Let's be honest about the Federation's failings
- Thread starter Charles Phipps
- Start date
Since I can't stand anything Berman related, I choose to believe that instead of "Humanity is Special" ala Enterprise, that the Vulcans solved 90% of our problems and fixed our environment too.
Humans like Archer just pretend they did it on their own.
I'm getting two versions of this according to the dialog. One is that 14 Federation members threatened to leave the UFP if they helped the Romulans, even before the Mars attack. Which meant the Federation were already thinking of not helping them.
Plus if those 14 members left, the Federation would have "imploded" which sounded pretty serious. As in the Federation collapsing from within.
The other is that after the Mars attack, the Federation had to pull its resources to deal with the Mars situation, and not help the Romulans. They didn't have enough resources to help although they seemed like they were about to. But then it changed to "let's look out for ourselves first".
So, the dirty reality of maintaining Paradise is revealed. The story got so caught up in the Synth stuff, we forgot all about this issue. Suggesting the Federation is not what it once was or should be (according to Picard).
Wait, something doesn't make sense. The Tal Shair or it's subgroup (Romulans) orchestrated the Synth attack which resulted in the Fed abandoning the aid effort, which resulted in nearly a billion Romulan deaths.
Because they were afraid the Synths would bring about the end of everything?
Plus if those 14 members left, the Federation would have "imploded" which sounded pretty serious. As in the Federation collapsing from within.
The other is that after the Mars attack, the Federation had to pull its resources to deal with the Mars situation, and not help the Romulans. They didn't have enough resources to help although they seemed like they were about to. But then it changed to "let's look out for ourselves first".
So, the dirty reality of maintaining Paradise is revealed. The story got so caught up in the Synth stuff, we forgot all about this issue. Suggesting the Federation is not what it once was or should be (according to Picard).
Wait, something doesn't make sense. The Tal Shair or it's subgroup (Romulans) orchestrated the Synth attack which resulted in the Fed abandoning the aid effort, which resulted in nearly a billion Romulan deaths.
Because they were afraid the Synths would bring about the end of everything?
My take on the subject is that helping the Romulans was always an unpopular decision akin to the Praxis deal with the Klingons. That resulted in a full-scale mutiny from some elements of Starfleet after all. However, the Federation was willing to spend a massive amount of resources to evacuate 900,000,000 Romulans from their planet.
Then the Synth Rebellion happened and an entire planet of the Federation was destroyed.
Picard thought, "Okay, that's horrible. Lets get back to work."
Instead, the Federation's members refused to donate any more to the rescue effort. The buck stopped there (or Replicator Credit).
Which I don't think is actually that unsympathetic a stance. Like if you sent a aircraft carrier to rescue the population of an island and it sank. The Federation isn't going to donate another aircraft carrier to it.
In this timeline, Spock went off to try to stop the supernova by himself and failed to get there in time.
I think we would make it too.
My opinions of whether we'd make it are dramatically influenced by who is President in my lifetime.
Meh. I've heard it all before from both sides. I survived the end of the world with Bush, with Obama, and I'll survive this one too.
I do my best to not just give in to my fears and focus on what I can control.
It’s not even that, but (if we’re still talking antimatter) what religious fanatic wants to bring about the Judgement Day because Allah or God wants it, or because they’re incels really deeply pissed off at women and would rather that than take a long hard look at their worldview. Ever see Twelve Monkeys? You don’t need a giant military to bring about the end of the world, just the right bioengineered bug and an “alternative” idea.
I think we could get to Trek’s world, but our priorities and wisdom would need to match out technological progress. And if not, then that’s why there’s re a lot of dead pre-warp civilizations scattered about out there.
The problem is that we don't know what the hell happened from 2063-2113 ish. Some parts of the world still sucked for twenty odd years. United Earth has been pushed down to 2131 (or even 2150!?!?! - far too late, IMO), and it's not like the Vulcans did a UN-Kampuchea on us.
It's my informed guess that the arrival of Vulcans, in the West of all things, spurred a new USA/UN movement that geared up and pacified the world via force and aid in twenty/fifty years (as per Doctor Crusher's quote that war, poverty, and the like will be gone by 2113~) and the Vulcans probably said 'hey worlds tend not to be disunited might want to get on that' and so the UE was finally formed. All of that was brushed up under the 'post atomic horror' era and it was a lot of 'peacekeeping' and 'stabilisation' but more than a few of those were analogous to full scale wars versus rogue states. The rapid push seen in space where every damn rustbucket was given warp nacelles probably helped, too.... Nothing like lasers on spaceships giving you total superiority over anything not underground or under the sea.
Archer's problem was that the Vulcans were weary of humanity and pushed them to be a stagnant local protectorate for no discernible reason; not that the Vulcans did all the work and humanity was insufficient to pull itself up. Archer probably thinks Humanity could had been a huge power by now if it wasn't for Vulcan influence.
I think even in Berman's writing that Archer was just really racist.
I think that cultural progress can be sped up along with the technology, just drop off some teachers or books. That's what they did a lot of the time, stop by to teach some lessons and then leave.
If we got replicators and some schooling on how that kind of society can work I think it would work itself out
I don't let outsiders influence my world view. I'm me, I deal with what I can control. It's best other people get realistic, unless you're in that seat of power, you really have no influence.
I don't know. We have Mr. Rogers now yet look at how we talk to each other. Especially online. I think religion is less about truth and more about art. The art of maintaining whatever worldview you have. .....though maybe I'm being too cynical about this. Maybe alien books could help us parse out the broader teachings of Rogers or different religions in more sophisticated ways more helpful in dealing with the sudden responsibility of antimatter power too.
That can be limiting as well as unrealistic. I think we're influenced in lots of ways just beyond our ability to perceive the influence. I'm not sure I believe in Free Will – that it's not ultimately an illusion of our perspective. I think the soul is the ancient word for the mind before we had a word for it, yet hold onto the older word because we fear death and disrespect our physical natures instead of caring for them all the more.
And I don't think we should be too closed off to the outer world because I believe in hubris and the cozy arrogance of being distant. We have individual minds and should use and nurture them, but we're limited beings and should seek out wisdom and assistance wherever we may find it, while we're fortunate enough to be able. If another scientist or philosopher or lover has thought about something, we should probe that and test it out in our own lives instead of trying to reinvent the wheel at every turn. We can do that until we're forever lost.
Well I just mean that I wouldn't be in charge of the anti-matter reactor.
Which was going on for quite some time before and for many reasons, which aren't tied hand-in-hand... Did it really take much for Stewart to come back?
Yes, he was out for good until Brexit, I think.
Probably. It has been a good ten years since I saw most of ENT, and I've barely catched the local reruns. I guess a lot of it is...'whoa Archer whoa' now?
I just chalked it up to resentment. His father never saw his project completed. Earth is a weak power. Three generations of humans have lived under a Vulcan guiding hand, a hand he disagrees with.
If Earth did not have that stupid anti genetic tampering policy, his father would lived long enough to see his project through. I never saw the logic in Earth being a de facto colony of Vulcan for 100 years unless during those years Vulcan was a military dictatorship or something.
