Warped World

2063. Ten years after the end of "World War III."  That would be 50 years from now. Sometime between now and I assume the 2050s this ridiculous war starts. There's not a lot to go on, but there's enough I guess. Eugenics Wars. Mass murder. Genetic engineering gone amuck. Another date of 2079, says DATA in "Encounter at Farpoint," the bullshit still continues with fascists and drug-manipulated soldiers where people are held "guilty until proven innocent." Well, it's getting that way right now. 1996, 2063, 2079, these Star Trek people can't get their dates straight. Some other nutbag, Philip Green mass murders survivors of a nuclear holocaust too. Lots of insane people. They don't sound so unfamiliar to our time now. We're well past the 90s, and perhaps we've dodged that bullet, as far as I know there have been no genetically engineered dictators in the last 20 years, but that doesn't mean we won't get one soon enough. But really, who needs 'genetically engineered' dictators when we got enough of the 'normal' ones right now? 

Today, in 2013, when one looks at the situation, we have neither space explorers, warp drives or any contact with alien races. We do however have bad genetically engineered food that they refuse to tell us whether we're eating it or not, we have flip-top cellphones, which have now been replaced with stupid iPhones, we have advanced personal computers which are rapidly becoming 'stupidity-machines' that nobody will know how to use in less than 10 years, and people will be so stupid they won't even type words anymore.  We have idiotic 3-D movies, but no holodeck yet. It's likely that holodecks will only be invented once the porn industry figures out how to work them. Weapons of course always advance faster than everything else, meanwhile people are moaning about gun-control laws. A segment of the population seems unaware that the availability of pulse energy weapons is out there, and the kinds of technology that makes their little chemical powdered ammunition seem ridiculous. There's not much a 9mm let alone a .44 is going to do against a drone strike. We have 3-D printers, yet meanwhile a segment of the population is still trying to replace Constitutions with their religious books. 

Our movies are getting dumber not smarter, people are becoming more vicious, not more tolerant, and those people who see themselves as 'progressive' are still throwing caution to the wind, almost taking dangerous steps just to spite the 'conservative' minded religious-book-thumpers. How do you convince people of both political persuasions that they're being irrational? When I see people arguing that dumber movies are good for us, otherwise we won't get 'another' one? If they're all dumb, what's the point? Both sides of the political world are awaiting their apocalypses, with their forecasts of destruction. One side says Global Warming is coming to get us, the other says God is coming to get us. Both negate the other, and neither side has any rational solutions to these problems. Taxing the poor isn't going to stop Global Warming, and if its the prophecy of the Book of Revelations, well, there's not a chance in hell of stopping that now is there? I share many ideas with both these groups, I see a lot of merit in many things both of them have to say, but they don't care, I'm "either with them or against them." So there's a "no-win situation" right there we can't get out of. 

I look ahead, I dream of a better world, and these people out there seem to forfeit any possibility of making things better, especially when they refuse to see any point of the opposing side. The opposing side also refuses to reason with what it is they seem to argue about, and you hear a lot of "let them die," and "someone ought to" and "they should be hung for treason." It all sounds like the Dark Ages to me. If one tries to point to something better, you'll get accused of being a communist traitor who wants a 'new world order,' and if you try to criticize and point out the dangers of unfettered technological advancement, you get called a fascist. How the hell are we going to get anywhere with these people? Aliens would have to come down and reveal themselves and alter the course of all human history, but something tells me this just isn't going to happen, no matter how much Star Trek one believes in.

This world is headed at at least Warp 2, on its way to total destruction, and even though that seems to be common knowledge people just keep on being mindless consumers as if they hope that they'll all wake up tomorrow and everything will be different. It's one thing to dream of Star Trek world, but believe in it blindly, hoping someone will provide it to you, and somebody like Khan just might come along and lie to you, and you'll buy into it, and OOPS, he didn't have that in mind all along, and you'll never get your Star Trek world ever again. Do nothing to get there, and you'll never get there. One cannot just assume that some magic device will be invented and it will all just happen one day. The more and more people do nothing, dream nothing, the less and less we'll have any kind of future at all.  It looks like after 9-11 everybody seems okay with "the ends justify the means." So Star Trek world at any cost, which means we'll get there if we have to murder half the world, pollute the place and destroy the entire natural genome to do it. That's not going to work ladies and gentlemen. There does have to be justice in the world, and the road must be taken with a lot of precautions, and a lot of considerations. We're not going to get there by banning religion, we're not going to get there by making everyone one religion either. It should be obvious to everyone that this can't be done this way, but it never seems to be. 

The Pope says atheists aren't evil, thank God. Can the atheists say that religious people aren't evil now? Probably not. Religion is causing a lot of problems right now as it is, and it's likely nobody's going to be thinking rationally for a long time. What can be done if this is the case? You see in Star Trek, people try to get along, and respect eachother, there stuff to do, so they're not sitting around on the internet all the time posting negative shit about everyone they hate all the time. They have exploring to do, they have the unknown to investigate, they have nature to study, they have 'new worlds and new peoples' to go to and meet. This is something we truly need at this time. If we're not doing something like that, it seems, we're just causing war. Too much videogames, too much porn, too much idle time without any exploration and we get angry talkshow callers, hate-filled comments everywhere on every internet post, and ridiculous flame-wars about insignificant details of people's favorite things. How does this get us anywhere?

Star Trek. To boldly go. Where no one has gone before. Look around you. Is ANYONE trying to go where no one has gone before? Not at all. They want things to stay the same. They want things to go backwards. They want to fuck with things they know nothing about with complete freedom no matter what the consequences and they want to force you to accept the consequences of their actions. We've gone pretty far with technology already, and one thing we're going to have to realize pretty soon here, especially if nobody's going to build any spaceships, that if you're going to be doing this shit here on this planet, other people live here too, and you have no right to do that, no matter how much money you happen to have. You have to be held responsible for your absolute disregard for the rest of the human race, and the future, regardless of whether you believe you're doing it 'for the future.' You see, good intentions are not always a good enough excuse. These are the problems... and we cannot deny them while we seek for this better world. We can't stop trying for a better world either.