Unfair?

[Asso]

This evening I was watching the news.
In UK it's cause for alarm the forced marriages among Islamic communities of immigrants.
Fiancés since childhood, compelled to marry by tradition's force.
As Vulcans.
And, in fact, in the show, Vulcans are outlined as a sort of stereotyped Easterners, a strange mix of mystic culture and modernism.
I think it’s a limit.
An important limit, consequence of the age when Star Trek has begun.
But, the point isn’t this.
I ask: respect of tradition is it always right?
Was right Trip, when he told T’Pol she didn’t have to necessarily follow her traditions, or was right T’Pol, when she followed them, marrying Kos?
It’s not a banal question, in my opinion.

[enterprikayak]

I think if you're doing something you really really don't want to do (and you don't feel right or comfortable) then it's unlikely you'll be happy with your choice. Even if you learn to live with it. So I don't agree with forcing anyone to marry anyone against their will. (If you WANT to go along with your arranged marriage, then fill yer boots, but no one should HAVE to, imho)

[evcake]

IMO, just because something's been done since the dawn of time doesn't make it right. Also, things change, hopefully. Sometimes. In some places.
Uuurrgghhh.

[TPoptarts]

"You know, I learned something today. It's okay to have logic and tradition, but with all the progress society's gone through, being forced to do stuff just because people used to do it like three thousand years ago sucks ass!"

[evcake]

That right there. That's what I wanted to say.

[enterprikayak]

The girl has a way with words.

[Kevin Thomas Riley]

We have a very good Swedish word called "osed". It could be imperfectly translated into "bad practice" or "bad custom". As opposed to the more positive (or at least more neutral, if you're not conservatively inclined) word "tradition".

[TPoptarts]

The girl has a way with words.

It wasn't me it was Spock.

[Kevin Thomas Riley]

The girl has a way with words.

It wasn't me it was Spock.

During his teenage rebellious phase, huh?

[TPoptarts]

Nah during his kan-telan ceremony

[Kevin Thomas Riley]

His kan-what...?

Never mind, I googled it!

[Alelou]

There is some logic to Vulcan arrangements, given the biological necessities of pon farr. Arranged marriages are common in many human cultures and continue today in many -- and probably they don't fare any worse in terms of success than unarranged marriages.

The thing is, when the marriage is forced despite the unwillingness of the participants, that reveals the ugly reality that undergirds that tradition (as well as some of our own wedding traditions, though they have become largely ceremonial in Western society): the female and the child is considered property. This is the actual legal status of women in conservative Muslim states.

T'Pol didn't have that problem. She could have said forget about it and skipped town. She allowed herself to be coerced/influenced/manipulated/whatever.

I suspect she could have grown to be quite content with Koss if she hadn't already engaged her katra elsewhere. ( I'd better run for my life now!)

[Elessar]

BLASPHEMER!!!!



I believe in the power of ignorance... so while I think her life would have been emotionally empty and given that we have all generally accepted the idea that for *some* reason T'Pol seems more emotionally tuned than the average Vulcan, she would always be on some level aware of it, and I think it would gnaw at her the rest of her life if she had married Koss, EVEN IF she hadn't allowed herself to become close to Trip. Like if she had physically removed him from her life by retreating to Vulcan, I think she could have had "a life", but I think a little voice inside her would always infuse doubt into what might have otherwise grown for her - and does for other Vulcans - into a seamlessly convincing facade of domestic contentment.

That's one of the issues at the heart of the Trip and T'Pol romance that has always drawn me -- the universality of the desire for passion in a relationship that is, on some levels, humbling. I think T'Pol wants, or needs, something that she can't control... something to foil every other aspect of her life, of science, of rationality, that CAN be controlled. Although we have not always portrayed it in as jarring and unpleasant a reality as it could be, the potential is clearly there (as it has to be, for the risk to be real) for Trip to hurt T'Pol - for the winds to be too strong, the waves untameable.

It's part of the risk you take when you jump on the wild horse that might throw you and stomp you to death. It's part of not knowing, when you leave cover and run 20 yards if there's a bullet out there with your name on it, or if you'll make it to the next piece of cover unscathed. It's what keeps some paralyzed by terror, uncertainty, doubt, and to be sure, well grounded sanity and a healthy psychological underpinning of self-preservation... and that which allows some of the more daring, the more reckless... like T'Pol, to open the door each time Trip comes for neuropressure. To let loose the leash on her imagination a little more each night, and eventually, to let go completely, unsure if the bullet will pierce her heart and kill her, or whiz by so closely that it somehow validates everything, makes everything compute, resolves every remainder, clears away every frilly edge... making her feel more alive than ever.

[krn]

^^so, Elessar, is this what comes out when you write - or do you actually give it thought? Because I actually had to think about how to phrase that last sentence - and I want to know if I need to hate you for your natural proclivity for prose or hate you for a finely honed skill.


And I'm with everyone here - Traditions have a place and can be wonderful. But to do something because "that's how it's always been done" is just narrow-minded and lazy.

[Asso]

Concurring with my natural tendency for romanticism, I cannot not agree with Elessar.
But it's not only that.
A civilization that doesn't open to others is a dead civilization.
And the fact is that traditions get often used as a shield: the fear for the "new", for the "unknown".
Their valiance get often changed into a bad thinking and a bad acting.
And this is unfair.
So... thanks goodness that among Vulcans there're people like T'Pol!
Otherwise Vulcan culture could be lost, I think.
And, excuse me... but I don't like Koss because of this, too,
Under the shield of the tradition he does the badest thing a man can do: applying an insidious constraint, so as to make a person do what this person doesn't want to do.