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The Politics of Star Trek
smitty_one_each writes: Timothy Sandefur, a lawyer at the Pacific Legal Foundation has written a breezy overview of the politics of the little-known show Star Trek. His thesis: "...the key to Star Trek's longevity and cultural penetration was its seriousness of purpose, originally inspired by creator Gene Roddenberry's science fiction vision. Modeled on Gulliver's Travels, the series was meant as an opportunity for social commentary, and it succeeded ingeniously, with episodes scripted by some of the era's finest science fiction writers. Yet the development of Star Trek's moral and political tone over 50 years also traces the strange decline of American liberalism since the Kennedy era." The article traces through episodes at each phase of the franchise, exploring literary allusions and lamenting that "Star Trek's latest iterations — the 'reboot' films directed by J.J. Abrams — shrug at the franchise's former philosophical depth."
I have always thought that the federation was a communist society. We are told that they don't need money. But the two fundamental rules of economics are:
1. We are in a universe of scarcity
2. People have ever increasing unlimited desires and wants
In the federation, we are told that everyone gets what they need, yet we constantly see scarcity everywhere. There is scarcity of engergy, transporter credits and limitations. There is an almost endless list of things people can gain credits and perks for. Then there is the huge amount of laws and regulations. Even trading and using something as money is illegal.
The federation has never been liberal, it has always been communist. It has just been hidden behind a higher level of technology.
The article traces through episodes at each phase of the franchise, exploring literary allusions and lamenting that "Star Trek's latest iterations — the 'reboot' films directed by J.J. Abrams — shrug at the franchise's former philosophical depth."
Because at that point it stopped trying to be real science fiction. It was just another franchise to be used for monetary gain by the rights-holders. So, out with any social commentary, no deep thinking -- this is Summer! It's time for an action flick -- in SPAAAAAAAACE!
Inclusion when you parrot the left's buzzwords and phrases and condemnation and vitriolic hatred when you don't?
Grievance politics?
Social policy based more on taking from people who have resources than on providing for those who need them?
Hairshirt environmentalism that never gives a thought to what's best for people?
Foreign policy nostrums that appeal to peaceniks and partisan opportunists but protect no one?
Protection of fashionable human rights and authoritarian disregard for others?
No one wants to watch your space show about microaggressions and about redistributing a middle class worker's paycheck to pay for an upper-middle-class student's PhD classes on transgender studies.
The Gene L. Coon episode The Devil in the Dark, in which a bunch of miners have come under attack by a strange stone-like creature, made an indelible impression on me, certainly more than any bit of religious scripture I've encountered. The lessons in that magnificent episode included the need to understand the other, the danger of assuming you are in the right, the dangers of an ill-educated mob, and the power of fear. I wish W and President Cheney had been forced to watch it before they were unleashed on the world.
Reading this post demonstrates Americans have absolutely no idea what socialism is.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
Don't be sorry. Star Trek is pretty shitty. It's not very fun, it's not very sci-fi, it's not very funny, and it's not very interesting.
what the hell is wrong with you?
how can you say that "Star Trek is not very sic-fi"?
Its had an immense role in what can be defined as sci-fi or not. even if i weren't a fan of TOS and TNG and even Voyager i would be able to plainly see that Star Trek was and incredible show. yes Shatner wasn't the greatest actor but give the rest of the show credit, they wouldn't have so many spin offs if they weren't successful.
Much of what people think of when they think about Star Trek's grand concepts of the Federation of Planets and many other things were ideas thought up by Gene Coon, not Roddenberry. Bob Justman also had a hand in those ideas, as did D.C. Fontana and many others tossing in various tidbits.
The book series "These are the voayges" go into extreme detail of who thought up what, which writers and directors invented things taken for canon and so on.
An awful lot of Trek lore taken for granted happened by accident or because Coon or Justman were trying to save money. There was no grand political scheme running behind the scenes. It was all about how to tell a story without having to actually show it. So they invented stuff that could be dialog.
