58 réponses à ce sujet

[The Devlish Redhead]

 

So the Federation is bad because they are the ultimate evolution of communism? 

 

Really?

 

Why is this bad, It looks like the ultimate society?

[Gravisanimi]

Communism isn't inherently bad or evil, if it is done right.

 

Well, not as evil as any other form of government, but the lack of government can be even more so.

[TheClonesLegacy]

The main problem is that this was really early TNG.

Early TNG is awful. The crew of the Enterprise were all "Holier than thou" Assholes to everyone.

 

They got better after Season 3. Became the TNG crew we all know and love.

 

But you can have any ideals you want. Just don't be an ass. Which is what they're being. 'Specially in that episode.

[ObserverStatus]

No, you're thinking of Metroid's Federation, those people are hella evil.

[Fishy]

Star Trek is set in a fantasy future. So of course communism seem to work. Everyone work for the greater good of society and to better and improve themselves and not for their own pocket or just more accumulation of wealth.

 

So if someone create more wealth the governement just take it all back to make you equal to everyone else. So you remain poor while your beloved government get richer. because of course they know better than you where to put all the cheese.

 

That why communisn will never work. You can't create riches if everyone is poor. Only the governement in a communisn society is rich.

[ObserverStatus]

Star Trek is set in a fantasy future. So of course communism seem to work. Everyone work for the greater good of society and to better and improve themselves and not for their own pocket or just more accumulation of wealth.

 

So if someone create more wealth the governement just take it all back to make you equal to everyone else. So you remain poor while your beloved government get richer. because of course they know better than you where to put all the cheese.

 

That why communisn will never work. You can't create riches if everyone is poor. Only the governement in a communisn society is rich.

I always assumed that the failure of communism had more to do with it relying upon certain assumptions about human nature which have been discredited by modern evolutionary theory.

[Obadiah]

What makes you think Trek isn't the ultimate evolution of Capitalism? The end result of a crapload of super-mergers.

[The Devlish Redhead]

What makes you think Trek isn't the ultimate evolution of Capitalism? The end result of a crapload of super-mergers.

 

Hmmmm That's interesting..

 

Can you go into more detail?

[spinachdiaper]

What makes you think Trek isn't the ultimate evolution of Capitalism? The end result of a crapload of super-mergers.

 

 

Hmmmm That's interesting..

 

Can you go into more detail?

 

The ultimate evolution of Captialism is the Ferengi Alliance. Commerce takes precedence over everything else while stagnating progress and ruining the lives of those without capital since it takes money to make money.

[mybudgee]

My personal fav episode of Star Trek:

 

 

 

 

[SwobyJ]

Technological communism, sorta, kinda.

 

Star Trek, in whatever form it took over the years, kept making it clear that the Federation wouldn't be so 'peaceful' and 'equal' without:

1)Salvation from the outside, so humanity didn't devour itself (Vulcans, as Mass Effect had Asari/Turians/Council/Prothians/Reapers)

2)Technology that made almost all capitalism obsolete

 

ST is still rather skeptical of human motivations and control structures. See: the above post, as a symbolic example. (I loved that episode, personally)

 

It just believes that humanity is capable of continuous evolution, to perhaps the point of being beyond organic physical existence. Eventually. And instead of regarding humanity as just dirty, sinful, cursed - it regards our humanity as integral to this process of evolution, even as it redefines.

 

Same goes for anything 'capitalist', 'communist'. Notice that the Federation still engages in capitalistic trade, but it is now as a more unified structure, exchanging with alien races. I think I've seen enough hints that this eventually will reach to a unified (or at least semi-unified) Alpha Quadrant in future centuries and millenia, and so on, once technology proliferates and becomes adopted enough, and species and societies turn to the Federation in various ways at various points. The 'Federation' then continues to survive and spread, its ultimate enemy being the Borg - which represents a more sudden and 'inhuman' assimilation of species into a whole. The Klingons and others represent the relatively 'unenlightened' ones like humanity used to be, who eventually all have to turn to better ways of life, bit by bit, but hopefully without utterly abandoning their culture (ST is clear that having culture and traditions and capitalism in itself is not bad). We see their stories through characters like Worf, of the events like the Romulan homeworld being destroyed and Romulans having to redefine themselves after losing their more antagonistic empire.

