Who has gone farthest? for I would go farther,
And who has been just? for I would be the most just person of the earth…
And who benevolent? for I would show more benevolence than all the rest…
– Walt Whitman.
In 1867, humanist Walt Whitman wrote Excelsior, a poem about the choices we make. He challenged us to aim for our optimal, most benevolent – and his words appear to have been largely ignored.
The world approaches the twentieth anniversary of a heinous act of terrible, world-changing violence. Even twenty years later, I see this anniversary as an opportunity for humanity to learn and grow. How do we respond to acts of brutality, cruelty or violence? Popularly, it is asserted that any response must include a balance of using minimal force necessary to remove the threat, along with rebuilding a better world afterwards. But for me, any response must also balance a consideration of the best from our past – as per Whitman’s words – with our potential for nobility and benevolence in the future.
Hence my personal liking for science fiction as a glimpse of – or a warning about – our possible future. At the time of the September 11 attacks, I editorialised in the newsletter of my LGBT science fiction club:
The movie “2001” prominently featured a large black slab, and ironically, the real-life 2001 struck a world dumb as we watched the collapse of two large monolithic structures.
This comparison is not intended to be flippant or disrespectful, nor to make light of the suffering of the thousands of victims of the September attacks. It is designed to show how tragically far we still are from reaching our dreams.
The monolith in the movie, “2001”, symbolised the struggle for humanity to learn and grow, to evolve into better people. The destruction of the WTC twin towers showed the opposite in action – how a few people can be compelled into committing terrible criminal acts by their narrow-minded and ignorant views from a past that deserves to be relegated to the dustbin of history…
Where do we go from here? Do we descend into World War Three and racist chaos? Or do we try to build bridges in order to cross our planet’s divisions of nationality and poverty, of religion and racism?
Tragically, history shows us now that the choices made over the last twenty years, in response to this act of inhumanity, demonstrate that it is too easy to fall into similarly unenlightened behaviours. We have countenanced the invasion of nations, the winding back of human rights, extrajudicial human rights abuses, torture and indefinite detention, the turning away of millions of refugees, the siphoning of trillions of dollars into war machinery, the rise of intolerance and bigotry, and the building of walls instead of bridges.
Have we become ennobled or unnerved by these actions? Is our planet a global village or a battleground? Are we building a better world?
I have hope for the future. Today is International Literacy Day, which encourages people towards education, reading widely and thinking critically. Today is also Star Trek Day, the anniversary of a popular franchise that has traditionally promoted futurism, optimism and nobility, even though its current incarnations are failing to uphold this legacy. Our potential as a species – and our literature as a reflection of that potential – offer us opportunities for responsible, informed actions to change the world. Let us create and claim this future.
I recall, and slightly paraphrase, some words from my editorial in 2001, to reflect the ongoing challenge for planetary betterment in 2021:
Our situation challenges us to build a better world – to feed the overlooked millions who are starving, or to heal the forgotten millions who are living with HIV or COVID. We could make a determined stand to fight a war against injustice, poverty and intolerance. Are we equal to the challenge?
Sources:
Geoff and Miriam (co editors), 2001. ‘From the Editors: In respectful memory…and in hope’, in Diverse Universe #9 – September 2001, Melbourne: Spaced Out, 10 October, p. 2.
Walt Whitman, 1867. ‘Exelsior‘, in Leaves of Grass.
You recently skimmed my bookshelves full of Babylon 5 DVDs, and novels by Clarke, Asimov and Le Guin. Then, you asked me your questions about “sci fi”. “Haven’t you outgrown these childish stories?” one of you asked. “Why does this fairy tale stuff appeal to you?” added the other, disparagingly. I felt like I was fifteen years old again, being chastised for staying up too late at night to watch a scratchy episode of Star Trek. But here is my answer.
I enjoy science fiction because it allows me to view the world through the eyes of a child – a youthful and enquiring mind. It gives me the chance to retain a childlike (not “childish”) sense of magic and awe at the world around me. Like a child, I can view everyone and everything as being full of potential and possibilities.
I enjoy science fiction because it is not fairy tale stuff. It is literature that dares to promise me possible utopias or warn me of possible dystopias. It challenges me to act, to take my individual place in the timeline of history, to actively create the future that I would want for myself and for those who will follow.
I enjoy science fiction because it renews my sense of wonder at the Universe. It reminds me of the insignificance of human ego when compared to the magnitude of galaxies, interstellar distances and planetary timescales. It tells me that our daily news – dominated by wars, politicians, economists and sports heroes – is fleeting and transitory. Science fiction reassures me that the beauty of the stars and galaxies will endure, long after our petty worries have been forgotten.
