didn't, because he joined Starfleet instead. So... he still has all his emotions. He's clearly repressed them in an unhealthy way that is different from the other Spock, and other Vulcans. TOS Spock would never have the kind of anger management problem / burst of blind rage that this Spock had. Also, he was a sensitive kid, who seemed only to learn to fake stoicism instead of actually being emotionless. This Spock is seething with emotion he doesn't express...blame the actor ZQ for staring soulfully into the camera, but it's true. So in fact, writing Spock himself isn't exactly the problem. He's just a really repressed guy, fine.

It's all the other Vulcans I don't understand. And in order to understand Spock's goals of being Vulcanish, I've got to understand what he was TRYING to be.

In short... I don't get the whole emotionless religion thing. 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 an important distinction, because one is an absence of emotional motivation, and one is just being super reserved in public.

If the goal is to reach a mental state where they have no emotions... is Sarek atypical for loving his wife? Is nuSpock a total failure at being a good little Vulcan?

I know what they say in the movie, about how Vulcans actually feel very deeply, but that seems to directly contradict with everything else I've read about it, and with the whole religion of emotionlessness. I especially don't get what that means for, like, daily life.

Do they only avoid anger/fear/sadness/pride/humor/joy, etc?

Do they feel CONFUSION?

What about the smaller emotions? Like curiosity, ambivalence, vanity, nostalgia, cynicism? Excitement, thankfulness, lethargy?

Self-confidence?

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?

Without emotion, how do you even operate in a world where you're constantly forced to make little decisions that have no logical answer, but become an expression of your tastes and preferences? ...preferences come from the emotion of pleasure/affection, and irritation/dissatisfaction.

But they can't have a favorite color, because THEY HAVE NO EMOTIONS!

Or they just pretend?

I'm confused.

I'm especially confused because Older Spock, Spock from the movies 1-6, is not emotionless that I remember. He's pretty stoic, sure, but he obviously loves the crew and his BFF Jim, and he obviously cares deeply about the Federation's safety. If I were going to write about Spock Prime, I'd just write about him as this pleasant, wise old guy who stays calm in almost anything but has a secret preference for Earth carrots and misses his old friend Jim Kirk. The idea that he's supposed to emotionless because Vulcans are, would never enter into my concept of the character at all. I'd write him as a fully empathic character, with complete active range of emotions even if he doesn't voice them very often.

Would that be, like, the completely WRONG reading of what his character is meant to be? Is this the noobie failure equivalent of assuming that hobbits are all short because they don't have domesticated cows so none of them took enough calcium as a child?

Did I miss the memo at the beginning of everything that said to all the fans, "This is what the Vulcan shit is all about?" My questions can be summarized thus:

1. What is this Vulcan shit about?
2. What does that mean for Old TOS Spock?
3. What does that mean for new AU Spock? [as of the end of the movie]
4. Are either Spocks striving to be more or less of this philosophy?

cross-linked to spock_uhura

Comments

it would be awesome to actually complete my thought!

[rawles.livejournal.com]

STXI!Spock doesn't suppress his emotions in a way that's any more or less healthy than any other Vulcan. He's just worse at it, ostensibly because of his half-human heritage.

Vulcans are not, as stated in the movie, emotionless and nor is their general goal to be so. They feel everything very intensely which is their reason for suppressing their emotions. Their religion arose from the fact that they were once an extremely violent and volatile people and Surak (the originator of said philosophy) decided that being ruled by logic instead of impulse was the only way to keep them from destroying themselves. (There were, of course, people who rejected this philosophy and they basically left and became the Romulans.)

The idea is for them to suppress their emotions to the point that their emotions have no bearing on their decisions and their actions thus leaving nothing but pure, efficient logic to govern them. They still feel things. They just don't, can't, and/or won't allow themselves to express them or, in many cases, even acknowledge them (depending on the situation).

