Mark Twain, whose Connecticut Yankee woke up in the future, finds himself aboard the 24th century Enterprise. "I guess the future turned out pretty well."
Wednesday, November 30, 2005
Looking for Star Trek, High and Low
(Along with the Beatles, Herman Melville and Harry Potter)
by William S. Kowinski
Science fiction writer Bruce Sterling has a fascinating new non-fictional but still scientific book called Shaping Things (M.I.T. Press), which should be of interest to anyone into design, the future and the interface of information technology and the stuff in our lives. Plus it’s very short.
This isn’t about Bruce Sterling, however. It’s been inspired by an “endintroduction” to his book by Peter Lunenfeld, editorial director of Mediawork, the outfit that puts out this series of little books. He starts off: “I was mulling over Shakespeare’s observation that the future is an ‘undiscovered country.’ No, that’s not true; I was watching late night cable and stumbled across one of those forgettable Star Trek films from the 1990s, with that phrase in the title.”
We’ll overlook the slight to the films, and mention that he was of course referring to Star Trek VI (which I’ve conveniently just posted an essay about, here.) Lunefeld goes on to say that then he “remembered that Shakespeare wasn’t referring to the future, he was referring to death. Actually, that’s not true either.” He looked up the phrase on the Internet, and got the “proper context from Hamlet” which he swears he actually did read, but long ago.
His conclusion, and presumably the reason for mentioning all this, was: “This mix of the high and the low, the dread and the absurd, constitutes the future, and that’s what this Mediawork pamphlet is about.”
It’s also an aspect of the future that Star Trek had a hand in creating, and that it embodies. Especially the “mix of the high and the low.” And that’s a very good and very necessary thing.
Before we go on, a brief commercial message: you'll find a Powell's Bookstore box on this page. You can use it to search for new and used books. If you order anything after linking from here, this site gets a cut. Thanks.
Now back to the show...
(Along with the Beatles, Herman Melville and Harry Potter)
by William S. Kowinski
Science fiction writer Bruce Sterling has a fascinating new non-fictional but still scientific book called Shaping Things (M.I.T. Press), which should be of interest to anyone into design, the future and the interface of information technology and the stuff in our lives. Plus it’s very short.
This isn’t about Bruce Sterling, however. It’s been inspired by an “endintroduction” to his book by Peter Lunenfeld, editorial director of Mediawork, the outfit that puts out this series of little books. He starts off: “I was mulling over Shakespeare’s observation that the future is an ‘undiscovered country.’ No, that’s not true; I was watching late night cable and stumbled across one of those forgettable Star Trek films from the 1990s, with that phrase in the title.”
We’ll overlook the slight to the films, and mention that he was of course referring to Star Trek VI (which I’ve conveniently just posted an essay about, here.) Lunefeld goes on to say that then he “remembered that Shakespeare wasn’t referring to the future, he was referring to death. Actually, that’s not true either.” He looked up the phrase on the Internet, and got the “proper context from Hamlet” which he swears he actually did read, but long ago.
His conclusion, and presumably the reason for mentioning all this, was: “This mix of the high and the low, the dread and the absurd, constitutes the future, and that’s what this Mediawork pamphlet is about.”
It’s also an aspect of the future that Star Trek had a hand in creating, and that it embodies. Especially the “mix of the high and the low.” And that’s a very good and very necessary thing.
Before we go on, a brief commercial message: you'll find a Powell's Bookstore box on this page. You can use it to search for new and used books. If you order anything after linking from here, this site gets a cut. Thanks.
Now back to the show...
Lunefeld felt this was worth mentioning because for awhile now there’s been a cultural separation between what is perceived as popular art or entertainment, and what is ritually considered high art. The difference between pulp science fiction and Literature, say, or rock and classical music, TV drama and Greek drama, and…Star Trek and Shakespeare.
