Wednesday, August 23, 2006

Childhood Ambitions

What did you wish you could do when you were a child?

Have you found that no matter how fantastical it might have been then, that now you can in some way do that thing, even just in a small way?

This idea has been knocking around my mind for a while, but a recent comment I made at CIP's pretty well summed up one of my childhood ambitions. Here's part of the comment in case you don't want to click a link:

And my amateur psychoanalysis is an offshoot of my childhood ambition to be able to do the "Vulcan Mind Meld" like Spock. Of course, it might be more effective if I could actually put my fingers on someone's head to 'read' him. And in certain cases, I might even require to 'meld' in a more intense and exhaustive manner in order to really get the full picture. ;-)

Yeah, I'm a geek and I love the original Star Trek. I grew up watching it. I never got into the newer shows.



To me as a child the Vulcan Mind Meld was incredibly sexy. I so wanted to be able to do that, or have it done to me. And yes, I was somewhat precocious and sensed the intimacy of such an act even if I didn't think of it in explicitly sexual ways. Maybe I was a little bit in love with Spock because he could do that, and I thought that really experiencing another's thoughts and feelings was as close to them as you could get.





One of my favorite episodes was "Devil in the Dark" in which Spock manages to do the Mind Meld with the silicon-based Horta to learn that it was a she, a momma in fact, that was protecting her eggs. A man who could even communicate with a rock was alright by me. ;-)

It's unfortunate that Freud never mastered the Vulcan Mind Meld, but then it wasn't even invented when he was alive. ;-) I've been studying a bit about the history of feminism in preparation for a post about the New Feminine Mystique. In my reading I found that Freud longed to understand women but never succeeded. He once said:

The great question that has never been answered and which I have not yet been able to answer, despite my thirty years of research into the feminine soul, is, what does a woman want?


Well, Dr. Freud, I have an answer for you, but this isn't quite the time for that yet. I'd just like to say that it doesn't require that a man knows know to do the Vulcan Mind Meld, but it does have to do with his willingness to let a woman do that to him.

Stay tuned for the next installment...

Update: Clicking the above sentence will take you to my answer to Freud.

14 comments:

Anonymous said...

You gotta know that every male reader of yours is hoping you'll want to meld with him. :-)

And Modern English almost had it right.

Anonymous said...
This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
QUASAR9 said...

I have to totally agree 100% with dhammett on this one ...

I was gonna ask:
"Do u wanna mind meld"
but been beaten to the punch

QUASAR9 said...

Rae,

you know how irritating the phone and especially mobile phones can be when you don't wanna be interrupted.

Well thank your lucky stars, humans are not telepaths, imagine people walking into your thoughts uninvited ...

QUASAR9 said...

It's enough voyeurs cruising blogworld looking into other people's thoughts ot conversations

But imagine the intrusion directly into your mind, when your thoughts are wholly on other matters ...

You'd be put away in a padded cell if you tell people you can hear voices in your head - other than your own voice and thoughts and the voices of those talking to you with air waves

unless your name is bush, then it's ok if you claim you are getting your orders from above.

He should check the intercom system in the whitehouse - he's probably getting subliminal messages tannoyed to him by Cheney & Rumsfeld, in his bedroom while asleep

Rae Ann said...

dh, I must apologize for the conduct of my evil doppelganger. ;-) I'm not sure if you saw that comment, but it was *bad*. lol

Q, If I really want to sound crazy it's kind of like this: it's like an antenna on a radio and I have to learn which frequencies go with which stations. But it's not like 'voices' in my head at all. It's just a *knowing*. Over the years I'm learning how to figure it all out. Of course, I'm still trying to work out what is my own imagination and what is not. ;-) I see what you're saying about blogging, but even then you're only getting bits and pieces.

Anonymous said...

Hi Rae Ann -

I missed your doppleganger's comments and, I think, I'm sorry I did. Nonetheless, if an apology were necessary, rest assured it would be accepted.

Our computer's giving us fits right now and it's all I can do to keep it going. And no extra funds to replace it at this point.

Q -

I guess it was OK when Jimmy Carter was listening to the Lord? Frankly, the more of us who listen to His voice, the better off we'd all be. BTW, Jimmy didn't have too much luck in the middle east, either, as I recall. :-)

QUASAR9 said...

dhammett, for sure for sure
we shouldlisten to the Lord

but do these poltical leaders who claim to listen to the lord, hear what they want to hear.

I know, I know it sounds strange
but if the lord is on 'our' side who shall we fear
does God need any man made weapons or armies - I think God repetedly rells us to put our trust in Him, and to not trust in the militasry might of Egypt or Rome or whoever thru history ...
empires come and go
military powers come and go

I am not saying the military is bad - a career or chosen ptofession. I am saying we should not use firemen to start fires - or start fires to justify spending in the fire services, if you catch my drift...