With TOS!Spock, one thing to keep in mind is that the portrayal of how much he felt or didn't feel was fairly inconsistent at certain points. But initially in the series, his reaction to his heritage was to want to be more Vulcan then Vulcan, so to speak. And his character arc, as it were, was about him learning to...be more human, basically. And to not be ashamed or unwilling to love his friends, etc. So Spock Prime, at that point in his life, is certainly far more emotional than the average Vulcan would be because he's been so humanized.

Whereas AOS!Spock starts off indulging more of his humanity from a young age and identifying a lot more with his mother's side of his heritage than TOS!Spock. This is best exemplified in his relationship with Nyota which is entirely illogical for many reasons and clearly based on his feelings for her and not much else. (With, of course, the subtext behind Sarek admitting that he married Amanda because he loved her being a validation of Spock's own decision to love a human woman.) So, he is also, in his own way, quite humanized, but clearly nowhere near as at peace with it as Spock Prime.

So overall a good thing to keep in mind wrt how he behaves and his internal processes is that he's feeling a shit-ton of things but he's only very rarely going to want to indulge in them or let them be apparent. Think of it as uber, uber reserved. Even in private. He, for instance, is obviously capable of letting things slip with Nyota, but he's not going to like come into his quarters and, figuratively, let his shoulders slump and then be totes expressive or whatever.

Also, an addendum re: kolinahr, I tend to think of it as sort of like becoming a priest or a nun. It's in some way the ultimate expression of the philosophy, but it's also not attainable or meant for everyone.

looooooooooooooooooooooooooooong

[fairhearing.livejournal.com]

All Vulcans still feel emotion -- EXTREMELY strong emotion. Spock's choice, IIRC, wasn't to "purge" them per se but to purge emotional expression and response. For Vulcans who have gone through the ceremony, they acknowledge that they are feeling an emotion, but in a completely distant fenced-off part of their brains. Instead, logic is the number one most important choice in deciding anything.

So, for your towel question above. A Vulcan would probably take into consideration the quality of the towel, the decor of her home so far, the most soothing or energizing wavelengths of certain colors, etc. in her decision-making. If, however, there are no non-emotional variables -- if all the colors would have exactly the same practical application -- she would then choose the color she "likes most" (or "finds most aesthetically pleasing"). It's only logical to do so at that point.

So all Vulcans feel. It's the expression of those feelings that they seek to erase. Primarily because hundreds of years ago they were basically a completely chaotic species with no control whatsoever over their overpowering emotions, and you can imagine the mess THAT was. (Romulans span-off from Vulcans around that time to colonize their own planet, and they're still violent and passionate and warlike -- like Nero, for one -- even though they are basically the exact same species as Vulcans.)

So there was one philosopher-dude who basically saved Vulcan civilization with his tenets of logic, order, and rationality, which Vulcans have followed ever since. Emotional outbursts are considered very unseemly -- like if a human lost control of his or her bodily functions, for instance, or rudely didn't even TRY to control a burp or whatnot. They don't try to deny that emotions exist, far from it, and they're certainly not always in control (see Pon Farr season). They just seek a proper (private) time and place and method (usually meditation) to work them out.

Interesting to note, a fully-purged Vulcan, like Sarek, doesn't live his or her life without damage from constant emotional repression. It makes them more susceptible to Bendii Syndrome, where at the end of their lives, so many years of repressing their feelings results in a complete and tragic meltdown into uncontrollable, sobbing, foaming-at-the-mouth emotional breakdown. Sarek actually died from it.

So, that answers 1.

(2) Old TOS Spock learned long ago, and with the help of his bff Jim, to be more emotionally expressive but not lose control. He's very comfortable in his own skin. (He also got more chill after he died in Star Trek II and cam back to life in Star Trek III.) He does NOT seek to be like his father and repress all emotions.