For example, a new biography of the Beatles was just published---it’s almost a thousand pages long, with a hundred pages of footnotes, a scholarly tome and, according to the New York Times review, very well written. The review authors expressed wonder at how things had changed since the early 1960s: “Rock 'n' roll was considered marginal and disposable; the way to learn about its practitioners was to scour fan magazines or pore over sparse album liner notes. When the Beatles began, it would have been unthinkable to read a well-written biography about rock 'n' roll performers that was as serious and thoroughly researched as an important book about Faulkner or Picasso or Mao. For better and for worse, the Beatles changed all that.”
So in its way did Star Trek. It was just a television drama, just science fiction, and dangerously close to a kids show--- the combination was about the lowest you could go. Star Trek became a serious part of the culture the same way the Beatles did---by becoming very popular and making a lot of money for a long time. But like the Beatles, in other ways as well.
(Before we get too far away from the Beatles biography, it’s worth saying that I’ve thought more than once how sorely we lack a really good biography of Gene Roddenberry by a trained biographer or journalist, not either a show business friend or a show business enemy. His authorized biography is respectable, while the other more scurrilous one basically repeats every grudge anyone had against him. There are lots of points of view in lots of books, but no means to figure out what’s what. Evaluating information objectively and placing it in an historical perspective in a biography like one on Faulkner or Picasso or the Beatles has yet to be accomplished.)
For example, a new biography of the Beatles was just published---it’s almost a thousand pages long, with a hundred pages of footnotes, a scholarly tome and, according to the New York Times review, very well written. The review authors expressed wonder at how things had changed since the early 1960s: “Rock 'n' roll was considered marginal and disposable; the way to learn about its practitioners was to scour fan magazines or pore over sparse album liner notes. When the Beatles began, it would have been unthinkable to read a well-written biography about rock 'n' roll performers that was as serious and thoroughly researched as an important book about Faulkner or Picasso or Mao. For better and for worse, the Beatles changed all that.”
So in its way did Star Trek. It was just a television drama, just science fiction, and dangerously close to a kids show--- the combination was about the lowest you could go. Star Trek became a serious part of the culture the same way the Beatles did---by becoming very popular and making a lot of money for a long time. But like the Beatles, in other ways as well.
(Before we get too far away from the Beatles biography, it’s worth saying that I’ve thought more than once how sorely we lack a really good biography of Gene Roddenberry by a trained biographer or journalist, not either a show business friend or a show business enemy. His authorized biography is respectable, while the other more scurrilous one basically repeats every grudge anyone had against him. There are lots of points of view in lots of books, but no means to figure out what’s what. Evaluating information objectively and placing it in an historical perspective in a biography like one on Faulkner or Picasso or the Beatles has yet to be accomplished.)
Like the Beatles, Star Trek rebelled against various high art traditions while it absorbed and used elements of that tradition. In Star Trek’s case, it was the form and content of story.
In a general way, Star Trek was part of several storytelling traditions: literary (both the supposed low form of science fiction, and the higher forms of classical literature) and dramatic. Science fiction, which began (with H.G. Wells, at least) in the late 19th century era when literature in the form of the novel was a primary popular storytelling form, was in Wells’ hands (and those who followed him) a ready-made way to bring classic literary ideas into the present, and forward to the metaphorical future.
As television drama, Star Trek was in a long line of literary and dramatic adaptation, or theft. Crucial to its creators were the movies. Everyone from GR to Leonard Nimoy and William Shatner had movie palace matinee memories. When George Takei got to display his previously nonexistent swordsmanship in “The Naked Time” episode of the original series, he was thrilled because he loved Robin Hood---not from reading the stories but from the movies. (He loved the Erroll Flynn classic version and when he sought fencing lessons, he happened to wind up learning from the man who taught Flynn for that very movie, and who did Basil Rathbone’s sword-fighting in the film itself.)
In a general way, Star Trek was part of several storytelling traditions: literary (both the supposed low form of science fiction, and the higher forms of classical literature) and dramatic. Science fiction, which began (with H.G. Wells, at least) in the late 19th century era when literature in the form of the novel was a primary popular storytelling form, was in Wells’ hands (and those who followed him) a ready-made way to bring classic literary ideas into the present, and forward to the metaphorical future.
