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this post was submitted on 01 Sep 2025
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I haven't seen the episode yet that I think you're alluding to, but yes Vulcans have always been presented as having a kind of Buddhist-style philosophy with the important qualification that they would literally destroy themselves as an advanced race without it. The "religion" is an important social technology to enable them to explore the cosmos.
It's obviously alluding to humans too, if we can't control our innate animal reactions like tribalism and greed then we too will not be able to harness our own (physical) technology without self-destructing.
Plus yet another data point is the fact (if my memory is correct) that Romulans and Vulcans are the same species except one split off to go war mongering around the galaxy while the other devoted themselves to logic to control their emotions.
Yeah true, I suppose that kind of defeats my whole idea that Vulcans would self-destruct if they allowed emotions to control them.
They very nearly did. Romulans found another way to build their society.
Enterprise explores Vulcans who have rejected the teachings of logic and emotional control, and one of them end up mentally raping T'Pol.
There have been mentioned a huge exodus, or multiple exoduses away from Vulcan, where those that rejected the philosophy of logic wanted to start anew somewhere. Romulus is the only succesful world as a result of that past.
I've long seen Vulcans as something of a cautionary example of going to an extreme. Rather than living alongside their emotions and learning their appropriate uses, Vulcans just repress them until it all occasionally explodes in an uncontrolled outburst. In their day to day, Vulcans have valuable logical insights but their lack of connection to emotion in a healthy way is a detriment.
Trek has from the beginning framed the strict adherence to cold logic as a flaw. That's why Spock got a bunch of people killed on the Galileo 7.