My buddy Heather recently blogged about her discovery of Conservapedia (no link will ever be provided) and their list of the worst majors and courses in colleges. I leave it to you to pay her a visit and see what she has to say (and to add her saucy blog to your RSS feed immediately!). But I want to riff off that post since one of the classes that Conservapedia (no link, no link, NO LINK!) determined to be worthless was Philosophy and Star Trek from Georgetown University. How could a class as innocuous as Philosophy and Star Trek earn the scorn of the intellectual dwarfs behind Conservapedia (no link, how d'ya like them apples?)?
Apparently, Star Trek has a well-know liberal bias...
Well, here's the course description: <-- Notice how I added a link? Suck on it, Conservapedia!
PHIL-180 Philosophy and Star TrekIt's not entirely clear why this course description would engender conservative ire. It's pretty tame (it's just a 100s level Philosophy class, after all) so I'm going to take a stab at why this class might get conservative knickers in a twist.
Fall only
Faculty:
Wetzel, Linda
Star Trek is very philosophical. What better way, then, to do philosophy, but to watch Star Trek, read philosophy and hash it all out in class (and on Blackboard)? That’s the plan. This course will center on topics in metaphysics that come up again and again in Star Trek. In conjunction with watching Star Trek, we will read excerpts from the writings of great philosophers, extract key concepts and arguments and then analyze those arguments. Questions we will wrestle with include:I. Is time travel possible? Could you go back and kill your grandmother? What is time?II. What is the relation between your mind and your brain--are they separate items or identical? Can persons survive death? Could a machine someday think? Is Data a person?III. What is a person? Must you have the same body to be you? Same memories? When do we have one person, and when do we have two (think of the episodes where people "split" or "fuse")?IV. Do you have free will, or are you determined by the laws of nature to do exactly what you wind up doing (while believing you have free will)? Or both? What is freewill?Text: Metaphysics: Classic and Contemporary Readings, 2nd ed., Ed. by Hoy & Oaklander (Wadsworth, 2005). Four short papers.Credits: 3
Prerequisites: None
- The Course Number includes the work PHIL which reminds them of Phil Donahue, noted Communist
- The title includes the word philosophy which is frightening and vaguely anti-Christian
- The course is only offered in the fall. You know what else is only offered in the fall? HALLOWEEN, the official holiday of SATAN!
- They're using an Affirmative Action Board! What's wrong with a whiteboard? REVERSE RACISM!!!!
- The course is taught by a woman who should be at home with her children and offering the use of her uterus to the state for reproduction.
- They're going to smoke HASH in class!!!! Hippie Libtards!!!! I'm calling the cops!!!!!
- Time Travel? Why don't you travel this great land of ours in a bus like historian Sarah Palin!
- This class advocates killing old people, just like Obama Death Panels!!!
- Mind and brain? Why aren't the discussing the SOUL!
- What is a person? It's a FETUS of course! This course advocates ABORTION!
- Free Will is not what Jesus intended for us, clearly this is an ATHEIST course.
- FOUR PAPERS? What am I, Ann Coulter? Do I look like a writer to you? I don't have time for that. I've got abortion clinics to picket and voters to disenfranchise!
Seriously, though, I think I know what's at the (dark, feted) heart of the conservative hatred of Star Trek. It's this:
"The economics of the future are somewhat different, you see money doesn't exist in the 24th centruy."
"The acquisition of wealth is no longer the driving force in our lives, we work to better ourselves and the rest of humanity."
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| Plato's Stepchildren |
But once we got on the air, and within the limits of those accident ratio limits, we did not accept the myth, that the television audience has an infantile mind. We had an idea, and we had a premise, and we still believe that. As a matter of fact we decided to risk the whole show on that premise. We believed that the often ridiculed mass audience is sick of this world's petty nationalism and all itís old ways and old hatreds, and that people are not only willing but anxious to think beyond most petty beliefs that have for so long kept mankind divided. So you see that the formula, the magic ingredient that many people keep seeking and many of them keep missing is really not in Star Trek. It is in the audience. There is an intelligent life form out on the other side of that television too.
The whole show was an attempt to say that humanity will reach maturity and wisdom on the day that it begins not just to tolerate, but to take a special delight in differences in ideas and differences in life forms. We tried to say that the worst possible thing that can happen to all of us is for the future to somehow press us into a common mould, where we begin to act and talk and look and think alike. If we cannot learn to actually enjoy those small differences, take a positive delight in those small differences between our own kind, here on this planet, then we do not deserve to go out into space and meet the diversity that is almost certainly out there. And I think that this is what people responded to.
Conservatives just don't get it. They can't seem to be able to comprehend a world without racism, sexism, money, politics and hate.
While there are countless examples of conservative Star Trek bashing on the net, this one is representative.
