Worf is also not attacking anyone or engaged in violence. All he is literally doing is telling people about their cultural heritage. If that threatens the authorities so much, maybe they have a reason to be threatened.
Worf sucks in Birthright.
- Thread starter gakelly
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The only thing "The authorities" in this society have done to the younger generation, which are also their children, is lie about their identity, & the outside world. However, they couldn't have ever had this society, had they not. If any hint of this were to be found out by either Romulans or Klingons, it would end disastrously, with the likely murder of all the Klingons, as the Klingon society will never recognize them, & the Romulan society would never accept them this way. This was the only option where that didn't happen. What they have would never otherwise exist.
The "Truth" which Worf seems intent on forcing these people to face (& in itself the truth is a noble pursuit) isn't that these kids have been denied their culture. The truth is that they have no culture, because they have been abandoned, & the kids that Worf took from there are going to have to lie about who they are anyway. The only difference is that the lie will now be theirs to tell & live with, & who can seriously begrudge a parent wanting to spare their children that? Worf, apparently.
It's not as though the Klingons who chose to live there, were forced to abandon their cultural ways. They chose to abandon them, because they themselves were abandoned. Worf is neglecting THIS cultures' ways in order to supplant his own, which he thinks they should be following. Granted, the real reason he is doing so, is because they've chosen to hold him captive, & he is choosing to undermine them as his only tactic
What should have happened, is they should've let him leave, with the understanding that he never tell anybody, because they are an abandoned people no one wants, & he should've respected that. It's almost the same quagmire they get into in Masterpiece Society, but worse
If I choose to not tell my children that that they are from a culture that was going to slaughter us, & they'd never have existed because of it, that's fair imho. Why should I be required to instill their values into my kids? Maybe I'd tell them much later on, when I felt they had the maturity to understand, but I don't think these young adults were ready to hear it, because they went off half-cocked to pursue a wholly different life from the one they've known. I often wonder how well those Klingons adjusted to being Klingons out there in the bigger universe
Probably about as well as Worf's own kid, me thinks
The "Truth" which Worf seems intent on forcing these people to face (& in itself the truth is a noble pursuit) isn't that these kids have been denied their culture. The truth is that they have no culture, because they have been abandoned, & the kids that Worf took from there are going to have to lie about who they are anyway. The only difference is that the lie will now be theirs to tell & live with, & who can seriously begrudge a parent wanting to spare their children that? Worf, apparently.
It's not as though the Klingons who chose to live there, were forced to abandon their cultural ways. They chose to abandon them, because they themselves were abandoned. Worf is neglecting THIS cultures' ways in order to supplant his own, which he thinks they should be following. Granted, the real reason he is doing so, is because they've chosen to hold him captive, & he is choosing to undermine them as his only tactic
What should have happened, is they should've let him leave, with the understanding that he never tell anybody, because they are an abandoned people no one wants, & he should've respected that. It's almost the same quagmire they get into in Masterpiece Society, but worse
If I choose to not tell my children that that they are from a culture that was going to slaughter us, & they'd never have existed because of it, that's fair imho. Why should I be required to instill their values into my kids? Maybe I'd tell them much later on, when I felt they had the maturity to understand, but I don't think these young adults were ready to hear it, because they went off half-cocked to pursue a wholly different life from the one they've known. I often wonder how well those Klingons adjusted to being Klingons out there in the bigger universe
Probably about as well as Worf's own kid, me thinks
And the moment those children become adults, they have a right to be presented all their options and choose for themselves.
If your parents chose to lock you in a closet your whole life, wouldn’t you want somebody to tell you the outside world exists? This is exactly that, just a bigger closet.
Parents don’t own their children’s future, and like in Masterpiece Society your culture doesn’t own you. Everybody has the right to be the master of their own destiny, whether their parents or culture like it or not.
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Replace the word closet with the word religion, & I'm betting a lot less people agree with you, or at least wouldn't agree with you, that you should introduce other ones to their children, as being equal. That's a closer comparison, because a life among a community of likeminded people is hardly comparable to the isolation & confinement of being locked in a closet, & in this specific case, was the only avenue left to those abandoned people anyhow.
Do they owe their children the truth? Sure, I'll grant that. Should an outsider take it upon himself to undermine them, because they haven't done it yet? Maybe not the way he did. It's not that black & white imho. That's kind of what I think Picard was pointing out at the end of Masterpiece Society. If nothing else, even if you think he was in the right, Worf was wholly insensitive to the delicacy of this situation, (For personal reasons) & may have given that community as damaging a blow to its future as they did in Masterpiece Society. So going back to the OP... yeah, Worf kind of sucks here.
Whether you think it's fair or not, parents & cultures do & are encouraged to shape their children & their futures. Frankly, it's the only reason societies are capable of forming & existing at all. That relationship is a huge gray area, Dude. It maybe one of life's hugest
That’s a poor analogy. Children raised in a given religion are fully aware other religions exist. Nothing is stopping them from making the choice to change religions after they grow up.
