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The posters and trailers for today’s films and TV series generally look awful to me. I occasionally give them a chance, against my better judgment, and find I have wasted my time. All these pope dramas and even Emir Kusturica’s documentary with Uruguayan President Peje Mujica: meh.[1]The Mujica documentary is informative in a few ways. Mainly: one is struck at how much these leftist political revolutionaries were willing to risk personally and how supportive their WAGs were.
So I look to the past. I’ve recently indulged in watching some Star Trek: The Next Generation. Now there is a homey show. It’s remarkable in a number of ways. Two striking ones for me: the decidedly optimistic cosmopolitan setting, which represents a kind of idealized fruition of the whole liberal-internationalist outlook, and the personality of Jean-Luc Picard, captain of the starship Enterprise, as a rare TV portrayal of a wise commander.
Star Trek is fundamentally a projection of contemporary liberal-internationalist assumptions 300 years into the future. As such, it’s an interesting show to analyze to understand the liberal idealism, for there is such a thing, which has underpinned the world’s basic evolution since the Second World War.
Star Trek portrays humanity the way the writers feel we should be if we could get passed our pettiness and bickering. The technological level is simply fabulous: effortless interstellar travel, materialization of objects from nothing, teleportation, a “holodeck” where any fantastical setting can be realized . . . The travels of a military starship through space work very well as a pretext for an adventure-a-week. The Enterprise encounters mysterious happenings, hostile aliens, and surprisingly common (invariably passionate and unenlightened) demi-gods.
The show’s basic idealism and optimism is, significantly, reflected in the crew’s personalities. Everyone is just so good.
As usual, each member of the diverse crew reflects different aspects of the human personality: the android Data is emotionless and childlike, the Klingon Worf is an impulsive hot-head steeled by discipline, the telepathic psychologist Troi is full of empathy, and so on. However, the crew always fundamentally collaborates as a community under the leadership of Picard.
Picard is a model of philosophical leadership. When there is a problem, he takes his time, hears out every opinion, and remains dispassionate and prudent. When a decision is finally made however, he is firm and decisive.
A typical TNG episode works as a morality play. The antagonist (there are rarely enemies) is not usually destroyed an epic battle of laser blasts in all directions. Rather, he is usually misguided, and can be brought back to reason through dialogue and moral example. This is where Picard excels: Socratic dialectic, explication, compassion, and moral self-control are his weapons of choice.
And you know what? It works. While there is often a soppy element to TNG, Picard’s wise leadership comes across as convincing and plausible. It’s not often we see a wise man in command: a few cameos of Marcus Aurelius here and there, the Gandhi biopic starring Ben Kingsley . . . hard to think of much else. Ned Stark provides an interesting contrast with a fundamentally good, too good, man in a Machiavellian world.
Star Trek’s social organization and politics are rather telling. Inevitably, every series’ idealized setting says a great deal about the social assumptions of the people who made it at the time.
In The Original Series produced in the 1960s, the cast is strikingly multiracial, including a black woman, an East Asian man, as well as a Russian (not to mention the famously ultra-rational Spock, a half-Vulcan). The show is often comically macho and women are basically absent, with Uhura (the black woman) coming across as a sexy secretary.
In TNG, produced in the late 80s and 90s, the cast is much whiter and, as so often in liberal shows, demographically resembles 1950s America, the only minorities in the main cast being two black men (one of them being a non-human Klingon). What’s more, the men are still in charge. After the female chief of security is killed off in the first season (a rarity for a main cast member, the actress wanted out), women star as the ship’s psychologist, doctor, bartender, and love interests.
The Enterprise serves the Federation, a kind of interplanetary United Nations/United States which actually works, with humans making up the core. Again, the Federation is good, working for the harmonious development of all species.
Picard is wholly committed to the Federation and its generous and cosmopolitan guiding philosophy. He affirms “the right of all life to exist” and the ability of “intelligent beings of good will” to get along. The latter is Stoicism 101 (all “rational and social beings” should get along). Picard’s own ship and personal example are a testament to the truth of these claims.
While having a basically “humanitarian” mission, the Enterprise’s crew are animated by a decidedly heroic and even Promethean ethos. The crew are more than willing to risk their lives to, as Picard famously puts it in the intro, explore “Space . . . the final frontier . . . and boldly go where no one has gone before!”
TNG works as a kind of Stoic-cosmopolitan idealization of what humanity could be. There’s something charmingly innocent and elevated to all this and, as I say, it works.
That isn’t to say this is particularly plausible or is the whole story. The cracks and omittances of TNG are quite suggestive of underlying darkness.
Today, we rightly worry about human obsolescence as a result of automation. In TNG, there’s a whole space ship of people busy each working in their little sphere. Scarcely is anything ever said of the Federation’s (presumably democratic) politics and we only know the authoritarian hierarchy of a military vessel under a wise commander (a setting in which, by the way, multiculturalism can indeed work).
Despite the total lack of scarcity, the humans are still motivated to do things. The men are still interested in tactfully courting the womenfolk rather than being addicted to sexing virtual babes on the holodeck.
In terms of international politics and war, Star Trek rejects the suggestion of fundamental differences in outlook and competition between species. We can all get along and coexist. This is true, if each species lacks any great difference in their fundamental drive, if no species is basically . . . anti-social . . .
This is particularly striking in the case of one of Stark Trek’s most original principles: the so-called “Prime Directive” under which the Federation is not supposed to interfere with the development of more primitive forms of life. In one episode, a bronze-age race which has come to believe Picard is a god is told the truth and then, despite their equal cognitive abilities, left to flounder on their own.
In another, nanites self-reproduce as a collective intelligence and threaten to turn the ship into gray good. The problem is solved when the exponentionally-developing “nanite civilization” is dropped off on a planet. Everyone can have their safe space, it is implied, and there is no reason even a fundamentally distinct life-form might have a drive, an impulse, a way of life, which could fundamentally clash with that of others.
Liberal-internationalism and multiculturalism work much the same today. Human differences can be manageable if these are reduced to sterile folklore and we all become united by the shopping cart.
I don’t know how Jewish Star Trek is. Gene Roddenberry is a gentile and the whole show is permeated by a very Western idealism and earnestness. Various Jewish publications report however that Jews have always had a great influence on the show.
I contend that there is something very French about Picard’s appproach and, specifically, pre-Revolutionary. Picard is supposed to have vineyards back home on Earth, but I suspect his family really made it big with that uniquely French expression of mass art de vivre: quality frozen foods.
Picard’s wisdom recalls that of that other chrome dome: Michel de Montaigne, the quintessentially French writer. Montaigne too is wise, detached, perceptive, reasonable, moderate, cautious, and fundamentally conservative in outlook. And all that is very good. The workplace might be a better place if more managers were to watch Picard at work. No doubt every human soul can be improved by reading Montaigne’s surprisingly humorous and approachable Essays. This is what philosophy – love of wisdom – is meant to be, delightful instruction on how to live.
History presents many examples of unwise and erratic monarchs. If I were a king, I would wish to be like Picard or Marcus Aurelius (the latter on a good day). But this is surely not the only valid style of leadership.
And . . . is the “reasonable” enough? Is that who we really are?
We live in an age of untold plenty and material prowess. Our scientific knowledge and mastery over matter is seemingly boundless. And yet, who could deny that humans are using this power to better express their follies? To better indulge, in particular, their petty-pride?
There are no feminists, no ethnic activists, and no transsexuals on the Enterprise. In our world, we know that ignorance of one’s nature and wounded egos have a seemingly limitless capacity to drive victimarian identity politics
There is untold darkness in every human soul. Above all, there is the vanity within each of us, that lowly self-love or amour-propre quite distinct from manly pride or self-respect. There is no doubt that being an apparently generous and reasonable reason broke down the traditional prejudice and poverty which kept vanity in check, contributing to unleashing this touchy beast which now rules supreme in our societies.
Is not appearing and thinking yourself good the best way of selfishly displaying your supposed superiority compared to the rabble or, indeed, to your betters?
Notes
[1] The Mujica documentary is informative in a few ways. Mainly: one is struck at how much these leftist political revolutionaries were willing to risk personally and how supportive their WAGs were.
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Mr. Durocher, I think that Mr. Houellebecq’s book Les Particules Elementaires is a really fine description of our future. Certainly more realistic, at least that’s this feel-good science fiction.
Played by an Englishman, bien sûr, and a Wessie at that.
Yes, that’s what I remember most about her.
What made the original series a true blast was the passion with which William Shatner overacted.
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Only a Frenchman can write such a lovely and original essay:))
Few of the episodes of the series with Shattner left a lasting impression: On a far-away planet they encountered a civilisation whose object of worship was, as they thought to their dismay, the Sun, but at the very end it turned out to their satisfaction to be the Son, as in Christianity, the Son of God. In these days, the belief in the universality of Christianity really did stretch beyond the final aim as pursued within Colonnade in front of the Vatican and apparently had become the world religion.
Great essay.
Montaigne I consider the wisest and best philosopher of life the West produced – I picked up the 1,000 plus page Essays on a whim in my late 20s, and could read nothing else until I finished it by the end of the month.
It changed my life.
In a way, it released me from the Promethean urges I had picked up from Western culture (and perhaps my modern Jewish upbringing) – for the first time in my life, I felt I had permission to be ordinary. Montaigne – “I want a simple life, without luster”. His constant admissions of his frailties, weaknesses, and failings – without any shame or apparent desire to “improve” himself – was such a refreshing novelty in modern American culture, and powerfully liberating.
Atheist materialist that I was, I also encountered in Montaigne for the first time the notion of detachment – that one actually lives better by not caring too much. That the visible world simply was not that important, and we make too big a deal of it.
His Pyrrhonian skepticism – that we know far less than we think, and the world is far more fascinating and mysterious than we think, freed my mind from the prison of dogmatic Anglo positivism it had fallen into.
His notion that we have far less control of our bodies and minds than we think, introduced me to the pleasures of spontaneity – and improved my social life and success with women immeasurably. The idea that we could trust Nature. It liberated my individuality, which was suffocating in a sticky web of social rules and prohibitions.
His example, upon being made Mayor of his town, of clearly explaining that while he would be honest and conscientious,, he had no intention of taking his duties too seriously or working too hard – was marvelous and delightful, and was so completely against the modern American ethos.
And let us not forget that what set Montaigne off on his eccentric deviation from the orthodoxy of modernity was a mystical near death experience, and that he was a devout believer in God – and that though couched in “humanistic” terms and offered as worldly wisdom, it is a deeply spiritual attitude.
Montaigne has been “coopted” by modernity and been presented as one of the first moderns, perhaps in order to neutralize his radical challenge of modernity. This is common – Buddhism and Zen has been similarly coopted and compromised.
Montaigne is the best antidote to modernity we have.
Interestingly, even though he may be regarded as the anti-Nietzsche, Nietzsche loved him.
Montaigne set me off on my long journey through Buddhism, Taoism, and Zen, which share his philosophy, and finally back to Judaism.
This is like saying “I hate shit but I love my pile of manure”.
STAR DREK is the worst. NEXT GEN is especially dumb. How is it they can travel at light speed but still haven’t found a cure for baldness? It’s retarded from just that.
But, unfortunately, philosophers since Descartes have been almost monomaniacally obsessed with epistemology. It’s very tiresome.
