With the recent passing of Leonard Nimoy (aka Spock from Star Trek), we were witness to the outpouring of love and many tributes that recognized his contribution to the science fiction genre. In his article entitled, “What Star Trek taught me,” Eric Liu speaks to what he describes as “the vision of society that ‘Star Trek’ [and Mr. Spock] embodied.”
When Star Trek hit the TV screen, our society
was, as Eric points out, “fractious, polarized, [and] flying apart.” He underlines
how in the series, “Scots and Russians, people of Irish and
Japanese and African descent, humans and Vulcans, all [thrived] together as a
crew without having to downplay their differences—[and] indeed, [activated]
those differences.” He points out how
such a vision “must have seemed truly like science fiction to adults” in those
times and “it [even] seems similarly fantastic in our own times.”
Eric speaks to how the Star Trek series
demonstrated “a way of being…that was about inclusion without assimilation…participation
without self-obliteration.” He adds, “Its
diversity was not mere tokenism; its diversity was in fact the raw material of
excellence. And all that diversity was
subsumed to a larger cause (that of the Federation) and a more urgent mission
(that of the Enterprise).”
Synonyms of the term “Federation” include:
alliance, coalition, partnership, amalgamation, combination, and union. In the TV series, the very existence of the
“Federation” required that countries and planets come together to move toward a
common goal predicated on inclusion. Eric
refers to it as “this greater good.” This
is in fact what the characters of Star Trek embraced!
Now let’s compare Star Trek’s vision to our
current world. I dare say that there is
no comparison! As Eric suggests, in American
life today, people “are divided along so many chasms of race, class, faith, and
ideology.” He adds that “it’s becoming
more challenging than ever to sustain a cohesive sense of shared
identity.” It’s clear to see that the
blame for this falls on the conglomerates.
They use countless schemes to make us believe that they are “unifying”
us, the consumers, and making us better as a people when in fact their rhetoric
and brainwashing techniques are merely ploys to get us to buy the poisons and
junk that they are pawning off.
Contrary to the first lesson Eric mentions in
the article, instead of appropriately working with the existing diversity, our society
allows supposed “inclusive institutions,” like schools and government, to
leverage their power over us. Are they
by chance trying to turn us into “clones?”
Yes, they’re trying to assimilate us, turn us into lemmings that will
follow each other’s tail over a cliff and thus self-obliterate! Likewise, rather than working toward a
greater, unified mission as Eric mentions as the second lesson, we’re being
manipulated by our society and the conglomerates to do the opposite: purchase
and ingest their garbage in order to express one’s individuality!
In hope of bringing us closer together, Eric
offers us a slightly different take on Spock’s famous catch-phrase, "Live
long and prosper." He suggests that
the Spock character actually summons a different maxim: "E Pluribus Unum,"
or “from many, one.” Now wouldn’t that
be something if we could come together in this world instead of ripping our
world apart! Yah, right!
- B. J. T. Pepin