Blue/orange morality
May. 2nd, 2017 12:01 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
alex_antoninThe Incubators in Madoka Magica are proof of what I've been saying for years about species like the Vulcans: Not having any emotions (evolutionarily unlikely) would make a species pretty much the ultimate psychopaths. As we see in one timeline, Kyubey would - for lack of a better term - "cheerfully" welcome the destruction of an entire planet full of sapient life forms (earth and humans) to save the universe. No hesitation, no moment of silence for the lost lives, nothing but the satisfaction of a job well done. Lacking emotions, they lack our values. Their ethics are what would be classified as blue/orange morality - IE their ideas of good and evil are on a completely different axis than ours, with very few similarities to ours.
Of course, the Vulcans aren't like that, as they DO have emotions, but they suppress them. Honestly, the Vulcans are even more unlikely than the Incubators, because any species that tried to suppress their emotions like that would have pressure build up and build up until they either had to vent their emotions violently or go insane. I know because I have personal experience trying to suppress my emotions, and the pressure building until it explodes out. For me, it came out in the form of violent angry outbursts. Though some of those were, I'm sure, autistic meltdowns, I know not all of them were. My autistic meltdowns started to reduce in number for many years in my early adolescence as I came to peace with the transition that had been causing them. But then I had another set of issues in my middle adolescence that caused me to start suppressing my emotions, and in place of the meltdowns I had violent outbursts as the emotions exploded from the pressure.
So basically, Vulcans would last maybe a few hundred years before they all went murderously insane and became a plague on the galaxy. Heh, it would be kinda fun to write an alternate universe Star Trek story where exactly that happened.
In fact, the Vulcan killer in that one episode of DS9 kinda proves my point. So many people he had fondness for died, and so quickly, that he went insane and became a serial killer. Even with however many centuries of evolutionary pressure to aid in suppressing their emotions, those emotions overwhelmed his ability to cope and he went violently insane.
Oh and now I'm picturing another story where a Vulcan character is born with some genetic anomaly that futzes with their emotional suppression systems and they lose control.
As to Lt. Commander Data, he *says* he feels no emotions, and he does act more logically and calmly than others, but there are signs all throughout the series that he actually DOES have emotions, they're just a lot more subtle than human emotions. I can understand why he would feel like he had no emotions, when his are so much less intense than human emotions. My fan theory is that his father DID give him emotions, just very subtle ones, and then later made the emotion chip to give him more human like emotions.
Although another fan theory I have, which may or may not contradict that last one, is that Data actually has a condition similar to autism. Plainly it's not the same thing, as autistic people do have emotions and can have very intense emotions at times, and our oddities are basically the result of being overly empathic and overwhelmed, plus a deficiency of the kind of empathy that allows us to understand WHY someone is feeling that way. But since Data has similar struggles of trying to work out other people's emotions and why they're feeling that way, it's very similar to autism in that way. I don't know if any other human mental conditions are more similar to what he has, or if what he has is unique given his artificial origins, but I know I as an autistic person have always identified strongly with Data and many other androids.
But getting back on track: Realistically, a species like the Vulcans suffering under a philosophy that told them to suppress all emotions wouldn't work at all. They'd either go insane, develop lots of stress related illnesses, or give up. As evidence, I present you with Christianity, a religion that is all about suppressing natural desires such as lust, greed, and gluttony under the excuse that they are sinful feelings. Clearly it did not work as intended, or maybe it did, as Western culture's greatest level of conformity to these beliefs yielded the Victorian people, for whom a combo of forced ignorance and forced conformity to Christianity's founding principles resulted in an epidemic of psychological stress and mental illness so bad that without it Freud might never have had reason to invent the science of psychology at all.
Alternatively, if the Vulcans felt strongly enough about the evils of their emotions, they might have had the scientific progress to use genetic engineering to remove or modify their emotions. Now I don't think it would be a good idea to get rid of all emotions, as fear motivates people to avoid things that hurt or kill them, pleasure rewards them for procreating and eating. The closest humans get to having no emotions is those with severe depression becoming apathetic. I suppose logic alone could be used to motivate people, but given that logic is highly subjective, there being all kinds of things that are logical on the surface but end up being completely bad ideas, I think there would come a time when a culture with only logic to guide them would go just as wrong as a species with emotion guiding them.
