Is it possible?
- Thread starter just_me
- Start date
I think you're onto something.
This is what I think Trek is claiming.
The goal is not so much about making people "equal", it's about making certain things class oppression, meaningless, when the tools are evaporating.
If Mr. Untouchable has a car like Mr. Brahmin, a nice house, and is financially independent and doesn't need to work for Mr. Brahim, then it's f-- you, Mr. Brahmin.
He doesn't need to be considered 'equal'. He can get anything the other has, and has all his or her rights. The oppression and influence is gone- the class distinction has little meaning without someone to compare yourself to.
Something similar happened with American slavery, although obviously, it was incomplete. But the former slavers felt they had a lot to lose just by having the slaves become free and independent of them. That class system changed, at least somewhat, but it did change.
That is what Trek is (probably) getting at. Basic needs, comfort and abundance for all leads to more civilized behavior-because ironically there's little choice left.
It's a piss and grass theory, sure, heck, I'm still skeptical that over a billion human beings don't get insulted by insults, or absolutely do not judge by appearance--whatsoever.
I think eventually, although it could take a few centuries, we'll arrive at a situation where the accumulation of things will be seen as the pathological thing that it actually is. People with great amounts of money at their disposal buy things that are ridiculous and only serve to flatter their gigantic egos when not far from them you have hard working people who are denied their most basic needs. Hopefully, someday this will be seen as the dark ages.
Interesting idea, if (somehow) you could keep it verbal only.
That was only a part of it, it was also Cochrane's engine that caused people to look outside themselves, it expanded their "world view."
Interesting idea, if (somehow) you could keep it verbal only.
That was only a part of it, it was also Cochrane's engine that caused people to look outside themselves, it expanded their "world view."
Well, we already know that the eugenic wars never happened. So this definitely isn't the ST universe.
No. Humans are too hardwired to a strong degree of savagery/territoriality. Can never happen; at least not for any extended period of time. Some people may suppress their territoriality for some time, but, eventually, enough people will have enough strong territorial impulses to collapse whatever "utopian" system has been created. We're fierce, killer animals first, our neo-cortex (evolutionary overshoot at its finest) second. Kirk's "we're not going to kill--today" speech in A Taste of Armageddon is fantastic, and I love this episode, but the next and logical question is never posed: what about tomorrow? And the day after that? Eventually, given enough time, our animal selves will win out.
Many things happen nowadays that never happened before. We don't know what humankind can or cannot do in the long run.
You do have to have that optimism, especially when things like religion, politics etc, fall through.
This sounds like evolutionary psychology. There's truth to it. It does try to explain why we behave why we do, but on its base, it's seems limiting and pretty negative for self improvement.
It's hard to even start trying to create any type of ideal society with its premise.
If I was into self improvement, I wouldn't want to start out reading a book that says you can't change your nature, because it's so hard wired.
There's probably got to be a compromise between the two ideas-- enough and plenty for all with freedoms and rights, don't expect 100% people to be perfect 100% of the time.
Roddenberry was purported to be a humanist, so he had a lot of ideas, some pretty far out, about utopia.
When it comes to humankind very little is hardwired, and a great deal is due to education, tradition, etc... Take the Sicilians for example, they've been killing each other for like six or seven hundred years over the stupidest of arguments. While to people from other cultures like myself these arguments appear idiotic at face value. To them they are cause of a resentment that will last for generations.
You don't know what humanity can do with a proper education.
You don't know what humanity can do with a proper education.
I don't understand the Sicilian argument, Kirkfan. Seems like that's more empirical icing on the s__tcake.
Nightdiamond, it doesn't really matter what viewpoint is optimistic or pessimistic. What matters is which one is true. I choose to believe that my viewpoint is the truth. I realize it isn't a happy viewpoint, but it wasn't joy at its consideration that caused me to believe it. It was my eventual acceptance that this was the likely truth, based on 1) what I think is the ruling impulse of mankind, and 2) statistics--that the aggregate actions of people will, in the long run, force us downwards. And naturally I accept that I could be wrong.
