Logical Limitations

I admire the Vulcan race. Often seen by outsiders (or non-Trekkies) as emotionless beings, the reverse is actually true. Vulcans are intensely emotional beings, who over their history found that their capacity for negative emotional outbursts was great enough to pose a danger to their entire civilization. A visionary named Surak founded a philosophical system based on meditation and self-control, which reigned in these emotions to such an extent that nearly all emotional expression was curtailed, to find an outlet only once every seven years.

The Vulcan system is indeed based on a certain despising of emotion, but that is due to the pendulum effect, a phrase I may or may not have just invented, in which the reaction to an extreme position is to take an extreme position as far away from the original as possible, often while failing to recognize that the central point is the same. (In this case, the central point would be "emotions are powerful," and the two diametrically opposed postions would be to embrace emotions completely or to shun emotions completely.)

Sometimes, stuck in the same familiar emotional ruts I've worn down to bedrock, I forget that this is not how the Holy Spirit works, that there is no sitting back and waiting for me to master my emotions, to exert self-control so powerful that nothing can touch me except for those regularly scheduled times when the world explodes.

But then sometimes, traveling the same worn-out roads, I forget how it is that the Holy Spirit does work, how it is that he can be working even when I don't see any progress, even when I see the same feelings flaring up that have been flaring up for a lifetime with no sign of stopping.

I suspect that life is not illogical, but rather extralogical--beyond logic, outside of the grasp of logic, larger than logic alone. Life is not to be found in logic, but rather what undergirds it: logos. Word made flesh. Dwelling with us. (The strain on the central point of the pendulum would be unbearable if it were anything other than divine in nature.)

How then shall a would-be Vulcan live?