Is it just me, or are Vulcans a bunch of jerks?

[A.V.I.A.F.]

I was stunned to realize this about myself recently, but I think I hate Vulcans. I mean, if we really think about it, they are kind of annoying. They walk around acting all superior all the time, they have no sense of humor nor charm, they only ever seem to talk shop, and they're incapable of saying "thank-you." They treat their women like chattel, and they are too arrogant to allow for any explanation for anything that doesn't fit into their very narrow perception of "logic" (ergo the Intrepid's destruction).

Now, I like Spock--but he is not your ordinary Vulcan. He possess a lot of the cool aspects of Vulcanhood but those are mixed with his human quirks. As a matter of fact, I wonder if Spock cares much for other Vulcans himself (seeing as how they've often thrown his mixed ethnicity back into his face--the kids while he was growing up (as per Journey to Babel) and T'Pau (as per Amok Time) and given the fact that he blew off the VSA in favor of a career surrounded by so-called irritatingly illogical Terrans.

Let's be honest, if you had a choice between partying with a Vulcan, a Klingon, or a Romulan; wouldn't the Vulcan be last on your list?

 

[T'Bonz]

Well let's see, according to TV Trek, a Vulcan would turn up his nose at me, a Klingon would try to kill me and a Romulan would prefer to hang with fellow Romulans, not a human. Not much of a choice there.

The problem with TV, is that the races were shown to be very, uh, homogeneous. They even had, for the most part, the same hairdos, you know? There wasn't much in the way of variety, not like there would be in real life, I think.

I'm sure there were Vulcans who didn't mind humans, Klingons who weren't out to kick everyone's ass and Romulans who were intrigued by other races.

Gimme a bottle of Romulan ale and a group of some of those. Skip T'Pau, Gowron and Tomalak though.

 

[7thsealord]

Let's be honest, if you had a choice between partying with a Vulcan, a Klingon, or a Romulan; wouldn't the Vulcan be last on your list?

Depends on the Vulcan, the Klingon and the Romulan, I would think.

Sounds like the lead-in to a joke here - "A Vulcan, a Klingon and a Romulan walk into a bar ....".

 

[Admiral Shran]

Let's be honest, if you had a choice between partying with a Vulcan, a Klingon, or a Romulan; wouldn't the Vulcan be last on your list?

Well, that depends - is the Vulcan a female who is going through her pon-far?

If not, I'll take the Klingon. They at least now how to party.

 

[Christopher]

It's not just you. It always surprised me, back when Enterprise was on the air, when people complained about its portrayal of Vulcans as arrogant, judgmental, condescending, and prejudiced against humans as if it were some radical reinterpretation. That's exactly the way most Vulcans have always been portrayed from T'Pau onward.

 

[trek_futurist]

I disagree. Vulcans are, in a sense, a portrayal of future humanity, a more evolved humanity with greater emotional control, more refined sensibilities.

Spock is an amazing role model who everyone should aspire to be like. I do not find him anti-emotional, on the contrary, I find his emotional characteristics more evolved than todays average humans.

But notice how vulcans and humans of the 23rd and 24th century share many commonalities. As Ambassador spock pointed out about Picard in Unification, he found him 'Remarkably analytical and dispassionate - for a Human. I understand why my father chose to mind meld with him. There's an almost Vulcan quality to the man.'

You see this trend repeated amongst other humans, like reginald barcley, who, despite his social anxiety disorder has a very refined personality. In the original series you see similar qualities in sulu, nurse chapel and even captain kirk at times.

 

[VulcanJedi]

The warm fuzzy moments we might remember from Star Trek IV rarely happen. I picture Spock in the water, smiling and splashing with the whales, but most Vulcans rarely act this way.

 

[Christopher]

I disagree. Vulcans are, in a sense, a portrayal of future humanity, a more evolved humanity with greater emotional control, more refined sensibilities.

Spock is an amazing role model who everyone should aspire to be like. I do not find him anti-emotional, on the contrary, I find his emotional characteristics more evolved than todays average humans.

