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This whole situation is so surreal and disappointing. I grew up on Star Trek and somehow I just though we had (almost) arrived in a post-war, federation-like wo
by teekert 5y ago
This whole situation is so surreal and disappointing. I grew up on Star Trek and somehow I just though we had (almost) arrived in a post-war, federation-like world. We know things should be solved with words because otherwise there are only losers. It’s how we raise our kids.
I just keep thinking about how Jean Luc is looking down on us from orbit, slowly shaking his head whispering “Savages.”
- petre 5y agoI grw up reading Strugatsky brothers novels. They too became more and more disilusioned with the world. I haven't read The Doomed City yet.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- krageon 5y ago> I grew up on Star Trek and somehow I just though we had (almost) arrived in a post-war, federation-like world. The Star Trek universe explicitly had a third world war, which was absolutely devastating. In that sense we're doing really well!
- corobo 5y agoWe're on track for 2026 too
- mrfinn 5y agoInstead of that we keep with our old fashioned thugs sh*t-show. But hey weapons are such a big business. Who's gonna keep paying the bills without a few soldiers, mothers and kids dying from time to time.
- kungito 5y agoThere have been multiple active wars in like 1/4 of the world the whole time since ww2 and all the time before that. The only thing different is that Ukraine is closer to EU than the rest of the countries.
- tinus_hn 5y agoIn my opinion it’s just a matter of timing and sentiment; when Putin annexed Crimea nobody did anything.
- teekert 5y agoYes I realize it is perhaps hypocritical, but somehow I thought we had figured it out. I mean we (EU and US) also could have done more talking less warmongering. I’m also disappointed with our leaders.
- ogogmad 5y agoYou think that talking to Hitler is going to stop a war?
- pydry 5y agoSaying "Ukraine will remain neutral and will not join NATO" would have stopped this war. It's an unpopular fact but it's still true.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- KptMarchewa 5y agoYou must be insane to believe that. Would saying Gdańsk will be neutral and Germany can transport troops between East Prussia and rest of country stop Hitler? No, those are just pretexts. He'd just go further and further and attack while you'd be way way worse position.
- pydry 5y agoHitler didnt sit publicly on a border with troops threatening to invade for 3 months with one single demand. Putin isnt Hitler. He's a monster hes just not that specific monster.
- dmead 5y agoI'm there with you. Unfortunately they had ww3 in star trek.
- ZeroGravitas 5y agoIn the Star Trek canon, world-war III starts in 2026: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_Star_Trek#21st_century https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_Star_Trek#21st_cen...
- Andrew_nenakhov 5y agoWe're pretty much on track for that.
- Cthulhu_ 5y agoWe've been on track for that since WW2; tensions for nuclear annihilation were higher throughout the Cold War.
- jacquesm 5y ago2020: plague, 2022: war, 2024 famine? 2026 ... We're right on schedule. This is obviously no joking matter but this scenario has been with us for decades already.
- noduerme 5y agoIt's how you raise your kids. It's not how everyone raised their kids, and we only pretend we can solve everything with dialog and ignore the heritage of violence at our own peril. Putin outright said he was sick of the west talking endlessly. He also said there was no reason for the world to exist without Russia and himself as the leader of it. The more post-violence a civilization gets, the more it's prone to total shock when confronted with barbarism and violence. If we survive this, it's important that the millennials generation experienced it. It will hold off our own collapse into nihilistic defeatism for another generation or two.
- Stevvo 5y agoIt was Q looking down, slowly shaking his head whispering “Savages.”
- dimator 5y agoI watched TNG in high school. I never realized how much of my worldview it helped form, until I reflected on it later on. Because of that, humanity has really disappointed me. I thought we were on track, but it's just so stark of a reality check. Despite all our progress, our greed and petty squabbling make me feel like the future that star trek pointed us towards is slipping further into the future. I'm sure now that even in a post scarcity world, humans would still find ways to fight, burn, waste, and regress. Sorry, Gene.
