Is Humanity Good? - The Philosophy of Star Trek #1

The Star Trek Mythos is famous for its optimistic vision of the future. Whereas other works of science fiction show us marching towards a haunting dystopia or retaining many of our present problems for centuries to come, Star Trek stands out as a work of science fiction which definitively states: The future will be better and brighter than the present we live in and the human race will move beyond prejudice, poverty and war. However when we pose the question: Is humanity good? Or to be more specific, do people naturally default to their good side rather than their bad side, it’s interesting to note that Star Trek - despite its optimism - actually says the answer is, no.

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00:00 Squarespace Ad
00:49 Intro
01:30 Part 1 We're Not Going to Kill Today
13:25 Starfleet is Kinda Racist
20:11 Part 2 What a Piece of Work is Man
24:17 Klingons
27:01 Ferengi
28:01 Cardassians and Bajorans
31:56 Conclusion
32:46 Outro

#startrek #philosophyofstartrek #rowanjcoleman

[RowanJColeman]

P.S. I've seen some fascinating responses in the comments and I'm encouraged to see so much nuanced discussion in response to this video. However, I feel I should clarify something: At no point did I discount individual responsibility as a factor in improving the world. I simply said that the sentiment "be better" doesn't go far enough. Recognising when an act is morally wrong is only the start of a solution, not the entirety of one.

[EndyHawk]

Slight missed opportunity to show the klingon lawyer from Enterprise mourning how the powers that be are changing his society to be more violent. That episode always struck me as a powerfully sad one, and even more so now.

[StreetPreacherr]

Also, one of the reason they originally used 'Stardates' was so that Roddenberry wasn't originally forced to define at EXACTLY what point in the future the show took place! He didn't want to place it at a specific future date.

[SodiumWage]

The advantage to not answering how society works in Star Trek is that it leaves it up to the audience to imagine how it would work. And that's central to the point made previously about how complex issues are mostly presented in stories dealing with individuals - by dealing with these issues at the individual's level, we're then truly engaging with them by imagining how we could solve them. Solving these complex issues always starts with the step of first improving ourselves, yet nobody can answer the question "How do I (genuinely) improve myself" except you.

[shaggycan]

Imagine every single person in the world having as much money as they want, as much free education and medical care and no downward pressure...right now we can't go anywhere, we are trapped on this world, imagine all of those advantages growing up and then being able to do anything you want with your life.
I think that's your answer right there.
I honestly don't think you fully grasp what a person can do in Star Trek. The answer is yes, the doors are all open. You can do anything you want as long as you work hard and help those around you; we step forward together.

[johnpotts]

One thing that the ST depicts is that the "optimistic" future is only achieved after a lot of (future) misery. According to Trek "history", we have the Eugenics Wars, World War III and the Post- Atomic horror to look forward to (I believe those are all separate events, though I could be wrong, and at least one has supposedly already happened). While the Promised Land is attainable, it's only through some pretty nasty struggle (at least according to Gene).

[ThePhantomSquee]

I saw somebody point out once that the thematic differences between Star Trek and Babylon 5 can be gleaned to some degree from humanity's first contact in each setting. In Star Trek, as you said, it was the Vulcans--while in Babylon 5, it was the Centauri, and you can see where the state of humanity in both series logically follows off of that civilization's model.

[ohdarah]

a personal thing I'd like to include is no matter how progressive most of Trek is, it is almost impossible to divorce it from it's innate American-ness. I find it hard to put into words exactly, but the "my way or the highway" approach is employed all too often. As always, seconding your call for ds9 being the best Trek (and I love them all!)😎

[palmercolson]

In many ways, Star Trek reflects many qualities of Gene Roddenberry and generation that went through WWII. Many of them, including Gene lived in their little corner of a state within the USA before 1942. They lived in a world that was recovering from the Great Depression, a period of hardship for many.

Then with the war, many moved and worked in a world that includes long periods of living outside the U.S. or in other locations they had never visited before. Most were in a military organization of some kind. Then the war ended with the atomic bomb. Then there were more wars including the Cold War which everyone thought would go nuclear at any time. There was also a economic boom in the U.S. as well as the economy switched from war production to domestic production and the Marshall Plan.

So, TOS is very much in that vein: military organization but not really just a war organization, exotic and different people that you should learn to understand, a struggle to better yourself, and a hard fought for utopia.

So, all the following series are built on that world for better or worst.

[LanceCSTCuddy]

On thing I’ll say re: Jake and the Bajoran religion.

Unlike every religion currently on earth, the Bajorans have artifacts with supernatural powers that can be seen by anyone. Their gods are not only visible, but can talk and affect time and space in verifiable ways.

