It's just a science fiction TV show, but you seem to want to argue about it, so....
I think you are distorting the story to fit your narrative. Pike resists captivity, not the temptations of illusion. He makes it clear he would rather die than live as a captive; the Talosians let him go because humans have a "unique hatred of captivity." Vina didn't like it either, and was on more than one occasion punished with extreme pain for her resistance. But they kept her because (a) they didn't have a starship with which to let her go and (b) they were hoping to get a mated pair who would settle in and produce generations raised in the illusion from childhood.
It was the Talosians who were the warning to the galaxy not to live in illusion, as they made quite clear themselves at the end. Pike does not understand this, the Talosians have to spell it out for him (and the audience) in the episode's final moments, as I quoted above.
Well this is not a particularly profound realization on their part, Vina comes right out and explicitly compares what they are doing to a narcotic, which I quoted earlier. Of course, similes are used to help us understand a new concept by comparing it to a different, but already-familiar one. It does not mean they are the same.
Civilization arose about 6,000 years ago in the Fertile Crescent. Humans evolved into their modern form about 300,000 years ago. So civilization has existed for about 2% of human existence. To repeat myself, "most of human existence on this planet has been a struggle to survive day to day and find enough food. The idea of leisure is relatively new. Leisure for the masses, even newer."
Civilization - which means "city-fication" - is basically what happens when an elite begins to live off the surplus produced by the hard labor of the masses. A surplus of food, in particular, is required to have people specialize into non-food-producing activities like blacksmithing, carpentry, pottery making, masonry, and of course war and oppression. True leisure is only enjoyed by the elite; the poor people, which is almost all of them, have hard lives spent working the land to produce food. You don't find social classes in hunter-gatherer tribes. Exploiting other people's economic output is something that arose only after agriculture, which in turn was the prerequisite for cities.
The kind of wealth required to live a life of leisure naturally attracts other people who want to take it. The first cities were more or less contemporaneous with the first walls, to keep out raiders and armies. The elite class was also invariably the warrior class, with a monopoly on high quality weapons and armor and the time and resources to train for combat, which also comes in handy for keeping the poor masses in line and continuing to exploit them. You have to go pretty late in human history to find civilizations so organized that the rich could enjoy a life of truly idle leisure without having to fight, having others to fight for them and protect their property and privileges - police and soldiers. As early as Ramses II in 1,200 BC, and as late as Napoleon, the head of state was on the field commanding troops directly. The first President of the United States was, not coincidentally, the supreme commander of the American war effort, General Washington, who fought in the field with his men.
It is only recently that the rich serve no function whatsoever. In the past they at least went to war alongside the commoners, and led them, having had the leisure to study the arts of war and strategy. In the British Royal Family even today it is customary for the royals to serve, usually in the Navy. Even the widely loathed (because of the Epstein affair - that forbidden fruit) Prince Andrew flew a variety of dangerous military missions in the Falklands War. At some level they realize that being perceived as worthless parasites is risky.
You refer to the upper classes. There were more slaves in ancient Athens than free men of all classes.
I think this is becoming a definitional game. There is a fundamental difference between a recreational activity and a life of leisure.
The Talosians were engaging in a life of leisure, with no work output of any kind. That is an entirely different concept than occasional recreational activities, which even animals engage in. No doubt you have seen your adult cats playing. Wild lions do too, playing is not confined to domestic animals. Dolphins and whales engage in recreational activity. That is not a life of leisure. I thought it clear from the context of the episode that we were not discussing mere recreational activities. The perils of the Mirror are not based on using it occasionally for recreation. We were discussing engaging in leisure at the expense of everything else. Not just any leisure either; leisure that is not based on reality, and is a completely internal experience.
LOL. I do not consider sports to hone intellect in the slightest. On the contrary, I find sporting culture to be quite anti-intellectual. But that is another conversation and much less interesting, as I am repelled from all things related to sports.
Not by me.
In general, I would say to go by what people do, not what they say, when evaluating what they really value. A lot more people choose to drink in front of the TV than participate in sports. In fact most sports fans engage in sports only to the extent of drinking in front of the TV while they watch others get paid to play sports.
And that is exactly what most people do. The athletes on the other hand are typically getting paid, so they are receiving a large reward also, they are just spending it off-camera, often on very hedonistic activities. For those still at the college level, the hedonism typically takes the form of easy access to willing women and partying.
Part of the American Dream is to be able to retire and - wait for it - enjoy a life of leisure. This is not a despised concept; it is an ideal. It is why people play the lottery. Millennials are rather famous for their obsession with the FIRE concept - Financial Independence and Retire Early. Everybody except workaholics wants 100% leisure, but it is very hard to get if you are not born into it.
It varies tremendously by individual and has a lot to do with the brain chemistry you are born with. Some people are happy picking weeds, while others require sailing a yacht on a turquoise sea. One thing is certain, it is not a state meant to be the norm, because a happy person has little motivation to do anything - he is already happy, like a lotus-eater with a full tummy, so why exert himself? I know people who eat the same thing all the time because they are perfectly satisfied with a very limited diet. Others, who are not, seek out new food experiences constantly. Happiness is a de-motivator. Nature abhors it. Hunger, fear, lust - these get animals off their behinds and on the move. Happiness is meant to be a reward, not a default state.
