TenForward: Where Every Vulcan Knows Your Name
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Romulans didn't need to be taught. They were always technological equals (possibly superiors if you count cloaking). Yet instead of making amends with an equal, Vulcans chose to embrace the neophyte humans and grow them to technological equality instead of embracing their brother and sister Romulans.
Yes, because once again, it's far easier to teach a curious child than a smartass who thinks they've got it already.
The Romulans and Vulkans are different on a fundamental level. They both separately DO think they 'get it' and the other does not. Their story is specificially about how they cannot make up. By saying, "I don't get why they cannot be friends." you're literally ignoring their entire reason for being written in to the show as opposition to Vulkan.
Neither of them have the "correct" answer. Pure logic doesn't work out, and pure emotion doesn't, either. The entire point is that these "advanced" species still have fundamental social flaws and still conflict over silly things.
They're basically trying to say, "It takes more than intelligence and advanced technology to overcome bigotry."
You're doubling down on the "teaching" bit. I'm not seeing a "teaching" angle that makes any difference here. What is it that you think Vulcans taught humans than they wanted to teach Romulans?
I'm not saying that. I'm saying it could be the perspective of the Romulans. The Romulans are less driven by logic and rationale than by their emotions and passions. Meaning, they'd make this assessment overriding logic and instead embracing emotion, envy and anger in this case.
Absolutely, and humans are no exception to these conflicts. In the area of this conflict of thought process Humans, Vulcans, and Romulans are equal. There is no position that all 3 agree on 100% with each other.
The teaching angle is to emphasize the Vulkan angle since you were making arguments for the Romulan angle already. Even the "emotionless" Vulkan don't constantly reach out for the obvious logical solution because there are sociological reasons they expect no purchase. Reasons that purposefully reflect faults of humanity, and thusly are inherently illogical to some degree given the "Vulcan" prescription of excellent logic.
If you want to be charitable to the writers, it's a great way to point out how bigotry trancends logic. They might actually make headway with outreach, but they do not, because Vulkans are the know-it-all types. I sort-of stated the expected dynamic backwards, but it still works because I'm sure Romulans would still dismiss the intelligence of Vulkans for nearly the exact same reason: they think they already have it figured out.
Yes, it's illogical, but that's part of the point: Logic is not wisdom. Someone can be plenty intelligent and yet still be a fool.
It's worth not over-analyzing, though, since it is a situation set up for allegory of human folly in a TV show, not one written in to a planned book series where it might have to stand up to stronger cohesive scrutiny. All you have to do is not explain things well, and suddenly the script isn't cohesive with canon. They are written to be laughably similar species to reinforce how dumb bigotry is, so something basically HAS to make little logical sense, because bigotry is illogical.
The technology is a side-effect. The thing the Vulcans want to teach is their philosophy.
That didn't work out so well with humans.
Didn't it? Not that humans became straight up Vulcans, but Vulcans did want to get the benefits of humanity's drive without the parts where we nuke each other. Most Vulcans in the 24th century would probably consider this plan a success.
Humanity had already made it through its nuclear wars. So what Vulcan philosophy did humanity embrace through this "teaching"?
That's a very good question. I'm not sure we can discern a specific answer from canon. Rather, we infer it based on Vulcan intentions in the 22nd century and the end results in the 24th.
The canon events of Enterprise seems to suggest very little went the way the Vulcans intended for humanity. At the beginning of the series, it was the Vulcans in the leadership role over humanity, while by the end of the series, it was humanity in the leadership role with the creation of starfleet.
Because they didn't know they existed until humans had built the second Enterprise.