True, that's how it should be today as well, Science for science class and religons beliefs for religious classes.
But sometimes those who are more deeply religios than others don't subscribe to that view.
Spoilers Who is sympathetic to the Klingons?
- Thread starter Charles Phipps
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True, that's how it should be today as well, Science for science class and religons beliefs for religious classes.
But sometimes those who are more deeply religios than others don't subscribe to that view.
Maybe the name is also based on J. M. Ford's concept of Kuve, which stands for foreign servants in his conception of Klingon culture.
If this is the case, it could be that it is a self chosen name with the meaning of servant to the people or tradition, or something like that.
It's a bit of an awkward metaphor (AN AWKWARD METAPHOR IN STAR TREK - SURELY YOU JEST!) given the fact she's educating children on a highly sensitive subject with limited information. Mind you, I live in the Bible Belt and work in education. So I know the horror of dealing with dumbass parents who still believe evolution is a myth despite the fact it's not a debate or a theory but as factual as the computer I'm writing on.
It did, however, show the Federation's genuine casualness about being "right" when much of the show illustrated they didn't know much about Bajor or the Prophets or the region.
Genuine frontier medicine indeed.
I honestly don't know how much we should respect something when it contradicts objective evidence.
It's too big a question for me. I used to have far more tolerance for diplomatically accommodating people's cultural sensitivities, and I had a general feeling that all humans have common ground, but I find the idea of pandering to people's offended sentiments, when we know objective facts, and they repeat self-flattering dogmas, increasingly tiresome. Maybe I am slipping off the path. But to have a society that protects the rights of all, and a "republic of letters", you have to believe that freedom of thought, and communication of thought, is inalienable, surely? You can't therefore respect a culture that polices thought, can you? Or is that something different to culture?
I am enjoying the show, but I don't know how I would feel if the route they went down turned out to be a story of how Klingon culture is fundamentally good and "when Klingons go back to the REAL teachings of Kahless, they will find common ground with the Federation and realize humans aren't the enemy". I wonder if pandering to Kahless shouldn't be replaced with honest criticism by Klingons of their own culture.
It's too big a question for me. I used to have far more tolerance for diplomatically accommodating people's cultural sensitivities, and I had a general feeling that all humans have common ground, but I find the idea of pandering to people's offended sentiments, when we know objective facts, and they repeat self-flattering dogmas, increasingly tiresome. Maybe I am slipping off the path. But to have a society that protects the rights of all, and a "republic of letters", you have to believe that freedom of thought, and communication of thought, is inalienable, surely? You can't therefore respect a culture that polices thought, can you? Or is that something different to culture?
I am enjoying the show, but I don't know how I would feel if the route they went down turned out to be a story of how Klingon culture is fundamentally good and "when Klingons go back to the REAL teachings of Kahless, they will find common ground with the Federation and realize humans aren't the enemy". I wonder if pandering to Kahless shouldn't be replaced with honest criticism by Klingons of their own culture.
I used to believe very strongly in absolute freedom of expression but then I found out the people who campaigned for it very rarely felt the same desire. Hate speech doesn't deserve to be protected nor the right to discriminate against other people because if the tables were turned, and they have been, the people who do them don't give the same right in return.
Because, shock of shock, they're bad people.
It depends on what sort of person Kahless is, isn't it? Because the secular TOS Klingon Empire was a bunch of assholes. I don't need them retconned as a bunch of religious nutjobs when they were based on people who actively murdered religious people in RL.
My favorite Klingons are the slightly less stereotypical ones like the female astrophysicist and the Romulan loving botanist.
I'd love to see Trucker Klingon, Klingon brothel, and Klingon Accountant.
I'd love to see Trucker Klingon, Klingon brothel, and Klingon Accountant.
It's really hard to tell the extent to which you're just pulling our legs here, playing devil's advocate for the sake of discussion, and the extent to which you actually believe what you're posting. Hopefully it's less of the latter than it seems at face value, because it's kind of disturbing.