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I enjoyed the original Star Trek as a child, but it is difficult to watch now without snickering at all the silly optimism and general liberal twittiness. Science fiction needs to suspend disbelief in order to be effective; Star Trek is just too obviously mythology.
Silly Priss: In the future baldness is a desirable state, a sign of evolution. That’s why he is the Captain.
+1 on Montaigne, AaronB. Mine is the Donald Frame (I think) translation from umpteen years ago when I first bought it. Do you know anything about more recent translations? Do they offer something worthwhile that illuminates this extraordinary man’s work?
I don’t know much about more recent translations – I too started with the Frame translation, that massive white book. I tried the other major translation about 5 years ago, because it was the only one available on kindle, but found I didn’t enjoy it as much as the Frame – possibly because the Frame translation was my first love.
I really enjoyed the Frame translation.
What’s wrong with baldness? Why are some men shaving their heads?
One quibble: in TNG, the original Chief of Security was a woman, a short haired shield maiden… once kidnapped by a black alien in his pursue to swindle his wife out of her land…
Thanks, AaronB. I’d read something favorable about a newer translation of Montaigne in the NYT maybe a decade or so ago. Can’t recall details; never followed up.
My personal feeling is that anyone looking for a Western exemplar of profoundly human thought, feeling, and action needn’t look much further than Montaigne for openers. Too bad we don’t have any moderns AFAIK who have the strength or wit to follow in his footsteps.
Have you read this? It’s one of my favorite titles, though I haven’t reread it in years. I much prefer the analytical rigor and precision of Anglo-American philosophy, but I also like a more humanist focus. Nozick did this brilliantly IMO.
(Aaron, have you read this? Of course, you wouldn’t identify with his ambivalence about his Jewish heritage, but he is one of those people that command respect even among those who passionately disagree with him, rather like liberal jurists feel about Antonin Scalia. This last effort of his was not well-received among the stuffy Ivory Tower set AFAIK.)
TNG was good television. I still (re)watch episodes to this day. Gene Roddenberry just wanted a show where peoples daily BS is not the story. And it worked. No need for crocodile-tear emotions. Enjoy a one-and-done stage play. Everyone says Star Trek was about technobabbles but it wasn’t, it was just to move the story along.
When I was a child I always wanted to grow up to be as uncompromising, wise, and honest (to oneself especially) as Picard. Sadly somewhere along the way I lost that path.
It’s a real shame how terrible the movies and series of today are… the war between Star Trek and Star Wars ended in Mutually Assured Abrams. RIP.
I once worked with a gentleman who had a love affair with Nichelle Nichols around the time of Star Trek’s 1st season. She quickly moved on from him, he never got over her. I myself was in love with Uhura the fictional character. We’d get drunk together and pine over the women we loved and couldn’t have.
Guillaume, you mention Pope dramas but have you seen The Young Pope? Ditto to any of the commentors here, I think it’s a fantastic show.
I like the passion and intensity of TOS. It was manly and virile. TNG was too intellectual.
Yes, the original Star Trek had many multiracial firsts including the first black/white mouth to mouth kiss on US TV. Note that the Russian character, Ckekov was only added in the second season after USSR newspaper Pravda complained that there was no character from the USSR – especially ironic since tbe USSR sent the first human into space.. As a kind of revenge, Roddenberry made the Chekov character repeatedly spout nonsense about how the Russians invented and discovered everything.
I would argue that the Original Star Trek series was much more more liberal and hopeful. For example, unlike in the Next Generation, there was no security officer as a lead character.
In the original series, main characters William Shatner (Captain Kirk), Leonard Nimoy (Spock) and Walter Koenig (Chekov) are/were Jewish. As far as influence on the show goes, Leonard Nimoy took the “Live Long and Prosper” hand gesture from Orthodox Jewish ceremony. In addition, when the network balked at showing white Captain Kirk and black Uhura in a full mouth to kiss, William Shatner purposely flubbed the reshoot by crossing his eyes.
All in all, The original star Trek was much better written, better acted. and more influential including such diverse influences as causing one of the Space Shuttles to be named Enterprise and David Carridine to pattern his Kung Fu character after Spock.
If you enjoy the great writing of the original Star Trek Series, I can highly recommend The Man From Earth which was written by original Star Trek writer Jerome Bixby. The Man From Earth shows how if you have a great screenplay, you don’t need big budgets to make a great film.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Man_from_Earth
“We live in an age of untold plenty and material prowess.”
WRONG.
Given time and resources, indeed human beings have achieved quite remarkable levels of productivity compared to our distant ancestors. And it is barely a speck of dust, easily washed away by the brute force of exponential population growth.
India has a population of about 1.3 billion (give or take), and despite all the amazing technological progress of the last 500 years, the physical standard of living in places like India is grossly inferior to that of late medieval Europe. OK sure, in late medieval Europe, they didn’t have the internet – but they also didn’t have chronic malnutrition, and children didn’t grow up stunted.
The fruit of 500 years of patient development, the industrial revolution, chemical fertilizers, the green revolution, computers, all of that, just cancelled out as if it had never occurred.
People can building amazing things, given time and resources. But it’s not a magic trick. And the present is very much not a time of untold plenty for a very large fraction of the human population. And if ‘globalism’ persists, perhaps it will not be a time of untold plenty for all of us, before too much longer…
To be fair, we can do supersonic travel right now, and no cure for baldness in sight. I think it’s harder than it seems.
I indeed watched a few episodes. Stunning imagery, witty dialogue, classic Sorentino. But a bit aimless. Sorentino’s La grande bellezza is magnificent and everything else I’ve seen of him feels derivative and somewhat inferior. I chuckled at parts of the Berlusconi biopic.
Rosie, thanks. Nozick is a blast from the past for me. I think his Anarchy, State, and Utopia (hope I got the title right) came out around the same time as Rawls’s work. There was some big back-and-forth in the academic literature at the time, the details of which I’ve forgotten. My local library has Examined.
Pat Buchanan in his prime seemed to me a good example of a modern’s channeling of Montaigne’s humanity and skepticism. There are probably others, but I just don’t know them.
BTW-I referred casually to Montaigne about twenty years ago to a local professional person. I wasn’t trying to score points or one-up, or at least I don’t think I was. I think I was trying to say I was a reasonably educated guy who had some acquaintanceship with human folly. It took me several months to figure out this idiot, with a top 3% income, had no friggin’ idea who I was talking about.
They think it hides the fact that their heads are pretty bald anyhow: it enables them to feel like they made a choice.
My personal strategy is “buzzcut (#0) once it gets hot; complete inaction otherwise“, so it’s not a “World War Hair” thing for me. I’ll join WWH once someone makes the call for the ManBun-ocaust, but that has nothing to do hair per se.
I haven’t read it Rosie, but it sounds intriguing – maybe I’ll give it a spin. I know of Nozick of course, he’s quite famous. Thanks.
I have no problems with Jews who are ambivalent about their heritage. It’s quite natural.
Thankyou for your wonderful comment, AaronB. I have never read any Montaigne, but your comment has just made it a priority for me (tho’ “priority” seems to conflict with the spirit of his work ).
I bit of detachment, of sangfroid, seems particularly apt for our all too “interesting times”.
I can watch the original ST — just. There’s an … earnestness to it which i find a bit tiresome. It definitely has an underlying propaganda purpose: the Federation is just so benign … like the contemporary US in its international role.
Interesting when they introduce “current” 1960’s cultural issues — (such as hippies) i dont know whether to cringe or laugh….
I more or less agree with your India views, but…
“OK sure, in late medieval Europe, they didn’t have the internet – but they also didn’t have chronic malnutrition, and children didn’t grow up stunted.”
I wouldnt be so sure about the malnutrition etc….
La grande bellezza is one of the greatest films of all time.
Star Trek and child abuse are often found next to each other.
Those of us who are Gen X and like Star Trek remember with Next Generation when it came out and think it is the best; boomers who prefer Star Trek like the original better.
Is the newest version really Woke? I haven’t seen any of them.
So Picard the character is ideal because he leads with common sense and decency a post-Christian, multicultural, multi-religious, multi-racial and multi-species, empire ship, bringing it all together in harmony.
Sounds like the opium dream of a French Freemason Revolutionist.
Either France repents of the Revolution and works to become once again the Eldest Daughter of the Church, or France will die a suicide with Mohammedans taking the physical remains and Jews owning its banks and almost everything that can sold on the globalist market.
Picard is probably the best in the series for overall quality IMO. The previous one I read about, and seemed to woke as to be unwatchable. Maybe I should give it a chance, but life is short.
As Patrick Stewart said in an interview when being asked about baldness, “in the 24th century no one cares.”
“Simply fabulous”
Teehee. You talk funny.
Kirk vs. Picard: Stewart is obviously the better actor (it’s a hoot to see “Picard” in I Claudius or Excalibur) but Kirk is the better character (more Ulysses than Picard’s Agamemnon). Shatner’s “overacting” may actually be the key to the appeal of his performance.
That’s the episode that everyone called “racist.” They may have pulled it from syndication, in some places.
Of course, I think that that’s silly. They actually come across pretty well compared to that episode where they meet some Irish Luddites, who are all dirt besmirched, and try to set up a whiskey still in a starship, so they can get drunk, and try to start a fire in the cargo bay. And the daughter of the leader, is such a whore that she drops her clothes immediately for Riker.
Will have to give Picard a try sometime!
In many ways, the old shows come across as optimistic. One reason is that the crew is overwhelmingly white, even though TNG is set in the 24th century, and even though the Federation includes dozens of alien species. Another reason is that there are still distinct nationalities. Scotty, O’Brien, Picard.
I’ve always liked the prime directive. Should be adopted for Africa.
Some of the places where it really goes off the rails: no money. Miscegenation across different alien species. The idea that there is a lot of empty real estate, unsettled planets with the right conditions for life and nobody claims them. The idea that humans would be in this competitive environment with so many other alien species and ban genetic-engineering to increase intelligence.
It’s evident from looking at the EU that the Federation would be a very bad and probably genocidal organization.
Okay, never mind baldness. Why does the black guy wear an air filter for glasses?
I don’t like much Sorrentino, but I haven’t watched La Grande Bellezza yet. Nor The Young Pope. I saw a couple of other of his films, neither great in my opinion.
Star Trek, for some reason, in all its different manifestations, I always ignored. Might have watched at most one episode or two. I don’t know why, it just never interested me much. I preferred Battlestar Galactica – the old one. The new one, the first series was watchable, the rest I couldn’t watch anymore.
I liked Montaigne ever since the first time I’ve read him, when I was about 19 or 20. I think Jorge Luis Borges said that more than a philosopher, Montaigne sounds like a friend of us, telling stories and giving advice. It’s true, it’s a very enjoyable read (well, in translation, not sure about the original in old French, how it feels today).
Thanks, I hope you find your reading richly rewarding. Montaigne is a treat.
As an American born and bred but with French ancestry, I am deeply offended by the casting of an ugly, bald headed British actor as Jean Luc Picard. British actors can barely play Americans. What made Gene Roddenberry think they can play French men?
I’m not saying Sir Patrick Stewart isn’t a great actor for some roles. He was a great guest star on Frasier. But he was greatly miscast as Jean Luc Picard – especially considering that there are many much better looking and more competent French actors.