"Spock" is one thing, "Vulcans" another. If you look at how Vulcans other than the hero characters are portrayed in ST, it's not a very positive portrayal. T'Pau was a borderline racist who didn't think much of humans. T'Pring was a conniving witch who was willing to force Spock to kill his best friend just so she could be with her preferred boy toy. Sarek was so stubborn and intolerant that he disowned his own son for following a career path that took him away from Vulcan norms. The Vulcan children in "Yesteryear" tormented Spock with blatantly racist insults, calling him a "barbarian" and saying Sarek "brought shame to Vulcan" by marrying outside his own kind. Not to mention the savage, brutal rituals the Vulcans were shown to practice -- mating fights to the death, maturity tests involving forcing 7-year-old kids to survive in a lethal desert -- how does that demonstrate "refined sensibilities?"

It even continues into the 24th century, where we have the overt racism of Captain Solok in DS9's "Take Me Out to the Holosuite," who insists that humans are inferior and sadistically singles Ben Sisko out as the target of his abuse and condescension. And there are the Vulcan dissidents in TNG's "Unification" who want to start a war. Sure, we've been shown noble and admirable Vulcans like Spock and Tuvok, but we were also shown that plenty of Vulcans are arrogant, intolerant, petty, cruel, or malevolent.

 

[Gary7]

Spock is half-human, so... he's not truly representative.

The problem with Enterprise is the context. You have the "primitive" pre-warp drive fairing humans and the Vulcans were overly cautious about them. And yes, condescension is easier to let fly. Although, there were some instances where the condescending attitude was a bit over the top. T'Pol was WAY too stiff for my taste. It took WAY TOO LONG for her to open up. I liked T'Pol in the latter 3rd Season onward... too bad the series ended so abruptly, never giving her a chance to finish evolving her character in a positive direction. Fortunately, when some of the Vulcan administrative officials are faced with correction, they accept and turn to appreciate humans more. This saved a lot of grace.

Vulcans tend to be know-it-alls, because they do... know a hell of a lot. Super smart on average, relative to humans. But their disconnect from emotion handicaps them. It's kind of like the pure socialism experiment stacked up to democracy... The democratic society embraces chance and fewer assumptions about things, allowing for more dramatic innovation, whereas the socialist society tends to stagnate.

Overall, I can't agree with the OP... Vulcans are not a bunch of jerks. They're wise, but tend to condescend. However, they don't do it by nature of ego (like humans do). They do seem humble enough to admit their mistakes and seek the truth above all else.

 

[BillJ]

I thought the Vulcans were one of the few elements that Enterprise got right.

 

[FordSVT]

Spock is an amazing role model who everyone should aspire to be like. I do not find him anti-emotional, on the contrary, I find his emotional characteristics more evolved than todays average humans.

As others have said, Spock was half-human, and came to balance his humanity with his Vulcan culture the older he got.

Spock should not be used as the basis for the "average" Vulcan. He would be more like Tuvok.

When you get down to it, however, Vulcans put up a big front to strangers and "outsiders". We all know it, the characters who spend time with Vulcans on screen know it. Any time we've ever spent a lot of time with a Vulcan and got to know them more deeply, they start to reveal their individual personalities, how they express humour, etc. Their emotions are always just under the surface. And we've seen all kinds of Vulcan personality types, as varied as Humans really. We've seen them hate, we've seen them love, we've seen pride and racism in them. Vulcans simply have an extra emotional filter that most species don't have, one they imposed on themselves.

I also take issue with the OP saying that Vulcan's never say thank you. They have. On screen. Please, thank you, excuse me. They are direct but in social situations most of them seem to be extremely polite if not outright friendly. Vulcans have never displayed having an issue with cultural formality. In fact, they seem to crave it.

 

[jayrath]

Since this is the TOS board, I have to disagree. Vulcans in TOS, and Spock in particlar, represented rationality. The rest is ENT ret-con, introduced to create drama. But it came at a high cost.

We now have Vulcans as the Harvard snots of the galaxy. What happened to the idea that McCoy represented passion, Spock represented intellect, and Kirk forged an "enterprise" of the two, in-between?

 

[AtoZ]

While I long ago warmed to Spock, I'd much rather hang with T'Pring.

Just sayin"

 

[Nerys Myk]

Since this is the TOS board, I have to disagree. Vulcans in TOS, and Spock in particlar, represented rationality. The rest is ENT ret-con, introduced to create drama. But it came at a high cost.

We now have Vulcans as the Harvard snots of the galaxy. What happened to the idea that McCoy represented passion, Spock represented intellect, and Kirk forged an "enterprise" of the two, in-between?