As television drama, Star Trek was in a long line of literary and dramatic adaptation, or theft. Crucial to its creators were the movies. Everyone from GR to Leonard Nimoy and William Shatner had movie palace matinee memories. When George Takei got to display his previously nonexistent swordsmanship in “The Naked Time” episode of the original series, he was thrilled because he loved Robin Hood---not from reading the stories but from the movies. (He loved the Erroll Flynn classic version and when he sought fencing lessons, he happened to wind up learning from the man who taught Flynn for that very movie, and who did Basil Rathbone’s sword-fighting in the film itself.)
So Star Trek took plots and ideas from everywhere, from a submarine movie to Joseph Conrad, from Captain Video to Shakespeare. Viewers even got a taste of what classic Greek theatre was like, because (as William Shatner said) the budgets were so small they were essentially putting on plays, but plays with meaning, like the Greeks did. Much of the cast in both the original series and TNG were theatre trained. If a writer suggested a classical allusion, they knew how to play it.
It truly was in the 60s, with the Beatles and other popular music, with Star Trek and a few other TV shows, that popular art and entertainment reinterpreted high art forms and narratives, and made them more accessible. Like those old Classic Comics books or movie versions, they also became conduits to the classics themselves. They made them relevant and easier to approach. They provided a kind of introduction. And the classics, in turn, illuminated aspects of a Star Trek story or a Beatles tune. Bob Dylan learned from an established (if notorious) poet like Allen Ginsberg, and Ginsberg recognized in him his successor.
In fact, ideas, encounters and engagements relevant to the times were more likely to be found in pop culture than in high art, and were accessible to more people, particularly the young.
Practitioners in forms old enough to be high art forms, like the novel, also became underground and popular successes dealing with ideas and issues that seized the imaginations of a popular or cult audience. A lot of young people got turned on to mystical and Eastern religious thought by J.D. Salinger and Jack Kerouac. Joseph Heller, Kurt Vonnegut, Doris Lessing and others became both popular and cult. They also turned readers on to writers they admired and emulated.
There was so much energy in popular forms in the 60s—in music, movies and television as well as more experimental theatre, novels and poetry---that a fair number of young people who’d majored in English literature became pop culture commentators, rock critics, film and TV reviewers and pop journalists. Who also played in a band, or made super eight movies.
So the cross-fertilization became pretty natural, and pretty healthy. Thanks as well to wide availability of paperback books, old movies on TV and foreign and experimental films on campuses, people began to make their own explorations, perhaps to go where no one in their families or neighborhoods or high school had gone before.
You could start anywhere and get everywhere, as the cross-fertilization of popular and high art continued. Leading to situations like: my Moby Dick story.
It truly was in the 60s, with the Beatles and other popular music, with Star Trek and a few other TV shows, that popular art and entertainment reinterpreted high art forms and narratives, and made them more accessible. Like those old Classic Comics books or movie versions, they also became conduits to the classics themselves. They made them relevant and easier to approach. They provided a kind of introduction. And the classics, in turn, illuminated aspects of a Star Trek story or a Beatles tune. Bob Dylan learned from an established (if notorious) poet like Allen Ginsberg, and Ginsberg recognized in him his successor.
In fact, ideas, encounters and engagements relevant to the times were more likely to be found in pop culture than in high art, and were accessible to more people, particularly the young.
Practitioners in forms old enough to be high art forms, like the novel, also became underground and popular successes dealing with ideas and issues that seized the imaginations of a popular or cult audience. A lot of young people got turned on to mystical and Eastern religious thought by J.D. Salinger and Jack Kerouac. Joseph Heller, Kurt Vonnegut, Doris Lessing and others became both popular and cult. They also turned readers on to writers they admired and emulated.
There was so much energy in popular forms in the 60s—in music, movies and television as well as more experimental theatre, novels and poetry---that a fair number of young people who’d majored in English literature became pop culture commentators, rock critics, film and TV reviewers and pop journalists. Who also played in a band, or made super eight movies.
