We do not discuss it with outsiders!

[The Laughing Vulcan]

We often see in Trek that certain races have a reticence to air their dirty linen. Klingons don't talk about their foreheads, Vulcans don't share their mating practices, Romulans just didn't like being looked at for a hundred years.

What would humans have to hide from the rest of the galaxy? What would be our shame.

While they've mentioned the ozone layer (When The Bough Breaks), no one ever talks about global warming. Maybe once we solve the problem, it's considered diplomatic to not mention the fact that we're a species that foul our own nests.

Maybe we keep quiet about all the species that are going extinct due to hunting, habitat loss and so on.

Maybe we don't share the history of slavery, and the extents that humans treat other humans with regards to totalitarian massacres, although the future is replete with Nazi references.

Maybe it's something more subtle. The future is a crime free utopia, where everyone seems well adjusted and 'normal'. Maybe we hide the fact that we did solve problems of social maladjustment, psychosis, sociopathy, the sort of thing that results in serial killers and child abusers, but the way we did it may not be all that pretty.

 

[Pemmer Harge]

The secret of how humanity came to dominate the Federation, even though it's reasonable to assume that we only constitute a fairly small proportion of the population.

 

[Orcus]

The secret of how humanity came to dominate the Federation, even though it's reasonable to assume that we only constitute a fairly small proportion of the population.

And the why and how all of the Federation now speaks American English...

 

[Joshua Howard]

I imagine that there is something to be said for the fact that the image which the Klingon Empire, Vulcan, and Romulus see through the com channels and viewscreens of Federation vessels - one indicative of universal prosperity and evolved economics - still fights with the negative elements of a sometimes discontent labor class behind the scenes.

In the 23rd and 24th centuries, there are still people who feel that they are undervalued; individuals who are unhappy with their careers, and men and women who perform mundaine tasks; it is only natural for those people to feel that their contributions to society are not appreciated in the same way as those made by officers and crews aboard flagship vessels.

There is probably also a minor percentage of folk who still haven't given up the old fashioned independant capitalist mentality. Those people very likely feel that space is too tightly regulated; they likely feel that they are trapped by red tape while a select few handpicked eletes do all the exploring and recieve all the economic support. They are probably a little extreme, but also a little bit correct.

I think that the big taboo conversation of the Federation - if such a thing exists - is the fact that Humanity is still struggling with the problems of bureaucracy. Some of Captain Picard's documented dealings with Starfleet Admirals provide case-in-point examples of how such problems have a way of making themselves manifest even in the upper eschelon.

 

[Timo]

FWIW, Quark in "Jem'Hadar" seemed to be fully in the know about Earth's history of slavery and intraspecies violence. And Sisko didn't appear surprised that Quark knew.

As for global warming, that's probably something humans of the future will be proud of: the first experiment, however uncontrolled, in manipulating climate on a planetary scale, and in coping with the results. Climate shifting is a human profession, or sometimes a hobby project, in the 24th century - hardly a dirty secret.

On the issue of erasing crime, the heroes of TOS seem a-okay with the idea that all crime is considered mental illness and requires medical treatment. This seems to carry on to the TNG era, where long prison sentences are unheard of: six months for attempted genocide cannot be considered a punishment, so it's more likely to be a means of facilitating medical treatment. And Picard does discuss it with outsiders, in "Justice", where he refers to screenings that help expose and eradicate crime and make capital punishment (or even punishment in general) quite unnecessary.

That leaves relatively few secrets that we would know of. Outsiders don't hear much about our run-ins with the nastier sides of genetic engineering and eugenics. Outsiders also don't hear about the covert organizations that help the UFP cause, either with or without the blessing of the beneficiary. But only insofar as we know. Perhaps those are "public secrets" after all, not comparable to the Klingon forehead taboo?

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Nerys Ghemor]

Maybe it's something more subtle. The future is a crime free utopia, where everyone seems well adjusted and 'normal'. Maybe we hide the fact that we did solve problems of social maladjustment, psychosis, sociopathy, the sort of thing that results in serial killers and child abusers, but the way we did it may not be all that pretty.

That's one possibility. I also find myself wondering if perhaps the apparent destruction of religion on Earth (colonies could be big exceptions) was not as "pretty" and cleancut as "we evolved." That would be a pretty big no-no, considering how humanity has lectured other species about stuff like ethnic/religious cleansing...

 

[KimMH]

a zillion years of oppression and genocide and inequality seems like a pretty big elephant in the room NOT to talk about . . .

 

[FredH]

I also find myself wondering if perhaps the apparent destruction of religion on Earth (colonies could be big exceptions) was not as "pretty" and cleancut as "we evolved."

