Star Trek and Tradition

In Star Trek, Gene Roddenberry painted a picture of humanity that was positive and forward-thinking. It was very much a humanist idea.

However, there is one thing I want to talk about in this post.

I was watching The Next Generation, when I saw an episode named "First Contact" in the fourth season. It was very negative towards ideas of tradition and exceptionalism. Very contradictory to my own perceptions of political science. 

Tradition was painted as bad, and exceptionalism was painted as foolish.

However, exceptionalism can push a people, a nation specifically, to perform better. It pushes them to exceed their own idea of how great their society is. Tradition, too, has a place in society. It is not, always, a bad thing.

(Morality is also based in such traditions. Without such morality we are setup to fail as a species.)

Anyways, the big problem I have is the "all or nothing" approach it seems to be advocating. All tradition becomes bad, and all "progress" becomes good. The problem is, how do you define those two things?

If all tradition is bad, then what of the tradition of personal property, intellectual property, and individual rights? If all progress is good, then what about eugenics, cybernetic implants, and democracy?

This is further explored in later episodes, making this one seemingly incomplete.

What I mean is that I think this episode clearly contradicts the very idea of the Borg as vying for perfection. If the Borg see themselves as perfect and individualistic organic species as imperfect, then the idea that progress is always good would seem to support them. How much better to be a collective, than an individual!

To me, this just seems out of place. I think that when such series get preachy, they lose focus on the overall truth that extremes are usually bad, even extremes towards progress.

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Hey, I made a video about Ayn Rand in BioShock, and how I think it doesn't make sense to say Andrew Ryan was Objectivist. Check it out, if you haven't! And if you still haven't, please subscribe to my YouTube channel!