But to leave the existence of emotions out of the equation, especially as it applies to humanoids other than themselves, is still illogical.
Depends on one's premises. Just because you may disagree with one's axiomatic assumptions doesn't make their conclusions illogical. Though you may claim they are . . . unsound.
I have to point out that I am not the one making sweeping generalizations about ancient Vulcans, Vulcans are. I am just trying to reconcile their descriptions of their ancestors with the reality of a society functional enough to achieve warp flight, and with things like the Romulans (which according to popular thought are directly related to those same early Vulcans). It just doesn't make sense.
Pretty much one man did it here, and right after a horrific war. You think that makes sense, but one Vulcan couldn't do it? NEVER! You go too far.
I welcome anyone who has canon info of early Vulcans described as anything other than totally unstable. As far as I recall the only early Vulcan we ever meet is Surak's katra, 2000 years after the fact, existing in a mental world of his own memories, but also having awareness and consciousness, so having had 2000 years to keep working on his logic and control... hardly representative.
You think the katra continues to evolve once boxed up like that? That's an assumption. I assumed they are a reflection of what they were when they died. They don't continue living and evolving, really, unless maybe they are again connected to a living person in the living world, but even then we don't know they retain any changes.
My contention is in fact that early Vulcans were far more stable than they are described, but highly militant and war-like.. They were able to build great societies and cultures, but were never able to achieve stability, and ultimately, their empires would fall to internal turmoil. I then assert that all current descriptions of those Vulcans is a myth started as propaganda by logic extremists at the time as a way to create monocultural totalitarianism, which they felt was the only way for Vulcan to avert disaster.
It's a possibility, but I don't think you can prove it. But what you are suggesting seems to be they know it's not really that bad, so they lie about it to society in general in order to avoid what they know is really not that bad. Or more probably, their belief is genuine, and like the artifact Picard dug up, they realized only through peace and non-violence would they be free of much of the problems they really were having.
The whole DNA rant... specious. The fact that DNA is the building block of all life (as we know it) isn't in contention or the issue... in fact it's part of my point. All life on Earth not only shares DNA as a building block, they share genetic structures, and as we can see, they share traits because of that.
What structures? And all life has them? What traits are shared by all life on earth do you have in mind? Or common to all life and that you claim are then responsible for a particular race's behavior?
This is also the "proof" that all life on Earth came evolved from one common ancestor (also proving my point).
What point? The fact we spring from one common ancestor that began life here is why we all use DNA, since that early life form did, and we all evolved from it (any other independent evolutions of life possibly just eaten or failed) but there may be other chemical bases for life on other planets than DNA. And simply sharing DNA doesn't tell us how humans will behave, or cats, or goats, or chickens, or jellyfish, or chimps, or bonobos, just because they all use DNA.
My premise was that all vulcanoid races share a large part of that DNA structure, as we do with primates... they are close genetic relatives.
For all we know, those proto-Vulcans didn't even use DNA but another chemical basis for life. And even if they do use DNA, that alone has little effect on their behavior.
If the Vulcan emotional instability is genetic (and in fact pre-Vulcan), then all related species might suffer from it.
Given the real world example of how chimps and bonobos are so close and how they act so differently, you really want to insist on this? Romulans and Vulcans are, of course, the same species in this universe, or so damn close it shouldn't make a lick of difference, and that's why they both share those violent tendencies. There is no reason to believe any other species that happens to look like a vulcan would also share those particular violent traits.
This doesn't seem true for the Romulans (but maybe it's just one of their many secrets), and certainly not for other Vulcanoid races (which I contend ARE related to Vulcans, via a common ancestor).
No evidence of that - beyond pointed ears. So cats, for example, have common ancestry with Vulcans? And elves, too - don't forget the elves.
Pointy ears were not the only things Mintakan's shared with Vulcans: they also had pointed brows, and a greenish cast to their complexion (which I know is inconsistent, but generally meant to imply the green blood in Vulcans and Romulans). The society was also more than just also based on logic, it was very much Vulcan-like. That many similar traits begs for more investigation.
All good reasons to call them proto-vulcans, then, but not a single good reason to think they shared common ancestry. Did they have green blood? Even if they did, that's still not sufficient reason to think Vulcans colonized that planet, any more than Mintakins colonized Vulcan 50,000 years ago and lost their space capability. You need some evidence of that, and they gave none, and I see no reason to assume it any more than I'd assume common ancestry with any race that had red blood and often made war with one another. Red or green blood is just apparently examples of those handy chemical systems that work well to carry oxygen around and simulate the ocean environment that they likely evolved in. BTW, scientifically, I'm not sure copper would make a good blood at all, so that's probably pure BS. But blue andorian blood, well, it's a well known fact blue bloods are all descendent from royalty.
This is especially true in light of the fact that they have many times discussed all humanoid life being seeded by older races (in-world)... so all humanoid races are (probably) related, and then I say all Vulcanoid races are possibly more closely related.
That story was likely written by somebody whose understanding of genetics and evolution was pretty minimal. I'm not sure what they dumped onto various planets, or which ones, really (was Earth one, was Vulcan one, was the klingon world and Romulan world and cardassian world, etc. one?) Were there races involved in the chase that were not from one of the seeded planets? If those were genetic instructions to make humanoids after billions of years, they sure took a long ass time. If it was just a DNA kick-start to get life going and let evolution take its course, and humanoids tend to be favored for some other reason, so be it. Such a relation is tenuous at best since humans would still be genetically more closely related to bumblebees than Klingons or Vulcans or Cardassians.
Vulcans have emotions. They technically lie about that ("we do not feel x"). Vulcans can lie. They most certainly lie about that (or, if we give them a pass on language for them to mean they "do not" lie, they still again technically lie about it, and since some of them do lie, then it becomes a total lie). Vulcan's discard emotional considerations when dealing with emotional humanoid species (something "even Data" can account for).
I'd have to mostly agree they are being less than honest about their embarrassing emotions, or their personal failures to overcome them, as Surak teaches would be a good thing, and since they don’t openly confess their flaws and faults and failings, they are indeed a race of nasty liars. As are we and any other biological race I can think of in Trek.
Pre-Surak Vulcan emotional instability is exaggerated. The Vulcan "need for total emotional repression" is a myth. Vulcan dominant social culture (that which we've seen) is (apparently very successfully) promoting a totalitarian monoculture of absolute emotional repression, contrary to their philosophy of "infinite diversity in infinite combination." All of which is illogical.
You can't prove many of those things, but if you wish to believe them, feel free.
I say Vulcans have a genuine belief they are extremely violent and aggressive if they allow their emotions to go unchecked, and Surak taught them through the discipline of logic they can keep most of those violent tendencies suppressed. They find this to be advantageous for them, and believe it often could be advantageous for others (and are more than willing to tell them so). Now I'm not sure how close to infinite acceptance in everything one must have to believe many beliefs and many combinations will likely result in more good things than any one culture can imagine before also saying, well, murder is bad, without being accused of hypocrisy, but I think it's O.K. to do that.