Yet there's a Christmas party on the Enterprise in the 23rd century ("Dagger of the Mind"), and a Hindu Festival of Lights in the 24th...

 

[Lapis Exilis]

We often see in Trek that certain races have a reticence to air their dirty linen. Klingons don't talk about their foreheads, Vulcans don't share their mating practices, Romulans just didn't like being looked at for a hundred years.

What would humans have to hide from the rest of the galaxy? What would be our shame.

While they've mentioned the ozone layer (When The Bough Breaks), no one ever talks about global warming. Maybe once we solve the problem, it's considered diplomatic to not mention the fact that we're a species that foul our own nests.

Maybe we keep quiet about all the species that are going extinct due to hunting, habitat loss and so on.

Maybe we don't share the history of slavery, and the extents that humans treat other humans with regards to totalitarian massacres, although the future is replete with Nazi references.

Yet Stalin seems to have been entirely forgotten...

Maybe it's something more subtle. The future is a crime free utopia, where everyone seems well adjusted and 'normal'. Maybe we hide the fact that we did solve problems of social maladjustment, psychosis, sociopathy, the sort of thing that results in serial killers and child abusers, but the way we did it may not be all that pretty.

I'm pretty sure the Federation hides the fact that human beings are chemically regulated by "medicine" from birth, which no doubt elevates moods, smooths conflicts and generally pacifies the population - certainly that seems the way we are going and would explain how it is that everyone is so "well-adjusted".

Pemmer Harge said:
The secret of how humanity came to dominate the Federation, even though it's reasonable to assume that we only constitute a fairly small proportion of the population.

Star Trek has long been seen in academic circles as a neo-colonial apologia, thus humans within the story simply stand in for wealthy white people of Western European heritage, so of course they dominate despite being only a small percentage of the population.

 

[Myasishchev]

For one, I always thought it was absolutely ludicrous that a ship's doctor had no idea how a member of his crew had sex. It's even more ludicrous to believe that no human had ever asked the question, or that a thousand studies had never been done if the answer wasn't forthcoming. Indeed, it seems pretty far-fetched to believe that ~6,000,000,000 people are capable of keeping all ~6,000,000,000 of their mouths shut about something that all of them know, and that the wider universe would not be very curious about it at first and extremely curious about it once meeting an institutional barrier of silence from an otherwise open people.

The same really applies to the Klingon forehead thing. It would be the subject of intense research, even if the Federation didn't already know, which iirc they would (hey, you got human in my Klingon!), and the big theories on its origins would almost definitely be general knowledge.

That sort of species-level secret-keeping falls into a really bad writing trap, that assumes that people aren't at least cursorily curious and are willing to accept no answer to obvious questions. "Hey, dude, WTF happened to your forehead?" "We do not discuss it with outsiders!" "Fine, I'll go read Space Wikipedia, you jerk."

If humans do hide anything, I agree with the person who said "Eugenics War." It's not altogether clear what happened to the Augments, but it seems more likely than not that they suffered a rather complete genocide. I don't think United Earth goes out of its way to rewrite history--unless the Federation is really quite as Orwellian as some people suppose --but I'd assume that it's probably not polite to talk the Eugenics Era with humans, in the same vein that you don't discuss the Rape of Nanking with the Japanese girl you just met, or Auschwitz with that German exchange student.

 

[Timo]

To be sure, we don't even know if the Augments were defeated by a coalition of Mundies, or simply fought themselves to exhaustion. And even if the fight was on the lines of Augments vs. Mundies, for all we know, the Earth nations that are dominant in the 24th century were in fact fighting on the side of the supermen in the 1990s, and owe their prosperity to this (benefits from listening to the superbrains, having access to their supertech and so forth).

Agreed, though, that these "species-wide secrets" need to be enforced rather harshly if they're to be a realistic possibility. I don't see why Spock's secret couldn't be a secret - he's basically the only Vulcan we see interact with humans in the 2260s, and thus mankind could plausibly know as much of Vulcan sex habits as Great Britain knew of Australian aborgine sex habits (or vice versa) in the 1770s. Ditto for the Trill secret - even by the end of VOY, it's far from certain that the Trills are even UFP members, so they have every right to remain secretive about important things.

Let's also not forget that doctors in general are good about keeping secrets, and military doctors specifically could be trusted to guard secrets that are important to national security - such as the fact that a strategic ally in fact is a hideous parasitic lifeform, or practices barbaric ritual duels.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Myasishchev]

I'm not sure medical ethics requires confidentiality to the extent that you can't make generalizations about a species... and besides, after 200 years of contact, someone would've or should've figured it out or at least come up with a theory ("Why does Sarek leave every seven years? Why doesn't he take his wife?" ).