Patrick Stewart is such a pompous ass that he thinks by reprising his role as Picard, he can strike a blow against Trump and Brexit. He doesn’t care about the actual Picard character. Just about gaining another forum to spout his political beliefs.
https://www.newswars.com/patrick-stewart-new-star-trek-show-a-response-to-brexit-and-trump/
Why does Jean Luc Picard need a security officer on the bridge? Is he such a bad captain that there is a constant danger of mutiny?
Why can’t he go down on landing parties like real captain, James T Kirk? Is he such a poof that he can’t take care of himself?
And what kind of stupid name in Picard. Sounds like a Pastis brand. Next they are going to have a Puerto Rican captain named Bacardi.
And is there any more annoying first officer than William Riker – the humorless Jar Jar Binks of first officers? A real French captain would have canned him long ago.
Just like George Lucas should have quit making Star Wars movies after the original Star Wars Trilogy, Gene Roddenberry should have quit making Star Trek TV shows after the original Star Trek got canceled. Both made their art a victim of their own hubris.
Along the same lines, the first pilot of TOS filmed in 1964, The Cage, has an Asian transporter room ‘tech’ briefly shown wearing some horn rimmed Buddy Holly style eye glasses. Apparently two centuries in the future and not everyone has discovered Lasik just yet.
It just shows that people, being people, are generally just not perfect (or perfectable).
https://www.trekbbs.com/threads/transporter-assistant-in-the-cage.103434/
Yes, the original Star Trek was an idealized ‘progressive’ view of what the same would like the future to be, a galaxy wide macro-cosm of the US micro-cosm.
The fleet of star ships (ie ‘Enterprise’, etc) which ‘police’ the known universe, have their parallel in the US fleet of aircraft carriers which ‘police’ the known world. San Francisco, besides being an early home of the United Nations, is also a capital (along with Paris) of the fictional ‘United Federation of Planets’. Too bad the ‘progressive’ United States doesn’t have a real life ‘prime directive’ though, and let others be.
Desilu also produced The Untouchables circa 1960, some very high quality television as far as that goes.
Did you even watch any episodes of the original series? How many episodes were dedicated to policing the known universe? Note that policing the known universe was not even possible since some of it was controlled by the Klingons and Romulans. The main objective of the Enterprise is exploration as is evidenced by the Star Trek original series prologue:
Space: the final frontier. These are the voyages of the starship Enterprise. Its five-year mission: to explore strange new worlds. To seek out new life and new civilizations. To boldly go where no man has gone before!
Unfortunately, its mission ended two years early which made it one of the first TV shows to successfully enter syndication without 5 years worth of episodes. Another amazing achievement of Star Trek the original series.
Hooboy. Yes, though not a ‘Trekkie’ I am quite familiar with the 1960’s series. The comparison of TOS with the United States was a rough on. Didn’t mean to offend any sensibilities.
Since you mention the opening monologue, I’ll adjust it a bit too the reality of things should today’s self described ‘progressives’ and ‘enlightened’ folks actually achieve interstellar travel, but without their markedly having changed their present ways.
‘Space: the final frontier. These are the voyages of the starship Enterprise. Its five-year mission: to open up new markets. To seek out new sources of cheap labor and conquer new civilizations for the Empire. To boldly go where no one has gone before!’
As Durocher has alluded to, the original series seems to be an idealized projection of a future which had it’s start in the US. If the United States is ever to reach anything close to the future presented in Star Trek, it might ought to start now with a crash course in treating it’s own people(s) far better, in addition to leaving the rest of the world alone.
the authoritarian hierarchy of a military vessel under a wise commander (a setting in which, by the way, multiculturalism can indeed work).
Thus the anti-freedom aspect of the modern political left. Diversity (that is to say the elimination of whites) uber alles.
Great essay! Durochers plenty never ceases to impress.
Apparently not familiar enough to provide episode examples to prove your point.
What offends my sensibilities is when you make statements about the original Star Trek series like the Enterprise’s purpose is policing the known universe but provide no episode evidence of your claims.
That’s not so say that I disagree with your critique of today’s progressives and enlightened folks. What I disagree with is smearing Star Trek, the original series by claiming the show promotes today’s progressives and enlightened folks values.
Now do Babylon 5.
IIRC the second episode is ham-fisted Nazi allegory.
I don’t recall the 2nd episode specifically, but there was a lot of allegory for a lot of things in the series. I thought it was better than the Star Trek version which would be Deep Space 9. Babylon 5 actually has an overarching plot, a war between order and chaos over 5 seasons or so, and is not as episodal as Star Trek. It’s definitely way less of a liberal utopia than Star Trek. There’s lot of bad blood between various species, war, politics, religion, some alcoholism/drug addiction, and an eon long sort of cold war between the two oldest races using the younger races to wage proxy wars over their deep philosophical differences. The ultimate intergalactic nanny-staters vs the ultimate nietzschean social darwinists, both hegemons trying to pull the younger races in their direction through infiltration and manipulation. The latter are the bad guys but in the end they are both bad guys. There are also a few different civil wars including a human one where Mars revolts against Earth I think. It was a long time ago that I saw it (back when it was airing). Everybody is not on the same page in a multicultural utopia. A bit more realistic in that regard and way more dramatic.
It does have fairly liberal sensibilities on the whole I guess, but not anywhere near as much as any of the Star Treks.
The special effects and production quality are as dated as TNG now but it’s got some great drama.
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Picard was a good character though. I thought most of the other ones sucked. TNG gave us Wesley Crusher. Troy and Riker also sucked. Picard was the best character in the whole series. I thought Picard was at his best when he was anything but cool and dispassionate though, like when he dropped his composure and cosmopolitan values and fought the borg like Captain Ahab.
This is because J. Michael Straczynski had the entire story arc of Babylon 5 mapped out before the series started and wrote many of the screenplays himself. Star Trek the Original Series had no story arc. The screenplays were written by different authors who had different visions. Gene Roddenberry didn’t have complete control over the Star Trek universe until Star Trek The Next Generation which in my opinion is why it really sucked. Star Trek The Next Generation has almost nothing in common with the original series.
The original Star Trek wasn’t much of a liberal utopia at all. You had traders selling women to asteroid miners and other such goings on. The liberal utopia didn’t really start until Star Trek The Next Generation.
Star Trek the original series and Babylon 5 are completely different animals. Both are great science fiction TV shows and I can’t say that I have a favorite between the two. They are the only SciFi TV shows I still re-watch to this day,
Montaigne is one of the few authors whom modern translators, especially the academic scum that inhabit Penguin Classics, can’t really fuck up, his style being too forthright and free of ambiguity; and I don’t think there are many more than Florio, Trechmann, Frame, a couple Jews, and this Screech, whom I have never looked into. Frame’s work is so perfect (I’ve tried reading the French, it’s very accurate and faithful) there’s no reason to stray past it. Trechmann, from the 20’s I believe, was actually the edition I read at first; it’s prolix to the point of being tiresome, but you couldn’t call it bad or inaccurate.
Exhibits one’s high level of testosterone production.
Many thanks.
After watching hundreds of Trek parodies on YouTube, I find it impossible to take any of the shows seriously anymore.
(This is coming from someone who spent hundreds if not thousands of dollars on the complete DVD collections between ten and fifteen years ago.)
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There is a station called H&I that plays five hours of Trek – TOS, TNG, DS9, Voyager, and Enterprise – six nights a week. I usually put it on in the background, even though I’ve seen all of the episodes dozens of times. It’s comforting pablum.
Montaigne could afford his ‘simple life, without luster’ of an early retirement from burdensome public affairs in very dangerous times, to pursue his desire to become a celebrated sage, from the ‘detachment’ of his ivory tower at the Chateau de Montaigne, and with the help of a ‘simple’ wast wealth. Who wouldn’t like to imitate his life-style? But, alas, how many can afford it? Can you?
One would not wonder why Montaigne set you off on your journey to Judaism. He was a Marrano.
What do make of the recent essay on Unz about modern American Buddhism being largely a Jewish project?
https://www.unz.com/article/jewish-crypsis-in-american-buddhism
It seems to me American Buddhism is about as Buddhist as the Nation of Islam is Muslim – just a useful non-Western skeleton of a philosophy on which to clothe in anti-Western flesh.
I relay don’t know, what “leftist political revolutionaries” have to do with all of this!Is is just to show, dislikes them?
@RationalRabbit
“As an American born and bred but with French ancestry, I am deeply offended by the casting of an ugly, bald headed British actor as Jean Luc Picard. ”
As an avid reader of Unz Review I am deeply offended by people using this platform for cringe drama 😀 Especially based on muh identity and muh cultural appropriation. There’s the remaining 99.9% of the Internets and media for that, let’s not do this here too, m’kay…
Watch the new Star Trek Picard remake, it is really awful. The optimism is no longer there, it has a world that is suddenly full of doom and gloom, the reason for this is that Stewart was trying to make a show speaking out against Trump and Brexit (serious).
Old wives tail that bald men tell each other hoping that it is a sign of virility. It is not. DHT causes baldness.
I have always had extreme contempt for the follow on series to the Star Trek TOS. I’ve not been ever able to close my eyes to the scientific implausibility of the whole thing, but more than that the idea of a Federation under *human* control is idiotic. Humans as an exemplar? Are you kidding me?!?
Good point about the original show being more ‘diverse’ than TNG. Except for Whoopi Goldberg, LOL.
As far as being Jew-ish, you’d have to look at all the writers of the respective shows. They did have anti Nazi and anti Roman episodes in the original series.
In the first two Star Trek series, the way the multiracial future works is by implicitly being under White Rule. Specifically, White men.
That makes it believable.
Will,
You mention manly self-respect while disparaging self-love. Ok – makes sense.
But you did not mention self-compassion.
Many people who notice the rampant narcissism of contemporary culture tend to overcompensate and forget this.
Everyone has dignity/the spark of the divine/inner light/autonomy and therefore is deserving of compassion, including you, regardless of their failings.
That is they deserve to be wished peace, love and happiness especially by themselves.
The complicated bit that differentiates self-compassion from narcissistic self-love is that people aren’t entitled to all these good things. It would just be good that they have them, and therefore they and we can at least wish them.
Another way of understanding the difference is to do the following:
https://www.youtube.com/watch%3Fv%3Dsz7cpV7ERsM&ved=2ahUKEwjYxdDm-ezoAhVOUMAKHe0fAQwQt9IBMA96BAgNECk&usg=AOvVaw3XEyMKVwvKUFuvHx1yUjWX
Best series the first one-sure by todays standards the special effects were corny but the show had the best writers by a long shot.It was basically a morality play which dealt with the big questions-why are we here,self-sacrifice,friendship,etc.One of my favorite episodes-The Alternative Factor.The character Lazarus decides for eternity to fight his evil twin look-alike from an anti-matter universe in a dimensional corridor to keep him from destroying the matter and anti-matter universe.The only Next Generation Episode which stands out in my mind as above the standard Romulans,Klingons etc. fare is Skin of Evil.
Marshall, thanks. I’m a non-specialist. AaronB’s excellent comment had me wondering if we were reading the same Montaigne. We were. I’m glad Frame’s translation holds up.
