Starfleet Academy:
“Ad astra per aspera” or “to the stars through difficulties.”
The future of our world — and particularly the Western world — feels increasingly precarious. Political divisions deepen, international conflicts unsettle long‑held assumptions about global stability, and social cohesion strains under the weight of competing identities and fears. It’s a moment defined by uncertainty, where headlines seem to offer little more than reminders of how fragile peace and unity can be. And yet, in the midst of this turbulence, I found an unexpected source of clarity: a single, understated episode of a Hollywood television series that dared to imagine a gentler, wiser, more cooperative humanity. That quiet vision of what we might become stood in stark contrast to the chaos of our present, and it has inspired me.
At its core, that quiet television moment resonated because it echoed something deeply humanistic — the belief that people, when given the chance, can grow toward empathy, cooperation, and understanding. Humanism has always asked us to imagine a world shaped not by fear or dominance, but by shared dignity and curiosity. Our arts and culture have traditionally been the vessels for that imagination: they challenge us, inspire us, and remind us of the better angels of our nature. Whether through literature, film, music, or the stories we tell around kitchen tables, culture has the power to lift our gaze beyond the immediate turmoil and invite us to picture a future where humanity chooses wisdom over conflict. That Hollywood TV episode did exactly that, offering a fragile but compelling glimpse of who we might yet become.
A World Pulled Toward Conflict and Colonialism
When we step back from the ideals that humanism and culture invite us to imagine, we’re confronted with a world that often seems to be moving in the opposite direction. Wars and regional conflicts continue to unsettle entire populations, reminding us how quickly fear can override cooperation. Even within nations long considered stable, political unrest has become a defining feature of public life. Nowhere is this more visible than in the United States, where deep ideological divides have reshaped communities and strained the social fabric. Some movements promote a worldview that elevates one nation, one identity, or one interpretation of history above all others — a mindset that wrongly suggests superiority rather than shared humanity. This posture, rooted in certainty and exclusion, stands in stark contrast to the betterment of all.
The United States has long projected two contradictory images into the world: a nation deeply entangled in global conflicts, and a nation that simultaneously imagines itself as a beacon of progress and possibility. Few cultural works embody this tension more clearly than the US franchise, Star Trek. Born in the midst of the Cold War and shaped by American anxieties and aspirations, the franchise offered a vision of a future defined by exploration, diplomacy, and scientific curiosity. Yet even this optimism carries the imprint of the culture that created it. The utopianism of Star Trek is often filtered through a distinctly American lens — one that has historically reflected its own limitations, from orientalist tropes to racial and gender imbalances among its central characters.
Even its attempts at inclusivity sometimes reflected the limits of its cultural vantage point. Characters presented as “diverse” were often African‑American or Asian‑American rather than people rooted in their own distinct cultures and histories, meaning that representation was still filtered through a US lens. This mattered because it subtly reinforced the idea that American identity was the default from which all other identities were interpreted. In doing so, the franchise unintentionally flattened global perspectives, offering diversity without fully embracing the richness of the world beyond its borders.
Since 1945, the United States has engaged in roughly a dozen major wars and more than a hundred military conflicts, a pattern that underscores how deeply its identity has been shaped by both idealism and interventionism. Likewise, the fictitious Starfleet has struggled to balance its militarism with its potential for peace, complete with a Prime Directive that is intended to prevent militarism and imperialism, but instead often ignores human rights abuse.
This is why recognising these limitations is so important. When a narrative claims universality while quietly centring one nation’s worldview, it shapes how audiences imagine the future — and who they imagine within it. Stories that unintentionally reproduce narrow cultural assumptions risk shrinking the possibilities of tomorrow to the boundaries of today. By acknowledging where these narratives fall short, we open space for futures that are genuinely global, genuinely inclusive, and genuinely reflective of the full spectrum of human experience.
The Future Arrives
This is why the moment in “Starfleet Academy” (episode 2: “Beta Test”) feels so striking. In the Betazoid resolution — where the Federation agrees to shift its institutional focus away from Earth and toward Betazed — the franchise quietly steps beyond its long‑standing US‑centric, Eurocentric, and Northern‑Hemisphere framing. It was still a flawed representation (the Betazoid world is still white, US-cultured, and patriarchal) but the symbolism of this handover is deep and meaningful. In a single gesture, the story acknowledges that the future of humanity cannot be anchored in one nation, one culture, or one hemisphere. It implicitly, symbolically opens the door to the global Southern Hemisphere, to Africa, Asia, South America, and the Pacific, to perspectives and identities that have historically been peripheral in the Star Trek universe.
In this episode, something shifts. Instead of exporting a narrow American self‑image as the destiny of the world, Star Trek tentatively gestures toward a broader, more pluralistic future — one that finally begins to imagine humanity as a genuinely global project.
