This episode reminds me of Aldous Huxley's "A Brave New World." I read the book before I saw this episode. Huxley's book had a profound impact on me, and this episode had essentially the same message - perfect happiness and utopia is inhuman and bad, and human flaws with struggle and pain is good. My philosophy has always been that happiness is the ultimate goal. If one is delusional or whatever, what does it matter if one is happy? Isn't happiness everyone's goal. It would seem not if you took the message from Huxley's novel and this episode. It would seem that the right answer is that to be flawed is human and one should embrace that, whether that mean war, starvation, misery, or whatever. The message is that it is better to be under one's own faculties than under the influence of a lie, even if that lie leads us exactly where we all want to go. I say, if we are unaware of the lie, then it does not matter. I can see the argument for why it would be bad. The argument is that it isn't possible, and I get that. But in Huxley's novel and this episode, it is possible, yet it is still purported to be a bad thing. It is as if something is lost in the human experience if the negative side of life cannot be experienced, though we all strive to avoid that side.
I am much like Spock, a bit autistic and logical. I really empathize with Spock when he states that this is the only time he knew happiness, and I wonder why he did not strive to return to it. To be completely free of what hindered him from enjoying life; to know what that felt like and abandon it truly asks for a serious philosophical discussion. I would not have made that decision. I would have returned to the bliss.
People question why Kirk was the only one that didn't succumb, and to me it is because he is the ideal human. For him, normal human life is extremely rewarding. He is a winner. For him to succeed when others fail is what drives him. It would be unthinkable that there are no winners or losers and that everything is just dandy the way it is. He cannot function like this. I think this is a very American view of the world; very individualistic; there must be winners and losers, pain and triumph.
We are told that we have to be a certain way, but that is just brainwashing to get us to comply and fill our role in society. It is what the ideal man wants for the rest of us. They don't want us to have bliss and happiness and not produce anything for them to feed their ego. They want us to be enslaved to them. Stories like this tell you that if you are ignorant of greed and the desire to be something better that you are living a worthless life. Marijuana was banned in the 60s not because it was unhealthy. It was banned because there was a concern that we would be turned into a country of do-nothings that were satisfied with basic needs. While I relate to wanting to live in such a way, I understand that ultimately, a nation of do-nothings is harmful, however when such a model could be produced such as in this episode to where there were no negative consequences from such a lifestyle, why not choose it?
For someone like Spock, he doesn't know true social happiness, and to find it is truly a gift. My guess is that without the influence of the spores that Spock succumbed to his loyalty to Kirk and the mission because that is what he is programmed to do. But for me, the human side of me, the non-autistic side, yearns to be blissfully unaware as most human beings are. I am too tuned in, and to be this tuned out would truly be something that I would not give up. I am a psychiatrist and find these sort of possibilities of the imagination most intriguing.
I am much like Spock, a bit autistic and logical. I really empathize with Spock when he states that this is the only time he knew happiness, and I wonder why he did not strive to return to it. To be completely free of what hindered him from enjoying life; to know what that felt like and abandon it truly asks for a serious philosophical discussion. I would not have made that decision. I would have returned to the bliss.
People question why Kirk was the only one that didn't succumb, and to me it is because he is the ideal human. For him, normal human life is extremely rewarding. He is a winner. For him to succeed when others fail is what drives him. It would be unthinkable that there are no winners or losers and that everything is just dandy the way it is. He cannot function like this. I think this is a very American view of the world; very individualistic; there must be winners and losers, pain and triumph.
We are told that we have to be a certain way, but that is just brainwashing to get us to comply and fill our role in society. It is what the ideal man wants for the rest of us. They don't want us to have bliss and happiness and not produce anything for them to feed their ego. They want us to be enslaved to them. Stories like this tell you that if you are ignorant of greed and the desire to be something better that you are living a worthless life. Marijuana was banned in the 60s not because it was unhealthy. It was banned because there was a concern that we would be turned into a country of do-nothings that were satisfied with basic needs. While I relate to wanting to live in such a way, I understand that ultimately, a nation of do-nothings is harmful, however when such a model could be produced such as in this episode to where there were no negative consequences from such a lifestyle, why not choose it?
For someone like Spock, he doesn't know true social happiness, and to find it is truly a gift. My guess is that without the influence of the spores that Spock succumbed to his loyalty to Kirk and the mission because that is what he is programmed to do. But for me, the human side of me, the non-autistic side, yearns to be blissfully unaware as most human beings are. I am too tuned in, and to be this tuned out would truly be something that I would not give up. I am a psychiatrist and find these sort of possibilities of the imagination most intriguing.