DHT stands for dihydrotestosterone, a first-level metabolite of testosterone by enzymatic reduction; it is substantially more potent (= more active, molecule for molecule) than testosterone as an androgen (= male sex hormone.) So this “old wife” is right, it indicates testosterone production level. And it is in fact a measurable marker of virility, by definition, in fact the main one. Also, I only was alluding to the bragging value of it, not to its effective function… which also happens to be real as I just wrote. Also, you shouldn’t channel medieval witch hunters by suggesting that old wives have tails. Just sayin. And, no, this old wife still has a full head of hair at his advanced age…
He breathes through his eyeballs.
Imma cheat and say they have been evolved to not have the… debilitating urges one gets in such settings, like purposelessness when you have infinite sex.
On the other hand, such selective breeding is literally the highest level of haram in the setting, so I just say that the creators are misguided on the true nature of life
Thought Picard tells a woman from 2050, “The economics of the future are somewhat different. You see, money doesn’t exist in the 24th century,” the alien (((Ferengi))) base their entire existence around acquiring and hoarding “latinum.”
Some things never change.
I would rather shave my head than my balls …
Is it not reasonably well established that the Black Death pretty well put an end to malnutrition (give or take some exceptional volcanic activity and prolonged winter) and that Europeans, or many or most of them grew larger during the 250 years afterwards – i.e. to about 1600?
I’m kind of surprised that nobody here hasn’t already identified the new United States Space Force as a real life operation designed for future U.S. colonizing and policing activities. It’s stated purposes are:
Space superiority
Space domain awareness (military, civil, and commercial)
Offensive and defensive space control
Command and control of space forces and satellite operations
Space support to operations (e.g. satellite communications)
Space service support (e.g. spacelift and space range operations for military, civil, and commercial operators)
Space support to nuclear command, control, communications and nuclear detonation detection
Missile warning and space support to missile defense operations
Is this an accurate example of real life imitating art? 🙂
Interesting article. I was never a fan of the Star Trek franchise but mostly that was just a matter of taste. But if you decide to continue with gleaning wisdom from the leaders of 1980’s televised fictional military leaders, I suggest a piece exhorting the qualities of Hannibal Smith, leader of the infamous outlawed mercenary band the A-Team. The guy always had a plan, and it always came together. Plus, he had a pet M60 named Baby and his preferred weapon of choice was a negro named B.A. Baracus. Or maybe it was the other way around, I forget.
Shatner’s overacting is a metaphor for the schlockiness of the whole series. I was overseas when Star Trek aired originally, but I’ve seen most of the episodes several times over, beginning during the ’70s when Star Trek was used as daytime filler by L.A. stations, and it’s still airing on MeTv Sat. evenings after Svengoolie.
A premier exemplar of Star Trek cheese is the episode “The Arena,” where Kirk does battle with a guy in a lizard suit called Gorn. Luckily, Kirk uncovers a hidden vein of sulfur splashed all over the side of a cliff that allows him to build a cannon, and blow Gorn to hell, or at least back to Central Casting.
One of the first TV series I watched as a kid was the legendary schlockfest “Captian Video,” with TOBOR the robot.
I’ve been laughing at the boob tube ever since.
Correct.
Incorrect, it is an indication of the overproduction of 5α-Reductase enzymes which convert some of your testosterone to DHT. Another fun effect of of DHT is that although it causes baldness, it promotes hair growth on places like your back and behind.
Not divserse enough? Then watch Star Trek Voyager with one white man, the navigator (Parrish), a female captain (Jayneway), a Native American second-in-command (Chakote), a black half Klingon engineering officer (forgot her name), an Asian Communications officer (forgot his name), a hologram “doctor”, a black Vulcan head of security (forgot his name), and a cook-bartender that looks like a fish. NOW THAT’S DIVERSITY! And then there’s a borg like character in season 3…..
Um yeah, the Federation is a communist outfit, projecting its space force across the quadrant under the umbrella of “research” and “peace”. Never mind that the Enterprise is a military flagship, they’re doing it for the science.
Notably, the only reason Communism works in the future is thanks to matter-energy conversion, specifically replicators, which create food and goods with no obvious inputs of labor or materiel.
Star Trek is a crock of shit! It has always represented post WWII U.S. hegemony, from the Cold War days of TOS, to the the culture war era of TNG. TOS also conditioned Americans for the moon hoax!
What was it Twain said? Good manners consists chiefly of concealing how much we think of ourselves and how little we think of others.
Sulu
This I really disagree with. Bab 5 was darker and much less utopian, but, for its time, it was a much more liberal show, in many ways. (guy walking around in a dress in the background of some episodes of TNG and the ep. with three gendered aliens aside) In fact, since he wrote the show, it’s hard to believe J. Michael Straczynski was an ethnic Pole, and not a Jew.
There were a few episodes where a blonde, blue-eyed Nordic women was paired with a black male. In one episode, they had priests, rabbis, imams, etc. and they were saying how diversity was humanity’s greatest strength. Of course, there was a lot of Nazi allegories. In another episode, they implied that humans who objected to alien species moving to earth were somehow evil.
The worst offender was some episode about the genocide of the Narn homeworld. How many Narns were killed? Six million! And the Centauri who helped perpetrate the thing was beaten to death by Narns, on the Narn homeworld, while simultaneously with the audio carrying over, on Bab 5, a black gospel choir sang “And the rock cried out, no hiding place!” And, I think that was the name of the episode.
– Except that there are other countries which have military space forces / programs Please pay attention.
Trump’s Space Force Isn’t the Only Military Space Program: https://foxtrotalpha.jalopnik.com/as-trump-s-space-force-ramps-up-what-are-russia-and-ch-1832772367
Countries By Number of Military Satellites: https://www.worldatlas.com/articles/countries-by-number-of-military-satellites.html
Trump landslide 2020.
DO NOT watch Picard.
It’s terrible. It has nothing to do with Picard. Its more closer to the crazed violent psychopath Picard from the movies. Not the wise collected individual we all know and love.
It has copious amounts of swearing and terrible jokes. It’s Star Wars Episode 1 BAD.
The very first episode an admiral outright starts swearing at Picard “SHUT THE F**K UP” “THE SHEER F**KING ARROGANCE”.
I was covering my ears. This isn’t Star Trek. Poverty, racism, xenophobia? Huh? That’s not the Federation I remember……
17 minutes of the very first episode was a highly-choreographed hand-to-hand fight which I remember walking away from, fixing myself a snack, and coming back to without missing a thing.
It’s all just lasers and explosions. Lasers and explosions…. that’s pretty much Star Trek the last 15 years.
What a waste. Picard could have been about a 79 year old man reflecting about his life, accepting his retirement, and all the things someone of his calibre would have to adjust with. Instead I got ACTION MAN IN SPACE! Great…
If you watch it just pretend Patrick Stewart is playing a new character called… Larry. Picards psychotic twin that appears in the Star Trek movies. Yeah.
Man I’m too emotionally charged over a TV character….
You don’t need parodies, just watch the cast as they are in real life, on podiums etc..
Most famous parody in Germany is “Sinnlos im Weltraum”, much on YT.
Some guys and added their own soundtrack to TNG.
“Set phasers on kill!”
Hehe. I had thought of including the pic below for a glimpse of a potential future.
Well, if you go back and review Star Trek mythological historical information you’ll see that it wasn’t always smooth sailing for the different earthling colonies. Some 600 million earthlings perished due to nuclear war, before peace and wisdom finally united the world into one. Perhaps, these separate programs are a prelude to something similar – God, I hope not. I’m enclosing a link that reviews the whole dastardly process as envisioned by Star Trek authors.
https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/World_War_III
Who was the mysterious “Red Angel?” Could it be the original Dark Angel known as Lucifer?
Your characterization of this episode is pretty accurate, however, I think that as you watch Star Trek evolve, you’ll see that at its core it’s philosophic underpinning included a solid foundation of a modern adaptation of a pantheistic religious vision, endorsed of course by our neo-liberal cultural elites (Hollywood’s preferred route).
All that’s missing, of course, are the hermetically sealed cubicles – gloves and masks anyone?
Maybe it was worse with that than I remembered. It has been a long time.
I was always fascinated by the contrast of that TOS episode “Bread and Circuses” which seems to mention Jesus and “Balance of Terror”, which included a chapel but seemed to make a mockery of religion.
It is hard not to notice how atheistic sci-fi often is.
The image is remindful of ‘Pazuzu’ from Excorcist 2. I’d thought initially that Pazuzu was some sort of half baked/half retarded ‘deity’ invented in Hollywood for a horror movie. Then I found out that ancient Mesopotamians did indeed venerate this er…demon/thing, which they (at least) thought of as being quite real.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pazuzu
Warhammer 40k is the ultimate right wing sci-fi. If we ever get power it needs to be a tv series
I rewatched a few episodes a few years back. It’s hard to rewatch stuff sometimes because some messages are more objectionable in the context of today, then they were close to thirty years ago.
Case in point is the movie Karate Kid (1984). In some ways, it seems like a pretty family-friendly movie with a positive message, but there is this really objectionable scene where rednecks pick on Miyagi at the beach. California is only like 36.6% Non-Hispanic White now, and this anti-racist sentiment is how the West got where it is today.
I totally missed that guy in a skirt in Star Trek TNG the first time around. Maybe, it was hard to notice on an old CRT TV. It’s some Asian guy who walks by in the background. I was really shocked, when I noticed it. I think it is in some of the early episodes, so late ’80s.
The only [true] things of importance:
Who wrote the script/s?
Who approved the scripts?
Who financed the series?
Who produced the series?
Who promoted the series?
Who directed the series?
Who aired the series?
Who made $$$ off of these series?
Now that’s out of the way: who watched the series?
Yes, you, the goy.
Gotcha!!!
Unfortunately, it’s not very difficult to discern that satanism is alive and well within Hollywood today…
Frank Herbert’s Dune is pretty right wing, the book I mean not any of the TV/movie adaptations.
If you go outside of TV and movies there is a wealth of non-liberal scifi. On TV though? Best I can come up with is some apolitical stuff. The rest is dripping liberalism.
Where in nature do ‘we’ see baldness as a normal fact? Bald or hairless spots on animals [generally] indicate something’s amiss.
The only time I shaved my head was before an operation on my neck. Now it’s back to a full set of hair.
I don’t imagine Durocher is down with the cult of q anon.neither am I but I recently watched a video from a q follower suggesting that trump and rfk are working with a real life white hat version of TNJ’s dimension hopping demi god ,Q.. could the gameplan be to first push the discreditable bill gates,then follow up with a hero to deliver the us from the NWO, a hero with q/Christ type power?(sorry,I too was gladly reading this to get away from corona and current affairs shit)..I used to quite like Alias Smith and Jones
I guess you don’t like teabagging.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teabagging
Note that the tea party members used to attach tea bags to their hats and call themselves tea baggers. They stopped when they figured out what teabagging actually meant. Once I went to observe an early Tea Party protest. Two guys were in their midst with home made signs which said “I shaved my balls for this?” I couldn’t stop laughing.
Something is amiss if you are missing patches of hair where you are supposed to have hair. Women and children are supposed to have hair on the top of their head. Men grow it on their face.
One thing about TOS is that it had an abundance of the ideal expression of Western feminine beauty.
Diana Muldaur, amongst quite a few others, would be an example of that.