These kids were not six year olds, they were adolescents and adults. All we saw Worf influence were more than old enough to make their own choices.
If he told a six year old his life was wrong, yeah, that would suck. He was telling 17 to 20 year olds! How many people would think talking about other religions to a 17 year old is undermining their parents? If a child is 17 and the parents are still forcing their will on them they should be undermined.
Those Klingon parents weren’t just shaping their children’s futures, they were dictating them. I’d make an analogy to the movie Dogtooth.
It’s the job of parents to guide children, not to chain them to the nest after they become adults.
These kids were not six year olds, they were adolescents and adults. All we saw Worf influence were more than old enough to make their own choices.
If he told a six year old his life was wrong, yeah, that would suck. He was telling 17 to 20 year olds! How many people would think talking about other religions to a 17 year old is undermining their parents? If a child is 17 and the parents are still forcing their will on them they should be undermined.
Those Klingon parents weren’t just shaping their children’s futures, they were dictating them. I’d make an analogy to the movie Dogtooth.
It’s the job of parents to guide children, not to chain them to the nest after they become adults.
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The comment I was replying to was saying that Worf was challenging the authorities by teaching the 2nd generation Klingons about Klingon traditions and that such an act threatens those authorities.
But those authorities are themselves Klingon, and more than that; their parents.
So you have the first gen. They're interned during a war. Check. The war ends. They are now allowed to leave, but they come to the realization that they can never go home. They will be rejected by their own people. So they establish a new community where they can continue to live out their lives, raise families, and so forth.. outside of the empire. They made a choice to leave behind Klingon traditions/religious practices/violent warrior ways, etc. Are you saying they were obligated to teach their children the old ways?
They can't leave, and before Worf came, their children had no desire to leave. There are probably many Klingon colonies where people are born, grow up, grow old, and die without ever leaving, or having the opportunity to leave. If one of these 2nd generation Klingons grew up in this community, had their own family, and died there, their life experience would propably be no different than your average inhabitant of any other Klingon or Human colony.
Their parents are prisoners who have had their societal taboos broken and are in a state of depression. They were kidnapped and put in this place. There's no way of getting around the fact the peace is a farce.
Mind you, there's an irony that the traditionalist Klingons assume their children are damned in Klingon society. Worf has regained his honor after losing it and as such has an entirely different view than most Klingons.
In effect, they're a bunch of excommunicated Catholics and Worf is coming from the Protestant Reformation.
(Now there's a weird analogy)
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Worf's honor was only restored when he was able to prove his father was wrongly stripped of his at Khitomer, & then kill the guy who set him up. There's no reason to believe those Klingons he brought back would be considered anything but outcast. That they lived is their dishonor & their offspring's, nothing wrongly accused about it, which is why Worf instructed them to keep the fact secret
They'll all be living under assumed names, with varying degrees of joining Klingon society under those names, & probably with great difficulty, as none of them have a clue what they are in for... & Worf has apparently abandoned them by the next episode, never to be spoken of again.
That's just your perspective. They were POWs, not kidnapped, and only after they were disavowed by their own people did they give up that life, and chose not to end their own lives, as their way of life demanded. When they chose to live, they chose not to live as Klingons anymore. That's on them, not their jailer. Their "Societal taboos" weren't broken. They were abandoned, because there was no place for them in this new paradigm. Their jailer gave up his role, when he knew no one cared whether they lived or died, & chose to stay and live among them, to form a new type of society, probably in no small part due to him falling in love with a Klingon woman there, & she him.
Not always. It's a better analogy than being confined in a closet anyway
But no one was forcing their will on them. They were just making the best life they could for them, as evidenced by the fact that they finally just let them go, as perilous as that may turn out to be for all
They provided them a model to live by, and no one objected to that model. They gave them a life, the only life that was available to them, short of returning to the bigger society, shrouded in lies. They chose a new way of life for themselves & their heirs, that shed some of the old ways, that had to be shed, & quite frankly, were kind of barbaric anyway, if it would've deprived all of them of their lives entirely
And they didn't... and they might not have, if they were allowed a natural development, but Worf gave them no choice, because he objected to it personally
As Worf shows, the children did have a place in the new paradigm. Technically, he could have also adopted them all into the House of Mogh or let them live in the Federation as a Klingon colony.
They were abandoned because a phaser was pointed at their head and they were forced to do it. I don't see any difference between them and other religious dissidents forced to give up their way of life in gulags. They're brainwashed and broken not persuaded.
They didn't object to the model because they didn't know it was a prison and they were lied to. Remember, they claimed there was a big war going on and it was a refugee camp. There was no war.
Also, "kind of barbaric" is ridiculous in a race-based prison camp.
Given the fact the children almost unanimously abandoned the camp, I think it says everything you want to know about their feelings on their situation.
