It's interesting, but it's a very lofty goal and paved with wishful thinking. I liked TOS (favorite show) and TNG for what it brought to the table, but ultimately their vision of the future (though not perfect, like in the other thread I made, I discovered) is not going to happen.
I think what separates human beings in Roddenberry's fictional future and our present is technology.
For the whole history of humanity, we squabbled over resources. Even today, although there are enough resources to go around, it's hard to ignore the idea that elevating people in one part of the world necessarily takes from others until we reach a kind of equilibrium. That dynamic doesn't exist in
Star Trek. The costs of sharing, of helping, of being noble perfect people, are all mitigated by
technologies that produce anything.
And I do think we'll get there.
Developments in solar technology, for example, are already well on the way to making energy costs almost obsolete. Energy for transport; energy for climate control; energy for the operation of factories and machinery and automatic production...
That's the first step.
Consider how much of the world's economy today is spent on energy and/or the acquisition and protection of energy-yielding resources. When we pass the point at which we can harness energy almost freely, we'll have eliminated an enormous reason for conflict. We'll also have eliminated a large fraction of commodity costs, lowering the expense of creating new and maintaining existing high standards of living.
We can achieve that balance, and create the paradise in which -- as Commander Sisko opined once -- it's easy for human beings to behave saintly.