(3) New AU Spock is but a lad, so he's probably going to struggle with this for a while, particularly as "being more Vulcan" probably seems like what he MUST do to honor his lost homeworld and keep their culture alive. But I suspect, since he's already got love and anger and friendship in his life, he'll end up veering toward the middle ground. Probably his development will be similar to TOS Spock's, who in the series was much more repressed and therefore tended to have outbursts of happiness or rage when circumstances got intense. (Sound familiar?) TOS Spock also beat up Kirk at LEAST twice to calm down again: another pattern.

(4) Both are pretty much striving to be "less Vulcan," IMO. Not "more human" -- they'll both probably still sigh at McCoy gettin' in a tiffy, for instance -- but definitely something more moderate.

Also I got ttly beaten ;_;

[celestinenox]

Here's the way I understand it (and why mention of the Kolinar to "purge all emotion" confused the shit out of me, too):

Vulcans do not lack, and never have lacked, all emotion. Sarek is not atypical for loving his wife, he's atypical for loving a human. In fact, Vulcan emotions are supposedly deeper, stronger, and more difficult to control than human emotions.

Proof that this Kolinar doesn't purge emotion completely is the Next Gen episode "Sarek" wherein the character's emotional control has been weakened by Bendii Syndrome. Because his control is weakening, he begins to empathically broadcast them to the entire ship, causing people to be angry and fight for no reason. Picard offers to, through a mind meld, share Sarek's emotions long enough for the ambassador to discuss treaty with the people he's there to talk to. Picard has to feel everything Sarek feels, and it's pretty draining.

So. There. I don't know what this Kolinar is supposed to do, but it doesn't "purge all emotion." At best, it's probably a religious ceremony that somehow helps to make a Vulcan's emotional control complete. Maybe if he'd gone through it, Spock wouldn't have lost his cool.

That's what makes the most sense to me.

[meiou-set.livejournal.com]

Fantastic post! I was also wondering about the details of Kolinar. I got the impression (might be oh so wrong) that it was some self training thing. By "purge all emotion" I thought it was more that through Kolinar those participants would learn to completely control all emotion or something like that.

[igrockspock.livejournal.com]

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.

[asim.livejournal.com]

Allow me to augment a few of the good answers. Please note that much of what I write below is my personal fanwank, although I try to cite examples in the series to underline it:

1) I think one way of looking at it, from the majority of evidence is this. Emotions are contagious; we Humans increase our tendency to cry when one person does, and one person's anger can inflame a group. Pre-Sarek Vulcans have that many, many times worse, and lean towards the "anger/fury" part of the spectrum, to boot. If Vulcans were highly emotional, and tended towards loving and caring, this would not be so big an issue.
Thus, really, the point is to not infect with Emotions. And the way to do this is to restrict the expression, thereof. And the way Vulcans do that, is to avoid expressing emotions where it's reasonable. There are various "mechanics" in the show about what they do internally; the "repress vs. restrain" debate is a long-standing one in fandom, and not likely to be solved today. :)