As others have pointed out in this thread, Spock is not a typical Vulcan and the Vulcans we see other than Spock are in line with what Enterprise showed us. Not so much a retcon as an expansion of the TOS version.

It should also be noted that Spock's rational/intellectual approach was often shown to be faulty while going with one's gut proved more successful.

Spock was very much a "Harvard snot". He was quite fond of pointing out how inferior humans were.

 

[Christopher]

Since this is the TOS board, I have to disagree. Vulcans in TOS, and Spock in particlar, represented rationality. The rest is ENT ret-con, introduced to create drama. But it came at a high cost.

Oh, yeah, right, because we all know that ENT invented the idea that Vulcans still practice ritual fights to the death in order to win ownership of their mates. The Vulcans of TOS would never have been irrational enough to do anything like that.

TOS established that Vulcans aspired to rationality in principle but frequently fell short of that ideal. Even Spock was routinely portrayed as having emotional motivations that he simply wasn't willing to admit to. He wasn't so much a paragon of rationality as a paragon of rationalization, always able to make up logical-sounding excuses for his acts of stubbornness or affection or vanity or compassionate self-sacrifice.

 

[horatio83]

Vulcans tend to be know-it-alls, because they do... know a hell of a lot. Super smart on average, relative to humans. But their disconnect from emotion handicaps them. It's kind of like the pure socialism experiment stacked up to democracy... The democratic society embraces chance and fewer assumptions about things, allowing for more dramatic innovation, whereas the socialist society tends to stagnate.

Democracy and socialism are not opposites. Democracy and autocracy are respectively capitalism and socialism.
Given Vulcan discipline and their superior mental and bodily skills their economy is most likely more productive than Earth's.

Their suppression of emotions does not handicap them in the least, it merely leads to a rigid society (arranged marriage, all the other stupid, religious-like rituals) which is so rigid in order to prevent Vulcans from doubting the dogma of emotional suppression. The fear behind this orthodoxy is that lack of emotional suppression will initiate a "return to the savage ways".

 

[A.V.I.A.F.]

Let's be honest, if you had a choice between partying with a Vulcan, a Klingon, or a Romulan; wouldn't the Vulcan be last on your list?

Well, that depends - is the Vulcan a female who is going through her pon-far?

Be careful what you wish for. Vulcans are much stronger physically and they seem to get a little overly passionate around pon-farr. You might not survive...then again, if you gotta go....

If not, I'll take the Klingon. They at least now how to party.

What kind of party would that be exactly? I'm thinking something between a college keg party and a little redneck off-season hunting!

 

[Redfern]

And a bit of "cow tipping" involving hibernating sehlats. (Wouldn't want to risk it while they're awake! Even Klingons aren't that bold!)

Sincerely,

Bill

 

[sonak]

Vulcans tend to be know-it-alls, because they do... know a hell of a lot. Super smart on average, relative to humans. But their disconnect from emotion handicaps them. It's kind of like the pure socialism experiment stacked up to democracy... The democratic society embraces chance and fewer assumptions about things, allowing for more dramatic innovation, whereas the socialist society tends to stagnate.

Democracy and socialism are not opposites. Democracy and autocracy are respectively capitalism and socialism.
Given Vulcan discipline and their superior mental and bodily skills their economy is most likely more productive than Earth's.

Their suppression of emotions does not handicap them in the least, it merely leads to a rigid society (arranged marriage, all the other stupid, religious-like rituals) which is so rigid in order to prevent Vulcans from doubting the dogma of emotional suppression. The fear behind this orthodoxy is that lack of emotional suppression will initiate a "return to the savage ways".

I don't see what the suppression of emotions has to do with a rigid society or arranged marriage. That seems to be more connected to the way many Vulcans seem to be very Conservative, Orthodox, and tradition-bound. Kind of ironic for a "logical" society.

 

[Temis the Vorta]

I thought the Vulcans were one of the few elements that Enterprise got right.

By S4, they did. Vulcans aren't unemotional, they are violently emotional and must repress their emotions for the sake of the humans who they'd throttle in a heartbeat.

Once you understand that part, their jerkiness is explanable.

I don't see what the suppression of emotions has to do with a rigid society or arranged marriage.

Seems self-evident to me.