The characters in the original Star Trek represented all the races of Earth (and another planet, Vulcan). However, the actors who played the Captain and First Officer were both Jews raised in Orthodox families. I’m sure this can be turned into a mad conspiracy theory, but I don’t see how. They were actors who played roles. As far as I am aware, the only Jewish influence either actor brought to the scripts was the Vulcan greeting, which was based on a Jewish priestly gesture.
Live long and prosper!
Most people believe that the Ferengi represent the Jews in the Star Trek Universe. The Ferengi are a species of traders who are exceptionally greedy and unprincipled. In my view, the changelings from Deep Space 9 represent the Jews more accurately than the Ferengi. Fiercely xenophobic and supremacist, the changelings represent raw Talmudic Judaism. They believe that non-changeling lives have virtually no value and may be sacrificed on a whim. As shape-shifters they are also able to infiltrate their enemies and sow discord. Jews likewise can pass of as white and similarly sow discord (feminism, cultural marxism etc). Towards the end of the Dominion wars, the changelings had to be taught to co-exist with the universe whereas jews have not yet learned that lesson.
And ‘Picard surgelees’ would perfectly come at hand for the revived cryopreseved future masters of the Universe. Hopefully there won’t be the predicted universal conflagration.
Unfortunately the new Star Trek Picard series is woke garbage.
Yes, there were a fair amount of good-looking women that made appearances on the original show, and sometimes on later ones. Though I was never a big fan of Uhura – especially when she danced naked in Star Trek V – very weird. On TOS, I never liked Elaan of Troyius, as she was like fingers to the eyes compared to some of the others. Done up like that, I thought she looked like a Blasian, but I guess she was Roma-Viet.
BTW, I always thought Marina Sirtis was picked on TNG because she was meant to be a subversion of the Nordic ideal of a blond haired blue-eyed beauty, having an appearance which was more similar to a Jewess, though technically not one herself. TNG totally destroyed any female ideal of beauty with Whoopi.
To protect against viruses. Duh.
Nozick was a prof of mine back in the days when Anarchy, State and Utopia was a big thing.
He spent a lot of time in class trying to jury-rig a moral justification of the state.
Imho he was never able to refute Lysander Spooner’s “No Treason”.
There is just no way to manufacture consent, regardless of how clever you are.
My take on modern Star Trek compared to the old:
Star Trek very much embodied what liberal American white males of the 1980s and 1990s thought the future would (or should) look like: secular, sexually liberated, humanistic, meritocratic, equitable, and technological – a man’s world, basically. In this world, religion plays practically no role in public life. Problems are solved with diplomacy instead of violence. Money doesn’t exist, so there is no capitalism, greed, or want. People spend their lives bettering humanity and doing other such noble things like negotiating peace with aliens or exploring the universe in one of Starfleet’s advanced starships, each equipped with a plethora of miraculous technologies. In their leisure time, the crews of these starships visit a holographic room, the holodeck, which can conjure any fantasy into a photorealistic facsimile of the real thing.
Probably the only place in the Western world where this mentality can still be found is California’s Silicon Valley. As in the fictional world of Star Trek, men do most of the work; they advance through meritocracy; and there is something akin to a fraternal culture, irrespective of the prevailing progressive ideology. Silicon Valley is also still largely free of the odious diversity requirements imposed on the rest of society.
That was also once true of Hollywood itself, and it showed in the television they produced — Star Trek, for example. That franchise, spanning hundreds of television hours and a number of theatrical releases, was mostly helmed by men who got their jobs through merit – actors, writers, ship designers, show runners. The main characters of each of the television series were also men. The Original Series (TOS) featured a lead triangle of male actors – Kelley, Shatner, and Nemoy. The sequel, The Next Generation (TNG), featured mostly male characters, certainly all the most popular ones. These characters often featured something educated men are interested in: the second officer is an android; the chief engineer has a technology-supplemented vision; the executive officer is a ladies man and a master strategist who plays games of skill underpinned by mathematical rules; the captain is a wise and cultured authority figure who reads Shakespeare; the security chief is a noble warrior from an alien species whose culture is based around rules of honor.
Spinoffs like Deep Space Nine (DS9) and Voyager were more diverse, but still roughly comported to what the male audience desired. DS9 featured a male captain, and the most popular characters were all men. Voyager had a female captain who mostly avoided gender politics outside of a few instances in the earlier seasons (written by a woman) – a rarity these days. In that show, one of the two most popular characters was a male and the other was a sexy Borg chick, Seven of Nine.
The high point of the franchise, The Next Generation, featured a mostly white liberal cast and various things white liberals liked at the time – sex appeal, food, pseudointellectualism (although handled capably by talented male writers), cutting edge tech, meritocracy, optimism, exploration, and the white man’s moralism.
Starfleet, the Federation’s military and scientific branch, was a rigorous meritocracy, just as Silicon Valley is today. Members were admitted only through a combination of senior officer recommendations, high scholastic achievement, and phenomenally high standardized test scores. Character was also paramount. Crew evaluations feature prominently in several episodes of TNG, and it was made clear to underperforming members that the starship Enterprise cuts a standard above the rest; perform or hit the road.
In the diverse world of Star Trek, the white writers imagined meritocracy would ensure whites like themselves would still have a position at the top of society (just as in Hollywood then and Silicon Valley now) despite soon becoming a minority in real life America. You’ll notice progressive humans are at the center of the Federation in Star Trek despite being a small minority in that fictional universe as well. That’s by design, conscious or not.
You can tell the creators desperately wanted to believe this sweet little lie about diverse societies. I’m sure they imagined their tolerance would be reciprocated when they were on the receiving end; we now know that’s not true, unfortunately. Remember, this was the generation that famously cheered President Bill Clinton’s college commencement speech where he lauded the idea of America soon becoming majority minority. The primarily white crowd roared in approval.
In this imagined future, white liberals would still get to feel morally superior to contemporary white conservatives, just as they often strive to in today’s world. In TNG, this is accomplished through various means – cooperation with hostile aliens (demonstrating philosophical supremacy, superiority of intellect and temperament), bravery, tolerance of differences in others, multiculturalism (the show almost never celebrates an earth holiday like Christmas but often supports alien cultures, including breaking Starfleet’s rules of dress for aliens), standing up to corrupt superiors (usually white conservative caricatures).
In the TNG episode The Drumhead, Picard faces down a witch hunting admiral — a woman, no less. The plot revolves around an incident that occurred on the starship Enterprise. Sabotage is suspected, and the situation is tense. The initial evidence points to a low ranking crewman who is later discovered to be of mixed race, one-quarter of the Federation’s most feared enemy. This all but convicts him in the eyes of the admiral’s tribunal. The admiral mercilessly presses her case, threatening to destroy anyone who gets in her way. She’s meant to be a caricature of conservative jingoists of the era – always scared of the Russians, racist against minorities, emotional. In Hollywood’s view of history, those were the people behind the McCarthy hearings, which this episode obviously pulls from.
Aside: it could be said that American SJWs have gotten so extreme of late that the admiral in this episode could easily be mistaken for one of them, a point a few critics have already made. Over in the American comic book industry, prominent SJW social media figures have chased out conservatives or even publicly announced they’d black list anyone caught voting for Donald Trump. In Hollywood, actor James Woods has claimed (probably correctly) that he’s been blacklisted for his – rather mild – views. Other actors have gotten the message and have now shut their mouths: Clint Eastwood, who spoke at the 2012 republican convention, endorsed democrat Michael Bloomberg in this year’s 2020 Democratic Party primary … probably to avoid a similar blacklist.
Toward the end of the episode, Captain Picard confronts his antagonist and gives a fine speech about principle, temperament, and morality in the process. The admiral is defeated when a fellow admiral, a black male character, stands up and walks out in disgust at her actions.
This is one of the reasons why fans liked the character of Jean-Luc Picard: he was a decent, honorable man despite not being perfect himself. He had a code he lived by, and he led by example. Men like that sort of thing. Star Trek Picard, in contrast, portrays him as a bumbling moron who is always wrong and continually berated by female underlings. His view of the world is portrayed as naive or just wrong, requiring strong SJW women to take it to the enemy themselves, often employing violence – including rank murder and sadistic violence.
In another episode of TNG, white male commander Riker stands up to his white male superior — an admiral — who wishes to break the terms of a peace treaty to gain a military edge over a mortal enemy. Riker prevents him from doing so and exposes the dastardly plot. Moral of the story: principle trumps Machiavellianism.
Star Trek was very much a pre-Millennial liberal morality play whereby inspired characters (mostly white) would often stand up to authority figures (mostly white) in order to promote a general moral code — a greater authority — among fellow whites.
Consider some of the following things about Star Trek: The Next Generation and ask yourself if any of this would be allowed on television today without controversy.
*There is a planet where men and women wear skimpy clothing and have casual sex whenever they choose (or so it is implied). The women are all very attractive and lightly dressed.
*The female characters are free to wear revealing clothing if they so desire (or not), even on the bridge of a powerful starship. This was also a feature of the original series (TOS) – premiere date: September 1966. Series creator Gene Roddenberry imagined it to be a rebuke of the more culturally conservative era of his time. Later in the early seasons of TNG, when Roddenberry still exercised influence, even the men wore skirts.
*Implied heterosexual attraction is present – Riker and Troi, Picard and Crusher; this is true of the spin-offs as well. The male characters all have numerous romances throughout the show’s run. Even the android, Data, has a romantic encounter with a woman.
*The black characters are portrayed as white people with dark skin, for the most part. Michael Dorn, Worf, is a proud Klingon warrior; he’s a noble character the audience looks up to for his courage and good sense (even if the writers comically ignored him). Whoopi Goldberg, Guinan, is the show’s Delphic Oracle; she gives advice even to the wise Jean-Luc Picard. Levar Burton, Geordi, is the ship’s chief engineer. He’s a black male nerd who has trouble dating girls but is otherwise a genius.
Basically, TNG was what white male liberals of the time hoped the future would be. “Threatening” minority characters would act safe and white, technology would trump superstition, and reason would prevail over emotionalism. The future would be a paradise where all problems had been solved and white men would still have a place at the table they created – it being governed by the same rules they originally put into place.
Consider some of what we saw in the spin-offs – DS9, Enterprise, and Voyager – and ask the same thing.
*In DS9, the black male captain Sisko feels uneasy about entering a holodeck program featuring a stylized 1960s Las Vegas casino. His reasoning: black people were discriminated against during that time period, so it’s unrealistic and even offensive to go there. It’s important for him to do this in order to save a friend, so his black girlfriend explains to him that his criticism is not relevant because racism doesn’t exist anymore; it’s the far future, after all. Sisko agrees and overcomes his objection in order to do the right thing.
*In one of the early episodes, captain Sisko puts his female executive officer in her place after she goes outside the chain of command to criticize him.
*Captain Sisko (Avery Brooks) is the wise leader who exudes bravery, honor, and integrity. He puts other people in their place when they step out of line, and he’s NEVER disrespected by underlings, including women, without severe consequence.
*Some of the attractive female characters still wear form-fitting suits. All the principal female cast members are attractive. The same is true of Voyager, most famously represented with Seven of Nine.
*Quark, the alien bartender, is a sexist who steals his employees’ tips and requires women to dress seductively in order to scam male customers at the gambling table. He expresses outrage when his mother starts dressing in clothes, which is forbidden for the house-ridden, oppressed Ferengi female demographic. There is also an episode where he tries to take a picture of the female executive officer in order to make a real-life sex object based on her likeness for a customer. The Ferengi are also obsessed with accumulating wealth and often scam people out of their money.