Is the franchise liberal or conservative?Wow... Where to start? Let's just disassemble this one
I ask this because I know a lot of people roughly my age (early 40s) who are conservative, and insist the show is conservative, or at worst middle of the road. I don’t pretend to understand this because from where I sit, over here on the right side of the room, it looks pretty staunchly leftist to me. Let’s run down the facts, shall we?
1) Nanny State that takes care of everyone’s needs
2) No Poverty (Except for those less-developed fools outside the federation)
3) No Religion (Except for those less-developed fools outside the federation)
4) World Government
5) Utopian Socialism, no money, no economics. Aggressively anti-capitalist
6) Free Love
7) No Politics (Implying a one party democracy, a’la the Soviet Union or People’s Republic of China)
8) No apparent art or culture (Except among those less-developed fools outside the federation)
9) No police (At least not apparently, though I’ve often wondered if Starfleet is a fascist organization)
10) Counselors - telepaths who are allegedly for the crew’s benefit, but behave similarly to the “Political Officers” on Soviet ships
11) No private ownership of weapons
12) No variation in education (“I know you are all familiar with the works of Descartes, Shopenhauer, and Flatulord the Immortal from the planet Flatulon Five”)
13) A secret police, as per DS9
14) No real private ownership of property
15) Expansionist
16) Multicultural on the surface, but this seems to be token acceptance to mask a deeper obsession with homogeneity - Worf can wear his beauty pageant sash, and Kira can wear her earrings, and Spock can wear his gay-looking Idic (Seriously, I’m straight and even I know that thing is a conceptual nightmare!) - but people are clearly uncomfortable with having a non-human around with Spock, there’s contempt for the Bajorans, and we’ve repeatedly established that Worf is more comfortable with humans than his own people. He’s tamed, token if you will.
17) Dissenting viewpoints are always presented as ‘misguided’ in some way
18) Mistake legalism for morality
19) Abortion is legal
20) Green
1) Nanny State that takes care of everyone’s needs
Near as I can tell, there is no real "state" in Star Trek. At least not one that's clearly defined. Like Iain Banks' Culture, Star Trek has no obvious "state" outside of Star Fleet.
2) No Poverty (Except for those less-developed fools outside the federation)
Yes, that's true. As Picard stated in the video above, there is no want or hunger because there is no scarcity. I'm not sure why this is a problem. Do Conservatives need poverty to feel good about themselves? And I don't believe the folks in the Federation would refer to them as "fools," but rather as different.
3) No Religion (Except for those less-developed fools outside the federation)
I'm not sure this is true. There are numerous examples of "spirituality" in Star Trek, although mercifully little "Christianity." Star Trek V: The Undiscovered Country was overtly religious, though, as it explored the nature of paradise and god.
4) World Government
Actually, it's a sector-wide "government," but that's just splitting hairs. It's unclear that other societies haven't retained their own governments. Vulcan clearly retained it's own unique rationalist system even after joining the Federation. I think it's less of a "World Government" and more of a "United Federation." Yeah, that's it. A "United Federation of Planets."
5) Utopian Socialism, no money, no economics. Aggressively anti-capitalist
Yes, no doubt that Roddenberry was showing us what life in a Utopian society of unlimited resources might be like. In the Star Trek universe, the "scarcity of scarcity" creates a society in which people are free to pursue whatever it is that satisfies them. To call it socialist is to misunderstand socialism. Socialism is an economic system seeking the same ends (distribution of scarse resources) as capitalism. Star Trek is obviously post-capitalist which makes it post-socialist as well. As for "Aggressively anti-capitalist," I think it's more "curiously amused by capitalism" as the videos above demonstrate. Picard is more bemused than anything else.
6) Free Love
There is no more free love in Star Trek than there is anywhere in the world. Can the author point to a specific episode (beyond the rather odd "The Way to Eden."
7) No Politics (Implying a one party democracy, a’la the Soviet Union or People’s Republic of China)
The concept of a world that transcends politics because it transcends scarcity is simply beyond the ken of conservatives, apparently.
8) No apparent art or culture (Except among those less-developed fools outside the federation)
There were several episodes where "plays" were performed by crew members, some in the holodeck. There were concerts and Data was a painter. This is a silly statement.
9) No police (At least not apparently, though I’ve often wondered if Starfleet is a fascist organization)
Fail...
10) Counselors - telepaths who are allegedly for the crew’s benefit, but behave similarly to the “Political Officers” on Soviet ships
Or maybe like the "counselors" on US Navy ships. The US Navy maintains a group of psychologists who travel on the ships to take care of the mental health of the men. Are they political officers too? Does everything reduce to the Soviet Union for you people?
11) No private ownership of weapons
This guy's got a gun...