Expansion of an alliance through consent based on mutual benefit is, by definition, legitimate. Nobody involved has any reason to object. Expansion of an empire through conquest is, by definition, not legitimate: the party being attacked and conquered has serious grounds to object. The two modes of expansion really aren't analogous.
This, now, this contains a meaningful insight: T'Kuvma and (most of) the Klingons are simply incapable of believing or comprehending the Federation's motivations.
Granted, any society that sees mutual benefit as "bribery" and violent coercion as "honest battle" is a pretty f'd up society, and obviously doesn't deserve the respect of anyone not a member of its self-serving ideological cult. Nevertheless, if that's the viewpoint to which one is acculturated, it's easy to see how it leads to paranoia about powerful outsiders.
Frankly, I've never found the Klingons all that interesting, because they're just so damn implausible. They make convenient villains for story purposes, but realistically the notion that a society organized around glorifying violent conquest, and disdaining peaceful/intellectual pursuits, could ever achieve the tech levels necessary for interstellar colonization, is pretty hard to swallow.
The closest anyone has ever come to making Klingon culture make sense (IMHO) was John M. Ford in The Final Reflection, but unfortunately most of his insights were rejected during the TNG years, which portrayed Klingons with all the nuanced sophistication of a biker gang in space. To the extent that I hear some echoes of Ford's work in the Klingon scenes in STD, that's welcome, but there's not really enough of it there (at least so far) to make it all seem plausible.
I think at the end of the day, the Klingons work best as an allegory. But whether they're an allegory for the Soviets (as originally conceived), or for feudal Japan, or the Mongol hordes, or (as seems to be the case here) for ISIS/Daesh, is almost beside the point unless they also make sense on their own terms in-story. Unless STD makes them work on that level, the more the Klingon war dominates this season the more tedious it's going to be.
Klingons believe the strong shall survive, and that the strong have the legitimate right to rule.
As expressed in Errand of Mercy:
Kirk: We have legitimate grievances against the Klingons. They've invaded our territory, killed our citizens. They're openly aggressive. They've boasted that they'll take over half the galaxy.
Kor: Why not? We're the stronger!
Kor
As expressed in Errand of Mercy:
Kirk: We have legitimate grievances against the Klingons. They've invaded our territory, killed our citizens. They're openly aggressive. They've boasted that they'll take over half the galaxy.
Kor: Why not? We're the stronger!
Kor
I also think John Ford's survival-of-the-fittest Klingons were probably the more plausible than what we got in TNG.
I can only speculate on the thought processes of strangers, but I feel like maybe Ronald D Moore might have been uncritical of 'cool warrior societies' in his promotion of a Klingon culture that was fundamentally honourable. In reality, where you have the assassination of officers for advancement and so on, you have so many avenues for abuse. Like lawman says, I'm not sure it would work in the format presented in TNG/DS9.
On freedom of thought:
Democracy is laid out something like this (to oversimplify); - :universal suffrage gives everyone a stake in promoting their own self-interest, preventing them from being used as tools in the games of the powerful; - :a constitution exists to protect the rights of minorities (really individuals) from the "tyranny of the majority".
The second facet to require a humanist respect for the supremacy of life as the chief end-in-itself. When you have totalitarianism, what you have is a rejection of the individual's right to life-in-itself as the ultimate ends and their use instead as a means to achieve a far off utopia instead of present well-being. Thought police is essentially a part of this process since it treats the individual as a vector of ideology instead of an autonomous end in itself.
So while I might agree that inciting violence is a crime, I think perhaps one should be very wary of censorship.
The Taliban destroyed the Bamiyan Buddhas because they wanted to censor the fact that Afghanistan had a past before their chosen ideology. ISIS did the same to the pagan temples at Palmyra for the same reason. I think perhaps a duty to the academic truth comes above anything else in a healthy society. That is what is being argued I think, not that hate speech should be tolerated, but that the first duty of a citizen is to the truth, before country, religion, etc. Didn't perhaps Picard say as much, "a Starfleet Officer's first duty is to the truth"? I'm not talking about some silly bronze age notion of "never tell a lie", I'm talking about combating self-deception, and insisting on objective fact.
