Nicolas Meyer Joins New Trek Series

For polite and reasoned discussion of Star Wars and/or Star Trek.
User avatar
Mr. Oragahn
Admiral
Posts: 6865
Joined: Sun Dec 03, 2006 11:58 am
Location: Paradise Mountain

Re: Nicolas Meyer Joins New Trek Series

Post by Mr. Oragahn » Sat Aug 06, 2016 3:46 pm

Jedi Master Spock wrote:
Mr. Oragahn wrote:For one, the intrusion of LGVYZ characters is most puzzling. Basically, ST science should have sufficiently evolved to have found an explanation and perhaps a solution to the causes of those personallity or severe mental disorders. I fail to see how, as a sexual species which survival solely hinges on the heterosexual bond between male and female, we could talk of any progress here. The real progress would actually require courage to rely on the science fiction part of the show to claim that homosexuality is a thing of the past, so men and women don't suffer anymore and can use – and want to use – their bodies the way it's meant to be, as part of their identity, having the will to create and harbour life within a sane cell.
At a Star Trek science level, the species is completely independent of heterosexual bonds between male and female. Think Forever War by Haldeman. Reproduction is no longer dependent on having an actual womb handy.
Ooh, that sounds Borgish. I picture those drawers full of babies.
I figure most people reproduce the normal way in ST, but by what you say it sounds like some citizen also rely on controlled birth environments. That said, if anything, the second option would most likely be used in a form of positive eugenism more than anything else.
If you want to think about population trouble, the trouble is socioeconomic. When having children is a luxury rather than a necessity, people don't have many children. How do you convince people to want to have children?
The same way weemen keep nagging men about having baybizz and the same reasons the near totality of them are absolutely cheerful and in paradise when they actually pop a kiddo out of their womb.
If anything, with all the wealth of resources, medical support and logistical help any human could obtain inside the Federation, having babies would have never been so easy.
You can't rely on accidental reproduction by heterosexuals when medical technology permits perfect birth control. You have to rely on people wanting to have kids (no more difficult with same-sex couples); or to start producing them institutionally.
Yes. That often happens when people fall in love and have sex. At some point, they do want to build a family, regardless of wealth. So life goes on.

Star Trek has a history of exploring alternate norms of sexuality through alien species. E.g.:

http://memory-alpha.wikia.com/wiki/The_ ... _(episode)
The Outcast episode rises an interesting question but the description I read puzzles me.
It says these J'naii are genderless, but they do have sex, and some people like to identify as either male or female.
Reading into the species' description, we learn that they don't have two sexes anymore after eons of evolution.
In other words, they all have one type of sexual organ and all is needed for reproduction is an interaction between two of those organs.
Any identification as male or female would be in some way an atavic expression. It may be a curiosity, but it certainly does not hamper the society's survival at all, since regardless of your identification, your sexual relation is fertile, when you're a J'naii.

Unless some of these sexual relations were only partially sexual as only one individual would use its (not his, not her) organ whilst the other used something else.
At this point, it would be a question of doing it for "fun" or else (the so called choice of homosexual relations), or being absolutely compelled to do it and rejecting the natural organ-organ intercourse (the equivalent of "strong" homosexuality in our species).
The later would be a mental illness dooming the species. The case of a brain not wired properly.
In the case of the J'naii, we're seemingly dealing with a –perhaps bigoted– strict cultural norm on one hand and a taste of exotism and excitement towards unruly behaviour on the other.

The fact that they may be sexually compatible with other species imples all sorts of things about their sexual organ though, like said organ can adopt an either female aspect (emptiness) or male one (plainness), meaning that they're neither male or female, or even less genderless, but actually both male and female.
The fact that they use a fibrous husk as some kind of third party element, which gets inseminated by both individuals, implies they either all have a male organ (which is just not going to work) or that for some odd reason, while one of the two partners could allows its organ to work in a female way, they prefer to involve that third element and both assume a male identity during the act.
And that, for all reasons, would make the current J'naii society quite hypocritical since at some point during sex, they'd have to chose an identity, husk of not!

Now, is the husk an artificial element? Is it something natural some bizarre people of their species started to use (like, erm, wanking in an apple pie) and found out that it could harbour life? So after so many years of evolution, the need for a female organ turned out to be unnecessary and somewhat all females were phased out, turning the entire population into homosexuals? That's messed up and very dangerous. It would have been a time of great distress back then and in fact there would be no reason for all the members of this species to turn to this contrapted method.
Besides, I'd be sorry for Riker.

In fact, many leftists would see this has an allegory of the opression of sexual minorities as they exist within mankind, when in fact it is a case in strong favour of differenciation to be either male and female and make babies within these options, itself within a society that imposes a genderless state (cue the rising promotion of the insane and warped gender theory).