So the cross-fertilization became pretty natural, and pretty healthy. Thanks as well to wide availability of paperback books, old movies on TV and foreign and experimental films on campuses, people began to make their own explorations, perhaps to go where no one in their families or neighborhoods or high school had gone before.
You could start anywhere and get everywhere, as the cross-fertilization of popular and high art continued. Leading to situations like: my Moby Dick story.
I first encountered Moby Dick in high school, in a long dense passage about whales in our American Literature anthology. All we were supposed to know about it, though, was that the white whale was a symbol. Even though I was a literature major in college, I never had to read the whole book; I just had to know a little about Melville, and generally what the established critics said about Moby Dick. There were plenty of other books I had to read. I never got around to that one.
But sometime in the mid 1980s my curiosity was piqued and I found my paperback copy (because as a lit major it was more important to have the book than to have read it) and began reading. I was astonished. The language was rich and crazy, like Shakespeare disguised as a mad sailor telling strange sea tales.
Then I came upon a passage in which Ahab talks of chasing Moby Dick “around perdition’s flames,” and then his expression, “he’s tasks me,” and then the “I spit at thee” speech, and somehow it seemed I read it all before. Or heard it. And then I realized---it was Khan.
This may not be a surprise to you, but trust me, this was an authentic personal discovery. Apart from the common theme of obsession, at that point I knew of no connection between Moby Dick and Star Trek II, which I had only seen once or maybe twice in a movie theatre. (It wasn’t until I saw it on video that I noticed the copy of Moby Dick in Khan’s empty quarters---with the same cover as my paperback.)
Of course the irony wasn’t lost on me---instead of this literature major picking up a literary allusion in a popular movie, I’d spotted Melville plagiarizing from Star Trek. (It was a couple of years later, when I was definitely on a campaign to read all the really long novels I’d always meant to read but didn’t, that I spotted the name “Yoyodyne” in a novel by Thomas Pynchon---and immediately remembered it from one of my favorite recent movies, Buckaroo Banzai.)
This reverse derivation is a somewhat surreal but quite lovely experience, showing the vitality of both the popular and classical art in a two-way relationship across time. That so many young people now may be discovering, for instance, how many classical composers have stolen from John Williams and Jerry Goldsmith and the other composers of orchestral soundtracks, is a deeply cultural experience, and a very hopeful one for holding on to the threads of the best content and practices, from past to future.
This two-way relationship is pretty widespread by now. At the memorial for GR, Patrick Stewart (who quotes---actually misquotes—lines from Moby Dick in First Contact) mentioned that someone had written to Rick Berman to point out that Captain Picard reading a copy of the Homeric Hymns (at the end of the TNG episode, "Darmok") had probably made “more people curious about that literature than at any time since their creation!”
I can recall more than one discussion of the epic of Gilgamesh in a Star Trek forum, including some very moving summaries of the story. A few months work of TNG episodes and viewers could see entire scenes from Shakespeare acted, meet Mark Twain and Jack London in 19th century San Francisco, hear discussions of Jung and Euclid, see Data reenact Sherlock Holmes in Victorian London, and watch Einstein play poker with Newton and Stephen Hawking.
Star Trek was among the first to include some of the spirit and meaning from the classics, as well as bits and pieces and allusions. Now there are other conduits for elements and values derived from “high” culture, especially for the young. Like Star Wars, and Harry Potter.
This two-way transport is even easier these days, thanks to DVD, video cassettes and the Internet---practically the whole culture, high and low, is easily available, a lot of it for cheap or for free.
But people don't have to seek Star Trek out---it remains more frequently present on TV sets all over the world. Several generations have learned from these Star Trek stories by now, have confronted the same ethical questions and choices, asked the same important questions about mortality and meaning, the past and the future, that the best literature and drama, philosophy and science also address. And come to their own conclusions.
At the same time, Star Trek put them in the context of a romantic but believable future, when confronting these issues was part of this believable journey. The application of the past to the future would run through our present as we watched. Later, curiosity about the classical roots or source of some element of the story could lead to discoveries that enriched the episode or movie on the next encounter.