- prox 5y ago“We think we’ve come so far. Torture of heretics, burning of witches, is all ancient history. Then, before you can blink an eye, suddenly, it threatens to start all over again.” - Picard (The Drumhead) “A matter of internal security: the age-old cry of the oppressor.” - Picard (The Hunter) “The past is written, but the future is left for us to write. And we have powerful tools, openness, optimism, and the spirit of curiosity. All they have is secrecy and fear. And fear is the great destroyer.” - Picard (Broken Pieces)
- Ajef 5y ago> I thought we were on track, but it's just so stark of a reality check. While I understand the world view and it's utopian appeal. I believe what your youth might have been missing is an incentive to critically think and search for information that is not curated for you. In the last decades there has been not much (imo) implying we are anywhere even heading towards such a society. I believe it can only be perceived that way if you omit the large parts of society and especially the world as a whole. Local things like changes in living standard for most of the population, crime rates, organized crime. International things like piracy, human trafficking, corruption in different parts of the world. If you look beyond a local bubble, there doesnt seem to be much implying much was heading towards a society you refer to. I do not wish to imply you don't think critically, just that there are too many topics for anyone to inform themselves about all of them. At best we are aware of what we know more about and what we know less about. Regarding critical thought: While I believe it is important to teach youth about independant thought and critical thinking, I also want for young people to have a somewhat sheltered youth and not to worry about all the horrible things in the world. As so many things it's complicated.
- 5350-uiop-1130 5y agoUS has been blowing up afghan villagers (and kids/babies) for last 20 years. You only noticed this now?? Have you been living inside a watermelon.
- drran 5y agoWhy US was in Afghanistan in the first place? Uh, they blow up American city...
- tut-urut-utut 5y agoWasn't that a citizen of the US ally Saudi Arabia that "blew up American city"? Why didn't you destroy Saudi Arabia instead? Because they pay their tribute in oil, and you had to destroy "someone", and Afghanistan was the first in the alphabetical list of countries that met the criteria for destruction?
- T-A 5y agoThe fact that said citizen of Saudi Arabia was based in Afghanistan and protected by the country's Taliban rulers may have had something to do with that...
- seventhtiger 5y agoHe was exiled in 1991 and ostracized by his family, 10 years before 9/11. He wasn't a citizen of Saudi Arabia when the attack was planned and executed.
- roca 5y agoThe US spent many billions of dollars feeding Afghanistan, building infrastructure, educating its people, and trying to protect them (especially women) from the Taliban. It didn't work, unfortunately.
- gspetr 5y agoProduction of opium and its derivatives before it was under US control and after. These are the only 2 numbers you should look at.
- tut-urut-utut 5y agoStar Trek fleet had actually excellent policies: - "any contact to less developed civilizations is strictly forbidden". - "do not interfere in any way and don't take a side in conflicts of sovereign civilizations". Both of them were crucial. If we followed these principles, the world would be much happier and peaceful place. What do we do instead? Bomb democracy into societies not yet ready for it, force trade agreements to detriment of less developed countries, incite and profit from wars that would either never happen or finish much earlier if we left those people alone. If we were James T Kirk and Jan Luc Picard instead of Joe Biden and Vladimir Putin, we should not need to worry for the future of human species.
- roca 5y agoIf Starfleet's policy is to simply stand aside and watch while one civilization genocides another, I'm not a fan.
- Cthulhu_ 5y ago> If we followed these principles, the world would be much happier and peaceful place. But countries like Russia would be free to invade Ukraine and others because of the "don't interfere" and "don't take a side" policy. It's like the "I did nothing" poem. NATO was founded to try and prevent another country from building an empire like Germany tried in WW2, because at the time it was like that poem, first they came. Which was about politics and religious groups initially, but it applies to Germany's conquest of Europe as well.
- tut-urut-utut 5y ago> But countries like Russia would be free to invade Ukraine and others because of the "don't interfere" and "don't take a side" policy. The "don't interfere" policy would also apply to Russia. And if they still try, the others would be responsible not to let them interfere. In the same way as others would need to stop China, USA, and Zimbabwe when they attempt to interfere with another sovereign state on the lesser level of development.
- 5y ago
- pkdpic 5y agoIt feels like a good time to watch encounter at farpoint. I cant think of the right Picard quote to pull from it but the general sentiment seems appropriate for the moment.