I enjoy science fiction because it promises me that humanity has a future, full of dreamers, explorers and heroes. It promotes the joy of diversity – including aliens, robots, cyber citizens, sentients, men and women, queer and trans and gender non-binary humans – all living together in peace and equality.
I enjoy science fiction because it prepares me for that future. It has introduced me to many concepts from tomorrow’s world – cloning, IVF, mobile phones, the Internet, space travel, ecological problems, robotics, computers and virtual reality – in many cases, years before the “mainstream” even considered the possibilities.
I enjoy science fiction because it has given me friends who represent the future. They are folk with open and enquiring minds, and they display a healthy scepticism about so many of society’s assumptions. They are true scientists in a world that too often equates science with militarism, religion or superstition.
I enjoy science fiction because I recall a television series, “The Invaders”, from the misty days of my childhood. The plot focussed on aliens invading the planet but symbolised American fears about communist infiltrators. In retrospect, I now see the show as an unintentional metaphor for gays and lesbians, bisexuals, transgender and intersex people living in every strata of society. We are here – get used to it.
I enjoy science fiction because it is a form of literature that will one day become “mainstream” literature – when the rest of the world is ready to accept its challenges.
I enjoy science fiction because it is all of these things – and more. It always promises me that the best is yet to come.
The popularity of the original series of Star Trek is based, in no small part, upon its portrayal of racial equality, possibly explained most succinctly by Star Trek actor George Takei (2015, @4:35 minutes) when he postulated that the starship Enterprise was a metaphor for starship Earth, adding that: “… the strength of this starship lay in its diversity…”. The show’s racial mix was exemplified in its most famous interracial kiss during a third season episode, Plato’s Stepchildren, originally telecast in November 1968. This legendary kiss forms one of Star Trek‘s most endearing urban myths, and serves as a focus of intersectionality entwining societal racism, misogyny and homophobia. The episode in question was a favourite of one of my Star Trek friends and mentors, Diane Marchant, because it also featured a kiss between Spock and Christine Chapel, but for some reason, even as an adolescent, I greatly detested the episode, although I could never quite clarify to myself why I disliked it so much.
Eric Greene (2006, 59) points out one of its obvious problems, and in doing so, he provided me with a personal revelation as to why I had always found this episode repulsive: ‘Kirk and Uhura were forced into that kiss – it was desired by neither and resisted by both. And a Black woman forced to kiss a white man against her will ain’t romance. It’s rape.’
Oops. It is time for Star Trek‘s 23rd century to have its own #MeToo moment.
Another major problem is that, according to this urban myth, the smooch was television’s first interracial kiss – which is incorrect. It was not even Star Trek‘s first interracial kiss. Kirk kissed Marlena Moreau in Mirror Mirror, an episode that aired the year before Plato’s Stepchildren (O’Boogie, 2015). Another, earlier interracial Star Trek kiss featured Khan Noonian Singh and Marla McGivers in the episode Space Seed; their romance having been made possible by the removal of an even earlier interracial relationship that had been planned for first season episode, The Alternative Factor (Cushman with Osborn, 2013, 474 – 476).
In all myths – urban and otherwise – the mythical and fictional dimensions grow as time passes, and mundane details can later assume Olympian proportions. We see this metamorphosis take place within living memory, wherein the mythology of Roswell grows from shattered weather balloon to alien visitation, and then to full-blown government conspiracy within a few short years. Similarly, having been a Star Trek fan for about fifty years, I can testify that in the 1970s, Plato’s Stepchildren was considered to be just another episode, and was not seen as being anything significant in Star Trek lore. It was only some years later, perhaps after The Next Generation, that I seem to recall ever hearing the idea that Plato’s Stepchildren gave us television’s first interracial kiss. This was not the only Star Trek urban myth that appears to have developed some years after the original events, to accommodate the needs of the franchise expanding to meet audience demands. But like all myths, this tale tells us perhaps more in its unpacking than in its telling: we desire racial equality, and a utopian story featuring utopian heroes is more uplifting and emotionally appealing than more mundane realities.
