"Technotranscendence" says:
> On Sunday, May 07, 2000 4:28 PM Spike Jones spike66@ibm.net wrote:
> > > Death to 7 of 9, the Borg, Data, and Spock, proud upholders of the
> > > frickin' *stupid* tradition that intelligent people are supposed to be
> > > unable to understand emotions. Hail Gene Roddenbury, who managed to do
> > > more damage to American rationality than, well, just about anyone.
> >
> > Oh, faaar too harsh on Roddenberry, Eliezer, waaay too negative.
> Certainly
> >
> > GR's work had its shortcomings, but recall he was writing for the
> > television
...
> > Roddenberry suggested a future in which humanity was working
> > out problems, fixing things, overcoming. Humans were not perfect
> > by any means, and yes, one did wish Spock had strangled Kirk that
> > time Spock got horny and challenged him to a dual. And one wished
> > that when Kirk was doing it with some green chick she would
> > transmogrify into Q. That'd fix him. {8^D
> >
> > But all in all, for 1967 it was one helllll of a cool series. Homo
> Sapiens
...
> Roddenberry might be excused for not knowing, but the damage is done. The
> conflation of irrational with emotional and rational with unemotional,
> sadly, has a longer history than Mr. Spock, extending back to the Ancients,
> but _Star Trek_ gave it a concrete portrayal that people confuse with the
> real thing.
>
> Even though I agree with Eleizer, the problem should not be assigning blame.
> Instead, it's how to overcome the stereotype here and now.
...
I prefer to look at Star Trek as an allegory in which the different
characters are archetypes for aspects of humanity. It is possible, as
I think Robert Anton Wilson has suggested, to view the principal Star
Trek characters as emblems of various aspects of consciousness, with
the Enterprise itself serving as one of them. Leary's eightfold
consciousness model works decently here. I should think this might be
of particular interest to Eliezer with his thinking aboud "domdules"
of consciousness. Once you view Star Trek as a story about the way
that human consciousness grapples with the unknown in a sort of silly
sci-fi allegory, it becomes a lot more fun, I think.
All the best!
James Wetterau
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