A Noble-Hearted People...

Captain's Log,  star-date 14th October 2012. As I said in my last post, the Klingons  are a rude but noble-hearted people. Strangers are viewed with suspicion, and Klingons very rarely invite someone into their home. I have noticed that folks from foreign lands tend to gather together here, partly because of the bond of mutual solidarity that any stranger feels with another, and partly because they find it next to impossible to break into indigenous social circles. 

But I promised in my last log that I would balance out my picture of the Klingons by explaining their noble-hearted nature. 

I prefer not to generalize about an entire region, so I will just speak of the Klingons I have encountered, those from Cuadrilla. Many of them grow up around a smallish tribe (say, between 10 and 20) of their peers, and live the majority, if not all of their lives in their company. Thus, a special sense of friendship and camaraderie grows up among them, and many of them do not feel any special need to reach out to people beyond the tribe, and certainly not to people beyond Cuadrilla. Indeed, this social structure is so famous (and somewhat infamous among foreigners who are generally excluded from it) that those who are fully immersed in such structures are commonly referred to as Life-Long Cuadrillians or LLCs for short. 

The emotional distance and social reserve that Cuadrillians display toward foreigners is matched by a fierce loyalty and uncompromising honesty with their friends. Whereas Freedom Lovers might have three hundred (or in some cases I have seen, up to a thousand) friends on Facebook, many of whom they barely know, Klingons (at least those of the Cuadrillian variety) only admit a few people into their carefully guarded circle of friends, and they are friends for life. To be invited into the home of a Cuadrillian is an extraordinary privilege, a sign of profound trust and lasting friendship. In short, the defining features of Cuadrillians at their best - something perceived most fully by their friends - are uncompromising honesty and fierce loyalty. When a Cuadrillian tells you he can't do something, he's not making an excuse - he's just stating a fact. When he tells you he can help you, he means it. The same cannot be said in general of people in warmer and more easy-going cultures. 

That's all for now.

- Captain Thunder.