The realities are that various interracial kisses had already appeared on US TV as far back as 1951, when Lucille Ball kissed Dezi Arnaz Jr (Mcleod, 2015). In a wider scope, a television kiss between black and white participants actually first took place (O’Boogie, 2015) in a 1959 TV program called Pension Hommeles on Netherlands TV; followed by a similar kiss (Mcleod, 2015) in a 1962 UK TV play, You In Your Small Corner. Even the first season of US western series The Wild, Wild West – which I would see as a template for much of what happened later in Star Trek – featured an interracial kiss between a Caucasian man and an Asian woman in 1966 (Jay, 2019).
The presumption within all these kisses was heteronormativity. By contrast, David Gerrold (2014) points to a very early Star Trek episode, What Are Little Girls Made Of?, which includes a scene where Uhura spontaneously gives a ‘sisterly’ kiss to Christine Chapel in a moment of shared excitement. It is there that we find Star Trek‘s first interracial kiss, possibly overlooked for fifty years because it involves a same-sex kiss between two women. Yet the ‘groundbreaking’ kiss which Star Trek promotes in its urban mythology is the patriarchal, heterosexual rape kiss (with racist overtones) between Kirk and Uhura.
Our human adventure is just beginning; and we do not need to invent fallacious myths in order to find inspiration. By all means, let us find value and significance and vision in our modern literature and art, but let’s base these stories upon truth and positive human values. Star Trek was transformative as television; we do not need false folklore to fully appreciate its positive humanism.
Sources:
Marc Cushman with Susan Osborn, 2013. These Are The Voyages: TOS Season 1, (Revised Edition), San Diego: Jacobs/Brown Press.
David Gerrold, 2014. Facebook posting, 7 November, accessed 1 November 2016.
Eric Greene, 2006. ‘The Prime Question’, in David Gerrold & Robert J Sawyer (eds.), Boarding the Enterprise: Transporters, Tribbles and the Vulcan Death Grip in Gene Roddenberry’s Star Trek, Dallas: BenBella Books, 57 – 86.
Kayla Iacovino et al, 2015. Oh Captain, My Captain (Kirk), Women at Warp, Episode 6, 10 May. (See also Rebecca’s response of 22 July 2015 on that webpage).
Maurice Mcleod, 2015. ‘Why TV’s first interracial kiss is a proud British snog’, The Guardian, 24 November.
Dr Winston O’Boogie, 2015. ‘Did Star Trek really show TV’s first interracial kiss?’, The Agony Booth, updated 22 November.
George Takei, 2015. In Neil DeGrasse Tyson (host), Star Talk, 20th Century Fox.
Commemorating 54-07-30 ∇ 16:54:07 Lunar Standard Time (LST)
on 16 July 2021 0:0:0.
From Anthropomorphism to Apollo
– outgrowing ancient myths, creating new ones.
Launch of Apollo 11, 16 July 1969 (NASA Photo)
“LIFT-OFF! We have a lift-off, 32 minutes past the hour. Lift-off on Apollo 11.” – NASA Public Affairs Officer Jack King utters the first words to confirm lift-off.
On the 52nd anniversary of the launch of Apollo 11 towards the Moon, it seems an appropriate time to pause and reflect upon the philosophical questions posed by that scientific achievement. The story of the Apollo missions is the stuff of modern legend – and is destined to become modern mythology. Perhaps it is no surprise that even as the Apollo missions were preparing to land men on the Moon, the archetypical astronaut was being conflated with pop mythology comprising gods and celestial beings, courtesy of Erich von Daniken.
Another remake of astronauts as mythical heroes took place towards the end of the Apollo program, when Martin Caidin created the Six Million Dollar Man – arguably a cross between astronaut, cybernetic superhero and James Bond. Colonel Steve Austin, astronaut, did not spawn much of a mythical industry beyond his girlfriend – possibly because his formulaic attributes were better represented in comic book superheroes; and if so, perhaps his most enduring legacy may have been the fuelling of the prosthetic industry.
Taking this idea of prosthesis and osmosis one step further, it is possible to understand that the space age has transformed us – and is still doing so, upgrading humanity one mobile phone at a time. Our ever-accelerating hardware and software updates mean that we have become humans with different capabilities and expectations than our parents during the Apollo Moon missions. It is hard to remember the world before the Internet, before ubiquitous mobile phones and streaming and tablets and wifi transformed us into a species that is closer to a lived experience of the ‘global village’ than any other in history. This merging of humanity with heroic high-tech might be the next step in our evolution from organic to something more. Such change is something to be celebrated and not feared:
“Asked if he felt the pervasive spread of technology was beginning to dehumanise us, [Arthur C] Clarke replied, “No, I think it’s superhumanising us.” “ (Benson, 2018, 432)
This evolution may even extend from the human to the posthuman. Francesca Ferrando suggests with some qualification that:
“Etymologically, the term “human” comes from the Latin term “humus” meaning “soil”, which, in our solar system, is only present on Earth. We can thus see migrating to space as the linguistic and semiotic step towards the literal creation of post-humans…”
Thus we may be evolving into the beings that we currently imagine in our dreams and myths: better, stronger, faster. Arthur C Clarke asserts in his Third Law that, ‘Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic’ and maybe we get a glimpse of this advancement when we ponder our futuristic posthuman societies scattered across the solar system. Perhaps we are in the process of becoming our mythological heroes.