2) OK. The first we actually see of Spock is very illuminating, actually. The 1st, unaired pilot for the show is called THE CAGE, and much of it's footage was reused in the TOS show THE MENAGERIE, thus bringing it into canon.
Spock is very emotional in it. He smiles. He shouts. He acts much like a Human. In short, he's very likely rebelling against Vulcan strictures regarding emotional displays.
By the time of the actual series, of course, this changes. Mostly. Others have pointed out that Spock is hardly a consistent "cold fish"; usually that comes out when he's placed in command (for example, "GALILEO SEVEN"). One can suspect, in fact, that TOS-era Spock finds being in command really bloody stressful, and over-compensates by becoming incredibly unemotional to an actually illogical (for commanding Humans) point.
Outside of that, though, he's mostly Stoic, but friendly enough to people he trusts. Jim goes without question, but his sparring with McCoy should be mentioned, as well as his flirting with Uhura. 90%+ of the time, though, he's focused like a laser on the job, and happy enough to do so.
When there is emotional stress -- bana5 just did another story based on one of those point in TOS, THIS SIDE OF PARADISE -- the ship is his refuge. On some level, one senses that TOS-era Spock aches to express emotions like he used to, and I mean REALLY aches in ways one suspects most Vulcans don't. But something stops him, and we're never privy to what.
One also suspects that this ache became so great, during the ENTERPRISE refit period before the first movie, that it drove him to finally "purge" all these pesky emotions with the Kohlinar. Keep in mind it's NOT PERMANENT; Kohlinar requires you to keep up strong mental walls, and goodness only knows how they manage during pon farr. Think of it like a Monk/Nun's vow of chastity, and I think it makes much more sense.
From that movie, where Spock kind of gets an epiphany about his emotions, he grows as a character. Spock in WRATH OF KHAN is a breath of fresh air; one senses he defers to Kirk not because he fears command, but simply because Kirk kicks ass in these kinds of situations, and it's logical to put that guy in change. (Plus, he knows Kirk misses command.)
He also is tutoring Savvick, and he's not shy about teasing the hell outta her, and thus confusing her like crazy. *smirk* He shows a lot of affection toward her in the film, and is, indeed, the perfect person, at that point in his life, to help her understand the cavalcade of emotional responses, some of which have far more to do with her early upbringing than her "heritage" (at least in my opinion).
Anyway, I say all that to point out that pre-death, Spock was very much the same Spock we see today -- maybe a wee bit more constricted, and certainly lacking the wealth of wisdom the Spock of the movie has, but that movie pretty much has the template for the Spock of the rest of the movies, excepting his development in SEARCH FOR and VOYAGE HOME, both of which reflect that journey in a highly compressed timeframe.

(more to come)

[asim.livejournal.com]

3) My personal belief is that both Original Recipe and Extra Crispy Spocks are, at the rough timeframe of entering Starfleet, more than a little rebellious. I've already pointed out the evidence for this in TOS Spock, but it's pretty well lighted up with what we see of AU Spock. In the latter's case, his rebellion is far more quiet, but arguably more intense, with the Uhura relationship. But that makes some sense; unlike in the Original timeline, this Spock and Sarek never broke contact over his joining Starfleet, so he has more incentive to keep following the Vulcan ways, at least externally.
He keeps that very rebellious spirit throughout the movie. Spock is eager, even happy, to take command, and actually does a pretty good job of it -- the decision to join the fleet isn't crazy, just not what was needed ATM. One senses that this Spock is more likely to be an active part of the crew, rather than aloof to all but a select few -- although I'm willing to be wrong about that.

4) See all the history above? The answer is, it depends on when you ask; although the great weigh leans towards not showing emotion, most days. It's hard to tell from the end of the movie how Spock will develop, because they really leave him, once the point of his rage is dead, in some level of flux. He has to get talked into not leaving Starfleet by himself, for example, which means...what, exactly? We'll have to speculate without a lot of evidence on that part.

[drusillas-rain.livejournal.com]

I have nothing to add, but wanted to say great post (and for linking to spock_uhura)! Everyone's comments have been illuminating and really helpful to read.

Great icon ^_^

[taraljc.livejournal.com]

Tuvok in VOY actually underwent Kolinahr, and there's an ep which flashes back to his childhood as he struggled with an attraction to a Vulcan girl who was not his bonded mate. Also, Surak appears in 3 ENT episodes and one TOS, and there's not a huge amount of canon as to what the Vulcan belief system actually is. Much of what fandom remembers comes from the tie-in novels (which are considered fanon or apocrypha).

But what I've always understood is that Surak's teachings aren't about purging emotions, but complete mastery of emotions--controlling them so you are not controlled by them.

The episodes that are usually cited re: Spock are "The Naked Time" and "Amok Time", and TNG's "Sarek" because those are curcumstances where we see Spock and Sarek break down, and lose control. But also because both Spock and Sarek lament the fact that because they were Vulcan, they could never tell Amanda how they loved her.

