Transcription
Star Trek is the story of humanity. Who we are, where we are going, and what we can do to get there. It's the story of Earth – centuries in the future – in which most social and economic hierarchies have been abolished through a combination of legal mandates and a cultural revolution that created cultural evolution.
Social hierarchies such as racial supremacy, patriarchy, and pervasive heteronormativity are largely relics of the past. Economic hierarchies such as capitalism and class itself have been abandoned in a favor of a more horizontal distribution of power, divorcing labor from reward in such a way that effectively eliminates poverty. If money as we know it effectively does not exist, then housing, healthcare and food are essentially free through a science fiction version of mutual aid or anarcho-syndicalist labor vouchers called Federation credits. Even if a portion of the human population chooses not to work and opts to take advantage of the system, a combination of automation and the significant portion of the population that does choose to work more than makes up for that. Few people really want to do nothing their entire lives. A permanent vacation can be paradoxically exhausting – not to mention unfulfilling. With the removal of economic consequences to their lives, humans are free to pursue whatever path they wish without much concern of failure.
Aristotle famously said “Poverty is the parent of revolution and crime.” Without poverty, social unrest and crime barely exist outside of the crimes we commit against one another for personal reasons. Due to this marginalization of crime, the modern centralized police as we know them today effectively do not exist, the implication being that they were abolished. Law enforcement and security is conducted through highly specific organizations with highly specific training. For example, the Department of Temporal Investigations is a bureau of the United Federation of Planets that conducts inquiries related to time travel law. [“I guess you boys from Temporal Investigations are always right on time.”] Starfleet security conducts inquiries related to Starfleet officers, crimes on Starfleet installations like ships and space stations, and threats to Federation security, such as hostile powers. They are only mobilized on Earth under extreme circumstances, and even then, with a great deal of controversy. Anything resembling a police officer is rare, and usually only exists in an alternate timeline. Incarceration still exists in the 24th century, but prisons as we know them have been abolished with actual rehabilitation centers devoid of cruelty. Sentences do not seem particularly long either. Capital punishment has been abolished as well. Students receive free education and study advanced topics at an early age – preparing them for adulthood as well as keeping them out of trouble. Crime on Earth is not resolved by increasing law enforcement but by decriminalization, education, and solving societal problems that lead to crime – criminogenic conditions. The state still exists, but with nearly all other social and economic hierarchies abolished, the state's control is severely limited and far less egregious than it is in the real world 21st century. So much, in fact, that it might be challenging to compare it to what we presently consider “the state” today. There are inconsistencies with this structure due to how many episodes and series of Star Trek there are, nobody needs to point that out, but these are the basics.
So, how did any of this even happen? Well, here's where things get weird. In 2026, World War III happened, nuclear weapons annihilated much of the population. In 2063, a scientist named Zephram Cochrane invented the warp drive and made a ship out of an old missile. The warp attracted the attention of a Vulcan ship. The ship landed, Vulcans and humans shook hands, and the future was set into motion. The Vulcans helped guide humanity toward making better decisions, and after some time, they didn't really need the Vulcans calling the shots, and they were being real mean to Jonathan Archer's dad anyway. Humanity stumbled forward, you know, like a baby gazelle or something, I don't know.
Watching Star Trek isn't simply escapist entertainment, although it is definitely that, too. Star Trek episodes are often fables – and much like more traditional fables, Star Trek is not subtle. It has a specific thing to say. Star Trek is a vision of a hopeful future with lessons about how we might behave in our time in order to achieve something resembling this future. Watching Star Trek often means believing in the idea of this future. Executive producer Rick Berman famously did not believe that something resembling the Star Trek future is possible. “I don’t believe the 24th Century is going to be like Gene Roddenberry believed it to be, that people will be free from poverty and greed.” He also remarked that writing Star Trek simply means buying into it that idea anyway, because you have to write that world – but those who watch Star Trek often do “buy into” that idea. The lessons in Star Trek genuinely have shaped the values of a great many people. This sounds preposterous, because in reductive terms, Star Trek is simply a product. A successful product worth billions of dollars – earned through advertising, movie tickets and merchandise. Star Trek is such a popular product that it alone can be enough to keep an entire streaming platform afloat. What was previously called CBS All Access and now Paramount Plus had little original programming to speak of when it launched, but the promise of new Star Trek convinced a sizable portion of the viewing audience to subscribe and stay subscribed as more and more Star Trek was developed. Star Trek gets spinoffs. A lot of them. Even Star Trek who don't like the new Star Trek shows keep watching the new Star Trek shows. This is because even though Star Trek is a product, it is not only a product. Star Trek is something that people believe in. So, to heck to Rick Berman. It's his fault Jadzia died anyway.
