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fiachairecht) wrote2018-12-15 10:35 am
fiachairecht) wrote2018-12-15 10:35 am
Entry tags:
on utopian futures
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Anyway about a year ago I was having one of my periodic 'Star Trek is a dystopia and the Federation is a police state' moments - I am always having one of those moments - and![[tumblr.com profile]](https://www.tumblr.com/favicon.ico)
tranxio asked: "What is [a/the/your] utopian future?"
This is a good question, and one that I don’t quite have a single answer to – it is, imo, much easier to find flaws in a self-described utopia than to design one from scratch. This is especially true in narrative fiction, where there’s … yknow, there’s a certain expectation of conflict –> resolution progression, which utopias do not lend themselves well to. I don’t think it’s impossible, but I certainly don’t think any Star Trek writers’ room has proven they’re collectively good enough at their craft to work with one even if they accidentally wrote one.
But. The first thing to keep in mind about utopias is that they require work. They’re constructed communities, constructed societies, and someone (multiple someones, ideally everyone to the best of their abilities) has to, yknow, do the construction work. Do the memory work: why was this utopian community created, what has helped sustain it in the past, &c. Star Trek is afraid of that work – there’s a reason Discovery is set only ten years before TOS, a reason why there’s a hundred year canon gap between the founding of the Federation and the start of adventures.
And. utopias aren’t inherently bound to a specific ideology. Whatever is driving this can vary – feminism, communism, a particular religion, whatever. Work has to be done to get everyone on board with the underlying ideology, or at least convince them that it poses no threat & the society it creates will be good enough that they should just let it be. Again, work, & work that has to be more or less constant, especially as new people come into the society.
Which is a third point – a true utopia, that guaranteed continued equality & quality of life, has to evolve. There’s a certain ideal of stagnation – the idyll of the garden & farm, untouchable because all the work has already been done. But what happens when someone who isn’t on board with the founding ideology of the utopia gets democratically elected and starts dismantling support structures? When it gets out that the robots and holograms have been sentient all along? if the boundaries of the utopia cannot expand once they have been proven not-so-all encompassing … can it keep the name? Did it ever deserve it? There has to be space & a mechanism for challenge.
There are no Narn forests and Londo Mollari dies knowing how fucked up it was that he specifically caused there to be no Narn forests and accepting the reality that there are people he will never earn forgiveness from. There are no Jaffa forests until they die over and over for the promise and reality of ones grown from the soil of their chosen care for each other. There are no Bajoran forests and Gul Dukat dies blessed and chosen by the gods of a people he tried to exterminate, at the hands of another outsider blessed and chosen by those gods. One of these things is not like the other.
The short version, I suppose, is: If everyone must be forgiven you have not found utopia. If there is no work to be done you have not found utopia. If only the outsiders are special and blessed you have not found utopia.
Anyway about a year ago I was having one of my periodic 'Star Trek is a dystopia and the Federation is a police state' moments - I am always having one of those moments - and
This is a good question, and one that I don’t quite have a single answer to – it is, imo, much easier to find flaws in a self-described utopia than to design one from scratch. This is especially true in narrative fiction, where there’s … yknow, there’s a certain expectation of conflict –> resolution progression, which utopias do not lend themselves well to. I don’t think it’s impossible, but I certainly don’t think any Star Trek writers’ room has proven they’re collectively good enough at their craft to work with one even if they accidentally wrote one.
But. The first thing to keep in mind about utopias is that they require work. They’re constructed communities, constructed societies, and someone (multiple someones, ideally everyone to the best of their abilities) has to, yknow, do the construction work. Do the memory work: why was this utopian community created, what has helped sustain it in the past, &c. Star Trek is afraid of that work – there’s a reason Discovery is set only ten years before TOS, a reason why there’s a hundred year canon gap between the founding of the Federation and the start of adventures.
And. utopias aren’t inherently bound to a specific ideology. Whatever is driving this can vary – feminism, communism, a particular religion, whatever. Work has to be done to get everyone on board with the underlying ideology, or at least convince them that it poses no threat & the society it creates will be good enough that they should just let it be. Again, work, & work that has to be more or less constant, especially as new people come into the society.
Which is a third point – a true utopia, that guaranteed continued equality & quality of life, has to evolve. There’s a certain ideal of stagnation – the idyll of the garden & farm, untouchable because all the work has already been done. But what happens when someone who isn’t on board with the founding ideology of the utopia gets democratically elected and starts dismantling support structures? When it gets out that the robots and holograms have been sentient all along? if the boundaries of the utopia cannot expand once they have been proven not-so-all encompassing … can it keep the name? Did it ever deserve it? There has to be space & a mechanism for challenge.
There are no Narn forests and Londo Mollari dies knowing how fucked up it was that he specifically caused there to be no Narn forests and accepting the reality that there are people he will never earn forgiveness from. There are no Jaffa forests until they die over and over for the promise and reality of ones grown from the soil of their chosen care for each other. There are no Bajoran forests and Gul Dukat dies blessed and chosen by the gods of a people he tried to exterminate, at the hands of another outsider blessed and chosen by those gods. One of these things is not like the other.
The short version, I suppose, is: If everyone must be forgiven you have not found utopia. If there is no work to be done you have not found utopia. If only the outsiders are special and blessed you have not found utopia.