You're looking for a ludicrous all-or-nothing approach here [...]
It means that we shouldn't be looking for absolutism.
I totally accept your accusation that I am the crazy totalitarian.
I don't think you're a crazy totalitarian. But I do think you're looking for the narrative to endorse your particular brand of moral absolutism, and I don't think that's fair to the film or the characters.
And Spock's entire character arc in the TOS films is all about him finding a different balance
for himself than tends to be seen as appropriate in mainstream Vulcan society. "Logic, logic... Logic is the
beginning of wisdom, Valeris. Not the end."
You basically agree with Sarek that it is OK to give in to one's desire for revenge.
No. I basically agree with Sarek that sometimes it's wrong to try to pretend you're not angry, that sometimes anger deserves expression.
Good points. If we were supposed to think that the Vulcans had it right, that suppressing one's emotions is always a good thing, then Spock should have completed his Kolihnar training and gotten rid of those messy human emotions. But, of course, that's not what he does--in that timeline or the new one.
Or, at least, if not that the Vulcans are wrong in general about how to behave, then that the Vulcans are wrong about what's right for
Spock as an individual.
One of the concepts I've always liked from the novels, actually, is from Diane Duane's
Spock's World. She identifies the philosophy of stoicism that Surak taught as being called
cthia; she writes that Humans typically translate
cthia as meaning "logic," but that a more accurate translation would be "passion's mastery." Throughout the novel, she suggests that Surak did not so much teach
complete emotional suppression as partial suppression, with leeway given for emotions that are not harmful or whose expression is necessary for mental health. The implication being that modern Vulcan society had taken Surak's teachings too far, had become more "fundamentalist" than he'd intended.
If one doesn't react angrily to seeing one's planet destroyed and one's mother killed before your eyes, then you've seriously lost touch with your humanity . . .
Or, in Spock's or Sarek's case, their Vulcanity.
I am not saying that you always can or should be a sublime ethical agent. This would be lunatic. But it is nonetheless a benchmark and as Spock has always been pretty close to it it pains me to see him deviating from it. Fall of a hero and so on.
I really think that you're projecting onto Spock a level of morality he has never actually possessed. Spock has
always had a ruthless streak to him, a utilitarian pragmatism that sometimes sweeps aside issues of ethics. As far back as "Where No Man Has Gone Before," was advising Kirk to kill Gary Mitchel long before Mitchel actually became hostile to the crew; in
Star Trek VI, he committed an invasive, nonconsensual mind meld with Lieutenant Valeris in order to obtain the names of the assassination conspiracy members, which more than a few people have argued amounts to the moral equivalent of rape. And, of course, Spock insisted that Edith Keeler must die (even though you'd really think that simply taking her with them back to the 23rd Century would have the same effect, removing her from history and preventing the rise of a pacifist movement).
By contrast, merely taking some satisfaction in the death of Nero, whom he had tried to save and been rebuffed by, seems quite mild.
You suggest that Spock should have expressed his anger earlier and not in a distorted form like marooning Kirk. In what way should he have done it? Should he have tried to immediately strangle Kirk? Should he have gone on an intercept course with the Narada? You tell me what option he had that does not lead to anything but more suffering.
Amongst other things, during the transit time, he could have gone to his quarters for a while to cry, and perhaps having Nyota with him to make things a bit more bearable. Or he could have hit the gym, perhaps taken his anger out on a punching bag, or at least by running on a treadmill. There are all sorts of ways to express and channel one's anger that don't require completely losing control -- that, in fact, would have enabled him to
better control himself while on duty.
Frankly, if nothing else, Spock should have recognized that he was too emotionally traumatized by the death of his mother and the destruction of his entire planet to continue serving as acting captain.
It is obvious that ST09 plays in a post 9/11 climate and you US folks guys did not react cool like the Britains did when Al-Qaeda stroke there. Perhaps this is behind our argument?
Okay. Now, you're not a native English speaker, so I'm going to give you some leeway here and assume you didn't understand all the connotations of the vocabulary you just used.
Let me explain something: "cool," in the context of describing emotions, is a highly informal word. It carries a connotation of unimportance. Saying that someone was "cool" with something, or "reacted cool," implies that the thing to which they were reacting was not significant.
Do you see where that statement can come across as deeply offensive?
The 9/11 attacks were not like any other terrorist attack. They weren't like the 2005 London bombings. They weren't like the Madrid bombings. That's not to take away from those tragedies, mind you. But 9/11 was quite literally the
largest, most devastating terrorist attack in human history.
Two thousand, nine hundred seventy-seven people were killed excluding the perpetrators -- including, I might add, 11 citizens of Germany. More than six thousand people were injured. Over three hundred of the dead were members of the New York City Fire Department, and other first responders. Two of the largest buildings in the world were destroyed, the emergency response services were utterly overwhelmed, and the entire city was absolutely crippled. And 9/11 is still claiming victims, as more and more people who worked at the wreckage site trying to find survivors succumb to various cancers brought about by the carcinogens released by the buildings -- and that's to say nothing of how many unknown numbers of people across all of New York City have died or may die from having been exposed to those carcinogens released into the city's atmosphere; that shit did not stay put, after all.
The 9/11 death toll was 56 times larger than the London bombings death tolls, and it's still climbing. You would literally have to start talking about the Blitz in order to find an event in recent British history truly comparable to the death toll of 9/11. So, no, we did not react as "cool" as the British did to the 2005 London bombings. And if someone had killed three thousand Britons, injured six thousand more, destroyed Canary Wharf, destroyed part of the Defense Ministry HQ, decimated the London fire department and Metropolitan Police, crippled the entire London metropolitan area for days, and was still claiming more victims years afterwards because of the environmental effects of the attacks? Had London suffered the worst terrorist attack in human history? I rather think the United Kingdom would have had a very similar reaction as the United States did to 9/11.
European xenophobia which is, believe me, far worse than in the US (lest you think I am one of those arrogant Euro-Jerks because of the former point), is rationalized by centrist politicians like this: "Some folks are antisemitic so we gotta create an outlet and be a bit antisemitic lest everything explodes one day."
So much about moderation, wisdom and the golden middle.
I don't think anyone here is trying to say that it's okay to have any and all feelings. Feelings of prejudice and bigotry are
not okay; they're signs that something is wrong with you and you need to seek treatment, frankly. But being angry at the man who murdered your parents and killed billions is not a sign that anything's wrong -- it's a perfectly healthy and appropriate reaction. The issue there is finding a healthy way to channel and express that anger so that it doesn't overwhelm you, instead of trying to pretend that you can just bottle it up and it will go away.
