The situations in Picard and Discovery Season 3 are quite different. In PIC, the Federation is still recognizable. In DSC S3, it isn't. And this person whose intellect you worship doesn't even bother to back up any of his points or to explain how something he'd think is more compelling actually is.
And if you want to play the Gene Roddenberry game, I'm much more familiar with Gene's Vision than either of you. And I don't pretend to speak for someone who's been dead for almost 30 years. I'll let Gene speak for himself.
I'll cut-and-paste it, and not just put in quotes. That way it's harder for someone to just gloss over.
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Excerpt of Gene Roddenberry Lecture from Wichita University, 1974
All of which usually brings up an interesting question. It goes something like, “Hey, wait Roddenberry, how can say that it’s all just beginning for us when you’ve gone ahead and wrote shows like “Genesis II” and others, which have said that our technological civilization that we enjoy now is probably going to crumble?” And an answer while writing the original Star Trek format, I never considered for a moment that the USS Enterprise, and the Federation, and the thing represented by that were necessarily a direct and [un]interrupted outgrowth and our present civilization with its heavy emphasis on material things.
And you might ask, “Doesn’t the collapse of all our much of what we have now mean the end to all of us?” Of course not. Humanity is an incredible creature. Knock us down, destroy our civilization, and we will probably get up and build a better one on top of it as we have done time and time again. And those of you that are frightened at some of the things happening on our day, and I thought that our civilization could crumble too, let us consider what happened the last time. The collapse of Rome, or perhaps since these things take generations to happen, the disintegration of Rome prepared the way for much more than was lost.
What happens in a case of civilization crumbling is something like those deep ocean currents that bring nutrients to the top and out of this spawn an incredible variety of new life. I think this is something talked about in History, but fall of the Roman Empire, and the rebuilding which followed, spawned treasures far beyond the capacity of Rome, Greece, or the Byzantine Empire. Consider these: the art of the Renaissance, the humanitarian philosophies, the medical revolution, that phenomenon named Shakespeare, the great poets, Beethoven’s symphonies, in fact the whole explosion of music that has persisted into our day. Our present technology then, in slightly over 50 years, has gone from the first spruce and fabric airplane to putting a man on the moon.
Should this civilization fall, it happens. There are a lot of factors right now that make some shake up sound quite desirable. For example, as I’ve been saying for years and as you’ve read in the newspaper recently, the nuclear bomb is no longer the exclusive property of reasonable and mature nations like the United States, Russia, China [mild laughter] We are about at the time of nuclear capacity potentially in the hands of any country willing to pay the price and even extremely large industrial corporations, or even extremely wealthy individuals. And as I’ve said on a news conference, yesterday, the idea of AT&T having an atomic bomb just scares the Hell out of me.
Pessimism? Absolutely not. What I’m being is an optimist. What I’m saying is that there are heartening indications all around us: in the power crunch, the population explosion, the food problem, and all of these things, that some of our society will become unglued before we are able to blast ourselves and our planet out of existence. In other words: I’m saying that these things we’re facing may be natural checks and balances protecting us as we slowly evolve into a more mature species. These crises may be happening as they were planned. I agree with Arthur C. Clarke and a number of other writers who have stated that call it what you will: God, El, Allah, Von Daniken Space Travelers if you want to go that way. Any wisdom capable of putting intelligence on this planet is no doubt capable of a plan that will protect it through its present childhood until we have reached the point where we’re able to take care of ourselves. We are going to have another chance and another and still another, if we need it, until we have built an adult reasoning civilization.
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Now, I'm going to assume someone as intellectual as you read everything I typed, so lets continue on. In "Encounter at Farpoint", Q calls Humanity a "dangerous, savage child race". Picard denies it vehemently and becomes defensive. At the end of the episode, Q says he doesn't promise never to return and then pops up time and time again. And Picard keeps arguing with him.
So, in TNG, Humanity has not reached "maturity" if Picard is its representative. It's only reached adolescence. Which means it still stumbles. Sometimes spectacularly.
That not good enough for you? Try "Return to Tomorrow" (TOS) on for size. Link to transcript.
KIRK: That's twice you've referred to us as my children.
SARGON: Because it is possible you are our descendants, Captain Kirk. Six thousand centuries ago, our vessels were colonising this galaxy, just as your own starships have now begun to explore that vastness. As you now leave your own seed on distant planets, so we left our seed behind us. Perhaps your own legends of an Adam and an Eve were two of our travellers.
MULHALL: Our beliefs and our studies indicate that life on our planet, Earth, evolved independently.
SPOCK: That would tend, however, to explain certain elements of Vulcan prehistory.
SARGON: In either case, I do not know. It was so long ago, and the records of our travels were lost in the cataclysm which we loosened upon ourselves.
KIRK: A war?
SARGON: A struggle for such goals and the unleashing of such power that you could not comprehend.
KIRK: Then perhaps your intelligence wasn't so great, Sargon. We faced a similar crisis in our early nuclear age. We found the wisdom not to destroy ourselves.
SARGON: And we survived our primitive nuclear era, my son. But there comes to all races an ultimate crisis which you have yet to face.
KIRK: I don't understand.
SARGON: One day our minds became so powerful, we dared think of ourselves as gods.
Next time you post here, don't assume I didn't think any of this out, can't defend it or am "brain-drained". I can show off just as much as you can. I can refer back to Gene as much as you can too. But instead of that, let's have an actual discussion. Thanks.
