I guess some people miss the planet S'oKal.
Why Are Spocks Siblings So...Dysfunctional?
- Thread starter Dryson
- Start date
What does "Yesteryear" say?
Spock apparently knows that the mating ground had been owned by his family for over two thousand Earth years. That seems to show that the names of the ancestors in each generation are recorded, and presumably the names of all the descendants. If an average Vulcan generation lasts somewhere between 50 and 100 years, that would be 20 to 40 generations of family history.
If the population of Vulcan was static for those 2,000 Earth years, each married couple would have to have exactly two children who married and had children of their own. Thus on the average each married couple would have to have 1,024 descendants in ten generations, 1,048,579 descecendants in twenty generations, 1,073,741,824 descendants in thirty generations , and so on.
Of course it is possible that after two thousand Earth years each Vulcan married coulple would have as many descendants as the entire Vulcan species, and thus every Vulcan might be a descendant of every Vulcan who lived two thousand Earth years earlier who has surviving descendants. In that case everyone would be Spock's family, and it would be a little illogical to speak of Spock's family, as though they a different group than every living Vulcan.
So I guess that only a subcategory of someone's descendants count as their family in Vulcan society. For example, it is possible that only the agnatic (male lineage only) descendants of a Vulcan couple count as their family, which would leave Spock with only thousands or millions of cousins.
In 1589 King Henry III of Navarre inherited the kingdom of France from his agnatic cousin King Henry III, and became Henry IV of France. Their most recent common agnatic ancestor was LOuis IX, king of France who died in 1270, 319 years earlier.
In 1777 Charles Theodore, Elector of the Rhine, inherited the Electorate of Bavaria from his agnatic cousin Maximllian II Joseph. The most recent common agnatic ancestory was Louis II, Duke of Bavaria, who died in 1294, 483 years earlier.
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/d0/Wittelsbach_Dynasty_Family_Tree.jpg
In 1890 Adolphe, former Duke of Nassau, inherited the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg from his agnatic cousin King William III of the Netherlands.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adolphe,_Grand_Duke_of_Luxembourg
The most recent common agnatic ancestor of Adolphe and William III was Henry II the Rich, Count of Nassau, who died in 1251, 639 years before 1890.
If there is a logical reasons, such as inheritance, to keep track of genealogy, Vulcans will keep track of genealogy, and a vulcan family could come to include thousands or millions of distant cousins.
Basically, that large Vulcan families are not unreasonable.
But OTOH Vulcans aren't unreasonable, either - not completely.
So equating "cousin" with "somebody one shares ancestors with" doesn't sound like a Vulcan thing to do at all. Sure, Spock speaks of his father as an "ancestor" on occasion, but he doesn't consider Sybok his "brother" as long as he can wiggle with "half-brother".
Would some other random Vulcan waltzing in on the Sarek estate really introduce himself as "cousin", then, if the closest link was sixteen generations ago? Is "cousin" in Vulcan the equivalent of "brother" in Harlem?
Timo Saloniemi
So equating "cousin" with "somebody one shares ancestors with" doesn't sound like a Vulcan thing to do at all. Sure, Spock speaks of his father as an "ancestor" on occasion, but he doesn't consider Sybok his "brother" as long as he can wiggle with "half-brother".
Would some other random Vulcan waltzing in on the Sarek estate really introduce himself as "cousin", then, if the closest link was sixteen generations ago? Is "cousin" in Vulcan the equivalent of "brother" in Harlem?
Timo Saloniemi
In the novels the Efrosian males are known for this, they deposit the sperm and keep on trucking. They are a free love society
Sure why not. Americans use the term "cuz", short for cousin, in reference to close friends.
Might just be the American South, then.
In the Afro-Caribbean and African community all very close female and male friends of ones parents are aunty and uncle. Its the only way you can use their first names and not lose your teeth lol
(Cultural generalistaion)
Nope. I use it as well with my family members, and have cousins call me cuz.
Cousin is the most common English shorthand for distant relations that I can think of. My grandmother's brother's grandson is my second-cousin. His son is my second-cousin once removed (or something along those lines). I would introduce both him and his son to other people as my "cousins" just to simplify things.
But if someone showed up at my door claiming to be family, I would definitely expect him to explain EXACTLY how we are related to each other. "Cousin" wouldn't be close to good enough in that situation. Taking a stranger at his (vague af) word on that is pretty damn illogical.
The only reason Michael can sense Sarek across vast distances is because she has a part of his katra within her. Which would be completely independent of Sybok's ability to sense the God entity.
Or then they are all interrelated, along with Spock's ability to sense the dying thoughts of the Intrepid crew, or the siren call of V'Ger, or the insistent nagging of his bride, or the lusty ideas of barbaric Vulcanoids around 3000 BC.
Vulcans are touch telepaths. But they are also capable of interstellar feats of paranormal communications, or at least Spock is, and the only un-Vulcan aspect to this that he admits to is his initial inability to get hot and bothered about T'Pring.
