Haruchai "showing" emotion

[matrixman]

Yikes! That's a great one, F&F. Wouldn't want to be on the receiving end of Bannor's savagery . Come to think of it, we never did see Bannor dish out the hurt all that much, did we? He was too busy protecting Covenant's behind. And front. And sides.

[Fist and Faith]

Yeah, Thomin's the only Haruchai we ever saw behaving in a way that we would normally recognize as savage, enraged, and all that. Their passion is hideously extravagant, but they're so controlled that it's difficult to see.

[Furls Fire]

Everything about the Haruchai is extravagant. It's a wonder Bannor didn't break in half when their vow was broken. 2000 years is a long long time...

[Skyweir]

LOL .. they just arent in touch with their feminine sides

i see the haruchai much like the clingon .. nope .. maybe more like Teuc's race .. oh .. no .. more like

emotionally inaccessible?? not really .. emotionally retarded .. absolutely not ..

the haruchai feel .. but do not express .. they repress

thus i cant see their extravagance .. furls can you explain your thoughts on this to my intellectually inaccessible self

[Furls Fire]

oh boy, well, as soon as I get all my faculties back, I'll be able to respond to that, sky

I can say this tho, without trying to think too much, the vow alone expresses the depth of their extravagance. Going without sleep, wives, food, home, for such service and for 2000 years, seems impossibly extravagant to me.

Their emotional surpression is more vulcan-like than anything else I've come across. The Vulcans actually trained themselves to be emotionless, replacing it with pure logic. That's the big difference between them and the bloodgaurd. Because to me, that vow was one of the most illiogical things I have ever heard of!

I don't think they are emotionless per se, I think it is more of a stance against showing the emotion they feel. The extravagance of their vow demanded that, they could not fulfill that vow if they let their emotions run amock.

Ugh, I am probably not making any sense at all...LOL!

[Zephalephelah]

When a new bloodguard comes to kevin's Watch to give the bad news of the giants, the new bloodguard gets beat down for showing emotion. I think that the bloodguard believe emotion is too unpredictable to be useful for their vow of utter service & so they rid themselves of it as entirely as possible.

Sure there are minor glimmers of it, but if you push a monk's face in dog crap long enough, he's gonna get mad. I think that they did admirably well for what they attempted to accomplish. I think they just didn't see the great price of it all.

[Durris]

Some of the examples of Haruchai emotion that move me the most are in Gilden-Fire.

...[Korik] had paid for centuries the cost of the yearning between a man and a woman...
...He grieved for Shetra and respected Hyrim. He judged the Unbeliever coldly. And the arrival of the Ranyhyn, seventeen of the great horses of Ra with their starred foreheads and their strange responsive fidelity, thundering forward in the first hint of day in answer to his call--that pride and beauty was a hymn in his heart. He was Haruchai and Bloodguard. His people had shown in their Vow how extremely they could be touched.

He could not forget any detail of the last night he had spent with his wife,
whose bones were already ancient in the frozen fastness of her grave. The Vow sustained him, but it was not warm.

(Maybe that degree of marital memory is incompatible with a "Me man, you woman" style of courtship? There's a Peggy Seeger album called "Penelope Isn't Waiting Any More"--Ms. Seeger must never have met Mrs. Korik.)

A few sentences after that passage, Korik's feelings are attributed to the landscape.

When the moon completed its worn traversal of the sky and fell into the west like a weary exhalation...

(Wince! 2000 years is a very long time.) It would be interesting to see where else SRD uses this method to express Haruchai emotions without attributing them directly to a character.

...And then rookie Lord Hyrim, who's had constant difficulty with horsemanship skills throughout the chapter, transcends his ineptitude during a life-or-death chase, and Korik's unvoiced response takes my breath away every time I read it:

During it all--the dodging, the surging pace, the unevenness of the ground--Lord Hyrim clung to his seat. He was kept erect by the proud skill of his mount. And the other Ranyhyn aided him by choosing their ways so that his horse had the straightest path through the trees. When he observed this, Korik applauded silently, and his chest grew tight with admiration, in spite of the other demands on his attention.

[Cail]

Yet another sci-fi analogy.

The Rangers in Babylon 5 drew heavily on the mythos of the Bloodguard. "We live for The One, we die for The One".