I get that his line was meant to be interpreted as how a 20th century atheist might describe human religions, but they did Jake dirty by making him dismiss perhaps the most real and powerful “gods” portrayed in Star Trek.

Edit: While speaking to his own father, basically the figurehead of said religion.

[Its__Good]

Trek writers can't explain how a utopia works in detail for the same reason that they can't explain how a warp drive works in detail.

The Trek vision isn't (as claimed here) that 'somehow Humans got better'. Rather, Trek skips to the point where humans are better and doesn't fill in the gaps because it has no idea how. If you know how to write stories about how humans overcame war, poverty or racism then you'd frankly be wasting your talents writing for a tv show.

[jamescrandall]

There was an episode of DS9 I forget the name of the episode, but there was a conversation between the one of the old Klingons Kor, Kang or one of the legacy characters from TOS I think and Sisko I think. where The Kling reveals that Humanity and the Klingons conflict made each other stronger and brought out the best in each other, I really appreciated that Diaglog and I found it refreshing because finally modern trek finally acknowledged that suppressing or removing ones negative traits can do more harm than good or has unintended consequences... does anyone remember the episode I'm referring to or did I just remember it wrong ? blame it on the Mandela Effect lol

[JazzGuitarScrapbook]

Nice essay! Some very good points about ST I hadn’t really considered. ST is proceeding really from a very postwar Western conception of history and ethics of course…. Have you read The Dawn of Everything (Graeber and Wengrow)? This fascinating book really ties into the themes of the video.

[bitbucketcynic]

We're only good when we have it good. Peace requires prosperity. Generosity requires abundance. When everything is scarce, everyone is an enemy.

[edsr]

@23:08 killing is not easy, not at all instinctively, it’s incredibly hard. I can attest to that.

[KingOfMadCows]

Warp drive is such a benchmark because it opens a civilization to other interstellar races. At that point, contact with other aliens is pretty much guaranteed. And we see how Starfleet can make contact with pre-warp aliens that have already made contact with warp capable aliens.

[tfh]

I have always thought that at the end of the day Star Trek is firmly about the human conditions. There are no aliens in Star Trek, aliens are there to amplify certain aspects of human nature and I think that is how the best Star Trek episodes are written.

[TheDragonOfWhi]

The idea that the achievement of Warp is not a bench mark for societal progress but more a sign that you will be meeting others sooner or later.

[mahatmarandy]

Humanity is neither inherently good nor inherently bad. We are simply human. When we act in a benevolent and life affirming way, we generally call that good, but when we behave in a selfish and violent nature, that is considered bad. But some people simply don’t care. And sometimes bad behavior is justified (such as fighting against the Nazis in WW2, because pacifism would have been worse in that context) and sometimes good behavior can be unjustified.

The business of being human is really really complicated, after all.

The original Trek never said Earth was a utopia, simply that it’s much better than the present. In much the same way that the mid-1960s were much much better than 1660s. Sure, someone from the 17th century may perceive it as a utopia, but people from the 1960s know better. And people from the 17th century would figure it out eventually after they’d been here for a while: not utopia, but way better than where I’m from.

TNG hit on the idea of Utopia and the ‘perfectability’ of Humanity. This is largely based on the post-scarcity economy. Perhaps I’ve just read too much Dostoyevsky, but that never really sat right with me. Marx hypothesized that the cause of most human suffering and misery was a poor distribution of resources, and I don’t think that’s wrong. A starving man will break a lot of rules to avoid starving. A starving dad will do far worse to keep his kids fed. But I never accepted the idea that if everyone had enough we would all simply stop being shitty to each other. And indeed there are many many many examples of people who have more than they can ever use, and have never experienced privation, just being dicks to each other for no good reason.

Because, again, the business of being human is really complicated.

See, humans evolved from hierarchical predatory pack hunters (and gatherers, but let’s not understate the predation aspect) and we lived like that for about 300, 000 years. That’s our natural environment. That’s what we evolved for, and it still governs our psychology, our emotions, our competetiveness, our general outlook. We’ve only been ‘civilized’ for 10, 000 years at the outside (i’m being very liberal with that number, it’s far less in much of the world) and our psyches simply haven’t caught up with our new lifestyles.

So, yes, absolutely, enough of everyone for everyone would certainly solve a lot of problems, no question, and I’m all for it. But I don’t for a moment believe it would change our fundamental nature, or make us ‘good.’ Trek’s outlook in this subject in the 1960s seems more reasonable to me - better, but not perfect. From TNG on, however, the utopian aspect of Trek has seemed didactic (and hats off to DS9 for addressing it on occasion) and almost a religious conviction rather than a coherent feasible goal.

[emanym]

Who decides who owns what land is owned by who on Earth. Why does Picard have the right to his chateau?