Oh, don't get me wrong. The ideal is wonderful, and it certainly ought to be striven for. But as long as we're human, we'll never quite get there. Now, if humanity's core nature were to change, then a Star Trek-like society might be possible. But I don't believe that's actually possible to do; humans have unlimited wants, and always have. The only way to make a Star Trek society would be to alter people to the point where their wants are either finite or nonexistent, and this is fundamentally against everything humanity has ever been. I'm not saying that your past inevitably determines your future; I believe in redemption and in the power of a determined individual to get where they want to be in life. But actually attempting to change the underlying framework of said life is a futile endeavor.
Note that I'm jumping at the chance to be convinced otherwise.
Well…when you put it like that. =)
To begin with, I think you are coming at this from a false premise. Human desire may well be illimitable (or, to put it more accurately, insatiable), but, for one thing, that does not preclude the evolution of our society into one more enlightened and peaceful. The rearing of children is essential in this, as is the nature of popular culture. You have to remember that human beings are born as wild animals, with genes older than civilization itself, and that it is our upbringing alone—nurture—which is responsible for our entire sophistication as civil beings. Our sources of influence in our early years have an incredible impact on who and what we become later, and, as society advances its understanding of the mind and of itself, the rearing of children will open up to more possibilities,
better possibilities, than were available to us ever before. Fighting against that propensity are traditional social values that encourage many kinds of ignorance, along with bad parents who have children they are not prepared to raise, and, of course, a ubiquitous and irresponsible pop culture that feeds children a steady diet of bad ideas for their entire youth, and beyond. But, in fits and starts, we have made spectacular progress in the past several thousand years—or even in the past several dozen. That same insatiable human desire that you claim to be a liability in our quest for enlightenment is actually our greatest asset, forever pushing us forward to grow beyond ourselves and reach for lofty heights that our ancestors could scarcely have dreamed about. Picard’s 24th century Federation is hardly the “ideal” society; it is simply one 20th century dreamer’s vision of how civilization might fancifully look once we have progressed through some of the major social issues of our time, developed fantastic new technologies, and taken our place as starfarers in a populous galaxy.
For another thing, and even more importantly, there is no mutual exclusion between insatiable desire and serene satisfaction. Your false premise is that the competition of wills between or within individuals will always corrupt the so-called “ideal society.” Not true. To take a stereotype for my example, consider all those Zen monks and martial arts masters, who are immensely influential and wise, yet often are content to drink tea and drill their students rather than conquer the world. This is, of course, an exaggeration, but it is reminiscent of real people who can reconcile the pursuit of their desires with their responsibility to the world around them. The true secret of this power is awareness; awareness is the forge that tempers discipline and desire into the stuff of good character. We do not
need to fundamentally alter the human condition so as to fit our insatiable wants into a finite planet. We have that power today, and many people have already created it within themselves, by building their awareness and choosing a judicious path in life. I am not talking about a myth; I myself have begun to cultivate it in the past few years. I have grand desires, but I am also slowly learning to be at peace with the world whenever possible. It is immensely gratifying to feel as though I am floating on a cloud above the foggy din of everyday turmoil. It is calming, soothing, inspiring—and my dreams are not sacrificed to exist in this state of mind. Truly, such a claim almost sounds like divine intervention, and yet it is blessedly religion-free.
In one very stark way, none of this matters. The United Federation will almost certainly never exist. By the time our technology evolves to even a fraction of that level, we will have already attained the power to fundamentally alter the human condition, and we will have used it. Life as we know it may well be vastly different, so as to render the society of 24th century humanity all but unrecognizable to our modern selves. Indeed…with such power our descendents may well have destroyed ourselves by that time, or at least set themselves back to beyond Ayla’s day. But that is neither here nor there.
Oh, and in all sincerity, if I could have free rein of the Enterprise, I would go find the large forward viewing windows at the center of Deck 3, just below the main bridge, and stargaze for a long time. They never showed it in the television show but, from this position, the Enterprise itself—the dorsal surface of the forward primary hull—takes up nearly the entire lower half of an observer’s field of vision. The stars would fill up the rest. Then, for something even more ethereal, I’d find a comparable position on the forward secondary hull, with the stars beneath me and the underside of the saucer above me.
After that I would walk the corridors of the ship—some of which go on for miles. Then I really would visit the holodeck, to fulfill a few impossible fantasies of mine, like self-powered flight, electricity-bolts shooting from my fingers, and the power to control gravity. I’d probably act out a few long-held sex fantasies too.
Speaking of gravity, I would make it a point to visit the low-gravity gymnasium, as there are a number of physical activities I have always wanted to try in low- and zero-g.
And of course, as an astronautical engineer—and it was Scotty who got me started on that path—I would have to tour the engineering levels. Maybe I’d talk shop with Geordie LaForge and challenge him to a technobabble duel.
Josh: Say, have you ever tried remodulating the triphasic subspace warp inducers into the upper C-band, and then measuring your plasma coil flow constrictor ratios for a harmonic resonance—
Geordi: —equivalent to the lateral displacement of the embedded impulse inversion field, thereby increasing warp field response efficiency levels—
Josh & Geordie: —by over point oh-eight percent!Riker: You guys would do all that for less than tenth of a point of efficiency?
Josh & Geordie: Grr…
