This is the personal blog site of Luke Hamaty. All opinions and articles posted here are just that: my personal opinion and not that of my employer or any organization with which I may be affiliated. In particular, I am prohibited from discussing or commenting on certain matters by the terms of my employment. Neither can I post content which might be construed as advice in certain domains. All freedoms carry responsibilities
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Why “Does Not Serve Vaal”?
The name, of course, comes from the original Star Trek episode “The Apple”.
(spoilers below, but good grief, you’ve had since 1967 to see the episode!)
Kirk, Spock, McCoy, Checkov, and some redshirts beam down to a planet where an immortal population of happy primitives bring offerings of food to the dragon-headed Vaal that controls the planet. Vaal, not unreasonably, sees the outsiders as a threat to the tranquility of the planet and attacks them. Kirk rather high-handedly decides that Vaal should be destroyed to return the people to their “natural” evolution.
I love this episode. There are so many questions on so many levels. Gamma Trianguli VI is, arguably, a paradise. It is certainly safe and its people are happy, healthy, and long-lived. But they are also stagnant, and sterile. This was the choice their ancestors made. They gave up on change and new generations to have endless life free of choice or struggle. And part of their “happiness” was a sense of purpose. Their whole lives revolve around serving Vaal. At one point, on observing a romantic interlude between Chekov and a Yeoman, one of the natives remarks:
” MAKORA: But what is to be gained? It is not a dance. It gathers no food. It does not serve Vaal. But it did seem as though it was, pleasant to them.”
So, why did I choose this?
Years ago, I was on a discussion thread where the existence (or non-existence) of God, where someone was employing an Argument from Consequences that, if there is no God, then life would be without purpose. This struck me as a particularly bad argument. If God exists to give purpose, then what gives God purpose? In the Star Trek episode, the people of Gamma Trianguli gain a sense of purpose from serving Vaal, but Vaal has no greater purpose, no import. The sense of purpose is an illusion. Does a sense of purpose require a God, or is it something we can create or discover for ourselves?
To be clear, I am not an atheist, but I think they bring up good points, and I often agree with them. I like to say that I share with them that I don’t believe in that God either. And in any logical argument, it is the agnostics who win anyway. We cannot know God, so “I don’t know” is a pretty good answer.
All this was at a time when I was deconstructing my faith, trying to decide what I really believed. It is not a pleasant process, one has to set aside the fear of where such a journey might lead. I recommend it though. When I put it back together, it was different but, I think, deeper and stronger.
I am a technologist by profession. My inclination is to science and reason. I like logical arguments and testable hypotheses. My faith though, is none of that, nor does it conflict really. I’m sure all the logical arguments are, well logical, but then…
“The wind blows where it wills. You hear the sound of it, but you do not know whence it comes or where it goes. So it is with the Spirit. That which is born of the Flesh if Flesh, but that which is born of the Spirit, is Spirit.”
Poetry, not prose. Incense rising to heaven. Joy and sadness, pain and passion. Death, resurrection, ascension.
I am a singer by avocation, mostly a church musician. We make art sculpted in time. We join in the song, it exists in the moment. It echos and passes, gone forever, yet somehow eternal. No, it makes no sense to me, I don’t understand how it works. It is something to be lived and experienced, not understood. And maybe life is like that, too, a part that is sung, existing in a moment of time.
What I serve, or try to, is not some mean physical thing that exists to assuage my ego or my need to have purpose. I don’t know if purpose is from God, or with God, or to God. But I do not, and will not, serve Vaal.