Philosophical Objections to Trek Lit

[LightningStorm]

Thanks for the post! It's intriguing to get the author's insight into something like this.

I fully agree!


And FWIW David, I did get what you were trying to do with that story and loved it. I think it is ingenious on the Founders' part (and by extension your part) to take a look at the effect religious beliefs on people and then turn that to their advantage (what with the goal of domination and subjugation of solids). I mean really if I had the ability to actually make people think I was a god and I had every intention of manipulating those people, what better way to insure a blind following without question. Everything there is built on faith and hope and not proof. Even when you get something similar to "proof" it can easily be explained away with some sort of "the god works in mysterious ways" or "the god has some sort of bigger picture type plan in the works that you aren't privy to or can't understand because you are so much simpler and lesser than the god." And as you said, what better way to actually understand the effects and importance of religion than to be heavily religious yourself.

 

[JD]

Agreed. I found the whole examination of the Founders in DI to be absolutely fascinating, and I'm really hoping you, or someone else if need be, get the chance to continue to expand on what you did in it. In fact tthe lack of that was the one and only thing I that I didn't love about Warpath.

 

[Trent Roman]

And as you said, what better way to actually understand the effects and importance of religion than to be heavily religious yourself.

Easy: by being the total inverse, which allows one the objective, critical distance to examine the nature and consequences of religion without bias or conflict of interest. It's not without reason that the great sociologists of religion--Marx, Durkheim, Weber--were atheist, agnostic and rationalist, moderate Calvinist (and Weber's gotten flak on that front, for seeming to privilege the effects of Calvinism in his study of the protestant ethic). To be a believer and simultaneously profess an impartial study of religion requires a dichotomy of self staggering to contemplate; that cognitive dissonance I mentioned earlier, of saying "Hey, let's make ourselves out to be gods--although our god surely isn't fake". As long as you believe, they'll always be a cause, and an authority, that only your beliefs countenance.

Fictitiously yours, Trent Roman

 

[MarianLH]

...that cognitive dissonance I mentioned earlier, of saying "Hey, let's make ourselves out to be gods--although our god surely isn't fake". As long as you believe, they'll always be a cause, and an authority, that only your beliefs countenance.

Fictitiously yours, Trent Roman

That kind of discontinuity can result from the compartmentalized thinking characteristic of people with the Right-Wing Authoritarian personality type.

Pure RWAs are followers, not leaders, but there are people who score highly for both RWA and the highly manipulative Social Dominance Orientation. "Double highs" are rare among humans, but they do exist, so the Founders could also belong to this personality type.

I haven't read the book, so maybe this doesn't fit with other elements of the Founders' portrayal not mentioned in this thread, but the combination of sincere religious belief and the cynical manipulation of religious followers in the same person is not impossible.


Marian

 

[David R. George III]

Actually, I wasn't saying that the Founders studied religion by setting themselves up as gods of the various other races of the Dominion. I was saying that it seemed to me that a race that held to a belief in a creator, and which therefore understood all that belief engendered in themselves, could as a result possess the understanding and facility to cultivate and usurp such feelings in others. In other words, it seemed reasonable to me that a Founder community that believed in, revered, and even feared its own god, could turn around and set themselves up as gods to less powerful races, simply as a means of controlling those races.

 

[Defcon]

Actually, I wasn't saying that the Founders studied religion by setting themselves up as gods of the various other races of the Dominion. I was saying that it seemed to me that a race that held to a belief in a creator, and which therefore understood all that belief engendered in themselves, could as a result possess the understanding and facility to cultivate and usurp such feelings in others. In other words, it seemed reasonable to me that a Founder community that believed in, revered, and even feared its own god, could turn around and set themselves up as gods to less powerful races, simply as a means of controlling those races.

O.K., I'm not really religious myself, but would a race truly devote to their god really declare themselves gods? I don't know, wouldn't that be a typ of blasphemy to a certain extent, even if they only want to use it as a way to control their "believers"?

 

[Timo]

They might simply set themselves up as a different level of God. You know, merely omnipotent beings who control destiny, rather than the High God who also created everything there is and more, who extends beyond time, and who has the ultimate moral say.

The Founders might not see any point in teaching the worship of the High God to the ignorant pagans who are taught to worship the Founders. Indeed, they might actually consider it blasphemy that such lowly creatures would get to directly worship the High God.

I don't think the Founder-worshipping religion ever was said to involve elements such as "Founders created the universe" or "Founders control afterlife". It seemed there was no room for such abstractions in the very pragmatic religion. The Vorta knew the Founders had given them sentience, and that sort of small-time creation sufficed just fine for worshipping them as Gods. The Jem'Hadar didn't need to believe in an afterlife, and certainly didn't think they deserved any posthumous rewards from getting killed in battle. All life for them was afterlife already, and there was nothing else to it. In contrast, the things the Founders themselves believed in rotated around just these sorts of abstract ideas, about the ultimate origin and the ultimate destiny beyond the observable universe. No conflict or overlap of interests there, really.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[ATimson]

But all of this did not simply come and go in a single story; rather, these concepts were introduced in Olympus Descending, and they await additional exploration in future DSN works. I'm looking forward to discovering where these ideas take us. I proffered quite a few details in my Worlds of Star Trek--Deep Space Nine entry, and there's a considerable number of directions in which the Founders can now be taken, some of which I think have not yet even been imagined by readers. We'll see.