Of course we know the Vulcans didn't remove their emotions, they suppress them. Which just wouldn't work, as I've said, because of building internal emotional pressure. Oh sure, there's the pon farr every 7 years, but I honestly don't think that would be enough of a vent to make such a species capable of continuing without insanity or mental illness. So no, the Vulcans are completely unrealistic and would never be possible as a species in the real world.
But setting that aside, assuming the Vulcans were able to remove their emotions, they would lose any possibility of a normal moral compass and would likely develop a logic-driven blue/orange morality. I think the Incubators of PMMM would agree wholeheartedly with Spock's quote "The good of the many outweighs the good of the few or the one." Which is very concerning. Whether Vulcans lacked emotions or suppressed them so well that they may as well have had no emotions, either way their logic would develop an blue/orange morality that humans would have no way to comprehend. So in the unlikely event that the Vulcans could exist as the Star Trek universe has them, there's no way in Hell that humans would ever become friends with them. There would just be no way. Oh sure, we'd start out friendly, but slowly here and there we'd come across more and more incidents that revealed the extent of their blue/orange morality, just as we see in PMMM with how the magical girls figure out Kyubey's moral axis. And just like PMMM, humans would - possibly in as few as a hundred years or so - work out enough of the Vulcan morality axis as being utterly horrifying, through incidents that showcased that species' willingness to sacrifice many sapient lives for what would seem truly bizarre or random reasons to us, and conclude that Vulcans are The Enemy.
Speaking of, the Federation's horrible Prime Directive sounds like something that a species with blue/orange morality would think of. Sure, on the surface it sounds like a good idea, but given the many examples we see in Star Trek of it being used to prevent giving aid to sapient life forms when their entire species is about to go extinct from a natural disaster just because they might worship the Federation's people as gods, one has to wonder about it, as that doesn't sound like something humans would think of. In fact, the humans of Star Trek frequently betray that Prime Directive. Could it be because the Vulcans are the ones that came up with the idea, and it's an example of an idea from a species with blue/orange morality? I think so. Because it doesn't sound like something humans would come up with for their own use. Not unless human culture went completely sideways into unknown territory before the founding of the Federation, and the evidence does not support such a thing having happened.
Of course, the Vulcans aren't like that, as they DO have emotions, but they suppress them. Honestly, the Vulcans are even more unlikely than the Incubators, because any species that tried to suppress their emotions like that would have pressure build up and build up until they either had to vent their emotions violently or go insane. I know because I have personal experience trying to suppress my emotions, and the pressure building until it explodes out. For me, it came out in the form of violent angry outbursts. Though some of those were, I'm sure, autistic meltdowns, I know not all of them were. My autistic meltdowns started to reduce in number for many years in my early adolescence as I came to peace with the transition that had been causing them. But then I had another set of issues in my middle adolescence that caused me to start suppressing my emotions, and in place of the meltdowns I had violent outbursts as the emotions exploded from the pressure.
So basically, Vulcans would last maybe a few hundred years before they all went murderously insane and became a plague on the galaxy. Heh, it would be kinda fun to write an alternate universe Star Trek story where exactly that happened.
In fact, the Vulcan killer in that one episode of DS9 kinda proves my point. So many people he had fondness for died, and so quickly, that he went insane and became a serial killer. Even with however many centuries of evolutionary pressure to aid in suppressing their emotions, those emotions overwhelmed his ability to cope and he went violently insane.
Oh and now I'm picturing another story where a Vulcan character is born with some genetic anomaly that futzes with their emotional suppression systems and they lose control.
As to Lt. Commander Data, he *says* he feels no emotions, and he does act more logically and calmly than others, but there are signs all throughout the series that he actually DOES have emotions, they're just a lot more subtle than human emotions. I can understand why he would feel like he had no emotions, when his are so much less intense than human emotions. My fan theory is that his father DID give him emotions, just very subtle ones, and then later made the emotion chip to give him more human like emotions.
