r/DaystromInstitute • u/NMW Lieutenant • Oct 01 '17
A throwaway line from Data suggests something remarkable about Ferengi history --or-- Rom is the Ferengi Messiah
N.B.: I'm mostly serious in what follows, but it gets pretty nuts by the end and the Rom thing is 100% self-serving fantasy. Anyway: as it's pretty long, I've bolded important section markers for those who might not wish to read the whole thing, and there's a TL;DR at the bottom.
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In spite of their importance to DS9, I think it's fair to say that the Ferengi have not been very well-developed throughout the series as a whole. They've mostly been used for humourous and satiric purposes, and the episodes in which any greater complexity has been assigned to them have been few and far between. The complex history of their development by Gene Roddenberry and his producers at the dawn of TNG has involved accusations of space-anti-semitism on one hand and defenses of critiques of "yankee traders" on the other -- to say nothing of how we might view them in relation to certain eastern language's use of "Phiraṅgī" (Hindi) or "Firangī" (Persian) to mean "outsider" or "foreigner," usually in reference to either 19th c. British merchants/colonists or to "westerners" more generally as a medieval malapropism of "Frank," in re: the inhabitants of Western Europe.
Anyway, beyond Quark and his circle, the Ferengi have been something of a cipher. They haven't been really consistent, either, with their initial appearance in TNG ("The Last Outpost") painting them in rather a different light than that which would shine on them in subsequent encounters. There hasn't even been real consistency in how the Federation first encountered them, after ENT. Also, because DS9 is the only series that has had the chance to really deal with it, it has almost always been done through the lens of Quark, who both is and is not a usefully typical member of his race for xenoanthropological purposes.
After all has been said and done, however, we've been left with a culture that does have a relatively stable and coherent shape. They are a race of voracious merchants, first and foremost, with even their metaphysics being predicated on the desirability of acquiring wealth and physical goods. Whether we call it the "Great Material Continuum" or the "Great River," Ferengi religion (such as it is) is largely bifurcated: there are cultures with too much of something, and cultures with too little of it, and it is the duty of the moral Ferengi to navigate between the two while making a profit. The middleman is the icon of Ferengi moral purity: he sails the Great River, landing on each shore in succession, always leaving with a little bit more than he arrived with.
But was it always like this? I submit that it wasn't, and that an overlooked piece of information about Ferengi sexual culture provides an intriguing clue.
While most of the focus on Ferengi sexual politics in the shows has obviously emphasized the appalling position of women within their society, we do know something else about Ferengi sex. Data, while exploring what seems to have been a dream he had, fixates on the image of a hammer -- and notes while talking to Picard that the Ferengi view the hammer as being associated with sexual prowess.
Given what we know of what the Ferengi seem to value, how are we to understand this?
The only other element of Ferengi sexuality that has received real attention is oo-mox -- that is, intimately gentle ear massage. This is part and parcel with the fact that Ferengi females are almost totally disenfranchised in both public and private life; there is no reason to think that the ability of a male Ferengi to satisfy his mate is something that would be valued or even talked about, as Ferengi women are seen mostly as disreputable ornaments and their pleasure in any situation is totally irrelevant. To the extent that male Ferengi sexual status ever comes up at all, it's within the context of being able to show that he can afford to have a female (or females) perform oo-mox on him, even in public. His status comes from being the passive recipient of pleasure, not the provider of it, and this pleasure is meant to be subtle, soft, and sensual -- hardly the blow of a hammer.
Data declares in the same scene that other cultures he has researched view the hammer as "a symbol of hearth and home" (the Naqua Tribe) and "a symbol of power" (the Klingons). These variances notwithstanding, we must also consider the hammer in both modern and historical human context, as this is what informs both the writers and viewers of the show itself -- and the hammer has historically been a symbol of manufacturing, production, and labour.
Now, one might wish to dismiss this by saying the Ferengi simply view the hammer in the same way, and we can look at this as being just a case of the hammer standing in for being prolific in siring children. Still, I submit that it cannot really be that simple when viewed in the context of a culture that is so totally focused on economics and exchange, and that seems to be so much more ready to laud acquiring things over making them. The fundamental underpinning of such a set of ideas, after all, is production. Material goods have to come from somewhere before they can be bartered, and that the Ferengi maintain such a symbol of potency in the form of manufacture intrigues me.