- ayngg 5y agoIf someone feels like they are losing either way (through words or conflict), making everyone lose through conflict instead of just them might not seems so bad. For the most part, people in western developed nations are sheltered from the fact that most of the world lives under much less secure circumstances, where things can fall apart very quickly. Even in the privileged world of developed nations, it doesn't take much to see the soft white underbelly of humanity that exists alongside us but is often ignored. Power and politics rarely align incentives in ways where everyone benefits equally.
- formerly_proven 5y ago> I just though we had (almost) arrived in a post-war, federation-like world 15 years ago Russia was participating in NATO and even US-lead exercises like BALTOPS. Putin suggested to join NATO in the early 2000s.
- watwut 5y ago> I just keep thinking about how Jean Luc is looking down on us from orbit, slowly shaking his head whispering “Savages.” I think that issue there is that Star Trek is a fiction.
- pilsetnieks 5y agoYou are not alone, there are academics who have build careers around this notion: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_End_of_History_and_the_Last_Man https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_End_of_History_and_the_Las...
- jzb 5y agoStar Trek is a post-nuclear war story, right? And a post-capitalist society? So far, humanity still hasn’t felt the need to unify or try to provide for all people. We’re way off from that utopian vision.
- mcdonje 5y agoStar Trek is a communist utopia. Our world won't resemble it as long as their are people who have the means and motivation to circumvent democracy. Unfortunately, such people exist in every major power.
- dunkelheit 5y agoThe only reason why this is not happening is that there is more than one such "federation" currently and no one is unquestionably stronger. And at no point in history had a stronger faction submitted to the will of a weaker faction just to avoid hostilities. In a sense war is just a reality check when it is unclear who is really stronger. While studying history, it struck me that many countries (current unit of sovereignty) honor some person who was a "great unifier" - created a cohesive whole and put an end to internal conflicts. As a rule, this person was a war-mongering psychopath. As you notice, at the end of the 20th century we almost had this kind of "federation" when the US and its allies were the only center of power in the world. The US arrived at that point by winning an economic and cultural war. But its coalition failed to entrench itself, grew weaker and more bloated and now we are facing these dangerous rifts between different factions of humanity. Note: in the current emotional climate this may sound like war apologism. It is not - war is unspeakably horrible for everyone involved. But this is what an impartial alien looking from an orbit would deduce about the humanity.
- Ancapistani 5y agoFWIW, I 100% agree with this assessment. Regardless of the outcome of the current flareup, I believe we're seeing the end of "Pax Americana". There is no way to accurately predict what will come next.
- ukraineally 5y ago>This whole situation is so surreal and disappointing. I grew up on Star Trek and somehow I just though we had (almost) arrived in a post-war, federation-like world. We know things should be solved with words because otherwise there are only losers. It’s how we raise our kids. I too am a trekkie and we could still obtain this vision. So far only world sanctions have been brought against Russia. If the Russian people rise up and protest/overthrow their government. It would tell the world that such extreme sanctions are enough to crush a nuclear power and prevent war. That we are indeed post-war. That borders become less important. Instead of war, we take that money and invest in ourselves. We start building tall. If the Russian people don't do this. It means we are not post-war. It means we haven't broken the cycle. It means in about 2100, the cycle hits again and we have another massive war.
- gspetr 5y agoThe Federation is not the entire world, there were at least 4 more entities of that level who were distinct, and weren't particularly keen on joining the Federation. Star Trek: Birth of the Federation captured this quite well in its endings representing Loss, Allied Victory, Domination ( 2/3 of the galaxy controlled) and Total Conquest. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8A8N1N-dREc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8A8N1N-dREc Contrast this with the Cardassians: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fy_RbUKsaj0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fy_RbUKsaj0
- philjohn 5y agoIf we're going with Star Trek, I think the more likely of the possibilities is that we're more similar to the Terran Empire timeline, sadly.
- teatree 5y agoI relate so much to this. Star Trek shaped a lot of my world view. I wish we had more TV shows like that today. But then, looking at some comments here cheering suffering of others and passing judgement reminds me of the episode 'encounter at far point', maybe Q was right after all.
- hogrider 5y agoIdk how anyone could get the notion we were living in world peace, that's delusional.
- tim333 5y agoShoulda watched Star Wars more. At least Putin isn't quite as bad as Jabba.
- shrimp_emoji 5y agohttps://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/World_War_III https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/World_War_III