What we can still learn from “Star Trek”: a saga of harmony in diversity.
The death of Leonard Nimoy, the actor who impersonated Mr. Spock in the original TV series “Star Trek” has ended an age. Star Trek was a true 20th century saga, a way of seeing the world. To some of us, it may look completely obsolete, today, but it must have been telling us something deep; something important, if it was so successful, so followed, so revered by so many. So, what was the secret of the series? It was not technological wizardry; it was the human side of the story. It was a story that told us of how it was possible to have harmony in diversity.
The literary origins of Star Trek go back to Homer’s Odissey, but its immediate ancestor is “Moby Dick” by Herman Melville. With all the obvious differences, the similarities are many and obvious. One is that the Pequod, the ship of Moby Dick and the Enterprise, the starship of Star Trek, never land anywhere, they just wander over the oceans and in the interstellar space. And, despite all the technological wizardry involved, the command deck of the Enterprise looks very much like that of a 19th century ship (and, maybe, Odysseus himself would have found himself at home sitting in Captain Kirk’s chair).
It has been observed many times that Melville’s microcosm echoes the structure of the American society of his times, a society which needed to integrate and harmonize its different cultural elements. Think of the character of Quequegg, the tattooed islander who appears very early in the novel and, in a sense, characterizes it. But, if the Pequod is America, it is also a society which is already facing its limits in its search for a disappearing resource: whales. This is why I described “Moby Dick” as “The greatest peak oil novel ever written“.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