The idea of having a "Starbase" came from the need to show planets per NBC but cheaply so it could be a redressed existing set, and then script mentions there's more than one base. Viola you've expanded the Star Trek universe without having to show it. Coon was a master of this stuff, dropping in mention of the Federation to explain away another loose end. He freaking invented it as a throwaway script change.
Fontana in turn made the characters who we know them to be and kept the thing going in the right direction. She was the bullshit detector and derailed a lot of crap that would have made the show into a joke. Roddenberry mostly sat around and screwed starlets and offered up lousy script rewrites.
The OTHER unsung hero of Star Trek is Lucille Ball, who went to bat for the show many times to keep it funded, until doing so help cost her ownership of the company. She gave her all for Star Trek, Nobody remembers it.
These Are The Voyages books are very highly recommended for anyone who wants to know what really happened and how, It is a lot like seeing how sausage or laws are made but it's important to see how hard these people worked and what they put into the show.
Sig for hire.
This article hits the nail on the head. In the 60s, there was culturally an understanding that there are some things that are right and wrong, moral and immoral. Slowly, this understanding was replaced by the notion that only tolerance matters, and the only evil is intolerance. This idea is embodied in the Prime Directive. It is fitting, reflecting our culture, that the Young Kirk movies lack any kind of notion of right and wrong OR tolerance, emphasizing only drama and special effects.
What Kirk objected to was a lack of liberty. His objection to Vaal and Landru was that they imposed themselves upon the people. The same for the plant spores. For that matter, that was his objection to the Klingons. I don't think he would object all that much to a society that voluntarily forswore technology and exploration (since apparently, the people were free to leave if they wanted) even if he might not understand it or want it for himself.
I wish more people would live-and-let-live today. So much culture seems to be based on denying others their own choices in how to live their lives when those choices are not victimizing anyone else.
Well the problem is obviously religion. Notice that in Star Trek, there really isn't any, except when they visit some backwards planet and there's religious nuts terrorizing people somehow. Otherwise, what rational reason is there to deny other people their own choices in how to live their lives as long as they aren't victimizing anyone? It's simple: because religionists don't like it, and don't want their choices to become popular and spread. We see that today with all the anti-gay-marriage vitriol from the Christians. They just can't stand the idea that other people are marrying who they want, so they want to shut it down and take control of it. These very same people were against interracial marriages a generation or two ago, calling it an "abomination". You'd think it'd be simple: if you don't like gay marriage, don't have one. But that's not good enough for these cuckoos, they want to make sure no one else has a marriage they disapprove of either.
Or the subtlety of TNG episode where everyone on an alien planet is genderless, but some of them lean more towards one gender or another. Or the subtlety of the entire Ferrengi race, for that matter, which was almost a literal demonization of capitalism (greedy, deceptive, ugly, backstabbing, cowardly, and sexist to boot).
Star Trek writers could have used a bit of restraint in creating these ham-handed scenarios and caricatures. I liked Star Trek in spite of its ridiculous political and social preaching, not because of it.
Irony: Agile development has too much intertia to be abandoned now.
What the heck are you talking about?
A fundamental part of the USA symbolism. You have flags and songs and all sorts of symbols, to tell you that everything is true and right and you don't need to look at the man behind the curtain. Having the dog catcher and the sheriff and common clerks elected is how you know democracy is safe, and you can relax your guard and be a happy consumer.
Well as somebody who is very anti-communist and pro capitalist, I could see it star trek economics becoming reality without all of the problems inherent to communism. What any economic system sorts out is how you allocate resources to whom. Where communism ultimately fails is that it assumes that people will just always be willing to produce out of the goodness of their hearts for just any old need that somebody wants (which includes jobs that aren't fun and nobody wants to do them unless they're paid, such as being a garbage man or a janitor.)