They were abandoned because a phaser was pointed at their head and they were forced to do it. I don't see any difference between them and other religious dissidents forced to give up their way of life in gulags. They're brainwashed and broken not persuaded.
They didn't object to the model because they didn't know it was a prison and they were lied to. Remember, they claimed there was a big war going on and it was a refugee camp. There was no war.
Also, "kind of barbaric" is ridiculous in a race-based prison camp.
Given the fact the children almost unanimously abandoned the camp, I think it says everything you want to know about their feelings on their situation.
But they made that decision based on Worf's fairy tale version of klingon society and they probably had a rude awakening when they actually lived among other klingons.
Worf is genetically klingon but culturally he is a federation hippie living in a utopia that allows its citizens to live their lifes as they want to (within reason), Worf himself would never thrive among other klingons and in fact he always felt out of place when he was shown among them, he always always returned to the warm embrace of the federation where he could yap about honor and tradition without being disappointed by actual klingon society.
And at the end of the episode what did Worf do? Did he rejoin klingon society? Of course not, after advertising it to those kids for days/weeks he leaves telling them "I actually live in a multicultural society where I'm not following some klingon traditions. See ya, byeeeeee!" and kicks back on the Enterprise enjoying a big glass of prune juice in his tastefully decorated, comfortable quarters.
Worf does follow Klingon traditions. It's just that he's constantly involved in Game of Thrones-esque intrigue because he's Ned Stark and he never seems to get out of Kings Landing.
We're welcome to judge Klingon society by our own standards but the simple fact is that plenty of people have historically tried to remove people from what they felt were barbaric practices--very often it was a traumatizing horrifying result rather than anything benevolent.
As long as they avoid Gowron, they should be fine.
That is the exact opposite of what happened. Their home world refused to recognize that they were anything but dead. Dead is what Klingon society expected/demanded they all be, and still does. However, the Romulans didn't want to do that, & offered the Klingon POWs the alternative of not being dead, & living there with them instead. They chose the latter, & gave up their way of life, for this new compromise
It wasn't a prison anymore, and the lie wasn't meant to keep them captive, but to protect them from the fate of being dishonored Klingons... who under most circumstances, anywhere but that planet, are killed
Worf follows the textbook version of klingon traditions and those are kinda removed from reality. He's not Ned Stark in King's Landing, he's Daenerys dreaming of going to King's Landing, the foreigner who only knows the place in theory but thinks belongs there because that's where daddy lived.
Why is abandoning old traditions such a bad thing?
To me, Klingon society seems based on outdated religious dogma. It would be like living in the dark ages where people were burned to death because the church decided you were a witch or something.
And how is the girl that Worf was trying to hook up with going to fit into Klingon society? If Worf can tell she is half Romulan by trying to seduce her, it isn't going to remain a secret for long. I assume some of the other children are half Romulan too.
To me, Klingon society seems based on outdated religious dogma. It would be like living in the dark ages where people were burned to death because the church decided you were a witch or something.
And how is the girl that Worf was trying to hook up with going to fit into Klingon society? If Worf can tell she is half Romulan by trying to seduce her, it isn't going to remain a secret for long. I assume some of the other children are half Romulan too.
I always thought the Writer wimpied out in the episode anyway. It would have been a great part of the story for Worf to encounter his father still living; and Worf having to come to terms with that as well as the rest of the situation - but no, Worf's father (of course) was the 'good Klingon" and died at Khitomher with honor.
I think the problem with that, is that in order for the episode to have any conflict, they had to detain Worf. Them forcing him to stay is the catalyst that moves the premise along. Otherwise, he just leaves & never hassles them about their community
So of course, having Mogh be one of the community members makes it pretty tough to have him then turn around and hold his own son prisoner, without it becoming an entirely different exchange that would ultimately be less about the community, & more about Worf's family dynamic yet again.
So now we'd have a Mogh who #1 didn't "die with honor", #2 chose to forsake his children/family, even after he could've left, #3 became sympathetic to his former captors, choosing them over finding Worf & Kurn, & now #4 turns on his own son, imprisoning him to hide the truth.
Knowing what we know about Klingons, & Worf, It's a hard sell to say Worf doesn't just kill the guy, under those circumstances lol
There's multiple answers to this but essentially the children were lied to by their parents that there was a war going on and then denied their cultural heritage by the Romulan warden who, whether he meant to or not, pressured the Klingons to conform to his idea of cultural pressure.
In real life, lots of displaced people feel a passionate need to connect with their heritage that was stolen from them. Worf is not a typical Klingon but he presented his version of it and it made the children feel happy and welcomed. So much so they left their families voluntarily.
I must remind everyone this. Klingons grow up really fast so Worf does indeed remember his life before the massacre. He even runs into a family friend who says he remembered hunting with Worf and Worf said “I do remember”. Worf was the Klingon equivalent of a preteen when he was adopted.
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