But given that most of the action takes place aboard a quasi-militrary vessel it's not surprising that there aren't a lot of opportunities to see well-armed private citizens. In fact, you hardly ever see private citizens in the show at all. It's actually one of my own criticisms of the franchise.
12) No variation in education (“I know you are all familiar with the works of Descartes, Shopenhauer, and Flatulord the Immortal from the planet Flatulon Five”)
I don't even know what this means.
13) A secret police, as per DS9
Secret police is liberal? WTF? While the activities of Section 31 are troubling, I'm not sure how this can be construed as "liberal."
14) No real private ownership of property
See scarcity above.
15) Expansionist
Not sure why being expansionist is liberal, nor that the Federation is expansionist in the way you mean. If you mean militarily expansionist a la 19th century Britain, then you're wrong. But if you mean expansionist as in "join the Federation, visit Earth and Vulcan" then yeah, it's "expansionist."
16) Multicultural on the surface, but this seems to be token acceptance to mask a deeper obsession with homogeneity - Worf can wear his beauty pageant sash, and Kira can wear her earrings, and Spock can wear his gay-looking Idic (Seriously, I’m straight and even I know that thing is a conceptual nightmare!) - but people are clearly uncomfortable with having a non-human around with Spock, there’s contempt for the Bajorans, and we’ve repeatedly established that Worf is more comfortable with humans than his own people. He’s tamed, token if you will.
General hatred of the "the other" is a halmark of conservative "thinking."
17) Dissenting viewpoints are always presented as ‘misguided’ in some way
You mean like how the show dealt with racism in "Let That be Your Last Battlefield?" I honestly don't know from which orifice this guy is pulling this stuff from.
18) Mistake legalism for morality
As opposed to conservatives who mistake religion for morality. Give me legalism over religion any day.
19) Abortion is legal
20) Green
Take his poor judgement, bad assumptions, racism, sexism, classism and money away and Tea Party Baby will cry and cry and cry!
I would argue that #16 could potentially be one criticism, but it's less a function of Star Trek as a whole than it is about the society that Star Trek was being produced by.. Wherein multiculturalism is still a lot of on the surface with unaddressed tensions underneath (and it's also important to understand how Roddenberry's vision was filtered through the demands of network producers.)
ReplyDeleteHow would you address the nature of the Federation, vs the Dominion and/or individual races such as the Cardassians or the Romulans, who are generally at odds with Federation ends. I think the DS9 series in particular makes it apparent that while Startrek represents the Starfleet/Federation perspective, which is certainly utopian, the rest of the known universes may or may not agree with those arrangements.
As to the "Lack of Culture" argument, hoo boy. That's a really lazy reading of the franchise.. And it also contradicts the "Multicultural" argument latter on. If there is no culture, how can the "cultural tokens" that are displayed be "superficial"? Or does he mean that just the Federation itself has no art/culture? (In which case I would say, neither does USAID, Amnesty International, or the UN-- because they aren't "cultures," they're projects.)
Ari, I think that, in context of the shows, the perceived "tokenism" is unfounded. Star Trek, all versions of it, have demonstrated the most open approach to interracial (interspecies?) relationships. In the most recent movie, Kirk had sex with an Orion and you can't get more interspecies than that. For conservatives to ding Star Trek for being insufficiently multicultural is the height of irony, don't you think?
ReplyDeleteThe nature of the Federation, such as can be gleaned from the various shows and movies, is one of voluntary integration. There is no indication that species are forced to integrate into the Federation, participation is voluntary. Although we've never seen a direct example of an integration, if you look at the text of the Prime Directive it's pretty clear that, by default, the Federation is quite "hands-off."
"Nothing within these Articles Of Federation shall authorize the United Federation of Planets to intervene in matters which are essentially the domestic jurisdiction of any planetary social system, or shall require the members to submit such matters to settlement under these Articles Of Federation. But this principle shall not prejudice the application of enforcement measures under Chapter VII."
"As the right of each sentient species to live in accordance with its normal cultural evolution is considered sacred, no Star Fleet personnel may interfere with the normal and healthy development of alien life and culture. Such interference includes introducing superior knowledge, strength, or technology to a world whose society is incapable of handling such advantages wisely. Star Fleet personnel may not violate this Prime Directive, even to save their lives and/or their ship, unless they are acting to right an earlier violation or an accidental contamination of said culture. This directive takes precedence over any and all other considerations, and carries with it the highest moral obligation."
It's clear to me that the Federation as constituted is intended to be a benign cooperative organization, unlike the Dominion, Romulans, Klingons or Cardassians. Those were clearly governments built on conquest and militarism.
Now what I find most interesting is the dark twist that the Section 31 group took in later shows (DS9 for instance). They represent the dark (conservative?) side of the Federation. They use underhanded and illegal tactics to preserve the Federation.
