Is Humanity Good? – The Philosophy of Star Trek

27 thoughts on “Is Humanity Good? – The Philosophy of Star Trek”

• HELP THE CHANNEL GROW: https://www.patreon.com/rowanjcoleman

  Also that Trekspertise video: https://youtu.be/17knGMdX4cU?si=SAmzlbsWo2ly91FG

  P.S. I've seen some fascinating responses in the comments and I'm encouraged to see so much nuanced discussion in response to this video. However, I feel I should clarify something: At no point did I discount individual responsibility as a factor in improving the world. I simply said that the sentiment "be better" doesn't go far enough. Recognising when an act is morally wrong is only the start of a solution, not the entirety of one.

• Instead of the warp drive being the standard they should have made it the replicator system. It would knock out hunger, disease, etc making money practically pointless and thus making greed pointless.

• In many ways, Star Trek reflects many qualities of Gene Roddenberry and generation that went through WWII. Many of them, including Gene lived in their little corner of a state within the USA before 1942. They lived in a world that was recovering from the Great Depression, a period of hardship for many.

  Then with the war, many moved and worked in a world that includes long periods of living outside the U.S. or in other locations they had never visited before. Most were in a military organization of some kind. Then the war ended with the atomic bomb. Then there were more wars including the Cold War which everyone thought would go nuclear at any time. There was also a economic boom in the U.S. as well as the economy switched from war production to domestic production and the Marshall Plan.

  So, TOS is very much in that vein: military organization but not really just a war organization, exotic and different people that you should learn to understand, a struggle to better yourself, and a hard fought for utopia.

  So, all the following series are built on that world for better or worst.

• Maybe the creators of all the Star Trek episodes don't get too much into the systemic aspects of society's problems because they CAN'T. That could be for more than one reason. You can propose that this is because it might upset various decision-makers in positions of power. But it might also be that getting into those things would make the shows more cerebral, and turn off the viewers TTTT I don't have a solid opinion. I just want to throw out some possibilities.

• Short answer: No.
  Long answer: Janeway.

• 19:38 I mean, yeah. Star Trek is kinda fascist. In the same way most american media is lowkey fascist. Yall idolize power and control over others. Rodenberry was a soldier and A COP. His show is a cop's show, where military men are the most enlightened and the best way to organize people is with a chain of command. The reason the earth government is not explored is because it was likely to be rather militaristic.

  Watching the og rn and its always funny to see how their happy ending is often "let us colonize you". The amount of times Kirk is sent to strong-arm deals off planets who Dont Want Starfleet There. I remember the one with the monster who is a mommy in season 1 which ends with the monster becoming an indentured worker of the miners in exchange of them no longer murdering all her babies… and this is seen as a happy equal partnership. Miners get riches, monster gets… babies not being murdered anymore and a lifetime of work for them all (since the miners expect the babies to ALSO mine for them).

• Your last bit is spot-on: do we have the tools to overcome our problems & evolve? I think we do. All it takes is the right people being in the right places, and a paradigm in how we think of the world.

• Says Rousseau who was a complete misogynist, and believed women not capable of running or creating soiety.

• i do err on the side of Hobbes in so far as Man's nature and think Rousseau was a touch naive. but obviously i think we should be active and societal in our approach to making the ideals of Star Trek a reality. We cant just wat for the Vulcans to save us, as a libertarian leaning individualist i am in general predisposed to be in favor of individualist solutions and against collectivism but its a balancing act. . Rousseau was right when it comes to murder for example and in how easy states and systems can be corrupted and need to be fixed at a systemic level at times/. but Hobbes was right in that anarchy doesn't lead to paradise either . we need society and civilization to curb excess negative impulses. and sometimes people who are yelling "systemic corruption: are just avoiding taking responsibility themselves.

