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BS ‘n’ About…
Spaceship Earth
“A Tribulation of Troubles”
Imagine this for the next Star Trek sequel: After having hyper-jumped into the middle of galactic nowhere, the Enterprise finds itself out of fuel with a busted radio. Anarchy rules. The crew splits up into more than two hundred factions. Resources are consumed with no thought for tomorrow.
Kirk leads one of the strong factions and roams the ship, taking whatever he wants, consuming much more than his fair share. Because he is certain that science is the answer, Bones has locked himself away in the laboratory, tinkering away with test tubes full of the crew’s DNA and the most dangerous viruses in the known universe. Chekhov’s faction has control of the Enterprises internal power supply and is constantly blackmailing the weaker factions by cutting off their power.
Scotty keeps the transporter fired up, beaming aboard enough new crew members to double the population every generation or so. Spock has no doubt the Vulcans are on their way with an allotment of forty virgins that he has convinced his faction to eschew all technology and be willing to die to stop the rapacious Kirk. Uhura is convinced that it is their own fault that they’re stranded, and that they can’t be ‘saved’ until they manage to destroy themselves, being beamed to some ethereal paradise in the process. Sulu’s faction has control of all the ships workshop, not to mention most of its hard currency, as it grinds out shoddy goods to sell to the rest of the factions.
“Lights! Camera! Act…What?” Won’t fly, you say? Too unrealistic? Too ridiculous? No ship could ever fall into such anarchy and, if it did, it certainly couldn’t survive it?
Uuuuh, that’s a problem. A big problem. For what is our situation here on Earth if not a close analogy to the chaos described in the last few paragraphs. We’re stuck here in the middle of galactic nowhere with no means of contacting anyone else. We have a finite amount of space and resources, yet we breed exponentially and consume voraciously. We use science to mess with the very building blocks of life, without having evolved beyond our primal, animal roots. And we seem to take for granted that we are meant to destroy this physical paradise we now occupy as some sort of test for being granted entrance into an ethereal peaceful paradise awaiting us.
One thing is certain on this Spaceship Earth of ours. For all our righteousness and certainty of conviction, at least some of us are wrong: Probably not us, but if so, then certainly our neighbor. And his certainty is going to get us all killed.
Until we find a way of powering ourselves away from this corner of galactic nowhere in which we find ourselves, Spaceship Earth is the only thing between us and extinction. Until we find a way of getting that radio working, ours is the only input we’ll be receiving, the only voice we’ll be hearing.
As we accelerate exponentially into our unknown future, we are doomed if we remain fixated on the certainties with which we’ve navigated the past. We don’t know the specifics of how we got here, nor of where we are going, and those who tell us they do are doing so for their own selfish motives. All we do know for certain is this small stretch of time we now occupy, and it seems to be flying by us faster every day.
If humanity is to have any hope of physically surviving as a species, an awful lot of our neighbors are going to have to back off on the righteousness, admit they don’t have all the answers, and start focusing on surviving the future rather than validating the past.
Kirk is going to have to learn how to make do with his rightful share. Bones needs to quit messing with the really dangerous stuff. Chekhov needs to learn to share. Scotty, Spock, Uhura, and Sulu need to quit going off on selfish tangents and rejoin the crew. Anarchy dooms us. We need a solid long-range plan and a command structure to see to it that it is carried out. We need to start working together.
Humanity has backed itself into a corner where it sits cowering in fear, embracing its own extinction. Too many powerful forces have vested interest in ideologies and entities that drive us apart, rather than together, push us toward destruction rather than peace.
The 20th century was unlike any other in the human experience. We entered it on horseback and left it in a rocket ship. We saw vistas of knowledge opened to us that were inconceivable to our ancestors. Every day forces upon us new questions and new knowledge that invalidates answers we have dragged with us out of our superstitious past.
Humanity has fought savagely amongst itself since the dawn of time. If we continue to do so, we are right up against our evolutionary apex. We need to quit lying to ourselves. Divided, we’ve taken things as far as we can take them. Spaceship Earth is in full-blown mutiny. Heaven help us.
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