 

 

What makes you think Trek isn't the ultimate evolution of Capitalism? The end result of a crapload of super-mergers.

 

Indeed.

 

I think we need to remember (maybe get it smacked into some of our heads) that we have never seen an actual communist superpower. We've seen state run dictatorships lead by Communist parties, sure, but not communism in practice.

 

Because communism requires a state not being involved - just the community. This has worked on smaller scales (and for example, may work in a family or a group of several families), but hits roadblocks on the national scale.

 

Some argue that this is the eventual form of capitalism, and the longer we take to advance our capitalism, the more refined the version of communism will be, as opposed to crude dictatorships. Essentially, the more we see capitalism feed on itself and eventually merge into something that barely serves anyone, and the more we see technologies emerge that we know ought to be everywhere to help everyone, and the more education levels raise for the commons... the more people will actually welcome a form of communism without the corruption of selfishness to hurt it as much.

 

In Star Trek, technologies like:

-replicators

-interstellar space travel

-alien communications

-universal translators

-optional credit based economy

-advanced medical care for almost no cost

-holodecks

-transporters

-artificial intelligence

-and so on

 

, all of these encourage a society that, regardless of human biological/mental impulses for selfishness/etc, may reject capitalistic notions. ST may be naive and basic in some aspects, but it was never meant to be a perfect representation of the future, but more an idealistic vision, where even the majority of problems humanity faces can still be defeated through evolution of the self and of the community and of the species, while tapping into traditional notions, yet not holding tight to them.

 

We're seemingly starting to face perhaps the start of this stuff in recent years. The prospect that many, many, many jobs could be automated in the next 10-15 years (as long as the state and society allows it, and companies decide on it), is something that is not being regarded as much as like a fairy tale, but instead is something even probable. What do we do about that? Assume that other industries will open up in the meantime, and hope that the job openings are going to offer as many positions (as well as give low trained workers something to do)? Regulate automation so it doesn't disrupt society too much over the next decades, and largely keep our socialized systems? Or embrace automation and instead introduce more experimental socialized benefits for citizens, like the rising meme called 'basic income'?

 

 

For the record, I'm not much of a Trekkie.. at all. But I did like TNG somewhat, Voyager a bit, and the Q episodes, especially the early ones, were cool.

[The Devlish Redhead]

My personal fav episode of Star Trek:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

OMG TNG  "Conspiracy" was one of the best episodes of that entire series.

 

The mystery is we never did find out who the aliens were trying to contact.

Modifié par The Devlish Redhead, 18 janvier 2015 - 01:42 .

[Jeremiah12LGeek]

It's clean future Utopian science fiction. They solved the world's problems primarily through technology. The Federation is technically a democracy.

[Fast Jimmy]

Since lore tells us the all of humanity voluntarily works for the greater good, I'm not sure the Federation is a totalitarian government. It just seems like the lines between Star Fleet, the Federation and the general populace are extremely blurred in terms of their priorities, command structure and resources.

Then again, the Federation fights wars to control areas of galactic space, so territory matters to them. So resources, in some way, shape or form, matter, making their claim that everyone works without material motivation questionable.


Like others have said, it less of an evil government so much as an unrealistic/illogical narrative leap. All sickness, famine and internal war has been alleviated through magic-level technology, so at that point... all desire to gain wealth is gone? I'm pretty sure that's not how human (or even alien) nature works.

[metatheurgist]

Like others have said, it less of an evil government so much as an unrealistic/illogical narrative leap. All sickness, famine and internal war has been alleviated through magic-level technology, so at that point... all desire to gain wealth is gone? I'm pretty sure that's not how human (or even alien) nature works.

Roddenberry was claiming that there could be a better nature to man. I guess you could say such an idea is science-fiction.

In the Star Trek universe they have endless energy and energy to matter technology. At that point materialism becomes meaningless.

[The Devlish Redhead]

Roddenberry was claiming that there could be a better nature to man. I guess you could say such an idea is science-fiction.

In the Star Trek universe they have endless energy and energy to matter technology. At that point materialism becomes meaningless.