In fairness, nobody knows what the future actually will be, but if we don't imagine what a better future could be, then that future becomes unimaginable. Those who do not believe in the idea of Star Trek often cite “human nature” as the reason why a better future for humanity is not possible – that our allegedly selfish nature will prevent us from saving ourselves – you know, like a scorpion and a frog's back or something, I don't know. First, if the behavior of humans were exclusively predetermined by a fixed, universal “human nature” then our social values would be largely identical to that of early homo sapiens. Remains of primitive homo sapiens date back as far as 300,000 years ago, followed by anatomically modern homo sapiens 200,000 years ago, and homo sapiens with the modern brain shape 100,000 years ago. Even judging humans by, say, the past three thousand years, change has been enormous, and it did not have anything to do with a changing “nature.” Because the biology of homo sapiens has not changed significantly in this comparatively short amount of time. In other words, if so-called “human nature” has not changed in the past three thousand years, but social values have changed enormously, then much of these changes must be attributed to culture. In fact, even if there is a human nature that impedes progress, it clearly can be overcome given enough time. The social values of humans as well as the structure of society, and technology of humans have changed so much that life three thousand years ago would be unrecognizable to us were we to time travel back there, and life today would be unrecognizable if some hypothetical time traveler from that period were to appear in our time. If the culture of humanity has changed so drastically, then the culture of humanity can change even further. Not all change is good, but it would be naive to claim that humanity is unchangeable.
Second, if the behavior of humans were exclusively predetermined by a fixed, universal “human nature” then our social values would be nearly identical from culture to culture even in the modern era. All social values in, say, India, would be identical to social values in the United States. All social values in Ireland would be the same as South Korea. Third, all social values among differing people within a nation would also be nearly identical, and we know that is not true. Because these values can be remarkably different, they must be shaped, in part, by culture and not biology. In short, there is clearly a tremendous amount of variation of what we believe and how we structure our societies. The claim that there is simply no way to overcome a social or economic hierarchy because of some inherent selfishness contained in “human nature” is not backed up by anthropologists, historians, sociologists or biologists. Endless studies show the positive effects of altruism on the human body and mind. Society simply could not exist if homo sapiens were naturally selfish or incapable of overcoming selfishness. This is not some amateur opinion. It is the contention of every field that studies humanity. As Peter Kropotkin once said “Competition is the law of the jungle, but cooperation is the law of society.” Combined with the technological achievements of today and the future, there is no real reason to believe humanity is incapable of achieving something resembling the Star Trek future.
Believing that humanity has the capacity to overcome our current predicaments and create a much grander and more compassionate world is often called “radical hope.” Philosopher Jonathan Lear defined it as the denial and refusal of cultural vulnerability. Radical hope is all about adaptation. This should not be confused with “escapist hope” – the assumption that everything will inevitably be resolved. After all, the Vulcans are not coming to save us. Radical hope is not escapist because it demands action in building and re-building the culture. This was said in a previous video, but to reiterate, if you want to change things, find a cause you believe in, find an organization that focuses on that cause, join that organization. The solution is to organize – either in pre-existing anti-capitalist, anti-racist, and anti-fascist organizations, parties and unions, or by developing our own. We cannot simply elect a completely different way of life into office and therefore must develop and popularize a political counter-balance. I, too, succumb to ennui about the world, but the answer is not apathy. The answer is hope, and doing something with that hope.