My introduction to science and myth-making came via two avenues: the first being the flying saucer craze of the 1970s (which really excited a teenager who had been inspired by the space program) until I began to realise – as I came of age – that the science and critical thinking in these conspiracy theories was abysmal. I later came to understand a fundamental truth about the UFO craze as explained by Alexander Geppert (2012, 335):
“Seldom can historians observe the making of a ‘modern myth’ in real time, over the course of several decades; the emergence of the UFO phenomenon immediately after the Second World War constitutes such a case.‘.
My faith in UFOs began to decline along with my wishful thinking about Chariots of the Gods and the possible circumstances surrounding the tragic disappearance of Fred Valentich as a local case of alleged alien intervention. Even as a callow youth, I could see that UFOlogy was more wishful thinking than scientific investigation. I was maturing into a youth who esteemed critical thinking and scientific evidence over excitement and superstition. If only the rest of the world could do the same!
My second introduction to science and mythopoeia came via a humble pulp magazine that was on sale in my local newsagents in 1979. I was attracted to the front cover and content of a magazine that proclaimed; “SCI FI – Religion of the 80’s”. Inside, Christian evangelist Mal Garvin proclaimed:
“We believe that science fiction is replacing some of the functions of religion. Though it may be doing it for the wrong reason.” (Garvin, 1979, 24.)
In that same issue, the Superman story was conflated with Biblical figures (ibid, 37 – 40). Even then, as a tender young teen, I sensed that this conflation of science and myth was somehow intended to lend scientific credibility to mythical/religious archetypes instead of acknowledging the grandeur to be found in science. If anyone was using the wrong reason to conflate science and religion, it was not the scientists.
Art by Dick ‘Ditmar’ Jenssen
Utopia, Dystopia, Mythopoeia
It is perhaps in human nature to construct a whole pantheon of mythologies, spanning from past and present into the future. As children, we seek role models in order to learn by imitation. As adults, although we have outgrown the need for imitation, we retain the instinct and use it to construct mythologies, religions and archetypes in order to personify what ideals we would seek to emulate or take as a warning of our fears. JRR Tolkein spoke of this myth-making in his poem Mythopoeia:
“He sees no stars who does not see them first
of living silver made that sudden burst
to flame like flowers beneath an ancient song,
whose very echo after-music long
has since pursued.”
Star Wars creator George Lucas created a breathtakingly successful franchise by borrowing extensively from other science fiction stories or literary tropes – including Flash Gordon, Dune, Lord of the Rings, Yojimbo, Gone with the Wind, and ‘Doc’ Smith’s Lensmen – and creating modern mythology which will undoubtedly echo our culture in the annals of history as much as the legend of Troy documents the culture of ancient Greece.
Damien Walter suggests that mythopoeia (myth making) is potentially interwoven with science:
“Science gives us far more accurate answers to our questions than ever before. But we’re still dependent on myths to actually comprehend the science. The multi-dimensional expansion of energy, space and time we call the Big Bang wasn’t literally a bang any more than God saying “Let there be light” was literally how the universe was created. They’re both mythic ideas that point at an actual truth our mammalian minds aren’t equipped to grasp.”
Such a conflation can be awe inspiring as we discover the glories of science. But David Ludden Ph.D. warns us that this conflation of science and mythology has its potential dangers, including the rise of conspiracy theories that undermine public confidence in science:
“Because conspiracy theories sow the seeds of distrust in our governmental and social institutions, they can have a destabilizing impact on politics and society.”