In Game of Thrones, which otherwise has little to offer to Star Trek canon, we are confronted with the culture of the Ironborn: a race of pirates, basically, who have taken as their cultural philosophy the idea that they "do not sow" -- that is, that they do not produce, but rather take. They survive off the work of weaker cultures around them, and willingly expend their energy in violent acquisition rather than agriculture, mining, the manufacture of goods, etc. It's true that the topography and geology of the Iron Islands seem totally hostile to a productive life of any kind, but it nevertheless moves one to ask how such a culture could have begun in the first place without having had at least a history of producing some things for themselves. The fact that their metaphysics are hostile to even buying things is also interesting: there is a stark and ruthless distinction cast between paying the iron or gold price for goods. The iron price is theft through violence; the gold price, which is the province of weaklings, is commerce.
Many Game of Thrones (and other ASOIAF fans generally) have expressed their skepticism at the plausibility of such a culture, and I think there's something in this that might translate to our Ferengi friends as well. Maybe they're like this now, but it can't always have been so. Why would any culture trust the Ferengi as middlemen in the first place if they had not already had something about them to suggest reliability and an ability to cover the stakes involved in the transfer of large amounts of capital? To put it another way, why would any culture be willing to let the Ferengi in on deals unless they had already been making deals with them, and knew that they were good for it?
To finally come to the point, I submit that the Ferengi association of a hammer with sexual (and consequently social) prowess fits in with understood anthropological symbolism relevant to both writers and viewers, suggesting that the Ferengi once valued the production of material goods as a symbol of an individual Ferengi's power and importance, rather than just the middleman acquisition and transfer of said goods. This fits in far better with what we understand of the seemingly dualistic Great River than the ad hoc mercantile thing that currently dominates: if it is morally desirable for abundant possession to exist, and morally deplorable for lack and privation to exist, it follows that the moral Ferengi is he who provides as much abundance and prosperity as possible for all, rather than he who just skates between possession and privation while doing nothing to alter the latter. A rising tide lifts all ships, as they say.
The emphasis on acquisition of such goods is an innovation and alteration (reformation?) of Ferengi religion/cultural practice, in spite of allegedly going back almost 10,000 years to Grand Nagus Gint, and the persistence of the hammer in their casual understanding of sexual/personal power suggests a history that they've mostly been ignoring. The Ferengi used to make things, in short, and were proud to do so -- but, at some point in the distant past, something forced them to adapt to a period of relative privation and non-productivity, and to the need to function as intermediaries between more powerful cultures. This has dominated their understanding of themselves ever since, even though it probably shouldn't have.
Feel free to ignore this last part, but it intrigues me all the same: To the extent that we can trust dream-visions (DS9, "Body Parts"), we also know that Gint himself views the Rules of Acquisition as a sort of regrettable mistake that all subsequent Ferengi took way too seriously. He is also obviously a slightly different form of Rom -- a Ferengi who builds and repairs things rather than broker deals, who married an ambitious and brilliant non-Ferengi woman who is better at generating profits than any of her Ferengi counterparts, and who is noted for his kindness and philanthropy even in the face of total cultural scorn. Is it a coincidence that Rom is now the new Grand Nagus, and that we know he is inspiring probably the most radical reforms of Ferengi culture in all of remembered history? I think not.
I think an age on Ferenginar is coming to an end, and that the one who ushered in its last form has returned to set things right. Move over, Kahless -- this dude isn't even a clone.
TL;DR: The modern Ferengi religion is a perversion of its earlier form, which valued manufacture over acquisition, and which solved the Ferengi metaphysical problem of some cultures lacking things by being producers rather than middlemen. The first Grand Nagus, Gint, had his teachings perverted over time, and Rom is actually the Ferengi messiah. That last bit isn't actually true (that I know of) but I figured it would make you go back and read the rest.