Star Trek has been a bridge to these ideas and to appreciating these works, since it began. That’s become more valuable and more important as time goes on, and our culture sinks into a dull morass, where intelligence is stereotyped, and curiosity is nearly extinct. That’s why I consider Star Trek fans among the true elite.
"Star Trek appeals to a higher denominator,” Harve Bennett once said. “ It appeals to the imagination, to the mind."
But sometime in the mid 1980s my curiosity was piqued and I found my paperback copy (because as a lit major it was more important to have the book than to have read it) and began reading. I was astonished. The language was rich and crazy, like Shakespeare disguised as a mad sailor telling strange sea tales.
Then I came upon a passage in which Ahab talks of chasing Moby Dick “around perdition’s flames,” and then his expression, “he’s tasks me,” and then the “I spit at thee” speech, and somehow it seemed I read it all before. Or heard it. And then I realized---it was Khan.
This may not be a surprise to you, but trust me, this was an authentic personal discovery. Apart from the common theme of obsession, at that point I knew of no connection between Moby Dick and Star Trek II, which I had only seen once or maybe twice in a movie theatre. (It wasn’t until I saw it on video that I noticed the copy of Moby Dick in Khan’s empty quarters---with the same cover as my paperback.)
Of course the irony wasn’t lost on me---instead of this literature major picking up a literary allusion in a popular movie, I’d spotted Melville plagiarizing from Star Trek. (It was a couple of years later, when I was definitely on a campaign to read all the really long novels I’d always meant to read but didn’t, that I spotted the name “Yoyodyne” in a novel by Thomas Pynchon---and immediately remembered it from one of my favorite recent movies, Buckaroo Banzai.)
This reverse derivation is a somewhat surreal but quite lovely experience, showing the vitality of both the popular and classical art in a two-way relationship across time. That so many young people now may be discovering, for instance, how many classical composers have stolen from John Williams and Jerry Goldsmith and the other composers of orchestral soundtracks, is a deeply cultural experience, and a very hopeful one for holding on to the threads of the best content and practices, from past to future.
This two-way relationship is pretty widespread by now. At the memorial for GR, Patrick Stewart (who quotes---actually misquotes—lines from Moby Dick in First Contact) mentioned that someone had written to Rick Berman to point out that Captain Picard reading a copy of the Homeric Hymns (at the end of the TNG episode, "Darmok") had probably made “more people curious about that literature than at any time since their creation!”
I can recall more than one discussion of the epic of Gilgamesh in a Star Trek forum, including some very moving summaries of the story. A few months work of TNG episodes and viewers could see entire scenes from Shakespeare acted, meet Mark Twain and Jack London in 19th century San Francisco, hear discussions of Jung and Euclid, see Data reenact Sherlock Holmes in Victorian London, and watch Einstein play poker with Newton and Stephen Hawking.
Star Trek was among the first to include some of the spirit and meaning from the classics, as well as bits and pieces and allusions. Now there are other conduits for elements and values derived from “high” culture, especially for the young. Like Star Wars, and Harry Potter.
This two-way transport is even easier these days, thanks to DVD, video cassettes and the Internet---practically the whole culture, high and low, is easily available, a lot of it for cheap or for free.
But people don't have to seek Star Trek out---it remains more frequently present on TV sets all over the world. Several generations have learned from these Star Trek stories by now, have confronted the same ethical questions and choices, asked the same important questions about mortality and meaning, the past and the future, that the best literature and drama, philosophy and science also address. And come to their own conclusions.
At the same time, Star Trek put them in the context of a romantic but believable future, when confronting these issues was part of this believable journey. The application of the past to the future would run through our present as we watched. Later, curiosity about the classical roots or source of some element of the story could lead to discoveries that enriched the episode or movie on the next encounter.
