I
have some good friends in Fandom who simply do not connect to the
idea of Klingon. That's fine.
For me, though, it is a fictional way of honoring and exalting what I
love about my ancestry. I'm German/Irish.
So the meme of the warrior bard strikes real deep in my soul. A
lot of
Klingons I know have gone in search of their roots
and also RP Viking, even to the extreme of adopting paganism. Well, my
personal experience makes that not an option for
me, I've talked a little about my faith, maybe not enough. But back to
the subject, there are few things that ring deeper in my soul than
Irish music and Northern poetry. I was reminded of this reading a
review/critique of The Thirteenth Warrior. I liked that
movie a lot, though I found some of it a little tedious, but this
prayer is really soulful and quite Klingon.
Lo there do I see my father.
Lo there do I see my mother.
Lo there do I see my brothers and my sisters.
Lo there do I see the line of my people back to the beginning.
Lo they do call to me;
They bid me take my place among them in the Halls of Valhalla,
Where the brave may live forever.
This is close to a part of the why of Klingon.
Klingon, as is practiced by fans, is a celebration of the Noble, the
Honorable, the commitment to respect, the willingness to shed blood and
die for an ideal.
But it's more than that, it's a joy in the rough and tumble, in the
unabashed. A commenter pointed out this prayer was a prayer without
shadow. That is a key to the Klingon, while there are thoughtful
Klingons, the Klingon culture eschews ambiguity. There is great humor
in the Klingon, it rejoices in the foibles and pompous. It is a knowing
humor that still loves the clear vision of the right and wrong. It's
knowledge is also self knowledge and acknowledges the warts and
ugliness of itself.
On the violence of the Klingon. This is misunderstood. Humans look at
the casual brutality and think that it means that Klingons are
unthinking brutes. In fact it is quite different than that. Klingons
understand and embrace the nature that humans and others try to veneer
over. Where humans try to tame deny and neuter themselves, Klingons
understand and channel the animal. There is a loss for Klingons, but it
is a loss that we accept. Where in the Human version of Hamlet, Hamlet
mopes and tries to come to a conclusion about his situation, in the
Klingon he quickly engages his uncle and finds a way to kill all his
foes. The human sees the deaths of the play as a tragedy, the Klingon
sees it as a just and honorable end. But what does the Klingon lose? He
loses the doubt and second thoughts, he might lose the depth that
introspection gives, but for most humans introspection is simply a way
to avoid the hard decisions. The Klingon makes the hard decision,
perhaps sooner than wisdom would, but he does make the choice and at
the end of the day even the most rigorous mediator is usually left with
a coin flip. Alexander of Macedon was his most Klingon when confronted
with the Gordian knot; he looked at it and rather than struggle to
unravel it, pulled a sword and cleaved it in twain.
People also mistake the directness and simplicity of Klingons as
stupidity and backwardness, as if they went directly from pillaging
villages to pillaging star systems... well we did, but that doesn't
mean there is no Klingon philosophy, that there is no love of wisdom.
While the Klingon is utilitarian and pragmatic, he is also thoughtful.
Their history is also different than that of Humans and Vulcans. where
Humans and Vulcans went through Reformations and Enlightenments, the
Klingon escaped that because it is a culture that was a slave culture,
enslaved to totalitarian oppressors. It fought and won the
freedom that is taken for granted by Humans and Vulcans. It's
philosophy is a deep and active one, based on warfare and liberation.
There are parallels and echoes in human cultures, the Japanese, the
African, and most resonating for me the Viking.