• This is a really good video, but I think your interpretation of the biological basis of species' behaviour is wrong. Yes Star Trek too often portrays species as a monoculture, but that's a consequence of the medium (one-episode appearances). Star Trek rarely (if ever) says that a species has a biological predisposition to a particular behaviour (other than Terrans, which was a bad bit of writing IMO), as it's the culture that predisposes them.

  Instead, when it has the time to develop a species, it shows us that Klingons, Vulcans, and Ferengi can have wildly different philosophies regardless of any underlying biology.

  The video rightly points this out about the Bajorans and the Cardassians, but I think it is true more generally.

• Is humanity good? Short answer- No. Long answer- Hell No! Will they be good by the 24th century? LOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOL

• This video may be your finest work yet perfectly identifying flaws in the themes of the thing you love with tact and grace this is a must watch for any long time trekkie

• But star trek did tell us what to do right now to get us there! remember the bell riots?

• Dear Rowan..sometimes we tend to over-think things…couldn't we just enjoy it for what it is? a decent story with a decent avenue for escapism for a short time away from our real lives? any imperfections could be just accepted as weaknesses in a good story?…just sayin…been enjoying Star Trek since I was a kid…and still enjoy every aspect of it, anything bad or impefect, I just brush off and move on….Thanks for the vid, much appreciated, keep it coming…God Bless…

• I think the discussion on violence, and it being natural or not misses the mark. You are confusing intra-group collaboration and cooperation with inter-group collaboration. Human ingroups have great internal coherence, and likewise absolutely no qualms about infilicting horrific violence, the kind that would see you cast out of the ingroup, on members of the outgroup. THEY are not US, so therefore OUR rules do not apply to THEM.

  To then draw the conclusion that violence is something people need to be taught has several leaps of logic that run counter to established history and whatever we can call human nature. The argument you ought to have made is that in a post-scarcity society, the ingroup encompasses everyone.

  Likewise, the discussion on the Klingons seems odd. You seem to come to this with an idea that a culture that does not needlessly throw away lives can't be as warlike and aggressive as the Klingons are supposed to be. Gowron's sin is not leading Klingons to their deaths, it is leading Klingons to worthless deaths. If you have a culture of channeled and ritualized aggression, then spending your life dearly is clearly a socially accepted thing. If a Klingon is worth ten Jem Hadar, then spending a Klingon to kill twenty Jem Hadar is great and glorious and worthy of song. Spending a Klingon life to kill one Jem Hadar is foolish, wasteful, and worthy only of scorn. Nothing in that implies that Klingons are not warlike, not agressive, and so on.
  When Klingons are written well, we see a culture (and a species) that values agressive conflict resolution highly, and has tamed and ritualized ingroup violence It fits perfectly well with all manner of human cultures that were obsessed with ingroup honour and treated expulsion, rather than death, as the highest punishment.

  While you accurately call out The Federation for having been written by people who had "end of history liberalism" blinkers on, you yourself seem to wear a few as well.

• I saw somebody point out once that the thematic differences between Star Trek and Babylon 5 can be gleaned to some degree from humanity's first contact in each setting. In Star Trek, as you said, it was the Vulcans–while in Babylon 5, it was the Centauri, and you can see where the state of humanity in both series logically follows off of that civilization's model.

• Good effort but you missed the mark by a lot. more so than any ay else in the klingon power structure.

• As usual Rowan another great video.

• None of the races featured in Star Trek are "good," they all have their moral failings. Even the ones portrayed as the good guys and their allies.

  It's funny how Quark will lecture Nog about humans, when he's almost been killed by his own kind more than once. Every race in Star Trek thinks theirs is better than others. Cardassians think they love their kids more than humans love theirs, but commit the same acts of genocide humans did centuries ago. A lil behind the curve don't you think lol.

  But i say that all in jest. The way the different alien races of Star Trek behave towards each other is just a mirror of how the different cultures of earth behave toward each other. Aggressive races like Klingons, Romulans, and Cardassians were just mirrors of the "current" aggressive real world powers active during that period in time.

