Vulcans
Earlier, I thought about what the Ah'Koi Bahnis, specifically a Shao'Bahn, would say if someone explained the Vulcan philosophy to them. The response I got was, "I have never heard anything so completely absurd." Pushing the matter further by asking why it's absurd, the Shao'Bahn answered, "Because suppressing emotion never works for long. The bottled emotions build in power and intensity until eventually they will come exploding out. Assuming the Vulcans, as advertised, were even possible, they would eventually experience a personality implosion. They would go completely, irrevocably insane. Violently insane. Their race could never work as explained, through suppression; they would either revert to their old ways or kill themselves off in the bloodiest incidence of species-wide psychotic rage ever. They would not have lasted more than 100 years or so attempting it. The Vulcans, as they have been explained by the canon, are impossible, and therefore absurd."
I poked a little further, and from the Shao'Bahn perspective, the only way to even get close to the Vulcans as they appear on the show is if, instead of suppression, they had a buffer between their emotions and their behavior; they would still feel emotions, they would just be able to choose how to behave in response, sort of like the soldier who puts aside his or her grief or other inconvenient emotions for later. But such a buffer wouldn't last long. If the behavior they chose didn't satisfy the emotion's need to be expressed, it would need to be dealt with in private later, or could get into "bottling" territory.
Still, even with that system, you still wouldn't get the appearance of the cold, logical Vulcan, not always. It would be unhealthy to do so. Bottled emotions can do a lot of psychic damage. I should know, I have years of personal experience with such things.
Ha! OMG, I just checked to see what the Shao'Bahn would say if confronted by a real, honest to goodness Vulcan as they appear in canon. Her basic response was "You must have used genetic engineering on your whole species; otherwise, what you say you've done would have been completely impossible. The mind just doesn't work that way, without being modified somehow first."
Another thought I had about Vulcans: I wonder if there were any groups popping up after First Contact with the Vulcans, of people convinced the Vulcans were responsible for historical sightings of elves or Faeries. :-)
This was cross-posted from http://fayanora.dreamwidth.org/1107903.html
You can comment either here or there.
I poked a little further, and from the Shao'Bahn perspective, the only way to even get close to the Vulcans as they appear on the show is if, instead of suppression, they had a buffer between their emotions and their behavior; they would still feel emotions, they would just be able to choose how to behave in response, sort of like the soldier who puts aside his or her grief or other inconvenient emotions for later. But such a buffer wouldn't last long. If the behavior they chose didn't satisfy the emotion's need to be expressed, it would need to be dealt with in private later, or could get into "bottling" territory.
Still, even with that system, you still wouldn't get the appearance of the cold, logical Vulcan, not always. It would be unhealthy to do so. Bottled emotions can do a lot of psychic damage. I should know, I have years of personal experience with such things.
Ha! OMG, I just checked to see what the Shao'Bahn would say if confronted by a real, honest to goodness Vulcan as they appear in canon. Her basic response was "You must have used genetic engineering on your whole species; otherwise, what you say you've done would have been completely impossible. The mind just doesn't work that way, without being modified somehow first."
Another thought I had about Vulcans: I wonder if there were any groups popping up after First Contact with the Vulcans, of people convinced the Vulcans were responsible for historical sightings of elves or Faeries. :-)
This was cross-posted from http://fayanora.dreamwidth.org/1107903.html
You can comment either here or there.