"Its operating authority stems from a provision of the Starfleet charter—Article 14, Section 31, from which its name is derived—that makes allowances for "bending the rules" during times of extraordinary threats." (from WIkipedia)
I'd like to see a whole movie about Section 31, I think it's fun to explore the dark side of Star Trek.
Fyi, I have to admit that going back and viewing a lot of star trek episodes provides a much clearer picture than relying on my adolescent memory.
ReplyDeleteYou watching the old ones with Cap'n Kirk and Mr. Spock?
ReplyDeleteUtter crap. While I agree that Star Trek does have liberal views in it (hard not too when Roddenberry was a raging liberal the same as most of the actors over the years), there is also a lot of conservative philosophy in the various shows as well, or even moderate views.
ReplyDeleteI don't feel like taking the time to go over each point here (maybe later), but I do want to tackle at least one of these points, and that point in number 14 that there is "No real private ownership of property." Just off the top of my head, there is Capt. Picard's family album, Picard's horse saddle, Picard's flute (from "The Inner Light"), Capt. Sisko's baseball, Sisko's father's restaurant, Worf's bat'leth (which also deals with issue 11), Data's cat Spot, Archer's dog Porthos, Chakotay's prayer rocks, Voyager's EMH's mobile emitter, Kirk's eye glasses (Star Trek II and IV), Geordi's VISOR, Spock's harp, Jake Sisko's Mickey Mantle baseball card that he later gave to his dad, Ens. Kim's clarinet, etc. I could keep going, but I hope the point has been made that in the fictional future of Star Trek, Starfleet and Federation citizens and personnel do have personal property. They not only have personal property, many of these items are highly valuable to their respective owners.
As a last minute bonus before I end this comment, some form of religion views and religious freedom clear exists in not only the Federation but Starfleet. Chakotay and Worf both clearly have some kind of religious views which are respected on their various starships to the point they don't endanger themselves or others, and Dr. McCoy clearly has some kind of respect for God, as was seen in smaller doses on TOS and then a much larger extent in Star Trek V. Heck, even Seven of Nine develops a sort of Borg faith over the course of her reemergence as a human (The Omega Directive). And of course Capt. Sisko over the course of seven years goes from a skeptic to a believer to a god really, and defends his faith to his superiors. Those are all Starfleet personnel and I haven't even touched on non Starfleet personal like Kira, who to this day still has maybe the greatest quote ever about religion from a fictional TV character. “That's the thing about faith. If you don't have it you can't understand it. And if you do, no explanation is necessary.”
Are there examples of negative views on religion in Trek? Sure, again Roddenberry was very anti-religion. However Star Trek has benefited from more people than just him adding to the narrative. A more positive religious view took hold in Star Trek and didn't let go. As a Christian myself, I found a number of positive portals of faith in the world of Star Trek that I could liken my own religious journey too.
As a conservative, I do not hate Star Trek. In fact it was DS9 showrunner Ira Steven Behr who commented after the Dax lesbian kiss and the backlash from that how very conservative Star Trek fans really are. I think the reality is more in line that it's about even, much like American politics, with as many liberal fans as conservative ones. So again, I do not hate Star Trek, however I do find myself a bit annoyed at the growing voice from some liberal fans online trying to push conservative fans out of the fandom. Not very tolerant and ultimately, not good for Star Trek. Star Trek at it's best shows all sides and let's the viewer decide for themselves what is what, and that is one of the big things I love about Star Trek.
Thanks for the thoughtful comment. Honestly, I wrote this 5 1/2 years ago and haven't thought a lot about the question since then only to say that socialist utopias often distinguish between personal property and private property. A rather tongue-in-cheek article from Jacobin explains the difference:
Delete(from End Private Property, Not Kenny Loggins: Socialists want a world without private property. But you can keep your Kenny Loggins records. by Bhaskar Sunkara
"Thankfully, socialists are not interested in collectivizing your music. It’s not because we don’t love Loggins. We simply don’t want a world without personal property — the things meant for individual consumption. Instead, socialists strive for a society without private property — the things that give the people who own them power over those who don’t.
The power created by private property is expressed most clearly in the labor market, where business owners get to decide who deserves a job and who doesn’t, and are able to impose working conditions that, if given a fair alternative, ordinary people would otherwise reject. And even though workers do most of the actual work at a job, owners have unilateral say over how profits are divided up and don’t compensate employees for all the value they produce. Socialists call this phenomenon exploitation."
https://www.jacobinmag.com/2016/02/socialism-marxism-private-property-person-lennon-imagine-kenny-loggins/
It's important to remember that capitalism is a means to allocate scarce resources. But we learn in the world of Star Trek (and in the universe created by Iain M. Banks) that if you have an economy without scarcity, then the competitive forces that drive capitalism simply vanish. Yes, it's a utopian vision, but it's one that drives Star Trek.