I did not know that. Was that revealed in the original series, or followups? Still though, stoics didn't walk around being robotic and showing no emotions. Often they were the life of the party. It works very much like learning martial arts—you develop the ability to master emotions, and then you use it when necessary, but you don't choke down every chuckle and stifle every guffaw. That would be repression, and then your emotions would turn into something really nasty in the unconscious and well up and destroy you. In fact it frees you up to reveal emotions that you might have been afraid to reveal previously, knowing you can get it under control if you need to. It's mostly fear that makes people want to not show emotions, and stoicism helps you overcome fear. I can attest to the fact that stoicism allows you to remain cheerful in situations where formerly you would have been petrified in fear or hysterical. But I accept that to most people stoic means emotionless or emotionallly repressed. There's no sense trying to fight that, it's too deeply ingrained in the culture.
This aspect of the Vulcans is more explored in later series like Voyager and Enterprise, though I feel like it must've been touched on in the original series (I've only watched through the originals a couple times). It's explained that they were a war-like race bent on destroying themselves, and the philosophy of Surak was what saved them and transformed their culture. When most people mention stoicism or stoic, they're not referring to Stoicism or a Stoic. The dictionary definition is about the same anywhere one looks:
Well, we're getting off topic (my fault), and I won't make a big deal about it, but it's one of thoe things where specialists know that the general public idea is off basis, like when it comes to facts about the military or guns or cars or computers. The people who are really in the know know things that most people just don't, and have to grit their teeth listening to it all. If it's truly 'befitting of the stoics,' then it would be a calm where most people would be hysterical or terrified or raging, but not a robotic emotionlessness all the time. Some stoics may well have been robotic or emotionless, but it isn't a necessary or normal result. I've made Stoicism a key part of my life, studied it for many years, and incorporated it into my daily life, and I'm not at all robotic or emotionless. I'm actually pretty goofy most of the time (that probably sounds weird in here, where my writing tends toward the philosophical and analytical). And where I used to be pretty anxious about walking into crowded places, I now go into what I call Chuckling Stoic mode. It's supposed to be cheerful, but I always used to forget the word and come up with chuckling instead, and that made me laugh, which is exactly the right attitude, so it stuck. My anxieties have fallen away, which actually frees me up to be cheerful or goofy or whatever I want. But yeah, this is too much detail and nuance for the general public understanding. Only those in the know know this stuff.
There is a recognized mental disturbance, caused by brain damage, called emotional incontinence (aka pseudobular affect (PBA), pathologic laughing and crying, emotional lability) characterized by a tendency to laugh or cry out of proportion to the underlying mood. The author of the article linked in the OP comes close to this definition in the second half of the article, writing about emotional health, stating that all emotional poses that minimalize emotion (e.g., the stoic and the schlub) breed emotional incontinence, resulting in:
I just watched a few scenes from both the OG Star Trek and Next Generation. I wanted to see if my memories were still accurate, or if maybe I've romanticized the original series over my lifetime (I was watching it in the 60's, as it was coming out, and I don't think I've seen an episode since then). It's a perfect example of the reigning in of emotions, because the original series could be described as a paeon to youthful human exuberance, passion, humor, and vitality, but by the 80's when Next Gen came out, it had all been squelched out, and all the crew had essentially become Spock. Restrained, formalistic, mature, and humor had apparently been reduced to the occasional hint, much like the way Spock used to do it. The way I remember it, Kirk was the very model of vital, healthy, exuberent young masculinity, full of passions and humor and champing at the bit for adventure, sometimes needing to be rescued from what his own curiosity and adventurous spirit gets him into. Spock was there as the counterpoint, supposedly with all human spirit and exuberence under full control, but I think the theme was that human exuberence, much like life in Jurassic Park, will find a way. Even through that imapassive face and that supposed complete control and restraint. In fact, in one of the scenes I just watched, Kirk straight up told spock that he seems to be getting more human all the time, and Spock responded with obvious embarrasment and wounded pride. Everyone smiled knowingly. I'm trying to figure out what changed in between the 60's and the 80s, and immediately 2 ideas present themselves. I think there's a bit of both going on, and maybe a few other factors. 1, Next Generation wasn't a 1960's low budget sci-fi fantasy with low level special effects and correspondingly broad standards for the show. Meaning they wanted to make a more mature, responsible show, that didnt' look like it came from the 60's. And maybe that wasn't aimed mostly at kids. In fact the audience may have been the same kids who grew up on the original, who were now adults. 2, The rise of political correctness. Nothing puts more severe restraints on the human spirit, humor, and exuberence. It was well in effect already by the 80's, especially in colleges and Hollywood. More ideas—there was an insistence on formalism in Next Gen that wasn't there in the original. I noticed all the crew members standing at attention all the time with their faces rigid and emotionless. In the original you almost never saw that, they were very casual and didn't really observe much in the way of formalism, unless there was some ceremony going on or military procedure demanded it. There was a facetime conversaton going on between Picard and a Romulan general on the big screen in the bridge, and the Romulan was far more emotional and expressive. This kind of formalism is what made the new Dune so dull to me I stopped watching about a half hour in. And the Vulcans seem to have largely been replaced (as emotionless beings who actually turn out to be in many ways "More human than human") by various robots, androids, Borgs, and holograms. I never watched much of any of the followup shows, but I remember lots of those, and they always did the same trick they did with Spock—"Oh look, they're supposed to be emotionless, but secretly they have more heart and more compassion than the actual human characters do!" I'm sure there were still Vulcans, but I don't think they had as prominent of a role, and there wasn't one on the main cast anymore as a counterpoint to Picard. He didn't need one—it's almost like he was Kirk and Spock rolled into one, with Spock predominating, and 30 years older. I don't know what the theme would be in Next Gen or any of the later series, but in the original the contrast between Kirk and Spock was the main expression of it (as I understand it, there may be other themes and it may never have been elaborated directly as a theme by the creators). This is making me want to load up a season or two of the OG series in Amazon Prime.
