The Long Road

01/17/2005 Archived Entry: "Humans in Sci-Fi Part 2: Human Culture"

Human culture of the far future is sometimes depicted as a homogeneous society, a global culture. The immense diversity present in today’s world is all but gone. Is it possible that in a few centuries, our cultures will all be merged into one?

I think it seems likely. Cultural borders are coming down a little more every day with media from any country being available in its non-native land. A few closed minded people aside, I think one day we’ll all be reading the same books and watching the same TV shows as people in Asia, Africa, and South America. I also think that it’s likely everyone will move to a democratic political system and that places like Africa will eventually move out of the stone age and catch up to the modern world; I mean, it’s not like they can stay this way forever right?

In most of Star Trek (in particular) everyone seems like they’re American or at least have American values. Which makes sense since it’s an American produced show watched by Americans. It’s also easier to totally Americanize humans and then contrast against the classic trek aliens, which are basically humans with 1 exaggerated trait. But how would a race ever get over itself and become space-born and explore the universe if their driving emotion is violence, or greed, or suspicion?

One of my favorite parts in all of Farscape was when Aeryn was being interviewed about the differences between humans and aliens and she answered that most races in the universe were pretty much the same; we all had the same wants and needs, the same disagreements and squabbles. The only differences were level of technological advancement which could lead to refocused societies (ie: why have war if you’re advanced enough that your technology could produce anything you dreamt of).

The statement somehow seemed right to me, or at the very least, refreshing against the usual “flawed humans” version of aliens.

Replies: 2 comments

Star Trek? American?

I don't know which Trek you're remembering, but the original idea of Star Trek was about as far from American values as you could get. The original show had the first on-screen inter-racial kiss, females were a regular part of the crew (if not in any of the main roles), and the whole society was held together by communist values!

And Gene Roddenberry's whole point of Star Trek was to eliminate stupid excuses for arguing (such as race and sex) and base plots totally around different ideologies.

It's true that the more recent series have not been as shocking, but this is partly because society has been quite inspired by Trek and the whole equality movement, and met half-way.

Sort of like how the Enterprise in the currently running series is named after the Space Shuttle Enterprise, which in turn was named after the starship in the original series.

And god help us all if everyone in the world is watching the same TV and reading the same books. I'm pretty sure not even a fraction of North America watches Farscape. Or do you mean we will all have access to the same materials?

Posted by ian @ 01/18/2005 12:15 AM EST

My view of Enterprise and Voyager, and to a much lesser extent TNG is that they're running around to new races trying to impose their values onto everyone.

Posted by Rayne @ 01/19/2005 01:31 AM EST