Will we see? Seeing as how everybody but Odo and Laas ran away, and neither one is exactly steeped in the Founders' former culture...

 

[ATimson]

Have their ever been any moments in Trek Lit that just rubbed you the wrong way? Not so much the individual character choices but the worldview created by the authors...

Vanguard. The secrecy behind the project is completely antithetical to the tenets of Starfleet and the Federation as shown in the television series, as are the lengths that Reyes and T'Prynn went to keep said secrets.

At least with Section 31, we know that the main characters think that they're wrong, and they don't (knowingly) help them with their misdeeds. With Vanguard, though, we have none of that; the "captain" and first officer are the ones fucking over a civilian--thousands, really, if you count the families of the Bombay crew who were actively lied to about the deceased's fates, but that pales in comparison to what they did to Pennington--just because they can.

I have issues with the revived Thallonian Empire from the last two New Frontier books; okay, I'm not a big fan of its philosophy (wherein its head of state not only has prisoners tortured, but enjoys it), but I think that my problems with it stem more from Lefler's lack of reaction to her husband's actions than anything else. So I'm not sure if that quite qualifies, as said Empire is completely in line with the philosophy of its predecessor, unlike Project Vanguard and its parent organization.

I'm also not convinced by certain aspects of the Federation Council system as presented in Articles of the Federation; I would have hoped that they'd have avoided anything like the discriminatory Security Council setup (that reserves a chunk of the seats for those planets that just happened to be closer to Earth, and so were around at the time the Federation was created--I don't remember if they had the broader powers seen in the UN Security Council nowadays, though). I also think that the method of handling a presidential resignation (or death?) is strange; rather than falling down a chain of succession, government more or less grinds to a halt until elections can be held. Doesn't seem very efficient to me.

 

[Christopher]

O.K., I'm not really religious myself, but would a race truly devote to their god really declare themselves gods? I don't know, wouldn't that be a typ of blasphemy to a certain extent, even if they only want to use it as a way to control their "believers"?

They might simply set themselves up as a different level of God. You know, merely omnipotent beings who control destiny, rather than the High God who also created everything there is and more, who extends beyond time, and who has the ultimate moral say.

Quite right. Again, let's not fall into the trap of assuming that the way our culture defines divinity is the only way of defining it. That's untrue even on Earth alone, never mind when you bring aliens into it. Many cultures have postulated the existence of multiple tiers of deities, and it's certainly not unprecedented among humans for individuals (such as Pharaohs) to declare themselves gods while still believing in a higher pantheon of divinities.

As David said, the Founders have been canonically established as believing themselves to have evolved from "solids" into a higher form. David interpreted that as a belief that they'd evolved into something closer to God. So if they sincerely believed they were closer to divine status than solids were, it stands to reason that they would consider it perfectly natural and right for solids to worship them. It's not a scam, but a genuine belief that they are members of a multi-tiered pantheon/taxonomy of divinities.

The Founders might not see any point in teaching the worship of the High God to the ignorant pagans who are taught to worship the Founders. Indeed, they might actually consider it blasphemy that such lowly creatures would get to directly worship the High God.

Indeed. We know that Changelings as a species have a strong sense of order and law. They may consider it part of the natural order of the universe that each level of being in the hierarchy may only be aware of the next order of divinity above itself, with each tier only worshipping one higher tier, and with the Founders serving as intermediaries/insulators between the lowly solids and the high God that the solids were unworthy to know directly.

Vanguard. The secrecy behind the project is completely antithetical to the tenets of Starfleet and the Federation as shown in the television series, as are the lengths that Reyes and T'Prynn went to keep said secrets.

At least with Section 31, we know that the main characters think that they're wrong, and they don't (knowingly) help them with their misdeeds. With Vanguard, though, we have none of that; the "captain" and first officer are the ones fucking over a civilian--thousands, really, if you count the families of the Bombay crew who were actively lied to about the deceased's fates, but that pales in comparison to what they did to Pennington--just because they can.

You haven't read Reap the Whirlwind yet, have you?

 

[The Laughing Vulcan]

The Founders might not see any point in teaching the worship of the High God to the ignorant pagans who are taught to worship the Founders. Indeed, they might actually consider it blasphemy that such lowly creatures would get to directly worship the High God.

Indeed. We know that Changelings as a species have a strong sense of order and law. They may consider it part of the natural order of the universe that each level of being in the hierarchy may only be aware of the next order of divinity above itself, with each tier only worshipping one higher tier, and with the Founders serving as intermediaries/insulators between the lowly solids and the high God that the solids were unworthy to know directly.