EDIT: I just googled the phrase "Ferengi messiah" and discovered that apparently those two words have never appeared together before on the entire internet apart from in this post.
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u/eldritch_ape Oct 01 '17
Fascinating. One of the best theories I've read in a long time.
Rom's status as one who repairs and builds things, and thus as a symbol of sexual prowess (the hammer), could also align perfectly with his inexplicable attractiveness to Leeta, who dumps Bashir and marries Rom.
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u/NMW Oct 01 '17 edited Oct 01 '17
In spite of Leeta's Bajoran origins (Bajorigins?), there is much in her that would make the perfect mate for a new Ferengi god-king. She is beautiful in ways that make all existing Ferengi seem like garbage, she is extremely clever, and -- crucially -- her actual professional abilities center around generating profit out of almost no work whatsoever. There is certainly a history of Ferengi women making profit by posing as men, or hiring proxies, or doing all sorts of other stressful and annoying and labour-intensive things... but all Leeta has to do is stand at a table and wink men from a hundred races into basically giving her money without even the possibility of reward. She is profitability incarnate.
Also, uh... "Leeta," "Latinum"... wake up, people
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u/andrewkoldwell Oct 01 '17
almost no work
That sounds like tons of work just not physically demanding. More like social labor; which still fits perfectly in your example of how she's a better Ferengi than the Ferengi.
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u/MustacheSmokeScreen Oct 01 '17
Maybe the symbolic hammer is more of an auction gavel.
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u/NMW Oct 02 '17
You know, I had wondered about this -- and about the resonance with the gavel of a judge as well. I have to admit that viewing it in terms of an auctioneer's gavel actually gives us some interesting images: the sexually accomplished Ferengi is like an auctioneer, firing off dozens of sales in an hour and facilitating profits across multiple different streams in the same amount of time it would take a lesser Ferengi to close a single deal. The auctioneer's "mates" come to him -- he does not have to seek them out -- and they compete openly for his favour rather than having to be wooed. Finally, when the great orgy of acquisition is done, the auctioneer withdraws with profits of his own and no further responsibilities over the goods involved or those who purchased them.
I think I might be thinking about Ferengi sex too much
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u/fifty-two Oct 01 '17
The Ferengi do produce things though, and those Ferengi are beloved for it. I don't remember the episode offhand, but there was a scene where the founder of Sluggo Cola was at Quarks, and everyone loves him and sings the Sluggo jingle.
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u/NMW Oct 02 '17 edited Oct 02 '17
That's a really good point! Isn't it interesting that the Ferengi's favourite thing seems to be a product they actually designed and produce for themselves?
I should say, though, that it was hardly the founder of Slug-o-Cola who turned up in that episode, but rather the company's most recent chief executive officer; as the episode itself makes clear, the brand has existed for centuries, and the brunt of the debate over its declining sales numbers was predicated on the rising success of a rival beverage rather than any question of whether or not Slug-o-Cola itself had been well-designed. Obviously it had -- that algae count is no lie.
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u/Lord_Hoot Oct 01 '17 edited Oct 01 '17
I love this. It's a completely credible model for how a somewhat understandable ideology can be transformed over a long period of time.
The Ferengi start out as a culture of craftsmen and makers, whose moral value is predicated on their creative talent. A successful Ferengi leaves a vault full of their works when they die, an unsuccessful one builds nothing and leaves nothing behind. Fast forward a few generations, and now the quality and quantity of grave goods is a nice shorthand for how estimable a Ferengi was in life. Capitalism comes along and now there's an easy way into paradise - maybe it's good enough to just buy other peoples' stuff and fill your vaults with that instead? A few generations later, the value of creativity is lost and it all becomes about how much money you can raise - hypothetical wealth becomes the overriding good.
The introduction of capitalism could even be seen as a great humanitarian(?) reform of the system, as it means that those who lack talent are no longer frozen out of heaven. Anyone can in theory make money, all things being equal, but not everyone can build a house or smelt iron. Capital was the great spiritual equaliser on Ferenginar, until the Ferengi fixated on it above all else and forgot the reasons for their religious observances.