[Durris]

Cail, while watching Brinn battling ak-Haru Kenaustin Ardenol, either forgets that he's among flatlanders or (more likely), in the grip of so extraordinary a sight, doesn't care anymore who sees him emote.

Cail had come forward and now stood staring into the mist. Every line of his face was sharp with passion; moisture beaded on his forehead like sweat. For the first time, Linden saw one of the Haruchai breathing heavily.

I got so carried away with Brinn's speech and Brinn's combat that I left Cail's response to it out of my Dissection of this chapter; but I found the Cail passage even more intense for not having read and reread it.

[Seafoam Understone]

I think Haruchai emotions are like Vulcan (Star Trek) emotions. They're there but strongly surpressed. Except when it comes time to mate or tangle with Merewives.

[Bahgoon the Unbearable]

The Giants seem almost the exact opposite to the Haruchai in respect to emotions. The Haruchai are stony faced on the outside, but passionate on the inside. The Giants are more emotionally extravagant on the outside, but seem to act from inner peace. The caamora resolves angst and anxiety (though it took LAVA to burn away Foamfollower's angst!) for the Giants.

(Have the Giants been discussed on a thread in this forum?)

(Dammit, I keep clicking on the Preview button instead of Submit! That's three times in a row!!!)

[Revan]

(Have the Giants been discussed on a thread in this forum?)

Only about a million times.

[Durris]

I think Haruchai emotions are like Vulcan (Star Trek) emotions. They're there but strongly surpressed. Except when it comes time to mate or tangle with Merewives.

With respect, Rocksibling, though the two peoples show similar detachment from emotions in their outward behavior, I've always imagined that the deep structure underneath the detachment is different.

Vulcans acknowledge only logic as an appropriate motivation for choices and actions. They strive not only to suppress outward signs of emotion but to exclude emotion as a factor driving their acts.

The Haruchai have no abstract ideal of logic as such, although their detachment makes them able to act effectively under various extreme physical and emotional conditions. As far as I've seen, they don't make any attempt to exclude emotions from the motivations of their choices. The Vow was not remotely a logical decision; responding to the merewives even less so. And Brinn didn't pretend to be rationally motivated--or even emotionally detached--when the chance to fight ak-Haru Kenaustin Ardenol appeared. Haruchai dispassion is only as deep as their outward manner; the deep springs of their being and action are permeated with passion.

[Variol Farseer]

Vulcans acknowledge only logic as an appropriate motivation for choices and actions. They strive not only to suppress outward signs of emotion but to exclude emotion as a factor driving their acts.

Which is only to say that the Haruchai are plausible characters, and Vulcans are not. Nobody is motivated by logic; logic is not capable of supplying motivation. It's just as logical to die as to live (in fact, it's inevitable), and once you've grasped that, you need some non-logical reason for choosing to live. Logic is extremely useful for figuring out how to get the things you want, but wanting itself is not a logical act.

If you seriously try to base your motivations on logic alone, you will end up like Mr. Vertue in The Pilgrim's Regress, by C.S. Lewis.

'I must choose because I choose because I choose; and it goes on for ever, and in the whole world I cannot find a reason for rising from this stone.'

[Fist and Faith]

Nicely said, Durris. I've also explained the difference once or twice, but never better than that.


VF, you're right. Aslo very well said. I'll see if I can find logical reasons to pursue life and absolute logic.


Edit: Perhaps the drive that it seems most living things have to survive is what keeps the Vulcans going. It may not be logical by Vulcan standards, but that doesn't mean they aren't stuck with it. Just as they're stuck with their pon farr. But how they go about their survival, and what they do with the rest of their psyche, is under their control, and they choose logic.

Sound any good?

[Variol Farseer]

Edit: Perhaps the drive that it seems most living things have to survive is what keeps the Vulcans going. It may not be logical by Vulcan standards, but that doesn't mean they aren't stuck with it. Just as they're stuck with their pon farr. But how they go about their survival, and what they do with the rest of their psyche, is under their control, and they choose logic.

Sound any good?

Yes, that sounds quite plausible. The urge to survive is one of the most primitive emotions, and anybody who claims to follow 'pure logic' exclusively is trying to sell you something. A lot of half-baked philosophers come up with thoroughly stupid systems because they ignore those primitive emotions; but they themselves never actually try to live by those systems, because the systems are in fact unlivable. 'Practise what you preach' is the test that Vulcans, Nietzscheans, and solipsistic college sophomores all fail.