Despite all of that, Quark is often a moral character (sold medicine and blankets to sick aliens during a war). There is an episode where he points out that Ferengi at their worst aren’t as bad as humans have been in recent memory – no genocides or slavery or concentration camps. Quark is supposed to represent much that is wrong with the contemporary world. He is also representative of the writers’ moral relativism – bad guy isn’t all that bad depending on perspective. But even that reasoning probably wouldn’t allow such a character to exist in modern Star Trek.
*In DS9, the Bajorans turn away poor immigrants who wish to settle on their planet. Their reasoning: Bajor is poor and can’t support them; they have their own problems to worry about.
*The Ferengi, Nog, needs a recommendation from a senior officer and phenomenal test scores just to be considered for entry into Starfleet academy. No affirmative action at all.
*The Cardassian antagonists have segregated their society along gender lines – men serve in the military and women serve as scientists. Female Cardassians think male Cardassians are bad at math and male Cardassians think female Cardassians are emotionally weak, so they are mostly excluded from the military leadership. The few female Cardassians who appear in the earlier seasons are mostly evil – a cruel judge and an intelligence official in the Obsidian Order (KGB equivalent). Dukat, the Cardassian male military officer, is once pitted against his female Obsidian Order boss and turns out to be the more compromising of the two characters before the end.
*In DS9, multiculturalism can sometimes have a dark side: the diverse, authoritarian, Dominion wages war against the diverse, but cooperative, Federation.
*There are lots of romantic relationships among friends and not as much of the Millennial hookup culture trash seen in the modern Star Trek iterations.
*The male characters are often the center of attention – leaders, philosophers, diplomats, family men, scientists, doctors, comic relief.
*Klingon females aren’t allowed to run family estates.
*The planet where people dress skimpily still exists.
*Several alien races are played exclusively or predominately by white actors with little make-up.
But as America’s demographics have changed, so too has the ethos of the Star Trek franchise. Starting with Enterprise (2001 – 2005), the former paragon of stoicism, the Vulcans, are continually denigrated – treated as paternalistic, deceptive, and even belligerent towards other alien races. Notably, Vulcans are more intelligent, more accomplished, and much stronger physically than humans; they are a paragon (sometimes a foil) of what pre-Millennial humanist white males imagined themselves to be … or hoped to be in the far future. Their treatment is odd. It’s almost as if the new – feminist – writers now feel they have to use the Vulcans as stand-ins for the white males they envy.
The new shows by Alex Kurtzman, Discovery and Picard, are helmed by a diverse set of writers decidedly unlike the target audience of straight white males. They’ve predictably produced shows denigrating that demographic: the lead characters are usually female; the male characters are continually insulted by wiser female underlings (Pike, Picard); many of the former straight characters are now gay (Picard, Data, Seven of Nine); aliens which were previously played exclusively – or nearly so – by white actors are now bizarrely multicultural in skin tone, just like humans. Can’t have too many whites on screen, I guess.
The female lead of Discovery is the bestest ever, she even appropriated the male name “Michael”.
The diverse new cast of Discovery and Picard mostly excludes white males. The only principle white men who did not appear in make-up during Discovery’s first season were either villains or openly gay. The show’s lead is a black woman who’s the best at everything, acts bizarrely hostile towards the crew and later berates the male commanding officer, captain Pike – introduced in season 2. There’s also an assortment of other female archetypes more typically seen in network television crime dramas – the dorky female comic relief, the bestest ever leader, the tech guru.
Star Trek: Picard’s white male actors, aside from TNG cameos, are mostly villains when they appear at all. Picard himself is a senile old man who contributes essentially nothing to the show. He is used as the butt of criticism from the cast. It’s clear the writers are using him as a canvas to paint their grievances with the real world. Picard — white male America — stands in the new boss’s empowered way. He lives in luxury as minority characters live in poverty. The (white) institutions he represents are all corrupt and racist. To rectify this injustice, the diverse cast must defy Star Trek convention – up to and including committing acts of cold-blooded murder (even villains don’t deserve that).
The new shows also – bizarrely — feature a dearth of straight black male actors. TNG had two; Voyager had one; DS9 had several, including a masculine male captain. The feminists who write this newer junk must feel threatened by their masculinity, a common phenomenon in modern Hollywood movies, comic books, and in network television: black men are usually removed (Star Trek), made gay (Marvel’s New Warriors), or turned into female servants (Samuel L. Jackson in Captain Marvel – a pet to Brie Larson). So, they’ve almost entirely been excised as primary leads in the new shows. The mostly unaccomplished female writers of Discovery even reported the more accomplished (read: threatening) black male writer, Walter Mosley, to Human Resources for uttering a racial epithet (in context with writing about racism), causing him to quit the show in disgust.
Discovery and Picard are both written by a crowd that obviously hates the demographic they are writing for, so they pepper many of the episodes with things they know that demographic will take as insults – female characters insulting male characters, underhanded jokes about masculinity or mansplaining, obnoxious female leads, incompetent white male characters who need female instruction, excessive melodrama, denigration of lore. It’s patently obvious. They aren’t even being subtle about it.
Everybody Hates Picard – Compilation of Humiliation
The Klingons, once a proud masculine race, are now reduced to xenophobic Trump voters in Discovery. The show runner directly stated this in an interview before the series premiere. Klingons now speak in subhuman, guttural-sounding vocals. They redesigned them to look like hairless Tolkienesque goblins – hideous primitives. Klingons were previously boastful, proud in speech and in manner … threatening black men, basically. Feminist writers can’t have that. Bye.
Fundamentally, these new shows struggle because they are written by people wholly unlike the target audience, so they are not able to appeal to them (the same is true of other ruined male franchises like Star Wars – but I’ll save that for another time). These new shows aren’t for the old audience. The new — diverse — show runners have made that clear. Star Trek now serves as a vehicle for airing out racial and gender grievances against the perceived white male audience. It’s akin to planting your tribe’s flag on another tribe’s territory. The aggrieved gets a rush from being able to rub their enemy’s face in their loss. It’s intentional.
Star Trek Discovery Feminism Compilation
Women are very cognizant of the fact that they’re in charge now.
Regardless, the primary audience for a show like this is heterosexual men, disproportionately white … And when minority male characters appear, they’re not supposed to be losers upstaged by their sassy, disrespectful and arrogant female subordinates. In Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, the black male captain put his hothead female executive officer in her place more than once. In the new Treks, men are continually insulted, often for no good reason, by female crew members.
What do men like in Star Trek?
Men like technology. So, the writers of Picard introduced a magic wand to the newest iteration.
Men like adventure, not melodrama. So, obviously the female writers feature an inordinate number of episodes of characters crying.
Star Trek Picard RomuLegolas Crying for a man who spent one day with him years ago when he was a Kid
Michael Burnham Crying Compilation Star Trek Discovery Season 2 Only
Most of the adventure element prominent in previous shows is absent or poorly constructed in the newer ones … or ripped off from other properties, including video games. Paramount was being sued a while back for copyright infringement.
Men like friendships, not … what the writers did to Jean-Luc Picard and Data at the end of Star Trek: Picard. The season finale of the new show ends with Picard confessing his amorous affection for Data, the male android – totally out of character. The writers thought they were being subtle, but it’s clear what they meant. It’s an implied gay relationship between the two most popular male characters in TNG, two characters that were never really that close to begin with. It was meant as a deliberate insult to the audience.
Note: This is supported by 1. writer Michael Chabon giving an interview with The Hollywood Reporter, I believe, where he was asked if there was something he wanted to do with the season 1 finale that he didn’t end up doing. He hinted that there was (my guess: a direct gay relationship with Picard and Data) by attacking “anti-SJWs” and “toxic fans” 2. Repeated gay scenes with the formerly male favorite Seven of Nine – implied relationship with a woman she killed and a completely unexplained hand holding scene with a female crew member 3. There is a clear affection beyond friendship between Picard and Data as he tells him that he loves him … or did before he died, something he always wanted to tell him. 4. Patrick Stewart bragged about how they did something special with the ending here.
WTF Love Scene in Star Trek Picard Finale
Men like relationships with women, so that’s almost totally ignored – even the subtle implication of male / female attraction; there is some casual sex between characters we hate, but few meaningful or traditional relationships in the newer shows. The female characters in nuTrek are now also disproportionately lesbians (literally – no exaggeration intended), closing off that male fantasy for the audience. For example, the once sexy Seven of Nine is now also a lesbian. I’m sure that was deliberate. The rest of the women are physically unattractive, emotionally disturbed, or otherwise weird.
Seven of Nine as she appeared in Voyager
Men also like ship design, which was a major component of the old shows. They provided countless hours of free fan promotion across message boards and websites, they were cool locations for new episodes, and they inspired fan movies. So, obviously that had to be sidelined in the new shows. The ships, once iconic and profitable selling toy items, are now generic CGI models – totally uninspired trash hastily put together as an afterthought. The new shows can’t sell the merchandise, so the retailers have refused to license much of it.
Another thing men like? Group service – following rules, meritocracy, sacrifice for the tribe, defending territory (even the non-violent philosophical variety), that kind of thing. Well, that’s almost totally absent in Discovery and Picard. The once-honorable and meritocratic military-like Federation is portrayed as corrupt and unequal; the black female lead of Picard berates Jean-Luc in one episode for living “in his fine chateau” while she lived in poverty – again, a totally antithetical concept to the old shows.
Smoking in Star Trek Picard vs TNG / DS9
The whole Federation is a dystopia with criminals and drugs and injustice all about.
Various Federation admirals in the new movies and television shows are belligerent, short-sighted, and rude; one is an outright war criminal. TNG featured at least two episodes with corrupt Federation admirals, but our show’s male heroes put them in their place by the end of the episode. Even the female captain Kathryn Janeway did this once in Voyager. Not true of these newer shows, though. Admirals berate the male characters, then go away – never to be redeemed or brought to justice.
Many of the characters in the new shows act entirely unprofessional towards each other. They are sometimes even cruel or sadistic. The female captain of one Discovery short Trek allowed a bumbling white male crewman (whom the female writers mocked the entire episode) to die horribly and then simply shrugged it off when asked about it, “he was an idiot” (implication: he deserved to die because he was annoying her). I’m guessing this occurs in the new shows because women don’t generally like things such as military service. Sure, women serve in the armed forces, but that’s just a gig for a lot of girls. Tactics, uniforms, codes of behavior, and group work are all things men sit around and think about when they aren’t being paid to do it.
The Difference between TNG and Star Trek Discovery / Short Trek
Sadism is a new feature of these shows, too.
Not surprisingly, the biggest internet critic of these two incarnations is an Israeli Jew (I suspect); he compiled many of the clips above. It’s not hard to understand why. Israel is a masculine country that requires compulsory military service, is based around codes of principle (Jewish heritage), is partly multicultural (maybe 20% of the population isn’t Jewish), is group-oriented, and has a high percentage of intellectual figures. These are all things you might vaguely see in Star Trek’s The Federation, especially in The Next Generation.