Star Trek has been a bridge to these ideas and to appreciating these works, since it began. That’s become more valuable and more important as time goes on, and our culture sinks into a dull morass, where intelligence is stereotyped, and curiosity is nearly extinct. That’s why I consider Star Trek fans among the true elite.
"Star Trek appeals to a higher denominator,” Harve Bennett once said. “ It appeals to the imagination, to the mind."
Distinctions between high and low cultural expressions have existed at various times and places in history, though not everywhere and not always. There’s a fascinating book by Lawrence W. Levine called Highbrow Lowbrow which details how there was little difference in much of the 18th and all of the 19th century, particularly in America, where Shakespeare and Dickens (writing in that new “popular” form called the novel) and Verdi’s and Mozart’s operas were as much a part of mass culture as jugglers, banjo players and music hall comedy.
When there is a distinction, it is usually based on money and social class, and sometimes on education. There remained some mixing in the 20th century, particularly based on tastes brought over by European immigrants: Italian peasants who loved opera, for instance, and Russians who worshipped ballet. But in some ways, the distinctions certainly became more rigid.
By now, however, in a way they’ve also reversed. Rich people are still more or less in charge of high art, like the symphonies their money partly supports, or the painting and sculpture only they can afford to buy (if only for the investment.) Yet anybody can tune into a classical radio station or get some idea of great paintings from reproductions, and the literary classics are among the cheapest paperbacks you can find. Thanks to DVDs, video stores, downloadable music, etc.--even literary classics online for free--a larger chunk of cultural expression is more easily accessible than ever before.
The problem isn’t so much access to high art, it’s the lack of respect for it. There’s less looking down on the low tastes for popular entertainment. Instead there’s more looking askance at what’s defined as high art. Popular culture is the culture. So it’s become up to popular culture to keep the best of great art alive.
The distinction between high and low has seldom been made by artists themselves. The great composers took liberally from folk melodies, classical artists stole from jazz, jazz artists stole from classical, and the Beatles absorbed from everybody. The same is true in all the arts. But these days, the balance has been distorted—high art absorbs low, but popular arts and entertainment, and even their audiences, keep their distance from the forms and content of high art.
Why is that? Money mostly, but this time not concentrated in the wealthy. The big bucks are in what’s defined as commercial entertainment, which is itself so closely allied to advertising that it is as much a form of advertising as it is a form of music, drama or literature. There is little to distinguish most television from the commercials.
The success of advertising and commercial culture depends on ignorance. Few products are sold anymore on the basis of meeting a need or because they’re good quality and value. Most advertising creates a phony need and suggests, falsely, that its product will meet it. Advertising depends on people falling for it. The dumber the customers are, the easier it is. By and large, television has to be as least as dumb as the commercials if the commercials are to look smart. And sooner or later, everything becomes television, just as every business becomes Hollywood.
When there is a distinction, it is usually based on money and social class, and sometimes on education. There remained some mixing in the 20th century, particularly based on tastes brought over by European immigrants: Italian peasants who loved opera, for instance, and Russians who worshipped ballet. But in some ways, the distinctions certainly became more rigid.
By now, however, in a way they’ve also reversed. Rich people are still more or less in charge of high art, like the symphonies their money partly supports, or the painting and sculpture only they can afford to buy (if only for the investment.) Yet anybody can tune into a classical radio station or get some idea of great paintings from reproductions, and the literary classics are among the cheapest paperbacks you can find. Thanks to DVDs, video stores, downloadable music, etc.--even literary classics online for free--a larger chunk of cultural expression is more easily accessible than ever before.
The problem isn’t so much access to high art, it’s the lack of respect for it. There’s less looking down on the low tastes for popular entertainment. Instead there’s more looking askance at what’s defined as high art. Popular culture is the culture. So it’s become up to popular culture to keep the best of great art alive.
The distinction between high and low has seldom been made by artists themselves. The great composers took liberally from folk melodies, classical artists stole from jazz, jazz artists stole from classical, and the Beatles absorbed from everybody. The same is true in all the arts. But these days, the balance has been distorted—high art absorbs low, but popular arts and entertainment, and even their audiences, keep their distance from the forms and content of high art.
