Honestly, I think 100 years of cleaning up after a nuclear war isn't that bad of a deal. Archer's granddad grew up in this.
Let's be honest about the Federation's failings
- Thread starter Charles Phipps
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Honestly, I think 100 years of cleaning up after a nuclear war isn't that bad of a deal. Archer's granddad grew up in this.
I used to think humans smartened up and made positive changes right before they destroyed themselves, on their own. Before the warp drive.
And then you look at TNG closely, it says the real reason humanity changed for the better was because they accidentally ran into the Vulcans, which then caused all those positive changes.
Outside the Trek universe, it's something of a let down, because I think fans, probably even the general public, uses Trek as a template for how much better it will be in the future.
And then it throws in, only if we run into more advance aliens, which is only an unlikely possibility.
I like the original idea. We have more control this way. The other is borderline fantasy.
My biggest thing is that humans have control over a lot of different facets and when we are willing to practice personal responsibility that positive results can happen.
Except if there’s a nuclear war, I think there’s a high probability the aftereffect is a Mad Max world that dies out completely, not a Trek one in which we “golly gee now we get it...we’re supposed to be nice to one another...of course...how could we possibly have known” deal. I think that’s a more romantic notion. If you really want a better world, we need to have time, safety, and conversation. That’s not exciting or sexy, but it is how we have the wherewithal to learn empathy for each other, not seclusion in our own madness.
I think TOS at first suggested that humans somehow came to their senses on their own. And that technology helped positively changed human nature. In a logical step by step manner.
Create technology that produces more than enough food and products for everyone, --- eliminate poverty and greed. If humans are free from poverty and less greedy,-- then class and discrimination problems begin to vanish. If class and discrimination vanish--- then humans start seeing each other as equal etc, etc.
A lot of this change, is technology related though.
But later on, it seemed that First Contact kind of inserted the idea that it was warp drive and accidentally meeting the Vulcans that caused all the positive change. In fact it said unless Cochrane made contact with Vulcans, none of this would ever happen.
Realistically speaking, waiting for a warp drive to be created is already unrealistic enough. But then believing that contact with aliens is the only way humans could achieve the things they do in the future is something of a let down.
So it's kind of like when you watch Trek documentaries and they tell you, "this is how our future can be. We will make it", and then you realize the actual show itself says the only reason we made it, is because we invented a faster than light ship and accidentally caught the attention of some advance aliens that stayed with us and guided us.
That scenario puts it more out our control, and left more to accidents and coincidents.
It was a limited Nuclear War, due to a draw out exchange between a 'Eastern Coalition' and the West. We know for sure America got hit, but not by a lot.
Of course that's all retro-active justification; because the writers went...wait...how do we have a nuclear war but still have a functional technological society afterwards? So they had to limit it to around two powers. AFAIK, China has around 200 warheads, max. The USA might have only acted in kind, tit-for-tat, than with full response (which is just overkill), but even then I doubt the USA list for China is more than a few hundred targets. If Russia didn't get involved (and there's no evidence that they did), that means most of the Yank arsenal is sitting pretty, and may had been less silo ICBMs and more cruise-missiles and sub missiles. So that's 200+200 warheads, maybe a smidgen more, but enough that the world just gets a few cold winters.
Hopefully the rest of the world was more developed and self-sufficient by then, too, so that having the US and China knocked around doesn't end up with a complete economic meltdown, Africa, the Middle East, South America is barely mentioned in the show; the earliest we see is that Hoshi is in Brazil teaching languages in 2151. Dunno how much Europe got hit...there are a bunch of random names thrown around at times; none of which can be dated to the Third World War.
Considering how prejudiced humans are, the only way I can see humanity getting passed its isms regarding sexuality, gendar, race, religion etc is coming across a group of advanced aliens that show us how insignificant humans are compared to everyone else. Present day Humans, under a United Earth, having the advanced technology of Star Trek would create a mirror style universe if there was no First Contact, with humans as the underdogs. Just consider how advanced we are now compared to our ancestors of 300 years ago, and still we are as territorial as ever.