The biggest supporters of these new incarnations, not surprisingly, are the show’s American writers – along with a few “critics”. These people lack any loyalty to a higher cause (other than themselves), are nihilistic, are sadistic, enjoy berating “the other” (men, whites, themselves even), and have practically no respect for anything they aren’t personally invested with. In other words, they are thoroughly Americanized losers.
There would be a college thesis in that observation if we lived in a better timeline. In this one, the world where the bad guys won, you are stuck reading it in a random internet comment.
I think that observation explains much of what is wrong with modern culture: the past, in many ways, was better than the present and probably will end up being better than the near future. That’s intolerable to a lot of political extremists, the very people who put us in this position in the first place. So, the past has to be destroyed; it serves as a foil to the current reigning madness. “Let the past die, kill it if you have to.” That’s why pop culture had to be denigrated. That’s why Star Trek is trash nowadays.
When conquering armies of the ancient world subdued an enemy, they often defaced the conquered tribe’s symbols – destroyed the statues, burned the temples, desecrated anything sacred; both Muslim and Christian conquerors were famous for this. Same thing here. The new regime is burning the cultural bridges so you can’t go back to the better world left behind, the one not ruled by them.
The Vandalization of Star Trek
Is Star Trek Discovery too Woke ?
Although, in fairness to the ladies, it’s mostly men like Alex Kurtzman who have ruined the new shows. The guy once stated in an interview that he has a problem writing male characters. Hollywood: let’s hire that guy for Star Trek!
The doom-and-gloom of Picard and the endless mawkishness about Data subsumed any anti-Trump pandering. Here & there they almost had a trek, even some of the old cheesiness, but mostly it was ruined in advance by the three forty-something Jewish nerds who scripted it. Not a terrible waste of time under House Arrest For Babushki, just not good.
“Nordic” bullshit, how tiresome. They cast her because she was a hot, busty Greek woman with beguiling black eyes and full lips. She isn’t “technically” not Jewish, she isn’t Jewish and doesn’t even conform to any of the stereotypes Jews push for or in spite of themselves (Spock, Data, Ferengi).
And no love for Beverly? how’s that for a “Western ideal of beauty”? She was absolutely gorgeous.
“Frank Herbert’s Dune is pretty right wing”
Now they’re re-shooting DUNE as an anti-capitalist anti-conservative saga.
Err…ok.maybe I could go back and see who brought up the movie “the man from earth” maybe it was Guillaume.so i just watched it.at one hour five minutes someone says ‘we aren’t going to deify JFK’ or a paraphrase..except that in the YouTube video I mentioned in the last comment they do say JFK Jr is this Q character who travels through time and will save us from the new world order..freaky stuff
Ok weird.getting coincidences all over.anon[230] brought up the “the man from earth” movie.the lead character says he once used Jon savage as a pseudonym.this is my Facebook name.i talked about Roddenberry’s ‘Alias Smith and jones’.my other Facebook name is Dave smith.i haven’t been called abdu samek for a long time but that was once my Facebook name,only chose it because my name was already taken on unz comments.
Really?
Trekkie articles belong elsewhere.
Unz is for those that left their Mama’s house as a teenager, and went out into the world and did something worthwhile.
If you are looking for Jewish malign inference, well, trying to shoehorn a schlocky TV show and movie followup into the subject is stupid.
Why not next write an article about ‘Get Smart’. You know, Jewish agent 86 was really agent 88 until the Jewish writers were clued in to what that means, yeah?
And agent 99 was supposed to be agent 69, but then the censors…
Mel Brooks got his revenge later in Blazing Saddles.
Stupid.
An essay within another essay, that’s what I like about UNZ. A lot to mull over here, and I haven’t even watched the videos included yet (I can’t wait until I do).
Is Star Trek Discovery too woke? C’mon,what do you think? 🙂
Like I said – the book. Herbert is dead, there is no reshooting the book.
Wow! Thanks for all the work you put into that thoughtful comment.
I have been watching Star Trek and Next Gen for over 30 years. I have always realized that it is a mid-20th Century American optimistic view about how people would all get over their differences and coexist in the future. And it may have been possible except for two things: Unrealistic expectations of Black intelligence, and Jews subversively pitting one group against another to divide and conquer. Some would add a third item: religion. But if Spock was a real person he would be my best friend.
I’m not saying that I think Marina was ugly in 1987, but her casting was a definite subversion of tropes. I believe there’s a quote of Roddenberry saying as much somewhere. There were a lot of subversions in it. Geordie the black engineer. Whoopie the god-like black woman. Denise Crosby who was Nordic, and quite good-looking (see: Red Shoe Diaries) had her hair-styled in a very boyish manner.
Beverly was pretty good-looking in retrospect – see the episode where she is wearing spandex with Marina, but I was pretty young at the time, so I thought she was a dinosaur. But the actress who played Beverly has abominable politics. Marina seems like a much nicer person.
Overall, I would say there is a dearth of depiction of red-haired beauties in entertainment.
He’s blind, and its a vision device. But it looks like its made from a woman’s banana clip (remember those) spray painted silver.
You goof. Mediterranean beauty isn’t a subversion of Scandinavian beauty. It is its own kind of beauty. But it is still beauty. Now if I said that Aboriginal beauty is a kind of beauty …
Once again, for the record: I think vintage Marina was a good-looking women.
I don’t think Southern European women are ugly. Some Jewish women are even pretty good looking. But there is a certain convergence between the two, when it comes to darker traits. Not a full convergence – you can also find Nordic-looking Jews, but they have a more Mediterranean appearance, overall. Naturally, I prefer depictions of my own kind.
Deanna Troi’s mother was a Jewish archetype. Not played by a Jewish actress, I think – but definitely a kind of Jewish character, even though she was an alien. She was Roddenberry’s wife, also played Nurse Chapel on TOS. My favorite appearance she did was when she played a brunette on the pilot for TOS.
I always assumed that Deanna Troi (Marina Sirtis) was of Armenian background. She looked Armenian to me (whatever that means). Turns out that she’s actually of Greek heritage. For the longest time, I thought that Cher was of Italian ancestry, turns out that she was in fact of Armenian heritage. Both women represent a darker caucasian attractive element (to me, anyway). I thought that Deanna Troi played her part well, and exuded the just right air of mysteriousness and spiritual empathy.
Honestly, Armenians weren’t on my radar for a long time. I knew many Greeks, though I’m not sure I was able to categorize Marina’s origins on an ethnic level. She just looked “Med” to me.
The idea of her being half-human always bothered me. Since, it always made me think of brain incompatibilities, since she was a telepath.
Cher is pretty hard to place, since she had so much plastic surgery. Her face looks pretty alien.
The Critical Drinker, The Dave Cullen Show, Major Grin, Red Letter Media, Overlord DVD, and Nitpicking Nerd are all YouTube channels that have covered nuTrek extensively, although few of these sources have dared to go as far as I did in naming the problem. They’re a good place to start if you want to know what’s wrong with modern Trek … and the rest of pop culture. What I listed were really only example videos from a much longer list. For example, Nitpicking Nerd has a video where he uses a robotic voice to read over Kurtzman’s script for one of the Abrams Star Trek movies. In less than 10 minutes you’ll learn everything you need to diagnose the problem.
Word. Absolutely true. Always look at the credits to see who is really pulling the strings. These actors and actresses have sold their souls for celebrity status and will say and do anything to keep their names and faces in front of the clueless sheeple; who spend their money and waste their time on this propaganda. Such leftist (((influences))) have been part of (((Hollywood))) since Frank the Cripple was president. Sad that.
You’ve done a great job of writing about the intricacies of the Star Trek vision and its philosophical underpinnings. I’ve always recognized it as being a secular vision, devoid of any real religious expression, at best (or worst) a pantheistic vision with all of its incumbent reliance on relativism. It has slowly but surely marched to this incessant drumbeat of modern day relativism. Some of it is a good vision, as you’ve been keen to point out, but overall it’s a philosophy that will never fill the void that afflicts all of mankind – a desire to unite with its Creator, most fully realized within the Christian Orthodox idea of “theosis.” Take some time out of your busy schedule and review the information within this tract. At best you’ll find that “pearl of great value” that you’ve been searching for. The worst thing that could happen is that it will provide you with another way of looking at things!
http://orthodoxinfo.com/general/theosis.aspx
I haven’t watched Picard (having read Patrick Stewart’s comments about the political angle they were going to take with it – he’s a raging liberast) but I find it funny when ppl complain about it being ‘woke’ – Star Trek was always at the vangard of ‘wokeness’, it had the first black/white kiss on TV for crying out loud. I view this of an example of selective memory some people have about how long this state of affairs has been going on, or their awareness of how much it ‘tainted’ stuff they enjoyed when they were too young to notice it.
Nevertheless I can’t help but enjoy TNG in particular…
As a pre-adolescent nerd, nothing could have prepared me better for an adult world of left vs right as Star Trek TNG and C. S. Lewis’ twin fantasy series (Narnia and the Space Trilogy).
At the time, I accepted all of Star Trek’s ideological premises and utopianism, and found Lewis’ religion and conservatism troubling. For me, being troubled — and generally rebellious or contrarian– inspired taking a closer look at my own views and getting a better understanding of what I assumed was ‘the opposition.’ I was never tempted to become a Christian believer, but at least Lewis helped me to abandon my obnoxious preteen atheism in favor of a more nuanced respect for both simple faith and more intellectual theological arguments. And I certainly have nothing but sympathy for his defense of a more traditional and pastoral life amidst overwhelmingly relativist and modernist trends.
Since then, I’ve come full circle and now find TNG to be the more troubling narrative — in the sense that I assume countless young viewers were propagandized in the same way that I was, but many failed to become aware of it, or to recognize it as merely quaintly idealistic young adult escapism. For decades, Trekkies were still objects of ridicule (albeit often somewhat fondly). It’s a bit disturbing that their subculture now seems like a clear precursor to a world in which fandom, a fetish for technology, and “liberal” values are basic and widespread adult characteristics.
I’m happy that my fellow nerds are enjoying more sympathy, but at the same time I wish that more of them realized how much of their worldview is essentially retarded adolescence. And that maybe less time should be spent on extracting superficial values from escapist entertainment… he says, after spending time responding at length to a discussion about Star Trek…
Just to be clear, several popular episodes of TNG were nevertheless written by women. These include fan favorites Hollow Pursuits and Measure of a Man. But there are at least three key differences between TNG and the modern variants: 1) TNG was written before identity politics became overwhelming in Hollywood; therefore, it was understood at the time who the target audience was for this show and what was expected (the focus of both episodes I listed were male characters) 2) the women who wrote for TNG got their jobs through merit, so the quality of their work was above average as a result 3) the prevailing culture of the time was less angry, less divisive.
Very interesting! And worth talking about! Pop culture has an impact on everyone.
Christianity offers you the opportunity to “be as gods.” Protestants (and Non-Denominationals) know “Theosis” as “Deification.” Lewis was certainly aware of this concept and was motivated by its vision. See the link that I provided in reply #134.
An excellent essay about how the concept of Theosis was prominent within the writings of C.S.Lewis:
https://www.abc.net.au/religion/becoming-icons-of-god-divinization-in-the-writings-of-cs-lewis/10099390
Seraphim, cast off your envy. It’s very ugly.
“Beverly was pretty good-looking in retrospect – see the episode where she is wearing spandex with Marina,”
Beverly was very hot in that scene/ episode.
