- #THE NEEDS OF MANY OUTWEIGH THE NEEDS OF THE FEW HOW TO#
- #THE NEEDS OF MANY OUTWEIGH THE NEEDS OF THE FEW SERIES#
I couldn’t name very many of the logical fallacies I learned, but I know how to recognize them even if I don’t know their precise names. I still have five of the seven books we read in my Women in Literature class and I read them with regularity, each time noticing something new. Most of the “nuts and bolts” - the content I learned in those humanities classes - has settled into the recesses of my mind, but the ways of thinking and knowing remain. World Religions: The East exposed me to value systems completely different from my own, and Action & Value: Ethics helped me engage in ethical arguments with others in ways that honored everyone’s humanity. In my Women in Literature course, I was exposed to authors who are so often left out of the literary canon, introducing me to voices and perspectives that I might not have experienced otherwise. I took a philosophy course called Knowledge & Reality, a course that focused on making logical arguments and identifying logical fallacies. Looking back, I have great appreciation for my advisor who really encouraged me to use those classes as an opportunity to explore something new - to find new ways of thinking. In addition to the math classes I took for my major, the psychology courses for my minor, and my elective courses, I needed to complete a number of general education courses in the natural sciences, social sciences, philosophy, literature, arts, and theology. It is a very utilitarian ethic: do what does the most good for the most people. Whether that means continually selecting teaching methods that resonate with “most” of the class or always relying on a popular vote to drive student programming, it would be easy for my analytical brain to justify such actions. As an educator, it can be all too easy to lean into the Spock mentality: that the good of the many outweighs the good of the few. After graduate school, I became a mental health counselor at a small university in Chicago and quickly shifted focus from mental health counseling to teaching and student development. I suppose it is fair to say that my academic foci were rooted in the natural and social sciences. In addition, I completed a minor in psychology and developed an interest in the analysis of human behavior, leading to my master’s degree in counseling psychology. In high school, I was on the math team (we even had a math team cheer), and during my undergraduate studies at Loyola University Chicago, I majored in mathematics. Logic and reason have always been particularly important to me, and so it was no surprise that I excelled in math. The tension presented in these two movies - between logic and passion, between reason and emotion - reflect a balance in perspective-taking that I was able to develop in large part because of the humanities courses I took as part of my general education experience.Īll things being equal, my tendency is to fall more towards the Spock end of the spectrum. During the retraining of Spock’s mind on Vulcan in Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home, his mother explains the “irrational” behavior of Spock’s human shipmates by telling him that they believed that the good of the one outweighed the good of the many. The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few.” And yet, in the subsequent The Search for Spock, Kirk and the rest of the crew risk their careers, their freedom, and potentially their lives in an effort to bring him back. To explain his self-sacrificing action that would save the USS Enterprise and its crew but would inevitably end his own life, Spock tells Kirk, “It is logical. Keep in mind that, when it was first released, we did not yet know he would return in Star Trek III: The Search for Spock. There were genuine tears: we grieved for the character we had all grown up with. I clearly remember the first time I watched Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan with my family, and just as clearly remember the moment of shock and devastation when (spoiler alert) Spock died.
#THE NEEDS OF MANY OUTWEIGH THE NEEDS OF THE FEW SERIES#
We had the entire television series on VHS and added the entire series of movies to our family collection as they were released. My family was a Star Trek family - Star Trek when there was no other Star Trek. How the Humanities Helped Me Balance My Inner Spock and Inner Kirk 16 The Needs of the Many, the Needs of the One
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