But take some note, and maybe some joy, in that what I propose doesn't mean lighting candles in the darkness is necessarily futile. Just not everlasting.
Nightdiamond, it doesn't really matter what viewpoint is optimistic or pessimistic. What matters is which one is true. I choose to believe that my viewpoint is the truth. I realize it isn't a happy viewpoint, but it wasn't joy at its consideration that caused me to believe it. It was my eventual acceptance that this was the likely truth, based on 1) what I think is the ruling impulse of mankind, and 2) statistics--that the aggregate actions of people will, in the long run, force us downwards. And naturally I accept that I could be wrong.
But take some note, and maybe some joy, in that what I propose doesn't mean lighting candles in the darkness is necessarily futile. Just not everlasting.
I think it's a bit of a logical fallacy to say that because the aggressive instinct is there, inevitably it WILL be acted on. That's like saying that, in their lifetime, every person WILL commit murder.
No. I'm not committing that fallacy. I am not suggesting that all people will participate equally in lowering us. I'm saying that the tendency of mankind in the aggregate is to lower itself to the lowest common denominator of constituents of a mob, and that, based on history's empirical verdict, this is what we should expect in the future. What empire has lasted more than a few 100 years? How many paradises on earth have been declared? Does destruction ever lag creation in technological growth?
But think of it this way, then: If you saw a lion, or even an herbivorous gorilla, within 10 feet of you, would you feel terrified or calm, even if there wasn't any particular reason to think that animal will hurt you? You'd expect the animal to behave like an animal, wouldn't you?--unpredictably and violently. Or you'd at least plan your own behavior on that basis. Well, we're animals. Why should anything ever change? Have we grown, somewhere that I haven't seen? Do we kill ourselves any less? Certainly not less in absolute numbers; possibly less in percentages (although I don't know)--but that is surely more due to increased overall human fecundity than to less effort devoted to killing. That is, if you consider not killing our fellow humans a sine qua non of societal evolution. I won't insist that it be so, but most would, I think.
You may he describing our culture, but humans aren't inherently savage. There is a tribe in Madagascar (the "Click Tongue" I think and/or they are referred to as that) that are welcoming to outsiders, have no possessions (everything shared including parenthood), and they're non-aggressive, and they've been maintaining that culture for centuries. Humans aren't assholes, only the assholes are.
Yes, that's exactly that. And what's more it's denying that on average people are less brutal now than they were millenia ago. For example there was a time when human sacrifice was fairly common in human cultures. Now it's a thing of the past. Who's to say that something practiced today, won't become obsolete in the future?
He most certainly was a humanist, and is highly regarded by humanist academics and associations around the world.
Moreover, it is obvious that the entire foundational, underpinning philosophy of Star Trek is that of humanism.
I feel very strongly that it could be an adherence to the principles of this branch of philosophy that brings us to and beyond the next step in our maturation as a species and global society.
A good place to start if people are interested in both philosophy and Star Trek is with Corliss Lamont's book The Philosophy of Humanism (1949)
Last edited:
Yes, ISIS is so much less brutal now than, say, the Incas were.
You keep forgetting that theses sorts of things were COMMON FARE back then. Not extremisms, COMMON! You can see them in every culture, not just in one in several hundreds.
That's what evolution does. It turns the exceptional into the normative and vice versa.
You're forgetting that, as a percentage of human behavior, of the numbers of humans on the planet, these things are no less common and perhaps more. NOTHING has changed in man himself.
What has changed? How is daily life any less horrible for most of humanity? I say most. Not just the industrialized West. The difference is, there are now far greater numbers in those places to suffer their fellow man's degradation. Slavery and killing.
Look, I don't like it that it's this way. You think I don't cheer Kirk on and boo Anan 7's point of view? I'm sentimental as hell for that stuff and a total sucker for it. I want things to be Kirk's way (Roddenberry's way). But Anan 7 was right and Kirk was wrong.
Heh. There's a decent nonfiction Trek book title. Roddenberry's Way.
Don't want to derail this thread. Will step away now.