Whether 5G, COVID (or other) vaccines, HIV/AIDS denialism, climate catastrophe, Moon landing hoaxes, September 11, lizard aliens… and probably a thousand other conspiracies… Ludden suggests that such theories express the desire for understanding and certainty, control and security – particularly among those who do not understand modern science or who might feel threatened by the modern world. I would suggest that such theories also promote the false equivalence of expertise versus ignorance – a favourite among religious fundamentalists – where uneducated and unqualified people believe that their ignorance is equal to the knowledge of world experts. Conspiracy theorists want to bypass years of hard study and academic rigour, and declare themselves as being equal to Stephen Hawking, Anthony Fauci or Katherine Johnson. This is a rather astonishing act of laziness, arrogance and hubris. Do you want to know about the COVID vaccine? Go ask your doctor – YouTube is not a university; and Facebook is not a scholarly source. Do you want to determine if climate change is real? Don’t take my word for it – ask a climate scientist, not your fundamentalist pastor who relies solely on a Bronze Age prescientific book as his sole source of information.
Barry Vacker warns us that the conflation of science with mythopoeia is filled with the danger of these human frailties:
“The Apollo missions, 2001, and the original Star Trek TV series blasted us into a sublime future with the opportunity to build a unified planetary civilization, but we rejected it because we were unwilling to accept that we are a single species inhabiting a watery rock orbiting a flaming ball of hydrogen in an infinite universe. Apollo and Hubble forced us to confront cosmic nihilism, or the fact that there is no obvious meaning to human existence in a godless universe. Via Apollo, we’ve walked on the 4.5 billion-year-old moon, and via the Hubble Space Telescope, we’ve peered across 13.7 billion years of space-time — and there is not a Creator in sight. As Nietzsche famously said long before Apollo and Hubble: “God is dead.” But most everyone can’t accept it. Apollo’s photos of Earth from space and the Hubble Deep Field images have obliterated the rationales supporting the dominant narratives (theology, nationalism, and tribalism) we use to explain our origins, meaning, and destiny. Yet our species remains in utter denial.
We humans apparently can’t handle the paradoxical meaning of our greatest scientific achievement and most important philosophical discovery: The universe is vast and majestic, and our species is insignificant and might be utterly meaningless” – (Vacker, 2018, 3).
Dr. Pham Trong Van points out that knowledge comes after a long process of hard study: “You must identify clearly that studying is arduous and “the path of science” is not like others. Through difficulties, we find the glories of science and sympathize with those who sacrifice their whole lives for science.” And Armond Boudreaux reminds us that mythologies serve a more pointed purpose in our modern human endeavours:
“One of the reasons that I think superheroes are important at this particular moment is how good their stories are at helping us think about questions of power. And perhaps more now than in any other time, we need to think about what it means to seek and to wield power.”
Perhaps our myths and deities tell us more about ourselves than we realise: our gods are anthropomorphic versions of our aspirations, dreams, or nightmares.
Future Imperfect
A generation has now passed since men walked on the Moon, and this has allowed sufficient time for eye witnesses to become wizened historians; for formerly fresh and vibrant memories to be recast as ephemera within a larger repository of lifetime memories; and for exciting progressive events to be recontextualised within the mundane modern culture that they have helped to create.
Like the charming angels on the frontage of Bath Cathedral – many climbing Jacob’s ladder and some falling back down – we are a mix of aspiration and frailty, nobility and weakness. Our science and our dreams are limited by our failures and foibles. But still we strive and evolve beyond our mundane limitations, even though – on the scale of an individual human lifetime – such evolution seems to take forever. Our small steps become a giant leap when combined.
Meanwhile, adults and children continue to pause and gaze up at the night sky in awe and wonder – we are glimpsing our past, our current place in the cosmos, and our future destination. As we outgrow our pantheon of deities from Mount Olympus or the Garden of Eden, we might find another source of inspiration when we climb the dizzy heights of Olympus Mons on Mars, or create our own interstellar Garden of Eden on an exoplanet. Leaving behind our ancient mythologies, perhaps we will create new ones that are more authentic, engaging and exciting. Stardust to stardust.
Non-Digital References::
Michael Benson, 2018. Space Odyssey: Stanley Kubrick, Arthur C Clarke, and the Making of a Masterpiece, New York: Simon & Schuster.
Francesca Ferrando, 2016. ‘Why Space Migration Must Be Posthuman’, in Schwartz, J., Milligan, T. (eds.) Ethics of Space Exploration, Springer, Vol. 8, 137-152.
Alexander C.T. Geppert, 2012. ‘Extraterrestrial encounters: UFOs, science and the quest for transcendence, 1947–1972’, History and Technology Vol. 28, No. 3, September, 335–362.
Barry Vacker, 2018. Specter of the Monolith, The Center for Media and Destiny.