Although another fan theory I have, which may or may not contradict that last one, is that Data actually has a condition similar to autism. Plainly it's not the same thing, as autistic people do have emotions and can have very intense emotions at times, and our oddities are basically the result of being overly empathic and overwhelmed, plus a deficiency of the kind of empathy that allows us to understand WHY someone is feeling that way. But since Data has similar struggles of trying to work out other people's emotions and why they're feeling that way, it's very similar to autism in that way. I don't know if any other human mental conditions are more similar to what he has, or if what he has is unique given his artificial origins, but I know I as an autistic person have always identified strongly with Data and many other androids.
But getting back on track: Realistically, a species like the Vulcans suffering under a philosophy that told them to suppress all emotions wouldn't work at all. They'd either go insane, develop lots of stress related illnesses, or give up. As evidence, I present you with Christianity, a religion that is all about suppressing natural desires such as lust, greed, and gluttony under the excuse that they are sinful feelings. Clearly it did not work as intended, or maybe it did, as Western culture's greatest level of conformity to these beliefs yielded the Victorian people, for whom a combo of forced ignorance and forced conformity to Christianity's founding principles resulted in an epidemic of psychological stress and mental illness so bad that without it Freud might never have had reason to invent the science of psychology at all.
Alternatively, if the Vulcans felt strongly enough about the evils of their emotions, they might have had the scientific progress to use genetic engineering to remove or modify their emotions. Now I don't think it would be a good idea to get rid of all emotions, as fear motivates people to avoid things that hurt or kill them, pleasure rewards them for procreating and eating. The closest humans get to having no emotions is those with severe depression becoming apathetic. I suppose logic alone could be used to motivate people, but given that logic is highly subjective, there being all kinds of things that are logical on the surface but end up being completely bad ideas, I think there would come a time when a culture with only logic to guide them would go just as wrong as a species with emotion guiding them.
Of course we know the Vulcans didn't remove their emotions, they suppress them. Which just wouldn't work, as I've said, because of building internal emotional pressure. Oh sure, there's the pon farr every 7 years, but I honestly don't think that would be enough of a vent to make such a species capable of continuing without insanity or mental illness. So no, the Vulcans are completely unrealistic and would never be possible as a species in the real world.
But setting that aside, assuming the Vulcans were able to remove their emotions, they would lose any possibility of a normal moral compass and would likely develop a logic-driven blue/orange morality. I think the Incubators of PMMM would agree wholeheartedly with Spock's quote "The good of the many outweighs the good of the few or the one." Which is very concerning. Whether Vulcans lacked emotions or suppressed them so well that they may as well have had no emotions, either way their logic would develop an blue/orange morality that humans would have no way to comprehend. So in the unlikely event that the Vulcans could exist as the Star Trek universe has them, there's no way in Hell that humans would ever become friends with them. There would just be no way. Oh sure, we'd start out friendly, but slowly here and there we'd come across more and more incidents that revealed the extent of their blue/orange morality, just as we see in PMMM with how the magical girls figure out Kyubey's moral axis. And just like PMMM, humans would - possibly in as few as a hundred years or so - work out enough of the Vulcan morality axis as being utterly horrifying, through incidents that showcased that species' willingness to sacrifice many sapient lives for what would seem truly bizarre or random reasons to us, and conclude that Vulcans are The Enemy.
Speaking of, the Federation's horrible Prime Directive sounds like something that a species with blue/orange morality would think of. Sure, on the surface it sounds like a good idea, but given the many examples we see in Star Trek of it being used to prevent giving aid to sapient life forms when their entire species is about to go extinct from a natural disaster just because they might worship the Federation's people as gods, one has to wonder about it, as that doesn't sound like something humans would think of. In fact, the humans of Star Trek frequently betray that Prime Directive. Could it be because the Vulcans are the ones that came up with the idea, and it's an example of an idea from a species with blue/orange morality? I think so. Because it doesn't sound like something humans would come up with for their own use. Not unless human culture went completely sideways into unknown territory before the founding of the Federation, and the evidence does not support such a thing having happened.