Never said you said it was. My post was not in response to yours. Don't much care what you said. Only what I said in response to the artificially overblown origins of "IDIC" and its inexorable ties to GR's documented greed.
Is "IDIC" redundant?
- Thread starter MarsWeeps
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As flawed as Roddenberry was, I do believe he had a very strong vision of a world with no cultural or genetic boundaries or prejudices and that he wished the world he lived in was more like that.
I think there's at least something to applaud in the idea that whilst Roddenberry was making money off of the back of his own Utopian society, he was also spreading and promulgating a symbol of peace, love and understanding. In the late Sixties then America was still waging a hopeless war in Vietnam. A symbol like IDIC was needed.
Why and how it was merchandised have no bearing on the message at all.
I don't think it is redundant. The second repetition is a doubling down on the first. It's like saying:
Infinite Diversity. With No Exceptions.
Can we talk a moment about how shoddy the design of the pendant looks?
I mean part of that is probably the production values of TOS, but it still looks shoddy and thrown together.
I mean part of that is probably the production values of TOS, but it still looks shoddy and thrown together.
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Well, it was the late 60's. 3D printing didn't exist and GR probably didn't want to spend a metric ass-ton of money to have a truly talented sculptor come up with something more professional looking. He was looking for the biggest bang for the buck.
Yes, that's an excellent point. It's easy to say "Oh, Roddenberry was just in it for the money," but everyone does their job to make money, and he could've chosen to make money by promoting fear or negativity. Instead, he chose to make money by promoting inclusion and diversity and optimism.
It's not a repetition at all, because diversity and combination are not synonymous. The former just means that differences exist, not necessarily that they interact. The whole point of the message is that diverse beings and ideas should interact rather than remain segregated, which was still largely the default at the time.
After all, a lot of people have argued that the way to deal with diversity is to ignore it -- that the way for different people to get along was to focus on what they had in common and downplay or avoid what was different about them. Like the old line that you should never talk about religion or politics, because bringing different ideas into direct contact can only lead to conflict. In other words, the ideal they advanced was diversity without combination, because the combination was seen as a negative.
So Star Trek's statement that the combination of differences was actually a positive thing to be encouraged, that it was beneficial to combine diversity, was a very important one.
The design with its geometric shapes never struck me as "shoddy." It's an example of era-appropriate minimalism.
Perhaps the prop itself could have been made with better care... in the close-up shot, the grind marks on the metal are pretty evident.
I kind of like the explanation that ENT gave, of the symbolism in the emblem: "Surak tells us that the story of the IDIC has no end. But it begins here, at Mount Seleya."
Kor
Perhaps the prop itself could have been made with better care... in the close-up shot, the grind marks on the metal are pretty evident.
I kind of like the explanation that ENT gave, of the symbolism in the emblem: "Surak tells us that the story of the IDIC has no end. But it begins here, at Mount Seleya."
Kor
I guess I interpret it differently. You keep leaving out "Infinite" when describing diversity. In my opinion, differences and combinations that interact are just another form of diversity.
The "infinite" part is beside the point, because it's used in both halves, so it cancels out. The question is whether "diversity" and "combination" are synonymous, and any consultation of a dictionary will demonstrate that they are not. Diversity merely means difference or variety. It does not automatically mean that the different elements are combined. A dairy case may have diverse ice cream flavors, but they're all in separate cases. Unless it's Neapolitan ice cream, which is three diverse flavors in combination. The combination is a distinct aspect, and the part that's most important to the maxim.
The fact that people today are inclined to assume that diversity includes combination just goes to show how influential the idea has been. People today have grown up in a world where they're used to seeing people of all different stripes being open about their diverse identities and coexisting in the same spaces or being in relationships with each other. But things were different in the past. There was a lot less combination of diversity in TOS's day, or even in TNG's day, and that's why it was important to stress the combination part.
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