I think one would quickly find living in the Federation isn't all that it is cracked up to be.
Poll Would you trade your real life to live in the ST Universe?
- Thread starter AdmiralBruno
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I think one would quickly find living in the Federation isn't all that it is cracked up to be.
Yeah... a technologically advanced utopia sounds so overrated... The way the "real" world works is corrupt, and people do terrible things to other people all the time. I am sure the future in ST is not perfect, but a HUGE improvement clearly.
How do you know? We know next to nothing about how the Federation government works. We know next to nothing about how the human freedoms fair in the 23rd or 24th century. I've never known how people can claim they are making educated decisions with little or no actual facts?
Eh? don't follow you...
What's so great about the world today? You have people who have a LOT who don't deserve it, and contribute only negatively to society.. IE- Kim Kardashian.... and you have ones who do and try hard and don't get where they want to go. It's sad really... heck Nikola Tesla died penniless and he was one of those handful of really special minds in history.
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Amaris
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Who are you to decide whether or not they deserve it? Was it yours to give? You have a right to yourself, nothing more.
So you think the constructive thing to do is to want to live in imagination land?
Logical. This one guy is questioning my assertion that you don't deserve to be worth $100+ million because you are a "reality star" who successfully marketed your sex video to get famous on your own....
Welcome to capitalism. People are willing to pay for that kind of stuff with their money. Is it the fault of either the person making the money or capitalism itself? I don't think so. Many people just like crap.
Want to make the world a better place? Push for higher tax rates on folks that are able to make that kind of money.
Running away to imagination land solves nothing.
It's shown to be incredibly boring in every depiction we've actually gotten. And it churns out an alarming number of corrupt politicians, admirals, ambassadors etc
A lot of the people we've seen in position of power in Trek have already gone off the deep end, and Kirk constantly goes on about the savage nature of humans in the 23rd century, that we 'don't deserve' paradise in about 3 episode monologues.
And 24th century Earth is...bland. It looks a lot like it does today with technology that apparently still hasn't cured everything and people are every bit as driven by pettiness as there are now when given half a chance.
Where's this angelic wonderland we keep hearing about in Star Trek and mostly from the fandom? because nothing so far has shown it.
Well, as has been stated, the "Good Old Days" are almost always when you were a kid, with no responsibilities and parents to take care of you..the Federation (at least the 24th century version) was actually rather similar to my eyes.. Now to be on a TOS starship that just is cool..but probably is a bit of a grind most times..just like the modern military..
This is the point I was trying to make.
Star Trek as a fun, entertaining, even "interesting to speculate about" setting? Sure! Someplace I want to live? No, at least, not to take advantage of the "perfect" society. Ain't no such thing.
But on the other hand, if it was to visit a Constitution-class starship for a few months exploring planets and getting into adventures, yeah...I'd take that. You're just not going to catch me sipping replicated tea and thinking deep thoughts about the evolution of humanity and how far we've come and blah blah blah.
Seriously, of course the picture painted in Star Trek is fascinating. But, we are all different. I personally would wither in such a bland, "perfect" society. It's been argued here that they are "free" and "able to explore their fullest potential" but I don't see that in the 24th century version of Trek. I see a restrained, passionless homogeneous society where competition is frowned upon and all of life seems like one giant boardroom meeting. For people of action, this isn't an appealing society. There's nothing WRONG with that on either side, despite what some have tried to say. It's simply different people with different values and motivations.
And yes, Good Stuff, it is insulting when one person judges another's values (values which lead to a certain point of view) to be "sad." You can disagree all you want with a point of view, but to imply that you need to pity someone because they can't see something as you do...well...that's pretty weak. I assure you, your pity for my lack of imagination is completely misplaced. I can dream and imagine a "perfect world" with the best of them...I just have no interest in existing there. Sorry if that's sad to you. I think it's frigging awesome.
"Maybe man wasn't meant for paradise. Maybe he was meant to claw. To scratch all the way."
"I don't want my pain taken away. I need my pain"
-James T. Kirk
Adventurer, Ass-kicker, Realist
Those two quotes speak more to me about the reality of life than any Jean-Luc Picard speech about humanity's evolved sensibilities (as Lilly Slaon said in FC, "bull$hit!!" And she was right!). And I don't mean this in a negative way. I mean it from a growth and progress way. Progress, both personal and societal, comes from struggle and hardship. Learning comes from mistakes and enduring the consequences. If the struggle and hardships just stop, so does growth and progress. It's a crappy fact of life, but it's part of the "truth of our existence." We would be better as a species if we could accept that and learn to work within it rather than fantasize about "living in imagination land" as BillJ put it.
Anyway, just my basic thoughts on that. There's no need for anyone to agree or disagree. We're all driven by different things.
Depends? Not sure too many folks would volunteer to clean toilets or plasma conduits. We never see the menial jobs of the Star Trek universe. Who wants to clean up the Rec Deck after a Deltan orgy?
Epilogue- the most ironic thing in 24thbCentury Trek was the revelation in FC that mankind didn't fix anything on their own. It was the arrival of the Vulcans that actually got people thinking differently. The inference there is that we would have never arrived on our own. We were wallowing in sorrow and despair after a horrible war.
I actually like FC, but I think that is a terrible direction to have taken the franchise. I always liked what TOS implied which was that we struggled and went through some tough times and LEARNED slowly and naturally how to work together and value or differences rather than kill because of them. We were still the same old savage humans...just wiser and more controlled. We had to fight every day for that control. "Im not going to kill....TODAY. " (A Taste of Armageddon) That society wasn't a utopia. It was simply a product of much sacrifice and wisdom gained through tough experience.
I actually like FC, but I think that is a terrible direction to have taken the franchise. I always liked what TOS implied which was that we struggled and went through some tough times and LEARNED slowly and naturally how to work together and value or differences rather than kill because of them. We were still the same old savage humans...just wiser and more controlled. We had to fight every day for that control. "Im not going to kill....TODAY. " (A Taste of Armageddon) That society wasn't a utopia. It was simply a product of much sacrifice and wisdom gained through tough experience.
Depends? Not sure too many folks would volunteer to clean toilets or plasma conduits. We never see the menial jobs of the Star Trek universe. Who wants to clean up the Rec Deck after a Deltan orgy?
May we at least watch first??
That's always been my point, too. Someone somewhere in a society like this still ends up having to do crap work that they don't want to do. Eliminating money, replicating tea, and worshiping science and philosophy don't change that or make it go away.
I do wonder what the people who have no 24th century skills plan on doing? Not like they're headed there to be a starship captain.
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