Over spring break, I rewatched some of the Star
Trek movies and found some interesting takes on some of the topics we have
discussed recently in class. So I will
be posting some different ideas that these movies portray over the next week or
so.
The
first idea has to do with what happens after death. First a little background on the story arc
that deals with the subject. In the
movies one of the main characters, Spock, is killed in a battle. His body is then laid to rest on a planet which
had an experimental device used on it to create a living planet from a dead
one. The effects of this device revived
Spocks body. As you may or may not know,
Spock is a Vulcan. The Vulcan society is
extremely logical but at the same time extremely religious. Their beliefs include that everyone has a
spirit of conscious related to their mind called a katra. When someone dies their katra is transferred through
a special ceremony to a different level of consciousness with the katras of the
rest of the dead. There the katras mix
together in a manner similar to eastern philosophy’s view of total enlightenment. Because his body had been revived, Spock’s
katra was placed back inside of it.
I
had never given it much thought before on this philosophy but now find it to be
an interesting mix of believes on death.
It is like a hybrid of the traditional western belief that death is
another step in the journey of a soul and the eastern belief that enlightenment
is achieved when one’s consciousness is merged with a universal
consciousness. It also demonstrates to
me that there are as many views on death as there are cultures and
subcultures. This brings the question:
how do we know which one is true, or at least the most accurate?
According
to these movies, we not only cannot know which philosophy is true but also
cannot describe what actually happens without experiencing death first hand. Because no one can die and live to tell about
it (except for Spock apparently). I
would agree that despite all the research, there is no way of knowing what
really does happen. I believe the movies
sum the inadequacies of our experiences best with this exchange:
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