Some people might have turned off the video when Stacey Abrams decided to say “I’m not a Star Wars fan…I don’t want a new group of haters” but to be fair she didn’t decide to talk about something she didn’t know that much about, since she’s a Trekkie without a doubt that can recall certain episodes that she happened to like. But her talk of a Utopian society was a bit, well, dodgy as such a subject usually turns out to be. People will continue to talk about Star Trek and how its many tenets are what folks should be aspiring to since in this particular future they’re not entirely perfect but they’ve still found a way to work together and create a bigger and better system that sees everyone working towards the common good. It’s funny how people say that but they don’t tend to go into the mundane aspects of life that exist beneath the glorious and idyllic life aboard a starship. What about the cleaning crews? What about the janitors? Oh wait, that’s right, those jobs might not exist in the future since there might be a way to simply clean and sterilize everything using a ray beam or something equally fictional, much as a Utopian society is at this time. The downside of Star Trek isn’t that it’s not Star Wars (I am a Star Wars fan and yes that was a dig), it’s that people are willing to believe that it’s entirely possible and will model their lives after it in one way or another.
There’s nothing wrong with that to be certain, but it’s not bound to work for everyone in the same manner since the world we currently live in is about as far away from being a utopia as it can be at this time since even those that are preaching unity and want to ‘heal’ the nation are still being pretty divisive. Listening to Abrams it’s not hard to see that she has good motives and would likely cite Star Trek and its many upsides when stating that this is the model that society might need to follow in order to really break free of the current state we’re in. But then there would be plenty that would gladly ask her just who would lead the charge when it comes to this new lifestyle, and who would foot the bill to make it happen. In short, it would be kind of a messy discussion that would no doubt lead to a big argument. But given the state of things following the election one might wonder if we’re going to hear more about this in the years to come if only because leaning towards ‘healing’ the nation appears to be what a lot of people are trying to do.
It is likely that Star Trek has come to mean enough to a lot of people and has helped shape who they are today since it’s been a long-running show and has changed things up so many times that gaining some form of inspiration from it has been simple. Stacey Abrams started her Star Trek knowledge with The Next Generation, the show that many people might be bold enough to say is the best in the series since it introduced Captain Picard and a host of other names that people came to identify with. To say that the show helped her to model her life is all well and good since this can be said for plenty of people given that there are elements of Star Trek that are easy to enjoy and even emulate in everyday life. But the Utopian feeling, sadly, isn’t one of them that is entirely possible since like it or not, humanity isn’t all that adept at sorting out its own problems since there will almost always be a dissenting view here and there to spoil what some would think of as a paradise where everyone puts into the same pot. This is unfortunately what some folks these days would want to see and while they extoll the virtues of such a system they also tend to deny the downfall that Star Trek doesn’t always explore, which is the fact that seeing the shiny, clean future that people want to see requires that there be a dingy, dark underbelly that will sustain this future. That’s what a lot of folks in this world don’t tend to focus on since it is a bit depressing when one thinks about it, but sadly it’s also necessary.
There is a positive note to the idea that Abrams took her cue from Star Trek and adopted some of what she saw in order to shape her own life since there are a few ideas from the show that might work, so no matter how one feels about her, she did what was right for her.
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