Mahndisa S. Rigmaiden said...

08 24 06

Hey Rae Ann:
I love Spock too!!!!!!! Did you see the roast of William Shatner the other night? They harped on him so badly, but Leonard Nimoy wouldn't participate except for a skit at the beginning of th show. It was vulger and hilarious all at once. Just in case you missed it, here is a link to Johnny Triangle's site. It is a five minute snippet of George Takei railing on Mr. Shatner. I laughed and cried! hehehehe

Anonymous said...

Q -

You asked, "...but do these poltical leaders who claim to listen to the lord, hear what they want to hear."

Maybe they do, maybe they don't. How can you be sure that our leaders who are claiming to listen to God really aren't listening to Him? The Bible is full of instances where God used the army of Israel to further His purposes. And similarly, full of examples of His use of opposing armies to frustrate Israel's purposes when they were in disobedience to Him. I can cite examples if you wish.

However,the Bible is also very clear on our obligations as citizens.

Romans 13:1 says, "Everyone must submit himself to the governing authorities, for there is no authority except that which God has established. The authorities that exist have been established by God."

Hebrews 13:17 states, "Obey your leaders and submit to their authority. They keep watch over you as men who must give an account. Obey them so that their work will be a joy, not a burden, for that would be of no advantage to you."

The Hebrews passage calls those in authority to divine account. If any leader is falsely using the name of the Lord to justify his actions, I wouldn't want to be in his/her shoes at the time of judgement. The Hebrews passage also contains a blessing for the citizenry, for when we obey our leaders and make their work a joy rather than a burden, it implies that it will be to our advantage.

I'm not sure which "fire" you'd like me to address, in terms of the fireman starting the fire. Iraq: it was under the control of an acknowledged brutal dictator and practicer of genocide. His regime had tortured and killed hundreds of thousands of its own citizens, and held the rest of the world in contempt. One need only look at the way he thumbed his nose at repeated UN resolutions. And this blog has a post from Tuesday that shows that it wasn't just GWB and Republicans who believed that he should be dealt with, in Bible lingo, be it ever so severely.

I've already documented for you the start of the troubles for Israel. Hezbollah and Hamas, if you were to ask me, were the firemen that started the fires, so to speak. You may recall that it was Hezbollah that bombed the US embassy in Lebanon that killed over 200 marines under Jimmy Carter's watch.

God understands man's need for armed forces and He uses them for His purposes. I don't presume to know God's mind. But I do believe the elimination of those who would terrorize innocents is a purpose He would approve.

ghartstein said...

Done the mind meld....it's not all it's cracked up to be!!! ANd then you get the munchies!

QUASAR9 said...

So dhammett

Would you submit to Hitler???
Would you submit to Saddam???

QUASAR9 said...

or
are there some authorities one must not submit to.
The connundrum with that one is why has the US been fighting wars non-stop since the end of WWII over 60 years ago.

The US god's policeman, hmmm!
Let me think about it
Ok they establish some sort of democratic rule, usually government's which plat by their rules.

But so did Nazi Germany
that didn't make them right or good
or ...

Anonymous said...

OK, Q -

I don't know if you'll read this because the response is a little late...I didn't get to this site over the weekend. However...

With regard to submission to authority, I was simply trying to document my comments with supporting information...something you seem to have a hard time doing. I think it's clear the Bible would not have us submit to a dictator who is bent on genocide. So supporting Hitler or Saddam? I don't think so. *dripping with sarcasm* But supporting a leader who has claimed to have heard from the Lord who would take actions to depose a dictator? ABSOLUTELY. And frankly, if you had an attention span any longer than a 2-year old's, you'd remember that I've been an advocate of taking out the terrorists (Hitler and Saddam both would have qualified under the current definition of terrorism) in the middle east, so don't give me that crap about submitting to those dictators.

Second, if the US hadn't saved Europe's sorry ass during WWII, you'd be goosestepping around Westminster Abbey right now. Nobody across the pond seems to have the stones (should I define that for you?) to come out against dictatorships/terrorists around the world. If you recall, Europe's hesitation in the late 30's led to Hitler's rise. The more things change, the more they remain the same.

So get off your ass and support Blair, and Italy and the other (mostly Eastern) European allies that aren't afraid to get their hands dirty to take out dictators who are abusing human rights, killing their own and other's citizens, allowing terrorism and so on.

"We sleep soundly in our beds at night because rough men stand ready to do violence on our behalf." Winston Churchill

http://homepage.eircom.net/~odyssey/Quotes/History/Churchill.html
- about 60% of the way down the page.

Y'all used to be staunch allies, men to be counted upon. Where did you go wrong?

Sleep well.