^ I dunno if we’re as territorial as ever. Modern warfare I think is more economic than military. If we can maintain (or increase) the wealth of the Empire without the bother of it, that’s cheaper and less bloody. (And you don’t get to dream about empire if you’re not on the front lines as far as I see it.) I think the key is to sublimate the intensities of our hormones through healthy avenues. Start a company, learn the guitar, discover exercise, write a novel, etc. Discover the humility of pursuing something difficult instead of wanking off at destroying in frustration. If you succeed, you’ll feel light as feather, less inclined to casually criticize, and happier than words. This is my current thinking anyway.
I mean, Vulcan was definitely a military dictatorship by the time of the Vulcan Reformation trilogy in Season Four.
Depending on how you interpret T'Las's lines in "Home," either Vulcan was already a military dictatorship before ENT S1, or it became a military dictatorship when V'Las used the excuse of Archer exposing the Vulcan listening station at P'Jem to get the First Minister dismissed and assumed direct power himself.
Either way, I think it's pretty clear that Vulcan was engaging in some neo-colonialism vis-a-vis its relationships with client states like Earth and Coridan. And there's plenty of logic in neo-colonialism -- the wealth of the client states gets sent back to the hegmon, but the hegmon doesn't have to undertake the costs of actual annexation and can just outsource the job of direct governance to local elites.
"Logic merely enables one to be wrong with authority." - Doctor Who
And a dictator who does his evil deeds because he loves you is the worst kind of dictator. He's doing it for your own good!
Yeah, it was more about resentment of the Vulcans and him thinking that humans were always standing in Vulcans' shadows. I suppose some of his thoughts and actions could be similar to being racist, but I don't think it was truly meant that way.
He was right, the Vulcans were holding the humans back out of fear and envy which they would never admit to. I did not see him as racist just frustrated.
I dunno, I think that's a positive message because the aliens in Star Trek are humans.
Multiculturalism and accepting help as well as giving help are the reasons humanity got better rather than just, "we fixed ourselves."
Alternate universe episode where they let the humans go and either a) they did okay, or b) conquered the Tellarites for their dilithium, er, Freedom Crystals because they were mean to the president on Subspacer.
I mean, that's just the mirror universe episode, we can glean that if Humanity went all out - they take over the Orions, Vulcans, Denobulans, Tellarites, Andorians, and had around 9 NX-Class cruisers than 2 by...2155? I wonder how their Romulan War played out -
But a less 'militant' form of that would be a very big, very active UESN aggressively defending itself. Kind to friends, terrifying to enemies.
^ I kid, but I’m not far off. The military industrial complex is the biggest business there is and ever was on a scale unlike anything else. If we didn’t learn anything from the war...no doubt “the war to end all wars,” it wouldn’t take a goatee to push us for many seemingly legitimate reasons to take aggressive action.
The P.D. is incredibly inconsistently applied and many things Janeway and others did would be certain violations in other interpretations.
Nevertheless — I have never seen an interpretation that forbids the U.F.P. to lend assistance to an f.t.l.-capable civilization, provided that such assistance not be taking sides in a conflict they might have with another.
They are very much free to lend humanitarian aid; they are definitely not free to take sides in an external conflict and play judge on what civilization is right, and what is wrong — they have however clearly violated this on many occasions, especially Janeway.
Apart from that, the directive seems to only apply to the vague descriptor of "civilization", not to individuals, so it is contingent upon a judgement call of what constitutes a separate "civilization". They are free to render assistance in the capturing of a criminal by local law, because the criminal on his own does not constitute a separate "civilization", yet with a secession movement of considerable numbers, this becomes less clear and that can constitute one.
If one ask me, the P.D. is a load of rubbish, and a naturalistic fallacy thrown in, for good measure — inconsistently interpreted, and contingent upon a ridiculous "collective identity" concept where an entire "civilization" is given personhood as if it were an individual, absent any technical definition of what might constitute such a "civilization"; I am not impressed.