The thing about the Augies is that, one way or another, they do no longer exist in the 23d century (barely in the 22d, and only illegally and usually unsuccessfully in the 24th)...

 

[SonOfMogh]

Section 31

 

[DevilEyes]

("Why does Sarek leave every seven years? Why doesn't he take his wife?" ).

1) Leave to where? Why would he "leave" anywhere?

2) Surely, he would need his wife more than ever during Pon Farr.

 

[Myasishchev]

("Why does Sarek leave every seven years? Why doesn't he take his wife?" ).

1) Leave to where? Why would he "leave" anywhere?

2) Surely, he would need his wife more than ever during Pon Farr.

And when my girlfriend ovulates, she always goes for the family cat... who would be about a billion times more related than Amanda is to Sarek. As I've said before, if that's all pon farr requires (which perfidious Voyager does seem to imply <_< ), then Spock should be taken out and shot for his mutinous activities in "Amok Time."

Plus, Sarek did have a previous wife (and by the rules of Amok Time, had one from shortly after birth), although I don't recall from Trek 5 whether it's known if this marriage had been dissolved prior to his appointment as an ambassador, or even if it had ever dissolved.

I suppose he need not leave for Vulcan ("as the salmon" etc.) if the concentration of available females on Earth, or wherever his assignment was during his early years, was high enough.

 

[Timo]

According to the original wording, male Pon Farr is supposedly an urge to find a mate, not an urge to have sex. The ENT "Bounty" female Pon Farr seems to have similar symptoms, except females proceed by desperately wooing random mates. Or then only unbonded females do that. At least some Vulcans are telepathically bonded to future mates, although inevitably at least some aren't - widowers, for example, but no doubt also a few nontraditionalists. The nonbonded ones still supposedly undergo Pon Farr, and the widowers eventually may find new mates. But what happens to the bonds afterwards?

It would be quite natural and consistent to assume that (the male) getting out of Pon Farr alive and well and satisfied hinges on consummating the telepathic bond specifically, and that any physical sex or violence is incidental. This is why Tuvok would have so much trouble when stranded in the Delta Quadrant, away from his telepathically bonded wife; no amount of medication or ersatz wives could ever satisfy him.

The bond would be broken in death, or in circumstances of duress such as Spock's "Amok Time" misadventure. It would probably also be harder to break after some time (and further Pon Farrs) had passed.

Now, why this rambling? Because if the above is true, Sarek might well be in a unique position among Vulcan males: being bonded with a non-telepathic wife (twice in a row!) would probably free him from the woes that nearly did Tuvok in...

To be sure, we don't really know whether Vulcan widowers ever remarry telepathically. Perhaps Sarek could never again take a wife after losing Sybok's mother, but could take substitutes, such as human females. Perhaps Spock is similarly hobbled/liberated after breaking up with T'Pring? Perhaps Pon Farr even goes away, once a mate is found and is telepathically present when the next Pon Farr would otherwise be triggered?

Amanda never confirmed that the seven-year cycle would still have an effect on their married life in "Journey to Babel", and the later appearances of Sarek didn't refer to this, either. Even in "Cloud Minders", Spock only admits that the seven-year cycle applies to mate-taking, with no mention whether it would persist once a mate is found.

Many ways to hide the intricacies of Vulcan sex life from the general public, then: an obvious one would be to only send out widowers to interact with aliens. Or people between their Pon Farrs.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[The Wormhole]

Humanity doesn't hide anything, because Roddenberry's interpretation of a pefect human is one who is over (0)100% honest about themselves and their past, even when it comes to the unpleasant stuff.

 

[barnaclelapse]

The secret of how humanity came to dominate the Federation, even though it's reasonable to assume that we only constitute a fairly small proportion of the population.

And the why and how all of the Federation now speaks American English...

I would love a good answer to those questions, as I'm getting sick of people who know I dig Trek asking me as though I wrote the fucking series.

 

[The Wormhole]

I'm getting sick of people who know I dig Trek asking me as though I wrote the fucking series.

The solution to your problem is to act as though you did write the fucking series. Become an in-your-face jerk about your knowledge to Trek. Hoard it over them. Always point out that you know more about Trek than they do. Always insert some trivial fact into any conversation, especially if it's not important. Mock them for being peasants as demonstrated by their lack of Trek knowledge, by referring to it as the "essentials of life." Walk around as though you're in a bad mood. If someone asks what's wrong, start bitching about something you don't like in Trek, like the Kelvin's registry or something.

People will quickly learn to stop bugging you about Trek as though you "wrote the fucking series."

 

[childofdarkness]

Probably humans would try to hide their weakness for their guilty pleasures (those that completely waste time and are utterly unproductive, but fun), like reading fanfic, watching video, playing on media forums.... Does the Enterprise have a BBS?