Two Worlds

One of the characters in fiction that has always fascinated me is Spock. Apart from the obvious intelligence, the main fascination is seeing someone living in the intersection of two worlds that are similar yet very different, and the challenges that presents. There is also the matter of the "conflict" between logic and emotion, which in a sense makes the character representative of all of us. We face daily choices between logic and emotion, what we want to do set against what we "should" do.

As Spock has said, "logic is the beginning of wisdom, not the end". Logic is a tool for thought, but it can be misused, and using impersonal logic to make decisions without regard to how we feel about the choices is rarely the best course of action. We all have emotions, and the key is to be aware of them and master them rather than ignoring them completely. Spock's middle path between the human emotional response and the Vulcan way of logic has always seemed a careful dance.

For many people, life is also a dance of appearances. Like Spock, they are careful to keep an outward appearance of conformity to the roles they are expected to play, despite having other feelings to deal with inside. Most people have public worlds and private worlds that may be very different. Some are simply minor conflicts of personality, like someone managing others who is expected to be harsh with mistakes when they would consider it better to take the opportunity to teach and coach instead. Some are more distinct, like those whose desires do not meet society's expectations and they may not wish to make that clear to everyone else.

Others are simply different inside than their outward appearance would indicate, in a world where that sort of conflict is not accepted by others ignorant of the reality. They don't wish to have to think about how to relate to others, they just want to drop them into generic slots that they can have knee-jerk reactions to. Like Spock's mixed genetic heritage, people are not simply A or B in one aspect, or X or Y in another. There are broad spectrums of ability and talent, similarity of appearance, and even the hidden structures of the brain.

Add in variations of development, and the spectrum gets even larger. There are definitely clusters of results, but it is rather telling to observe the reactions of people to those who are outside of the main "normal" sections. Perhaps even more telling is each individual's expectations of what "normal" is. Spock appears to be Vulcan, but that does not mean that there is not a human part of his being hidden away under the skin. Appearances can be deceiving, and someone who looks perfectly normal may be trapped in an appearance that feels alien to them because their bodies did not develop with complete congruency.

Similarly, when people see someone that does not look normal, they often react badly to it and make incorrect assumptions about the person. Some times the differences are obvious, such as an incorrectly formed face or someone suffering from a disease. Sometimes the differences are "obvious" to some and not to others, such as those who care about skin colors and those who simply know it is just skin.

The important thing is to remember to treat others how you would like to be treated, and accept their differences from you or from what you expect as just that, differences. To paraphrase McCoy, "he's not a human or a Vulcan, he's a Spock".