Not that they didn't feel love. But that they could not express that love in a way that a human would want/crave/need/understand. Because it was not their way.

[ishtar79.livejournal.com]

I'm not familiar enough with TOS to comment on Spock Prime, but I think Tuvok is an excellent example of a more typical (and full-blooded) Vulcan.

He's conforms to the Vulcan ideal more than Spock, yet it is repeatedly expressed in subtle ways he *does* feel affection for Janeway (one of the most emotionally effective scenes in Voyager is when, certain that they were facing death by Space Anomaly Of The Week he protectively moves his hand closer but doesn't quite touch the unconscious captain. It's subtle but speaks volumes) and Kes. His primary 'emotion' seemed to be 'annoyed', especially when he shared a scene with Neelix (and I felt his pain on that).

Here are some choice Tuvok quotes where the Vulcan emotion question is touched upon:

Conversing with an insightful holographic (sort of) woman whose insight inexplicably draws him to her:

Marayna: Imagine this: that you - with your logic and your reason - are skimming atop endless waves of an ocean. You believe you're in control; but you know the control is an illusion. You believe that you understand the depth beneath you; but that, too, is an illusion.
Lieutenant Tuvok: I can see why Ensign Kim finds you... compelling.


Lieutenant Tuvok: The Vulcan heart was forged out of barbarism and violence. We learned to control it; but it is still part of us. To pretend that it does not exist is to create an opportunity for it to escape.

He's also got a very wry sense of humour, the capacity to be embarrassed (in an episode of the crew having their dreams invaded by an entity, his nightmare involves walking to the bridge naked) and a soft spot for children he'll try to rationalise logically.

I clearly need some Voyager icons.

[damalur]

Kinda late to the discussion here, but there are two relevant concepts that are laid out particularly well in Diane Duane's book Spock's World. I'm not sure if you've read her book or not, but it really helped me get a handle on the Vulcans and emotion.

The first concept is arie'mnu. To quote Amanda, "The concept keeps getting translated as 'lack of emotion,' or 'suppression of emotion,' which is a little better...but not much. A more accurate translation would be 'passion's mastery.' The word itself acknowledges that Vulcans do too have emotions, but are managing them rather than being managed by them."

The second is cthia. To quote Amanda again, "It's the modern Vulcan word which we translate as 'logic.' But what it more correctly means is 'reality-truth.' The truth about the universe, the way things really are, rather than the way we would like them to be. It embraces the physical and inner realities both at once, in all their changes. The concept says that if we do not tell the universe the truth about itself, if we don't treat it and the people in it as what they are - real, and precious - it will turn against us, and none of our affairs will prosper. [...] What Sarek is saying is that if we don't handle this matter with the utmost respect for the truth, for what is really needed by everyone involved, it will end in disaster."

There's quite a bit more in the book about Surak's teachings, but Sarek and Spock both point out that the philosophy affects some Vulcans more deeply than others. I see Kolinahr as a very extreme interpretation of that philosophy.

This is such an interesting topic, and I wish I had more time to read everyone's responses and reply more thoroughly, but I have to run. Back later, for sure!

[jade-sabre-301.livejournal.com]

CANNOT REPLY OR READ AT THIS TIME IN ITS ENTIRETY BUT no Sarek is not atypical for loving his wife apparently at one time he was married to a Vulcan woman who did undergo Kolinar and their relationship sucked so they "divorced" but anyway um.

Sarek. by A.C. Crispin? Addresses a lot of this. But that would involve reading a book, which takes time? Will read Rawles's comment before I go forth and rewrite it.

E.g. once upon a time Romulans were just Vulcans who rejected Surak's teachings and clearly in the thousands of years they've evolved farther along that route, but the basic STRONG EMOTIONS thing is still the same between the two races.

see she says that. *sigh*