Star Trek

This Post is inspired by Matthew Yglesias at Slate.com. Some of the content herein is directly quoted from his article.

"In the second episode of the 7th season of the fourth Star Trek television series, Icheb, an alien teenager spouts: “Isn’t that what people on this ship do? They help each other?" 

This impressionable young man brings a certain clarity to the Star Trek franchise. In 5 television series and 11 films, people on the Federation ships and space stations DO try to help each other. That's the whole Utopian point Gene Roddenberry was making since it first aired on Sept. 8, 1966.

The standard line among Trek apologists is that the franchise is not just a lot of sci-fi nonsense but a meaningful exploration of humanity. My own observations of the human condition, as 1 of 7 billion now on this planet, is that we have a long way to go to reach Star Trek's lofty goals. 

Among Trek’s kaleidoscope of Vulcans and Androids, holograms and shape-shifters, there is always a particular take on what it means to be human: participation in an ongoing progressive project of building a Utopian society. That now-anachronistic spirit of mid-20th century optimism has remained at the heart of Star Trek, and its spin-offs. It’s a big part of why I believe Gene Roddenberry was a prophet along the likes of John Lennon.

Captain Kirk’s multi-racial crew piloted the "Enterprise" at a time when segregation was a subject of ongoing political controversy. Lieutenant Uhura is a black woman whose name means “freedom” in Swahili and who served as an officer aboard a starship at a time when there were no female astronauts or military officers, and black characters on television were more likely to be maids than professionals. Equally striking, given the political context of its era, is Ensign Pavel Chekov, navigator and proud Russian nationalist. The show asked audiences to imagine a seemingly amicable resolution of the very-real-at-the-time Cold War.

“To explore strange new worlds, to seek out new life and new civilizations, to boldly go where no man has gone before.” 

This line is so famous today as to be a cliché. The Federation is engaged in something like a Cold War with the Klingon Empire. But its premiere Starship "Enterprise" is not a military vessel and has no sharply defined political agenda. We hoped Obama would be this kind of President. He has not been.

Kirk establishes diplomatic relations with new species and tries to play a constructive role in the galaxy, but he’s not there to open new markets to Federation goods or to assist one side or another in proxy wars. The values that triumph in the Star Trek universe are a mantra that united liberals before the "Tet Offensive" and the riots and assassinations in American cities in the late 1960's, and then Watergate in the 70's. Where have you gone Joe DiMaggio?

The message of peace, progress, and tolerance all happen to be great ideas our "Baby-Boomer" generation assumed would triumph over evil. It hasn't happened.  

On Jean-Luc Picard’s bridge, years later, there is a Klingon, a token of a new spirit of friendship between the Federation and that evil Empire. And the crew includes a blind man whose sight has been restored by technology and a sentient android with human rights and a Starfleet commission. This team’s “continuing mission” has the same broad and peaceful mandate as Kirk’s, and their conduct is precisely the opposite of gunboat diplomacy. Picard explains in Star Trek: First Contact that “money doesn’t exist in the 24th century,” when “the acquisition of wealth is no longer the driving force in our lives.” Instead, “we work to better ourselves and the rest of humanity.”

And it could hardly be otherwise. Consider the miraculous technology of their replicator, a machine that can seemingly create anything out of thin air, based on rudimentary raw materials plus energy. Aren't we at the cusp of such miracles with 3-D printers making guns? 

When computers and energy can substitute for productive human labor, either the energy supply will be controlled democratically for Federation-style liberal socialism, or else it will fall into the hands of some narrow clique and give us the fascistic authoritarianism of the Klingons, the Romulans, or the Cardassians. Under those circumstances, nothing resembling capitalism as we know it could survive. 

As Marx wrote in his "Critique of the Gotha Program", the material prosperity made possible by ever-better technology is the necessary precursor to an economic system ruled by the principle, “from each according to his ability, to each according to his needs.” And that’s the principle the Federation lives by. Is that what is happening in China in our 21st century?  

Or ......

On Deep Space Nine, there’s a focus on the importance of maintaining civil liberties even in the face of very real security threats. Remember when Sisko and two crew members travel back to 21st century Earth, where they help shake the powers that be out of their complacency about mass unemployment. Even the Ferengi come around by the end and start adopting gender equality and a welfare state." 

It underscores the truth, that unlike the Star Trek Universe, on Real Earth great human power emerges from missions often rooted in the "name" of helping the oppressed, and sometimes are even given the title "peaceful diplomacy". But often is the case, even in the name of religion, powerful, ego-maniacal humans are ultimately greedy. They terrorize and control the people. 

And as in the words Jar-Jar Binks, an alien depicted in the sister universe of "Star Wars", "the people, they're going to die."