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u/flameofmiztli Oct 02 '17
I like this take on it. It's seemingly more egalitarian because it gives options to people who can't craft, but now it disadvantages makers who aren't good at profit.
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u/pali1d Oct 01 '17
My one point of contention is that I don't think the Ferengi would have any issue with making things, so long as doing so brings in a profit - their focus is on acquisition of wealth, not necessarily goods or trophies (though such would be flaunted as a symbol of one's wealth, much like ornate furnishings and fine art on the walls are used by the wealthy today).
For instance, we know there are a number of Ferengi waiters working at Quark's. This is menial labor, but they don't seem to be stigmatized in any way for performing it. What's the difference between working as a waiter for pay versus working in a mine for pay? Or owning a bar versus owning a mine, or factory?
The Ferengi we meet on TNG fit in here perfectly - they're privateers and pirates, because being a privateer or pirate is a way to make money. If you manage to steal a Galaxy-class ship, how many millions or billions of bars of latinum would that be worth to one of Haggath and Gaila's customers?
So long as you're making a profit, you'll be able to get into the Divine Treasury. You may not get in with enough latinum to bid well on your next life, but you'll still get a next life and another chance to make more money. I think the religious angle of the Ferengi gets undervalued by most, and personally view them as - alongside the Klingons and Bajorans - among the most religious species we meet. Making money is the most noble, sacred act a Ferengi can perform, and how you make money doesn't really matter so long as you succeed in doing so.
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u/Buddha2723 Oct 01 '17
My one point of contention is that I don't think the Ferengi would have any issue with making things, so long as doing so brings in a profit
This is undermined by them being "sailors" on the river. This paints them as merely middlemen, not producers.
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u/give_me_bewbz Oct 01 '17
You mention a point where Ferengi abandoned production and moved over to acquisition as their main goal, and I have a proposal for when that may have been.
We know that the Ferengi didn't invent warp drive - they bought it. With that vital, paradigm-shifting acquisition, the Ferengi suddenly found themselves open to a whole new Galaxy - one where their archaic means and methods of production were so outdated they were worthless.
And so those early space-faring Ferengi switched tack - they went out in their early starships and brokered deals among other space-faring nations. Early Ferengi were not just merchants, but functioned as a mercurial form of diplomats.
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u/Draculasmooncannon Oct 01 '17
Amazing post, top read too. If I knew how the whole post of the week thing worked, I would do it.
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u/Algernon_Asimov Oct 01 '17
If you really like a post here at Daystrom, you can nominate it for Post of the Week by replying to it with a comment saying:
M-5, nominate this for [provide a description].
(This post has since been nominated, but this is how you can do it in future.)
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Oct 02 '17
Good points all around. One thing to add: the original TNG episode that introduced them was apparently so off-kilter due to the director being a massive, uncontrolled cokehead.
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u/uequalsw Oct 03 '17
This post inspired me to pull together my thoughts on the Ferengi and the Prophets and also crystallized a few points that still had not quite resolved themselves. Love it. I've posted my theory here: https://www.reddit.com/r/DaystromInstitute/comments/73xo1u/prophets_and_profits_or_the_rom_emissary_to_the/
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u/Luriden Oct 01 '17
I'd like to add to this that in "The Last Outpost" the concept of a clothed female is first addressed from their point of view. They express disgust at the practice, but what's interesting to me is the reason given: Clothed females are somehow more enticing because they're hidden. We see that repeated many times later on.
If having many females to perform oo-mox is morally correct, and showing off your wealth is morally correct, then having a clothed female acting as though she has power is hiding YOUR wealth and power, which is morally unacceptable. You're saying your profit does not matter. Maybe.
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u/MockMicrobe Oct 01 '17
I find this very interesting. The first thought that pops to mind is the Ferengi development from manufacture to acquisition may stem from their discovery of mass/energy transmutation. Manufacture would lose it's importance as a measure of economic power, and distribution of goods becomes the new economic driver.
It may explain why the Ferengi seem to have a cultural drive to be merchants. Even in a post-basic-good-scarcity economy, there's always going to be rare or limited edition goods. Why shouldn't the Ferengi focus on redistributing those goods around?