Were Vulcans Attempting to Be Psychopaths?

Leonard Nimoy as Spock, a Human/Vulcan hybrid, demonstrating the Vulcan salute

 It was when I was reading the Psychopath article by Kevin Dutton in a Scientific American magazine something about the development of the ideal psychopath had me looking for comparisons. Although fictional,  the Vulcan culture made sense to me because there were things that stood out to which had me scratching my head.

In about the 4th century CE, Vulcans emerged from their violent tendencies and civil wars under a philosopher named Surak, who advocated the suppressing of emotion in favor of logic.

October 2012

Trolleyology: A railway trolley is hurtling down a track. In its path are five people who are trapped on the line and cannot escape. Fortunately, you can flip a switch that will divert the trolley down a fork in the track away from the five people—but at a price. There is another person trapped down that fork, and the trolley will kill him or her instead. Should you hit the switch? What Psychopaths Teach Us about How to Succeed

The experimental example when taken further serves to help one understand that if a moral dilemma becomes a choice,  then how would a psychopath make it? This becomes interesting,  in that the suppression of emotion,  is not the idea behind "such choices"  for a psychopath so it would seem.  In the case of the Vulcan's,  this was not the case. The Vulcan's brain scans would have shown activity when the emotions were involved in their moral dilemmas, yet,  they would have wanted to extinguish that primitiveness from their historical civil uprisings depicted with regard to their success as a race.

So yes,  you can see and understand this is a fictional comparative example of the process of moral dilemmas. So this is to show that with reason and logic we would have wanted to perform most appropriately. There is no doubt that such a success in the choice of "pushing the fat man over the bridge" could have saved five lives. The psychopath,  would not have had to think about it,  and their brain scan would show such absences of the emotive part of our expressions. Especially with those destined to be human and alive. So in my view we should not disregard the emotive quality of our being toward such success with regard to reason and logic. Hold high, the need for this Emotional absence.


So while cognoscente of the way in which psychopath characteristics are useful in the world of CEO's  it is most intriguing that such a design in our culture wold have spawned such architects of the human experience. Such fictional stories of the Vulcan's to have succeeded in such a humanistic destined as the most apropos human construct that we can find?

This is what I found most disturbing. That it  is to think,  for humanistic trials and recognition of this emotive facet by design was and is held by most with regard to such primitive standards?  This is not what I  had hope society would have seemed to required for success?

See Also:

• Psychopathy