As for her name.. Gates Mcfadden…. Liberal screwball… But one hell of a dancer. Great bod.
I never understood what this episode was about. Seemed like there was some obvious Jewish message – I took it to be something about Israel, but it seemed very confused. I wasn’t sure if the Bajorans were supposed to be Jews or Palestinians, or if it was supposed to refer to other immigration into Israel, or who was supposed to come off looking bad. Whether there was supposed to be an open-borders message or not. Terrible episode, though.
The episode was meant to set up the Dominion as merciless conquerors in their part of the galaxy; they would later become the show’s central antagonist. The aliens in this episode were fleeing as their former masters were being forcefully subsumed into the Dominion. It establishes the fact that one can accept alien refugees as misunderstood and disadvantaged without necessarily obligating one to mass import them into your society. It’s pretty subversive when you think about it. The writers were trying to establish the fact that one may have rules governed by reason while also still being moral.
DS9 was a product of a time when moderate democrats had just taken over the White House (1993) and were trying to prove to the conservative public they could be trusted after having gone nuts in the 1960s, giving them just one presidential term (Jimmy Carter) since Lyndon Johnson as a result. Remember, the Clinton Administration pushed “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell”, “The Defense of Marriage Act”, welfare reform, and told the public the “era of big government” was over.
Obviously, that’s not true in the West anymore. With absolute power comes absolute corruption. Now that the demographics have changed beyond a critical tipping point (generously aided by the republican chamber of commerce guys), the white left feels that it can push any radical social issue it wants and get away with it while still winning elections. They’re probably right.
My problem was that the obligatorily “gay”-voiced robot had more personality than the whole crew put together; and his personality wasn’t much to speak of in the first place.
Similarly, Guillaume with his usual depth and wisdom, breaths more life into this staid monotony than Geppetto ever did into his own creation.
Fish.
Why Jews believe that everybody ‘envy’ them? But why would I envy the life of the atheist when I am not?
Sharon Duncan Brewster Confirmed As Race and Gender Swapped Liet Kynes In Dune Film
“When I was a child I always wanted to grow up to be as uncompromising, wise, and honest (to oneself especially) as Picard. Sadly somewhere along the way I lost that path.”
That’s because Picard is a fictional character, the path is also fictional. His words come through him, emanating from the writers, not from the depth of character of a real person.
Babylon 5 was superior to the Star Trek world. In the latter, everyone was so damn noble I wanted to vomit. In B5, humans were human.
UMMmm… Yes, she’s gorgeous, of course. But she can’t compare to my only true love from the original series:
https://vignette.wikia.nocookie.net/memoryalpha/images/5/53/Janice_Rand%2C_2266.jpg/revision/latest/scale-to-width-down/350?cb=20170129025140&path-prefix=en
Jean Luc Picard’s words of wisdom – ‘The acquisition of wealth is no longer the driving force in our lives. We work to better ourselves and the rest of humanity.’ – describe a post-capitalist society. Science fiction writers including Iain M Banks have expanded this theme: it was with with the publication of Consider Phlebas in 1987 that the world was introduced to the technologically sophisticated, resource-rich but egalitarian, free access and galaxy-spanning society of the near future known simply as The Culture
“Men also like ship design, which was a major component of the old shows.”
I have this poster, from the nineties, framed, behind glass. Of course, it’s in a closet (!) now, but I have it.
I’d estimate 90% or more of white humanity wouldn’t want to imitate Montaigne, judging from how people behave. They don’t want to write essays in a simple life without luster, they want to party, travel, have fun. Furthermore, when they have retired here in clown world, people persist in not writing essays or becoming sages (though they do want us to listen to them).
I would say it’s actually fairly easy to imitate the lifestyle of Montaigne today, except if you really want that chateau of course. Books are basically free, good books are definitely free, walks in the forest or the city are free, and a modest NEET lifestyle in a small but comfortable apartment might even be covered by unemployment or disability or similar, if you can’t get into academia.
“We can all get along and coexist”?
Not likely as long as people of anti-social character lead and dominate. By anti-social, I mean such qualities as freely lying and being extremely dedicated to wealth hoarding while giving back little of value.
We have an inversion of leadership that will need to be handled.
I met and chatted with Nozick at 80 Libertarian Party Convention, I think it was.
Nice guy.
Anarchy ,State,and Utopia was attempt to justify Minimal State versus Rothbardian anarchist natural rights vision.
Jeff and Ellen Paul were his contemporaries at Harvard as students.
It is hard to overestimate the scandalous nature of having a quasi libertarian as head of philosophy at Harvard.
He actually took Rand seriously.
He later recanted some , but the book was a very big deal, indeed.
Incidentally, got to meet and chat with Szasz who was there also. Superfamous.
Rand, Rothbard, Nozick, Szasz, Friedman,von Mises, Hayek, Heinlein,could go on… megatalented , smart, academically rigorous people involved in this quasi movement.
Lots of truth but incomplete.
Could never solve this fundamental question: how to get from here to there?
Heady days then in certain circles.
Talent has deteriorated and minimal influence has waned.
Led me to my aphorism which no one adopted(who am I and who cares?!):Libertarianism- A Perfect Theory In Search Of A Perfect World
Lastly, Szasz was the greatest genius of them all.
Truly brilliant man.
Actually may have been 1978 in Boston
Correct!
“I’d estimate 90% or more of white humanity wouldn’t want to imitate Montaigne, judging from how people behave.”
Yep, agree, Pericles. I’d estimate the percentage much higher. The satisfactions of the study are just not everyone’s cuppa.
” . . . [M]odest NEET lifestyle in a small but comfortable apartment might even be covered by unemployment or disability or similar . . .”.
I know my local metro area (pop. about 600,000) pretty well, and I’d guesstimate the main “occupation” (hours per week, psychological investment, or however you measure that) of up to 100 or so people is the production of small-market cultural material independent of their main sources of income. Articles for community service papers, gigging at the local jazz club, magazine articles, art, you name it. Most below retirement ago have jobs, but solely to bankroll their “occupation”. (I’m ignoring academics, schoolteachers, and paid journalists.)
As Pascal said, all the world’s problems come from man not being able to sit quietly in a room.
The majority of mankind is dissatisfied and restless. They feel inadequate, and deal with this by turning to “progress” and “growth”.
Montaigne’s point is that this is based on an error in perception – life is, in fact, perfect just as it is, and so are we. We have nowhere to “go” – just enjoyment of life as it is.
This is the basic message of Taoism and the higher levels of Buddhism – but even in these traditions, this core message had to be concealed somewhat, because it is too radical, too simple, and too threatening to the mainstream powers, who always want “progress”.
In Tibetan Buddhism, Dzogchen is considered the highest teaching – it is basically Taoism and Montaigne, a message of “do nothing”, you are perfect as you are, no spiritual practice based on “progress” is necessary – but it is wrapped in a thick layer of texts about spiritual “progress” and the like, and was considered controversial and somewhat heretical, and a “secret” teaching.
But complete radical acceptance of life as it is is the obvious ultimate message of the Buddhism (no desire, letting go – desire for a “higher state” is a desire, perhaps our strongest one).
Zen too, at its core, is a message of acceptance and no attempt to alter anything – but again, wrapped in s cocoon of “efforts”.
Mankind cannot yet accept the simple message of radical “acceptance”, which is really at the heart of all religion (often deeply buried) and all wisdom.
My strong advice to anyone who wishes to live out Mountaigne’s values – you must be discreet and exercise some level of disguise. Most people will be extremely threatened by your lack of ambition and happiness.
She was as they said back in the day a knockout.She also was the only one that wasn’t a officer.
I always saw Star Wars as dark – always about evil & war, war, war. That’s probably why most of the confused sheeple prefer it to the always positive & enlightening Star Trek TNG series.
In Captain Picard, I see a man who exudes a high level of integrity in a leadership role – unlike any persona I have ever seen or will ever see in my lifetime. His “Frenchness” is authentic, traditional & passionate – unlike what you see in the current crop of treasonous French leaders who are destroying France & French culture with suicidal dieversity. I’m looking at you Sarkozy, Hollande & Macron! You are all a disgrace to DeGaulle’s secular French society.
Picard always upholds the Prime Directive (PD) – unlike today’s crop of warmongering exceptional “Western” leaders selected into power due to their innate corruptibility. Oh how I would love to borrow a Romulan Warbird for a few hours to sort out all of their treachery if u know what I mean. But that’s another story.
As for Picard, he has no fear of going head to head against Star Fleet Admirals who disregard the PD. Do we see this in our “Western” Military leadership today with their resource meddling in Africa & the Middle East? Nope, I have a better chance spotting a pink unicorn!
No doubt Patrick Stewart’s stage experience at the Royal Shakespeare Company in Stratford-upon-Avon gave him an unfair advantage when graduating to the big screen. He is the most polished quick-thinking & versatile Starfleet Captain you will ever meet. Even his most fearless adversaries respect him.
Personally, I think Gene Roddenberry & the other producers were waaay ahead of their time in creating the Star Trek TNG series. You get a sense there’s a higher creative consciousness at play when watching TNG episodes. I wonder if this creativity was enhanced through the use of psychedelics like psilocybin (magic mushrooms).
So you’ve got great character development combined with excellent screenplays which blends in perfectly with a remarkable mix of SciFi technologies that are plausible if humanity can stay alive for another 600 to 1200 years or so. Fat chance of that happening. We’re all going to die either via bioweapons, nuclear war or vaccinations.
One of my favourite TNG episodes, by far, is The Nth Degree (season 4, episode 19) where Barclay temporarily becomes a super-genius due to an accident, attaches himself to the ship’s computer & is guided 30,000 light years by a distant alien explorer race (The Cytherians) who want to exchange knowledge with Starfleet. The imagination in this episode is out of this world – literally. See if u can watch the entire episode & scroll to the point where Barclay creates a subspace inversion catapulting the Enterprise across great distances faster than warp travel. Really kool stuff.
Captain Picard, as usual, is fantastic in this episode. Arguably one of the greatest actors of our time in a leadership role.
God damn it! You’ve pricked my bubble about Picard being a fictional character.
All joking aside, I will say this…
The writer who intimately created the persona of Captain Jean-Luc Picard on Star Trek TNG is obviously a remarkable person who has a great innate sense of humanity with a firm grounding in honesty, justice & integrity. You definitely don’t find such a rare combination in “real life” because, as I’ve said a zillion times, humans are easily (dangerously) corruptible.
Heck, just look at the entire “Western” exceptional & allegedly “superior” AngloSaxon leadership Swamp. All treasonous, all supremely corruptible which has now put our planet in a destructive game of brinkmanship that is definitely leading us on a war path. That’s my point.
IMHO, the closest person who exudes Captain Jean-Luc Picard’s remarkable leadership skills here on Earth is none other than Vladimir Putin. Fact! How ironic that he’s not an AngloSaxon but an Orthodox Christian Indo-European slav from Eurasia. I know a lot of brainwashed Western sheep will disagree with me on this, but I’m sticking to my assertion because actions speak louder than words.
Therefore compare President Putin’s talk & actions vs. same for Obama, Bush Jr., Bill Clinton, Bush Sr., yes even Ronald Reagan. No comparison! In fact, you’d have to go all the way back to the original Founding Fathers who were incorruptible.
because it is what we let them believe (why would anyone be envious of them anyway?).