I think one reason so many Millennials and Gen Z are alone is because the Internet eases their loneliness just enough to demotivate them from undergoing the pains and perils of dating to find a partner, without delivering the value of a human relationship. If they were stuck in a room with no phone and no computer, I think most would eventually go out and interact with other people, the way people used to.
Yes I have read several translations of the Odyssey, the Iliad, and the Homeric Hymns and the Homerica, wherein lie such stories not found in the Iliad such as the Trojan Horse. I am familiar with the Land of the Lotus-eaters. I suspect it is an ancient reference to the opium poppy, or perhaps alcoholism.
It is a fantasy of course. In real life the Lotus-eaters would starve to death or be killed or enslaved. The ancient world was not particularly friendly to people who were stoned all the time. At best it was a weird scene and a warning not to be a drunkard. This was a warrior culture and anything which enfeebled a man made him vulnerable and despised. This included, incidentally, old age. If you read Homer you will see the old being treated with extreme disrespect because they no longer have physical prowess. I would not look to Homer for any sort of moral compass. Of course, in that time, living to an old age was unusual to begin with. Better to die young in battle than to become a feeble old man at everyone else's mercy.
It is analogous but it is not the same. The Talosians survived thanks to ancient machines built by their ancestors. They lived an entire lifetime turned inward, living in fantasy, in complete leisure, experiencing the lives and emotions of others rather than living their own. In the time of Homer, there was no actual option for a society to exist in a state of perpetual bliss like that. The idea of the Talosians was not an old trope IMO, it was an entirely new science fiction concept - a skill or technology so seductive it could destroy entire civilizations. The Talosians knew that, with the noxious captivity element removed, humans would be just as vulnerable as they to the lure of a life of illusion.
Homer just knew that drunkards or opium-eaters or whatever he had heard about were enfeebled and it was thus a fate to be avoided. Spoilers, Odysseus is the only one to survive the voyage home, his men would have been better off staying in the Land of the Lotus-eaters, alive and blissful.
It's a science fiction show and the Talosians were an interesting new science fiction concept. They were not stoned, they were living via the emotions and sensations of other species they held captive - lots of other species.
And they certainly were not inebriated nor enfeebled. Their intelligence and mental powers greatly exceeded that of the humans.
TALOSIAN: Your ship...release me, or we'll destroy it.
VINA: He's not bluffing, Captain. They can make your crew work the wrong controls or push any button it takes to destroy your ship.
I think you are distorting the story to fit your narrative. Pike resists captivity, not the temptations of illusion. He makes it clear he would rather die than live as a captive; the Talosians let him go because humans have a "unique hatred of captivity." Vina didn't like it either, and was on more than one occasion punished with extreme pain for her resistance. But they kept her because (a) they didn't have a starship with which to let her go and (b) they were hoping to get a mated pair who would settle in and produce generations raised in the illusion from childhood.
It was the Talosians who were the warning to the galaxy not to live in illusion, as they made quite clear themselves at the end. Pike does not understand this, the Talosians have to spell it out for him (and the audience) in the episode's final moments, as I quoted above.
Well this is not a particularly profound realization on their part, Vina comes right out and explicitly compares what they are doing to a narcotic, which I quoted earlier. Of course, similes are used to help us understand a new concept by comparing it to a different, but already-familiar one. It does not mean they are the same.
Civilization arose about 6,000 years ago in the Fertile Crescent. Humans evolved into their modern form about 300,000 years ago. So civilization has existed for about 2% of human existence. To repeat myself, "most of human existence on this planet has been a struggle to survive day to day and find enough food. The idea of leisure is relatively new. Leisure for the masses, even newer."
Civilization - which means "city-fication" - is basically what happens when an elite begins to live off the surplus produced by the hard labor of the masses. A surplus of food, in particular, is required to have people specialize into non-food-producing activities like blacksmithing, carpentry, pottery making, masonry, and of course war and oppression. True leisure is only enjoyed by the elite; the poor people, which is almost all of them, have hard lives spent working the land to produce food. You don't find social classes in hunter-gatherer tribes. Exploiting other people's economic output is something that arose only after agriculture, which in turn was the prerequisite for cities.
The kind of wealth required to live a life of leisure naturally attracts other people who want to take it. The first cities were more or less contemporaneous with the first walls, to keep out raiders and armies. The elite class was also invariably the warrior class, with a monopoly on high quality weapons and armor and the time and resources to train for combat, which also comes in handy for keeping the poor masses in line and continuing to exploit them. You have to go pretty late in human history to find civilizations so organized that the rich could enjoy a life of truly idle leisure without having to fight, having others to fight for them and protect their property and privileges - police and soldiers. As early as Ramses II in 1,200 BC, and as late as Napoleon, the head of state was on the field commanding troops directly. The first President of the United States was, not coincidentally, the supreme commander of the American war effort, General Washington, who fought in the field with his men.