I have noted the intensity of criticism directed at this latest iteration of Star Trek — complaints that the franchise has become “too diverse,” “too inclusive,” or “too political,” as though expanding the range of human experience on screen somehow threatens the legitimacy of those who once saw themselves as the default. These reactions echo a broader cultural anxiety: a fear among some groups that equality is only acceptable when it preserves their own centrality. Movements that resist diversity often frame themselves as defending tradition, but history shows that such positions rarely endure. Those who once defended slavery, racial segregation, or rigid gender hierarchies also believed they were protecting a natural order. Over time, those beliefs were rejected, not because change was easy, but because the moral arc of society gradually widened to include more people, more voices, and more truths.
In that sense, the backlash against inclusive storytelling feels less like a meaningful cultural stance and more like the fading echo of a worldview struggling to keep its footing. History is filled with beliefs that once seemed immovable — from segregation or heterosexism to rigid gender hierarchies — yet each eventually receded as society grew beyond them. The resistance to diversity will follow the same trajectory. These old perspectives persist for a time, but they gradually lose their force as the world expands around them, becoming relics of an era too narrow for the century ahead.
The youth of today — much like the cadets in Starfleet Academy — are growing up in a world where diversity is not a threat but a fact, and where cooperation across cultures is not an aspiration but a necessity. The Betazoid resolution in episode 2 captures this shift beautifully: a symbolic move away from a single cultural centre toward a future shaped by many voices. It is a reminder that the next generation is already imagining a world more expansive than the one they inherited, and that their vision, not the fears of those clinging to old hierarchies, will shape the future.
A Generation Ready to Imagine Something Larger
When this episode showed their arrival at San Francisco – to the tune of Scott Mackenzie’s old hippie classic “San Francisco” – I feared that the episode would once again reflect US-centric notions of liberalism and humanity. The episode concluded with an inspiring transcendence: the old hippie notion of inter-generational change was brought about by the youth of Starfleet and Betazed working together.
This shift matters because it brings us back to the heart of humanism: the belief that humanity’s future is not predetermined by the fears of the present, but shaped by our capacity to grow beyond them. When Starfleet Academy dares to move its symbolic center away from Earth — and by extension away from the cultural dominance that has defined so much of Western storytelling — it gestures toward a future in which no single nation or worldview claims ownership of humanity’s destiny. That is a profoundly humanistic act. It suggests that progress is not the property of one culture, but the shared work of many.
And this is where the generational parallel becomes impossible to ignore. The young characters in the series, like the young people in our world, are not burdened by the same anxieties that fuel backlash against diversity. They are growing up in a globalised environment where difference is normal, where collaboration across cultures is expected, and where identity is understood as expansive rather than fixed. Their instinct is not to retreat into hierarchy but to reach outward. The Betazoid resolution captures this beautifully: a moment where the future is no longer imagined through the narrow lens of a single hemisphere, but through the collective imagination of many worlds. It mirrors the way today’s youth are already redefining what community, equality, and belonging mean.
This is why the criticisms of newer Star Trek — the complaints about “wokeness” or the discomfort with diverse characters — feel increasingly out of step with the world that is emerging. Such reactions echo older systems of exclusion that once seemed immovable but ultimately collapsed under the weight of their own contradictions. Just as societies eventually rejected slavery, segregation, and rigid gender hierarchies, so too will the resistance to inclusion fade. These worldviews persist for a time, but they do not endure. They cannot. They are too small for the world we are becoming.
What endures instead is the quiet, steady expansion of the human story. The recognition that no single culture, nation, or ideology can speak for all of us. The understanding that the future will be shaped not by those who cling to old hierarchies, but by those who imagine something larger. In this sense, the hopeful moment in Starfleet Academy is more than a narrative choice — it is a cultural signal. It reflects a world where young people are already building connections across borders, already challenging inherited assumptions, already envisioning futures that are more inclusive, more global, and more humane than anything that came before.
I look forward to a future for the franchise that draws from the full richness of humanity rather than a narrow cultural lens. This would be Star Trek at its finest — finally living out its own ideal of “Infinite Diversity in Infinite Combinations” in both story and spirit. Even more than that, I look forward to the real world that such a future implies: a world where our shared imagination is shaped by many voices, many perspectives, and many voices working together to build something larger than any one of us.
And perhaps that is the real lesson: even in a time of conflict, division, and uncertainty, the seeds of a broader, more generous future are already being planted. The youth of today — like the cadets of tomorrow — are not waiting for permission to imagine a better world. They are already doing it, quietly and confidently, in ways that transcend the boundaries of the past. In that small moment when the youth of Starfleet stood alongside the youth of Betazed, I realised I had seen the future — the same future that emerges whenever young Israelis and Palestinians reach for understanding, when young Russians and Ukrainians dream of rebuilding instead of destroying, when the children of Yemen or Sudan or Congo imagine peace in place of war. Not in the stars alone, but in the courage of a new generation willing to imagine differently.
I have seen the future.
©2026 Geoff Allshorn. I show my respect for Elders past and present and acknowledge the Wurundjeri-Willam people, the Traditional Custodians of the Land on which this blog was prepared.