Timo Saloniemi
Vulcans are touch telepaths. But they are also capable of interstellar feats of paranormal communications, or at least Spock is, and the only un-Vulcan aspect to this that he admits to is his initial inability to get hot and bothered about T'Pring.
Timo Saloniemi
Technically every living human is a cousin of every other. That includes parents and children and brothers and sisters, since everyone has numerous ancestral couples who were related as cousins to various degrees, whether they knew it or not.
If someone names two randomly chosen present day members of European royality it would take a comparatively short research period for me to find examples of them being cousins, such as second cousins, third cousins, tenth cousins twentieth cousins, etc., And if I don' t stop looking when I find one first cousin relationship, I can go on and find other cousin relationships they have. European royal family trees can become so complex that I made up a little rhyme "Oh what a tangled web we weave, when first we practice to conceive".
Everyone the world has many different relationships, usually distant cousins, to everyone else, whether there are records of those relationships or not.
In my own family one of my great great great grandmothers was both the half sister and the grand aunt by marriage of one of her relativw.
In "Yesteryear" Spock told Sarek:
If T'Pel and Sasak were Sarek's ancestors enough geratiosn before him, Sarek should have several lines of descent from them, and thus be his own cousin. Thus it would have been perfectly truthful for Spock, son of Sarek, to say he was a cousin of Sarek.
So everyone is their own cousin, and the cousin of all living humans, and every time they eat meat they are eating part of their very distanct cousin, and every time they he vegitble food they h are eating part of an even more distant cousin.
So if Vulcan restrict the term "cousin" to relatives who have traced and proved genealogical relationships with them, no matter how distant, and who are a subset of the entire Vulcan Species, that seems reasonable to me.
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A lot of amilies have family associations that family members join to keep track of births, deaths, etc. in the family and to arrange family reunions. It is quite possible that Sarek's family has a family association, or that every Vulcan's genealogy is on the Vulcan itnernet for anyone to look up, and thus each Vulcan family, however it is defined, would have a complete list of members.
People with a common ancestor 16 generations ago would be 14th cousins. And according to some inheritance rules on Earth, people that distant have inherited property.
As I wrote above in post # 82, King Henry IV inherited the Kingdom of Frances from King Henry III. Henry IV was descended in 10 generations from Louis IX, and Henry III was descended in 12 gnerations from Louis IX. So they were 8th cousins twice removed, I think.
Maximillian II Jospeh, elector of Baviaria, descended from Duke Louis II in 14 generations, died in 1777 and Bavaria was inehrited by Charles Theodore, descended from Duke Louis II in 15 generations. Thus they should have been 12th cousins once removed.
And Adolph of Nassau inherited the throne of Luxembourg from King William III of the Netherlands in 1890, being King William's 17th cousin once removed.
This is quite fascinating, really. In my humble corner of the world, inbreeding is assured, so everybody is obviously nth cousin by the above definition, for a fairly low value of n. But there's no tradition for using the word "cousin" loosely: first and second cousins are a thing, but there's no concept of a third cousin in the terminology. This in a culture where the terminology clearly specifies whether a nephew is by brother or sister, say (the sad corollary being that the three ducklings at Unca Donald's were originally misidentified here and the error persists - even the word for Unca has the wrong gender connotation).
...Okay, there is a tradition of using the word for "cousin" loosely - it supposedly used to mean anybody younger that you... But with the transition from smelly forest dwellers with few possessions to dowry-conscious farmers, the terminology got very specific here. And apparently it doesn't translate as well as I thought it would.
Timo Saloniemi
...Okay, there is a tradition of using the word for "cousin" loosely - it supposedly used to mean anybody younger that you... But with the transition from smelly forest dwellers with few possessions to dowry-conscious farmers, the terminology got very specific here. And apparently it doesn't translate as well as I thought it would.
Timo Saloniemi
I do have the one near immortal species (Fantasy setting) that uses the term "chia" for any family not parent or sibling because generations can get very mixed up very fast. Vulcans are not that bad. Long lived on the order of centuries, but you will not see siblings old enough to be your G,G,G grandparents and their children your age.
Ergo arguing that "Everyone is cousins if you cast the net wide enough" is begging the question. Yes in that absolute broadest sense, true. But that is not how we use the term "cousin" and I would assume not how Vulcans use it either.
Surak was not entirely certain about older Spock's explanation, but he was unwilling to be inhospitable. Also an indication of a culture from a difficult place. Even the stranger is not turned out to the mercy of the land.
And, I doubt Dorthy Fontana was overthinking the issue. That is OUR job.
Ergo arguing that "Everyone is cousins if you cast the net wide enough" is begging the question. Yes in that absolute broadest sense, true. But that is not how we use the term "cousin" and I would assume not how Vulcans use it either.
Surak was not entirely certain about older Spock's explanation, but he was unwilling to be inhospitable. Also an indication of a culture from a difficult place. Even the stranger is not turned out to the mercy of the land.
And, I doubt Dorthy Fontana was overthinking the issue. That is OUR job.
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