It is only recently that the rich serve no function whatsoever. In the past they at least went to war alongside the commoners, and led them, having had the leisure to study the arts of war and strategy. In the British Royal Family even today it is customary for the royals to serve, usually in the Navy. Even the widely loathed (because of the Epstein affair - that forbidden fruit) Prince Andrew flew a variety of dangerous military missions in the Falklands War. At some level they realize that being perceived as worthless parasites is risky.
You refer to the upper classes. There were more slaves in ancient Athens than free men of all classes.
I think this is becoming a definitional game. There is a fundamental difference between a recreational activity and a life of leisure.
The Talosians were engaging in a life of leisure, with no work output of any kind. That is an entirely different concept than occasional recreational activities, which even animals engage in. No doubt you have seen your adult cats playing. Wild lions do too, playing is not confined to domestic animals. Dolphins and whales engage in recreational activity. That is not a life of leisure. I thought it clear from the context of the episode that we were not discussing mere recreational activities. The perils of the Mirror are not based on using it occasionally for recreation. We were discussing engaging in leisure at the expense of everything else. Not just any leisure either; leisure that is not based on reality, and is a completely internal experience.
LOL. I do not consider sports to hone intellect in the slightest. On the contrary, I find sporting culture to be quite anti-intellectual. But that is another conversation and much less interesting, as I am repelled from all things related to sports.
Not by me.
In general, I would say to go by what people do, not what they say, when evaluating what they really value. A lot more people choose to drink in front of the TV than participate in sports. In fact most sports fans engage in sports only to the extent of drinking in front of the TV while they watch others get paid to play sports.
And that is exactly what most people do. The athletes on the other hand are typically getting paid, so they are receiving a large reward also, they are just spending it off-camera, often on very hedonistic activities. For those still at the college level, the hedonism typically takes the form of easy access to willing women and partying.
Part of the American Dream is to be able to retire and - wait for it - enjoy a life of leisure. This is not a despised concept; it is an ideal. It is why people play the lottery. Millennials are rather famous for their obsession with the FIRE concept - Financial Independence and Retire Early. Everybody except workaholics wants 100% leisure, but it is very hard to get if you are not born into it.
It varies tremendously by individual and has a lot to do with the brain chemistry you are born with. Some people are happy picking weeds, while others require sailing a yacht on a turquoise sea. One thing is certain, it is not a state meant to be the norm, because a happy person has little motivation to do anything - he is already happy, like a lotus-eater with a full tummy, so why exert himself? I know people who eat the same thing all the time because they are perfectly satisfied with a very limited diet. Others, who are not, seek out new food experiences constantly. Happiness is a de-motivator. Nature abhors it. Hunger, fear, lust - these get animals off their behinds and on the move. Happiness is meant to be a reward, not a default state.
I think one reason so many Millennials and Gen Z are alone is because the Internet eases their loneliness just enough to demotivate them from undergoing the pains and perils of dating to find a partner, without delivering the value of a human relationship. If they were stuck in a room with no phone and no computer, I think most would eventually go out and interact with other people, the way people used to.
Yes I have read several translations of the Odyssey, the Iliad, and the Homeric Hymns and the Homerica, wherein lie such stories not found in the Iliad such as the Trojan Horse. I am familiar with the Land of the Lotus-eaters. I suspect it is an ancient reference to the opium poppy, or perhaps alcoholism.
It is a fantasy of course. In real life the Lotus-eaters would starve to death or be killed or enslaved. The ancient world was not particularly friendly to people who were stoned all the time. At best it was a weird scene and a warning not to be a drunkard. This was a warrior culture and anything which enfeebled a man made him vulnerable and despised. This included, incidentally, old age. If you read Homer you will see the old being treated with extreme disrespect because they no longer have physical prowess. I would not look to Homer for any sort of moral compass. Of course, in that time, living to an old age was unusual to begin with. Better to die young in battle than to become a feeble old man at everyone else's mercy.
It is analogous but it is not the same. The Talosians survived thanks to ancient machines built by their ancestors. They lived an entire lifetime turned inward, living in fantasy, in complete leisure, experiencing the lives and emotions of others rather than living their own. In the time of Homer, there was no actual option for a society to exist in a state of perpetual bliss like that. The idea of the Talosians was not an old trope IMO, it was an entirely new science fiction concept - a skill or technology so seductive it could destroy entire civilizations. The Talosians knew that, with the noxious captivity element removed, humans would be just as vulnerable as they to the lure of a life of illusion.
Homer just knew that drunkards or opium-eaters or whatever he had heard about were enfeebled and it was thus a fate to be avoided. Spoilers, Odysseus is the only one to survive the voyage home, his men would have been better off staying in the Land of the Lotus-eaters, alive and blissful.
It's a science fiction show and the Talosians were an interesting new science fiction concept. They were not stoned, they were living via the emotions and sensations of other species they held captive - lots of other species.
And they certainly were not inebriated nor enfeebled. Their intelligence and mental powers greatly exceeded that of the humans.
TALOSIAN: Your ship...release me, or we'll destroy it.
VINA: He's not bluffing, Captain. They can make your crew work the wrong controls or push any button it takes to destroy your ship.
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