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You can rest assured that you have lived a good life when the first thing that comes to everybody's mind when you die is the phrase "live long and prosper." Leonard Nimoy, who died today at the age of 83 from a pulmonary obstruction, can boast such a life. He was an actor but he had the good fortune, or the misfortune depending on how you look at it, to transcend performance. As Spock, he was one of the icons of American popular culture. His invention of the Vulcan greeting was his legacy, one of the most optimistic gestures of the twentieth century. 

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Science fiction, both in the sixties and earlier, was primarily a means of deflecting the anxieties of contemporary life. Invasion of the Body Snatchers was a way of dealing with the fear of the Cold War. The Day the Earth Stood Still was about the new possibilities of global war. Godzilla and Them! were about the threat of radiation and genetic mutation. And so on. Star Trek was something new. It was pure hope. Born out of the great victories of the American space program, it foresaw a future in which human growth and development and innovation would simply expand infinitely outward. 

Within the hopeful world of Star Trek, Spock was the most hopeful character. Every other science fiction alien is a monster or so different that we can barely understand one another. In Star Trek, the first aliens human beings run into are super-rational, long-living humanoids who want nothing more than to share their rationality with other species. 

The Vulcan gesture of greeting captured that enlightenment sensibility perfectly. It's hard to imagine a time and a place so full of hope that anyone could imagine that the first thing a vastly powerful alien species would say is "Live long and prosper." But it was the gesture that really communicated the benevolence of the Vulcans. Nimoy himself told the story of inventing the gesture many times. He saw the V sign—it corresponds to the letter Shin in Hebrew—for the first time as a child in a Jewish ceremony at a synagogue. It's a blessing that can only be conducted by Jewish priests. But young Nimoy peeked, and remembered. And when the moment came when he needed it, the gesture was there for him.  

The history of how Nimoy developed the gesture is the definition of enlightenment: looking into mysteries and using what you see to benefit everybody. Despite being a Vulcan, Spock was the ultimate icon of human enlightenment. Nimoy, who both was and wasn't Spock, embodied that beautiful hope perfectly. 

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