  Real life answer, nobody is "good." We're born selfish. As kids we argue and fight over toys. We have to be taught to be good. We see the results of that in our everyday lives. People are the products of their environment and upbringing.

  Star Trek is vague on how to create this utopia cuz even the showrunners have no idea how to get there lol

  I personally never got the implication that Starfleet i.e. "humanity" is better than everyone else. We've seen many examples where they aren't. But I think one can definitely make the argument that the Federation as a whole thinks they're better than everyone else.

  Star Trek also seems to present alien worlds the same way as the races that inhabit them. Just as ALL Ferengi are greedy, their entire planet is rainy. Most planets presented seem to only contain one biome. I think the one dimensional races and the one dimensional planets are both just a result of writing, be it efficient or lazy. I don't think it's "problematic."

  I'm a war veteran. You're pretty spot on when talking about soldiers during war time.

  TNG and DS9, thru the storylines involving Duras and Gowron added much needed depth to Klingons. And were some of my favorite episodes, since Worf is my favorite character.

  Yes, DS9 is the best Trek series. I was very impressed by how it handled religion as opposed to how previous Trek series tended to only look down on religion.

  In your closing argument, I also prefer the latter.

  Very good video overall. Clearly will thought out and researched

• "We don't even know what 'NCC' stands for."

  Um…it stands for Naval Construction Contract. Maybe it's one of those "you had to be there" things but this has been fairly common knowledge for decades. I don't remember where I first learned this but a simple google search brings up corroboration.

• I don't know about humanity being good or not, but they taste alright.

• Awesome video. I highly recommend reading The Dawn Of Everything by anthropologist David Graeber and archeologist David Wengrow. It really puts to bed this linear progression all-humans-are-savages idea by showing that the preponderance of evidence we have really doesn't support it.

• A lot of what you have said here is why I feel that the newer series of Star Trek has so many fans up in arms, both for and against the various current series. The earlier versions were more hopeful. from everything that I have heard from both sides the current versions have made the personal drama more visual. It is this last part that i have not bothered with the current versions of Star Trek, is it wrong for these to exist? No. Star Trek has always been a vessel of the times, as it currently is. I just don't like the current versions, so I find other things to do and watch.

  As for what your video is about, I tend to look at the older books that focused on the races of Star Trek, like The Romulan way, and various sourcebooks published by FASA. these works do flesh out the various races to a point that the shows could not afford to do, you would need whole series devoted to one race to pull off what you were hinting at. Although I would love to see this attempted. The closest we saw in this was DS9, and that was just because the cast were limited to one area of Star Trek and the writers were given the freedom to explore the three races shown.

• Seeing Thomas Hobbs and Jean-Jacques Rousseau in this episode I half expected John Locke to pop up but I guess not.

• 10:01 it either means "Naval Construction Contract" or "Navy-Curtis Craft"

• To live is to question i would argue.
  If we decide that now is perfection we would cese to improve ourselves and end up like Vulcan.
  I would say that Star Trek argues that Only by making mistakes and willfully learn from them to improve ourselves will we grow and finally meet those 3 breasted Cat ladies.

  Also one individual can make a diffrence just look at Zelensky at This very moment a Leader which the world deemed aclown, Yet by staying and not abandoning his post which 90% of the western society thoguht and planned for him to do (Evacuation) his answer rallied NATO and Europe (Most of em atleast) in a way no one thought possible just a few weeks earlier.

  One individual can make the vast collective in a way the collective never could have done by itself.

  That is why a balance betwen the two is needed.

  Best regards.

• Our economic theories don't really make sense in a society with effectively infinite energy, the ability to produce anything out of atoms in the ether, and where any fantasy can be lived out with perfect immersion.

  Hell, the most illogical thing in all of Star Trek might be the fact that Ben Sisko's dad owns and operates a restaurant

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