Why is that? Money mostly, but this time not concentrated in the wealthy. The big bucks are in what’s defined as commercial entertainment, which is itself so closely allied to advertising that it is as much a form of advertising as it is a form of music, drama or literature. There is little to distinguish most television from the commercials.
The success of advertising and commercial culture depends on ignorance. Few products are sold anymore on the basis of meeting a need or because they’re good quality and value. Most advertising creates a phony need and suggests, falsely, that its product will meet it. Advertising depends on people falling for it. The dumber the customers are, the easier it is. By and large, television has to be as least as dumb as the commercials if the commercials are to look smart. And sooner or later, everything becomes television, just as every business becomes Hollywood.
But the future depends on other qualities besides gullibility, short attention spans, jaded brains and senses, and psychological enslavement to what’s popular at the current moment---all of which are essential to the triumph of the will of advertising.
The future will only exist for individuals and for society if people are curious and adventurous in their minds and hearts, and if they esteem learning, knowledge, openness to the best new and old ideas and expressions, and above all to making up their own minds based on quality and quantity of information.
People who deride Star Trek fans as losers (because they are different) and conformists (because they are all the same) and especially as shallow people who pour way too much interest and faith in a relatively silly television show, just don’t get it. Star Trek fans often exercise more intellectual curiosity and openness, as well as sincere need to understand the larger contexts of their lives, and a heartfelt desire to live a good life, than many of their jaded critics do.
As someone from the lower middle class who was lucky to be born in a time and place where I could go to a college and study literature and philosophy and theatre, while being part of a new culture of movies and popular music and writing, I don’t dismiss any avenue of exploration that leads to great insights, expanded consciousness and the oceanic and subtle complexities of feeling inspired by great art, high and low.
What does it matter really if a Harvard professor or Star Trek II leads you to Moby Dick, as long as you get there? And why would anyone object to the shared memory of Moby Dick informing a psychological insight particularly instructive to us in our time, in the guise of Jean Luc Picard in the 24th century, being consumed by vengeance against the Borg?
It’s win-win, as far as I can see.
We need people with depth and character, if we’re to have any sort of future. And if we don’t get there, then we need a present where we reach with our hands and hearts and minds to the extent of our potential, so we at least live full lives. We must try our best not only to create a better world, but to be the kind of people who make it better right now, so we at least deserve a future.
Anyway, according to the big thinkers at MIT, Star Trek fans are way ahead.
The future will only exist for individuals and for society if people are curious and adventurous in their minds and hearts, and if they esteem learning, knowledge, openness to the best new and old ideas and expressions, and above all to making up their own minds based on quality and quantity of information.
People who deride Star Trek fans as losers (because they are different) and conformists (because they are all the same) and especially as shallow people who pour way too much interest and faith in a relatively silly television show, just don’t get it. Star Trek fans often exercise more intellectual curiosity and openness, as well as sincere need to understand the larger contexts of their lives, and a heartfelt desire to live a good life, than many of their jaded critics do.
As someone from the lower middle class who was lucky to be born in a time and place where I could go to a college and study literature and philosophy and theatre, while being part of a new culture of movies and popular music and writing, I don’t dismiss any avenue of exploration that leads to great insights, expanded consciousness and the oceanic and subtle complexities of feeling inspired by great art, high and low.
What does it matter really if a Harvard professor or Star Trek II leads you to Moby Dick, as long as you get there? And why would anyone object to the shared memory of Moby Dick informing a psychological insight particularly instructive to us in our time, in the guise of Jean Luc Picard in the 24th century, being consumed by vengeance against the Borg?
It’s win-win, as far as I can see.
We need people with depth and character, if we’re to have any sort of future. And if we don’t get there, then we need a present where we reach with our hands and hearts and minds to the extent of our potential, so we at least live full lives. We must try our best not only to create a better world, but to be the kind of people who make it better right now, so we at least deserve a future.
Anyway, according to the big thinkers at MIT, Star Trek fans are way ahead.
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