My God! They're Scientologists!

 

[ATimson]

You haven't read Reap the Whirlwind yet, have you?

I have; it doesn't change that I have strenuous philosophical objections to what happened, though. (At least with regards to the conceptual basis of the project, and to Reyes' actions. T'Prynn's actions... I suppose it depends on whether she truly is as bugfuck nuts as she appears from her POV. She sure functioned like a sane person before whats-her-face blew up...)

Hopefully Reap the Whirlwind is a sign of things to come, that we'll see the introduction of a much more cooperative atmosphere within the project/series. It'll depend on how much Reyes lets slip about the project's origins and purpose at the trial, I suppose.

 

[Dancing Doctor]

I'm also not convinced by certain aspects of the Federation Council system as presented in Articles of the Federation; I would have hoped that they'd have avoided anything like the discriminatory Security Council setup (that reserves a chunk of the seats for those planets that just happened to be closer to Earth, and so were around at the time the Federation was created--I don't remember if they had the broader powers seen in the UN Security Council nowadays, though). I also think that the method of handling a presidential resignation (or death?) is strange; rather than falling down a chain of succession, government more or less grinds to a halt until elections can be held. Doesn't seem very efficient to me.

In regards to the method of handling a vacancy on the fifteenth floor: Government *doesnt* just stop. A President pro tempore is appointed by the Federation Council to fill in until elections are held. Except for the one or two days during which the pro tem is chosen, government very much continues.

And in regards to the Federation Security Council setup: I can't really speak on this until I know if the FedSecCoun perm five have the same veto powers as the UNSecCoun perm five.

 

[EmperorKalan]

Have their ever been any moments in Trek Lit that just rubbed you the wrong way? Not so much the individual character choices but the worldview created by the authors...

Vanguard. The secrecy behind the project is completely antithetical to the tenets of Starfleet and the Federation as shown in the television series, as are the lengths that Reyes and T'Prynn went to keep said secrets.

That's quite similar to my mental balk with Serpents Among the Ruins. Liked the action, liked the characterization and machinations.

Couldn't buy its "what really happened" of the Tomed Incident.

 

[ATimson]

In regards to the method of handling a vacancy on the fifteenth floor: Government *doesnt* just stop. A President pro tempore is appointed by the Federation Council to fill in until elections are held. Except for the one or two days during which the pro tem is chosen, government very much continues.

That's not the impression I got from A Time for Ellipses, and all the crap waiting for Bacco like council appointments. That could be a failure of understanding on this reader's part, though.

 

[Dancing Doctor]

In regards to the method of handling a vacancy on the fifteenth floor: Government *doesnt* just stop. A President pro tempore is appointed by the Federation Council to fill in until elections are held. Except for the one or two days during which the pro tem is chosen, government very much continues.

That's not the impression I got from A Time for Ellipses, and all the crap waiting for Bacco like council appointments. That could be a failure of understanding on this reader's part, though.

The members of the Presidential Administration (The Second Zife, in this case) would remain until the election was held and they lose their jobs.

Or did you mean Federation Council subcouncil appointments (like Beltane on Commerce, and Artrin on Judiciary, and Quintor on Government Oversight, etc.)?

 

[ATimson]

The members of the Presidential Administration (The Second Zife, in this case) would remain until the election was held and they lose their jobs.

Or did you mean Federation Council subcouncil appointments (like Beltane on Commerce, and Artrin on Judiciary, and Quintor on Government Oversight, etc.)?

The latter.

 

[Stevil2001]

Check out this "nuanced" read on the Iraq war :

http://www.racefreezone.com/diane/criminalsgun.html

Wow... That's quite possibly the worst analogy in history.

I could construct a much better one, and may do so in my blog. But it's a little too off-topic for this thread.

The title of that makes me think of this. Which I suspect is not the association Diane Carey is trying to make!

 

[garamet]

Actually, I wasn't saying that the Founders studied religion by setting themselves up as gods of the various other races of the Dominion. I was saying that it seemed to me that a race that held to a belief in a creator, and which therefore understood all that belief engendered in themselves, could as a result possess the understanding and facility to cultivate and usurp such feelings in others. In other words, it seemed reasonable to me that a Founder community that believed in, revered, and even feared its own god, could turn around and set themselves up as gods to less powerful races, simply as a means of controlling those races.

There are certainly precedents for that IRL.

 

[Dancing Doctor]

The members of the Presidential Administration (The Second Zife, in this case) would remain until the election was held and they lose their jobs.

Or did you mean Federation Council subcouncil appointments (like Beltane on Commerce, and Artrin on Judiciary, and Quintor on Government Oversight, etc.)?

The latter.

The openings had just come up, from what I remember from the book.

ETA: That's also realistic, considering how many positions there are in the United States government alone that need appointees at any given time. Considering how large the Federation is, I wouldn't be surprised if there were tons of positions that need filling.