 

Can you imagine the chaos on Earth when replicators are first invented.  In terms of Star Trek there must have been a time of utter chaos.... Money would have meant nothing now.

[Fast Jimmy]

Roddenberry was claiming that there could be a better nature to man. I guess you could say such an idea is science-fiction.

In the Star Trek universe they have endless energy and energy to matter technology. At that point materialism becomes meaningless.

Yet there is still war.

War. War never changes. Just ask Ron Pearlman.

[mybudgee]

OMG TNG  "Conspiracy" was one of the best episodes of that entire series.

 

The mystery is we never did find out who the aliens were trying to contact.

Probably Troi (with her fine a$$)

[Jorji Costava]

If there's anything evil about the Federation, I'd say that it would be its often sociopathic interpretation of the Prime Directive (especially during the TNG era); in more than one episode, Federation officers judge that it would be best to allow an entire civilization to be wiped out by a natural disaster, on the grounds that preventing this disaster would be 'interfering' with their culture or with the 'natural course of events,' whatever that means. It's the result of writers who don't know much about ethics trying to come up with an ethical dilemma.

 

Also, this is only loosely related, but it's funny, so I thought I'd include it: Here's a brief clip of Ronald D. Moore (worked on a few episodes of TNG, a lot of DS9 and was also the creative mind behind the Battlestar Galactica remake) discussing Star Trek's penchant for technobabble.

 

[TheClonesLegacy]

There was also that one movie that tried to say the Federation is evil because they wanted to kick a bunch of Luddite squatters (Which wasn't their native planet. The Federation had just as reasonable a claim as the inhabitants) off a planet that had magic healing powers.

Which would come in handy in that whole War with the Dominion they were losing at that time.

 

Insurrection really is the worst Star Trek film.

[Drone223]

If there's anything evil about the Federation, I'd say that it would be its often sociopathic interpretation of the Prime Directive (especially during the TNG era); in more than one episode, Federation officers judge that it would be best to allow an entire civilization to be wiped out by a natural disaster, on the grounds that preventing this disaster would be 'interfering' with their culture or with the 'natural course of events,' whatever that means. It's the result of writers who don't know much about ethics trying to come up with an ethical dilemma.

 

Its even more stupid if its a plague, they is nothing wrong with giving medical aid to those who need it, you aren't sharing any technology with them.

[Drone223]

There was also that one movie that tried to say the Federation is evil because they wanted to kick a bunch of Luddite squatters (Which wasn't their native planet. The Federation had just as reasonable a claim as the inhabitants) off a planet that had magic healing powers.

Which would come in handy in that whole War with the Dominion they were losing at that time.

 

Insurrection really is the worst Star Trek film.

DS9 does a much better job of ditching the notion that the federation can do no wrong. We finally see the more morally grey aspects of the federation with episodes such as "In the pale moonlight" being one of the best examples.

[Jorji Costava]

Its even more stupid if its a plague, they is nothing wrong with giving medical aid to those who need it, you aren't sharing any technology with them.

 

There was an especially egregious instance of this in Enterprise; the series predates the Prime DIrective, but the episode "Dear Doctor" is clearly portrayed as laying the groundwork for it. Dr. Phlox discovers a potentially life-saving cure for a genetic disease that is gradually killing off a pre-warp species known as the Valakians, but he withholds the cure, on the grounds that if the Valakians are saved, it will stunt the evolutionary development of another species, the Menk, who live on the same planet and have an almost symbiotic relationship with the Valakians. Captain Archer is convinced by this nonsense, and decides to withhold the cure on the grounds that providing it would be "playing God. Anytime "playing God" is treated as a knockdown argument, you know the writers have no idea what they're talking about.

 

DS9 does a much better job of ditching the notion that the federation can do no wrong. We finally see the more morally grey aspects of the federation with episodes such as "In the pale moonlight" being one of the best examples.

 

"In the Pale Moonlight" (along with the series' introduction of story elements like Section 31), convinced some Star Trek fans that DS9 had betrayed Roddenberry's vision for Star Trek, to which my response is, "Yeah, and there are a lot of other great things about the episode too." Aside from Senator Vreenak's meme-worthy delivery of the "It's a FAKE!" line, it's is one of my favorite episodes in the whole of Star Trek canon.