When you have children, at some point they do what all children do and get obsessed (in a nice, non-stalking way) with things you might not think worthy of obsession.
With mine years ago it was the pop song "Star Trekkin'." It was not only played endlessly on the car tape deck but demanded over and over again. "Again! Put it on again, dad" came the chorus from the back seat.
I am not, I should point out here, particularly interested in pop music. I am of a generation that believed good pop music ended on December 31st, 1989. Oh sure, there have been the odd decent songs since then, but nothing as consistently poppy as we were fed in the 'eighties. One of those songs was the essentially trivial but ever so catchy "Star Trekkin'" from 1987. It not only made it to number one slot but turned out to be the ninth best-selling single of 1987 in the UK says Wikipedia (at a time when record sales meant something.)
So what else did this trivial song have apart from relevance to popular culture and a catchy, kicked-in-the-knee-so-can't ignore-it tune?
Well, it had a degree of truth. Apart from familiar catch-phrases (real or incorrectly attrubuted) from impressions of the show's participants the song has the line "Boldly going forward 'cause we can't find reverse." It also has a Kirk-like voice saying: "We come in peace, shoot to kill."
Funny, maybe, but true. You see if you look at the whole Star Trek thing you soon realised you are being are shoved, at warp factor 9, into a socialist utopia. This wonderful era to come has everyone wearing uniforms, a world government that allows only good things to happen, huge spaceships that probably cost billions of global currency to make but then that's no surprise as no one's counting. The workers aren't paid anything either. Rank and authority are accepted lower down the chain, decisions never really questioned outside of the bridge. Everything is free to these hardy souls but, because they are a thoroughly conditioned people, no one in Star Trek -- unless they are deranged -- asks for more than they are given.
I know, I know... it was a TV show and not real life though it's obvious you can't really see portrayals of the future as real even if apparently some people do. But the underlying message is that to be good you have to follow the diktat of authority. One gets sent out on various missions and face great danger though one must apply the Prime Directive which is tantamount to letting the peasants be themselves. The actual phrasing is: 'The Prime Directive dictates that there can be no interference with the internal development of alien civilisations.'
Bold stuff, except interference is what the show is about. People on far flung planets get interfered with, but strictly for their own good even if they don't know it. They get interfered with because in the Star Trek universe the Big Brother ideal knows better than the people on some backward little planet. Like Big Brother these worthless creatures can be watched and analysed and their fate decided. Justice is done at the end of a phaser though with stirring words attached, spoken gravely. Strangers can and do magically appear in people's lives to assist the cause of freedom, justice and the noble truths of socialist interference.
One of the central tenets of socialism is that people can't be left to make their own way in life. A peasant -- sorry, I meant valued human worker -- must be always guided, advised and corrected in their thoughts. Ideally they should be so encouraged to follow the norm that they never ask "why?" Under socialism, an elite can live very well but they only enjoy luxuries so they can have more time to spend on committees and compiling reports and establishing consultation procedures for your welfare. Your job is to do what you are told and not seek more, because better people than you have set your path out for you. They will negotiate on your behalf (with a generous cut for themselves, naturally) and make sure you stay where you are.
Star Trek, either inadvertently or otherwise, had that mind-set. No one on the great warship in the sky could say: "Let them be, let them sort their own shit out." No one could set a course for second star on the right and straight on 'til morning because the third star on the left needed help. Star Trek approved help.
This would, as the Kirk line in the song has it, involve coming in peace and shooting to kill. The Enterprise was armed with some powerful weapons and its personnel carried weapons, too. Beaming in to people's homes if necessary meant there could be no privacy, no way out for the poor people about to be forcibly helped. Technology allied with superior thinking patterns enabled the righteous to spy and interfere and then kill if needed.
But the line in the song that is perfect for the progressives of socialism is ""Boldly going forward 'cause we can't find reverse." There is no feature in socialism for anything but going forward, no matter what. In Star Trek the past may be visited through easy-to-access time-travel portals, but you wouldn't want to live there. In fact, there is nothing in the past worthy of regard under the progressive ideal.
Quite possibly, Star Trek could progress right past a wonderfully balanced world where people live their own lives and achieve their own levels of happiness. The Enterprise would never know, because no one would ever find reverse on the ship to go back there, in which case they could never sing "Let It Be."
No comments:
Post a Comment