Surely, the modern Trek that is brewing over here would completely nix this subtlety and bite-you-in-the-ass intricacity of the plot in favour of an all in your face piece of propaganda on said gender theory, gloves off. Defenders of this insanity would actually love to have access to psychotectic therapy, which is used to "eliminate all psychological elements of gender identity..." and produce genderless people.
Of course, the pious and full of virtue Trek crews keep encountering species with utterly monolithic and perhaps ridiculous norms. The odds are so stacked against the "natives" on the moral spectrum, it's totally over the top in favour of Captain Moral and his crew of Luminaries from Outer Space!
Like, how the hell cogenitors, who are essential and RARE within the species, would be treated with such contempt when in reality, they'd probably hold a seat of power above both other sexes and exploit their median position as a mean to provide counsel and organization to society, perhaps able to see both sides of the spectrum?
And of course, the cogenitor is magically taught all sorts of things, language and all that and immediately transforms into a hyper genius and a superior player of go, just to make it clear how the heteros were cruel and cowards.
Of course, one would cook up a subplot about how in the distant past, both males and females actually understood how they'd become potentially subordinate to cogenitors, and therefor PLOTTED to turn the later into practical slaves.
Boo bah.
Looks like an inelegant crass jab at the heterosexual duality, for supposedly mistreating queer and third sex stuff, with all the necessary grotesque exaggeration that goes along with it and the convenient denial of the realities, namely that we're not a weird tri-partite species but a sexual one; binary.
Or think about Dax. Trills have allowed for some fairly adventurous plotlines.
I think this is totally unrelated.
It is a symbiosis and I don't think it even involves reproduction at all, but my memories on DS9 are hazy.

There are alien cases which, conveniently and for very entertaining plot reasons, are assuming the possibility of healthy compatibility between very different species in regards to sex or some other kind of bonding. It's a very rose tinted take on life considering that even reproduction between different races of a same species can produce unhealthy offspring. So the idea of having radically different species that mate together and the results of such unions end up being totally healthy is purely gratuitous, even if it creates a new form of life, which is immensely positive in Trek and without much troubble, outside of species-centric cultural norms which, once again, are bigoted and more.

User avatar
Mr. Oragahn
Admiral
Posts: 6865
Joined: Sun Dec 03, 2006 11:58 am
Location: Paradise Mountain

Re: Nicolas Meyer Joins New Trek Series

Post by Mr. Oragahn » Sat Aug 06, 2016 4:00 pm

Jedi Master Spock wrote: The amount of Jesus involved with Ted Cruz makes it a pretty tough match.

The Federation is an individualist and liberty minded society in the sense of being one which guarantees a list of freedoms; but it is one where the list of guaranteed individual freedoms includes freedom from want. Which is not to be found on the agenda of most of those identified as conservative at present. I see it as a clear left-libertarian society. Right-libertarians might be able to see themselves living happily in such a society, but the presence of a social safety net and the fact that business is relegated to frontier settings (ala Mudd) or seen as recreational hobbies (ala Sisko) makes this different from an idealized right-libertarian society.

The profit motive is pretty much entirely absent. Capitalism - the use of ownership as a method of earning income - is conspicuously absent as well.
It probably depends on the era one uses as a context for observing Star Trek, since the idea of social support of those in need has, if anything, typically been something from the right-wing types, from the Church to aristocraty or any political group that pushed some social support. Actually, the generosity and collaboration seemingly advocated from Christians is a way to free as many people as possible from aforementionned want, but does not involve a safety net. It relies on popular support, although it needs a clear form of action at the invidual scale, whilst a monetary safety net is, by virtue of the economical and financial system, largely automatized, although it originated from a larger plan and a great mobilization of human resources too.
You'll also find tons of people who make the least effort yet claim to be entitled to freedom from want, thereby parasiting (taxing) the work of those who have to provide more.

User avatar
Mr. Oragahn
Admiral
Posts: 6865
Joined: Sun Dec 03, 2006 11:58 am
Location: Paradise Mountain

Re: Nicolas Meyer Joins New Trek Series

Post by Mr. Oragahn » Sat Aug 06, 2016 10:01 pm

Jedi Master Spock wrote:
Most conservatives take issue with "freedom from" much of anything without rigid and rigidly enforced definitions. The "freedom from offense" that has taken hold on the political left at the moment leads to absurdities like safe spaces and produces coddled, infantilized children largely incapable of navigating a world that isn't obligated to care about their feelings. It empowers the most thin-skinned and emotionally fragile members of society to run roughshod over the rest.
"Freedom from offense," or "freedom from insult," isn't a phenomenon of the left. Not exclusively.

Pope Benedict pronounced much the same in response to the Denmark cartoon controversy. Muslims themselves are, globally, conservative, and similarly have endorsed "freedom from insult."

Conservative students also issue complaints about being offended, and making similar complaints about being "traumatized" by content they find politically disagreeable.
It's certainly not an exclusivity of either side. If anything, freedom from insult is a form of required de facto respect by default, something enshrined in the Constitution.
Point of order, by the way: Marx had an idea of what the future involved in a socialist society: Machines producing things for people with virtually no input of human labor. Modern Marxist thinkers often label these devices "replicators," because it fits very neatly.
That is some interesting point we'll have to return to.
I wouldn't say that Star Trek is doctrinaire Marxist, but if we think of Federation credit being issued by the Federation to its citizens, the Federation operates to the economic left of virtually every developed nation on the face of the modern-day Earth.
Capitalists would probably try to control the existence of a replicator technology. Marxists would make the control of these devices as conspicuous as possible as much as it would remain in the hands of the organized society and not be owned on a personnal level.
Many definitions of socialism would fit with the later.
Who owns a replicator inside the Federation? Can it be done at the individual level? If it can, the economical system in place may have more to do with distributism then.

Post Reply