I can only speculate on the thought processes of strangers, but I feel like maybe Ronald D Moore might have been uncritical of 'cool warrior societies' in his promotion of a Klingon culture that was fundamentally honourable. In reality, where you have the assassination of officers for advancement and so on, you have so many avenues for abuse. Like lawman says, I'm not sure it would work in the format presented in TNG/DS9.
On freedom of thought:
Democracy is laid out something like this (to oversimplify); - :universal suffrage gives everyone a stake in promoting their own self-interest, preventing them from being used as tools in the games of the powerful; - :a constitution exists to protect the rights of minorities (really individuals) from the "tyranny of the majority".
The second facet to require a humanist respect for the supremacy of life as the chief end-in-itself. When you have totalitarianism, what you have is a rejection of the individual's right to life-in-itself as the ultimate ends and their use instead as a means to achieve a far off utopia instead of present well-being. Thought police is essentially a part of this process since it treats the individual as a vector of ideology instead of an autonomous end in itself.
So while I might agree that inciting violence is a crime, I think perhaps one should be very wary of censorship.
The Taliban destroyed the Bamiyan Buddhas because they wanted to censor the fact that Afghanistan had a past before their chosen ideology. ISIS did the same to the pagan temples at Palmyra for the same reason. I think perhaps a duty to the academic truth comes above anything else in a healthy society. That is what is being argued I think, not that hate speech should be tolerated, but that the first duty of a citizen is to the truth, before country, religion, etc. Didn't perhaps Picard say as much, "a Starfleet Officer's first duty is to the truth"? I'm not talking about some silly bronze age notion of "never tell a lie", I'm talking about combating self-deception, and insisting on objective fact.
These are not universal definitions. The Ancient Greeks or even Romans or pre-Civil War American with their concept of democracy would not have subscribed to universal suffrage since there existed classes of people in these societies without rights of political participation whether they be foreigners/slaves/non-citizens/allies/non-propertied citizens. If anything democracies seem to create classes of people without some sort of political rights or representation.
It's less about censorship and rewriting of the past, but creating a new society based on their religious principals that forbid graven images and equate them strongly with idolatry. These acts usually signifying the triumph of the new regime over the old order.
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It's not like the concept is unprecedented in RL. Mind you, warrior races require slaves/serfs or other people to clean the warrior race toilets.
It'd also be nice if, say, we found out the Klingons had included a vast merchant fleet.
It's not like the concept is unprecedented in RL. Mind you, warrior races require slaves/serfs or other people to clean the warrior race toilets.
It'd also be nice if, say, we found out the Klingons had included a vast merchant fleet.
Historically on Earth "warrior cultures" have not done all that well. They focus too much on fighting and not enough on winning. Plus they are inherently very conservative and thus reluctant to embrace new technologies and tactics.
Given the Klingons obsession with "honor" I have a lot of trouble believing they would embrace the use of cloaking devices. I would think their rather rigid concepts of personal honor would tend to work against sneaking up on enemies.
Eh, that's a very loaded statement because the majority of human history is defined by military warrior castes over civilian cultures. Medieval Europe lasted 1200 years after all.
Rome, before it, managed to balance allowing the peasants into the army while keeping a civilian sector.
Japan had 400 years of isolated warrior rule without war.
Random aside but it's funny you should bring that up because I play a Klingon in my STAR TREK D20 game and an in-uninverse conversation was held about this very subject last night.
A Klingon nobleman complained about deception and sneak attacks being dishonorable and my character, effectively said, "Do you realize why we have cloaking devices? Because being smarter than your enemy is part of the tests of war."
It got into an interesting argument where my character said there was a difference between Klingons who thrived on deception who were actual warriors and the ones who complained about who never stepped foot off Kronos but were scheming politicians.
Obviously, it's not canon but I was basing it off the fact "Warring States" Samurai would have laughed at what Bushido later became.
That's kind of the point. A warrior culture can survive only if it doesn't actually fight.
The Spartans were beaten eventually. Medieval Europe was not really a "warrior culture". It was a feudal culture with a group of warriors as one of its levels.
Rome's greatest gift was not in fighting but in governing conquered people once they won.
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