|
|
| | STAR TREK AS SUCCESSFUL MYTHBack when I was young and watched Star Trek: The Next Generation with my father and brother in the evenings, I often thought to myself when the title appeared, "So, when is the next generation?" It had not occurred to me that there was was a previous incarnation of the show. As it was, I certainly would not want to imagine the bridge without the commanding tone and smooth cranium of Captain Picard. Earl Grey, hot. One could easily imagine the same character on the deck of a Victorian Age warship, cultured down to the timing of his blinks.
Recently I turned on the passively-imbibed message transmitter, or TV as some know it, out of mild curiosity for what might appear randomly at the click of a button. It was the Sci Fi channel, so fondly recalled for the subtle play made during the mid-break segments on the word "if" hiding in the middle of the abreviation. The channel also is home of the most recent incarnation of Star Trek, and this time, I was watching what was simultaneously the first and last generation. The show, simply titled Enterprise, explores the first steps of the human race into warped space-time. The writing and production values have changed very little since the Next Generation set the pace with its remarkable 10 (I believe) season run. Watching three episodes back-to-back, the common principles of the approach of the show stood out among the specifics of the individual episodes, and I was again able to appreciate the brilliance of the Star Trek universe. Not for its androids or weaponry, its hot alien women or even its utopian vision of Earth's future. The single most brilliant design of the Star Trek myth is that the Vast Universe is utilized as a metaphor for exploring both the Individual Mind and the Global Mind. Both universal issues of the individual and his internal conflicts, and contemporary social issues, are handled with imagination, makeup, and limited special effects. I recall primarily one episode that broached the issue of sexual orientation and the repercussions of the "correction" of a natural variation. Some alien was attracted to Commander Riker, but this was a symptom of some condition, with a parallel to homosexuality. I also recall that this episode did not seem to comment on the rightness/wrongness of the methods used to "correct" the alien, but the effects of a larger culture's drive towards a particular vision of uniformity, the basis of which is brought into question through this very scenario of severed interpersonal connection.
I suppose I recalled all of this to relay the epiphany that has stayed with me for more than a week now. It is this:
What it is to be human, continues to be defined. Or, more accurately, expanded.
Through my research into the nature of perception and ontology, a little piece which I may post here in the near future, I discovered that the Search for Unity and its Beauty, which continues to inspire human endeavors of both science and religion, contains one inevitability and irrationality: all is one. Particles and particulars alike are partitioning conventions of the mind, or inevitable side-effects of the operational procedures of the brain. Everything is really something else, but the brain is structured to obtain only a limited set of data points from the curvaceous fabric of reality, causing us to think in terms of our natural constraints, as opposed to the forms which defy the tiny points of words and ideas. Some scientific observation, however, rather clearly defines our current problem of thought.
We know that matter and energy are interchangeable forms, and that matter can be thought of as condensed energy, which can under special circumstances be exploited by us in the name of energy or victory. Energy, or radiation, can itself be thought of as particular, in the form of the photon, though several curious experiments reveal that light also has wave characteristics. The photon, it would seem, is, like the atom, reducible to something else still. I have a hypothesis that energy can be thought of as condensed, or crinkled, space-time. This meaning, among other things, that all is one, and the wave characteristics underlying all things in this expanded singularity provide for the geometrical basis for the infinite (and unfortunately, irrational) universe. The passage of time, and all other perceptions really, can be thought of as the cognitive measurement of a particular value derived from the local underlying geometrical reality, or wave-form universe. Secretively, and most curiously, both the past and the future are coexistent, for these particulars are simply values derived from a single geometric reality. Time, in a sense, is eternal. As Einstein once said, "The distinction between past, present, and future is an illusion, however a persistent one." The illusion, of course, is mind. Anything that can be named or categorized is an idea, or construction of the brain, even the self. Ask yourself what lips are forming the words of the voice in your head, and you realize, that voice is nothing yet something, nowhere yet everywhere. And that, in turn, is the nature of the universe, which you are: beyond categories, beyond the finite.
But there is another side to this scenario. Your body, which supports your brain, which produces the mind, is constantly exchanging its molecules with the environment, while the mind itself constantly exchanges old information for new from the environment. And so what it is to be human is constantly changing, or to use another language of knowledge, our cognitive processes are encountering new values of the wave-form universe, as both it, and we, expand and mature. Thus the Star Trek myth recognizes and capitalizes upon the metaphor of the Sentient Universe, and as we boldly go where no man has gone before, we venture only more deeply into ourselves. We will encounter alien forms, to be sure, but they will strangely seem familiar (emphasized visually by humanoid form). The aliens of the Star Trek universe, of course, are consciously designed to represent human values and ideas, as they encounter and dialogue with each other. This universe, however, is not as concretely anthropocentric as our myths are in narrative. Chances are very slim that we will constantly be bumping into aliens who look like us with the exception of a few extraneous cranial protrusions. And no one really gets to see angels, demons, or the Big Man Himself. Historical time and space are not their home and they don't really look anything like how they're envisioned for mass consumption. The first aliens we meet will probably be microbes, not Vulcans; the first spiritual beings we meet aren't angels, they're fortuitous junctures of events falling under the purview of a coldly probabilistic universe. To some institutions this detail may be a grave threat to their personal God, but the disparate thinking between science and religion is a veil, an illusion, however a persistent one.
| | | Posted 4/20/2008 9:14 PM - 3 comments
- recommend
  - recs1
- give stars
- votes1
- email
 - sent1
|
|
