Most Popular ArticlesVulcans Have Taken Over Planet Finance
August 18, 2009
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Can you out-geek me? In just the last month, I saw the latest Star Trek movie, not once, but twice.
The first time, I took my eldest son ("Thing 1"). The second, I dragged along his younger brother ("Thing 2"). And while in public I hid behind the explanation of, "I need to go again in fairness to Thing 2 who couldn't make it last week," the truth is, it was my 30+ years of Trekkiedom that had me aching for a second showing. (And by the way, before you sic social services on me, I mean "Thing 1" and "Thing 2" as in The Cat in the Hat, not as in I didn't get around to naming my kids.)
If you are not a Trekkie, feel free to indulge in a moment of smug superiority at my pathetic need for subterfuge to justify seeing the movie again. But what can I say? It was 2 hours and 6 minutes of immensely satisfying, visually stunning, action-packed drama.
It was during the second showing that I had an epiphany about the popularity of the Spock character. As you probably know, Spock struggles with an oddly compelling identity issue: He's the son of a human mother and a vulcan father.
As you are also probably aware, vulcans are ubernerds - humorless and boring in their slavish devotion to logic. Humans, of course, are quite the opposite. And so for Spock, much of the drama - and much of the reason, I believe, behind why he's become such a cultural icon - is found in his own internal tug-of-war, as he works to keep his human half under control.
As a species, it seems, we humans have a deep distrust of our emotional selves; it's the part that gets us in trouble and that makes us do things we later regret. And so as the sub-species known as "Investment Professional," we take a different approach - we behave as shameless vulcan wanna-bes.
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