In Star Trek economics however, there's two problems that are solved without even needing an economy: There are no scarce resources, and there's no need for somebody to be a producer. Why? Because you've got replicators to handle your everyday goods, holodecks to entertain you, and if you want a vacation to florida, either you can holodeck there or beam over there. And since everything is made out of deuterium, there's basically an infinite supply of everything.
We're already starting to see some of that happen. Namely, we're already starting to see "free" production in the form of robots taking over certain jobs. We're a long way off from a star trek economy because a few other things need to be solved (we don't have replicators yet, and not everything can be automatically created) but in terms of making everyday goods out of cheap materials, we're getting pretty close.
Luddites are usually fighting this tooth and nail, but if having a lot of wealth for free (keep in mind, wealth is not money, wealth is material goods) then it's definitely better to just let automation take over anyways.
Your assumption seems to be that the fruits of automation, owned by the few, will somehow be shared by the many. Perhaps they will be, and we'll live in the Star Trek utopia. But I think more dystopian outcomes (extreme wealth inequality sustained through violent repression; revolution and war) to be more likely.
I don't know. If you can ignore laws because you believe that some group doesn't deserve the protection, then that means that robbery (the protection of people against it) can be ignored for, for example, bigoted religiotards who don't want gays having a wedding cake they make.
If you don't want to do the job of baking cakes, DON'T BECOME A BAKER. If you do, bake cakes. If someone asks you for a cake and some hot gay sex, say yes to the cake and feel absolutely free to say no to the buttock action.
If your religon is so strong that you CANNOT bake a cake that a gay person will be eating at their wedding, then please also obey that religion and refuse it for people who break the sabbath (saturday, not sunday), have divorced, masturbated, blasphemed, avoided taxes ("render unto caesar that which is due caesar"), eat shellfish, shaved a beard, seen a woman during her period (including himself if a customer is on her period), wearing cloths of two different fabrics, has a foreskin, and so on.
If you picked only gays, then how does anyone know that your problem is your religion (which we could say is protected), and not your bigotry (which is not)? If you aren't obeying all the rules of your religion, then the rules you are following are not being followed because of your religion. Those rules only happen to appear in the religion, but there is no evidence you are following them because of that religion. You'd have to follow all the other laws too.
Oh, and don't claim "New Testament!!!" because
a) No OT, no NT. No god, no creation of the world by god, no owed obeisance to god, no original sin, therefore no sin for JC to die for, therefore no need to worship him. No heaven in fact, since that was made in the OT.
b) Only Saint Paul was against gays. NOTHING in the teachings of JC was to repudiate and discriminate against them
c) JC said you should sell all your stuff and follow JC. Since you're not doing that either, you're not a christian.
d) also, if there's no god, no JC saving us, then there's no reason to hate gays anyway, since they were an issue for the OT god, and not NT JC, who has no debt owed to which we must observe his commandments for.
Blaming religion for all the woes of the world, is just naive. People can bend religion to match how they are thinking about stuff at the time. The bible has a lot of teaching to push a very liberal agenda as well.
Currently in politics the issue with abortions has split America, it is a complicated problem on many levels.
When does human life begin. (when it genetically a new person, when particular organs develop, when it can survive on its own... )
When it is considered a human life, when does its rights kick in. (Where does the cutoff for the rights of the mother and rights of the offspring come in)
Many Christian religions has gone the moral safe route. Life kicks in at time of federalization, the right to live trumps all other rights.
While it is the safe route it may not necessarily be accurate.
Now because of this stance, political parties can join with this group as a source of easy voters. And as these groups who joined in for this cause, begin absorbing the other ideals of the political party. Then they will twist the religion where it was more neutral on the topic to become more entranced, as well pushing the political party to expand on some of the other issues it has.
Now they are Christian groups who are far more liberal, some will support gay marriage, and abortions. So saying religion is the problem is over simplifying the issue. It is whenever a group of people join together and make a bunch of rules, is when the problem occurs.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.