The North West Passage

Earlier today I wrote on my twitter: “Most of my friends on the political left, and some on the right, say the #AmericanDream is over. Do we have a new mythology to replace it?”

And I was asked by a friend to clarify; so here goes. 🙂

For the sake of the exercise, let’s say that the “American Dream” is two propositions: 1: “Equality of opportunity for all (if not equality of everyone’s eventual final position)”, and 2: “any person who is talented and hard-working can make it rich, or famous, or otherwise materially successful.”

The idea of the American Dream is a nation building mythology. It galvanized America for decades, perhaps for two centuries; it gave people a sense of purpose and of initiative; it was hopeful and optimistic; it defined clear and measurable goals. It was for America the equivalent of France’s “Freedom, Equality, Brotherhood”, or Canada’s “Peace, Order, and Good Government”. You knew that when you were talking to someone who wanted “success” and who believed (quite rationally) that he had a fair chance to get it, that you were talking to an American. Or, anyway, someone inspired by America.

I read a poll today that said 59% of Americans think the American Dream is unacheiveable. Among those friends of mine who discuss such matters, those on the political left gave up on the American Dream many years ago. They point to the fact that there is no such thing as equality of opportunity in America today, given the wide disparity between the rich and the poor; they also observe that many talented and hard-working people nonetheless remain “unsuccessful” (in that narrow materialist sense of ‘success’) because of various systematic injustices. They also observe that many people become materially successful without any talent at all, but instead they succeed because of inheritances or privileges or sheer dumb luck. I also have a few friends on the political right who also believe the American Dream is basically finished, although they point to different reasons. For instance, some of them think that getting “success” in the narrow materialist sense isn’t especially important anymore. Others look to some feature of the welfare state and/or the social safety net, and argue that it creates a disincentive for individual effort.

My question is: suppose we assume that the American dream is, in fact, over and gone. What, if anything, is rising up to replace it?

I suppose this is partially a factual question (ie. what is replacing it?) and also a moral one (i.e. what should replace it?). I am as interested in how people interpret my question, as I am interested in their answers.

But I think it is a deeply serious question. A nation without a mythology has nothing to galvanize it. Its people no longer identify with it, often long before they are willing to admit as much to themselves. Should the nation come under attack, or be paralyzed by injustice and by corruption in its high places, the people might not come to its defense. The mythology isn’t there to grant the necessary glamor of heroism to the effort to protect the nation or to right its wrongs. But they might come to the defense of different mythologies, different worldviews, different ideals, which also possess the power to galvanize people and direct their initiative and energy toward clear and measurable goals, even if they call that new and different worldview by the same old name. And I am interested in what different mythologies might be emerging today, and perhaps which of them should “succeed”.

I’m not an American myself. But I am a person who lives on this world and who cares about what might happen to it while its only superpower nation undergoes an agonizing revision of its identity.

Two months ago, my sister B gave me a surprise gift of a live rabbit.

Though BrightEyes was a surprise gift that I wasn’t fully prepared for, B knew that the gift would be fitting. For I have imagined and wondered about and loved rabbits like a personal totem (if there is such a thing) for most of my life. It probably began when I was two or maybe three years old, when my dad gave me a toy rabbit; forty years later I still have him. As a child I read and watched Watership Down over and over again, and I made up my own stories about rabbits and their adventures. In my private mythology, rabbits are the listeners and the knowers of the animal kingdom. They’re always alert to danger. They build their homes and families close to the earth, in the hidden places where other creatures think there’s nothing of interest. They’re curious, and their curiousity sometimes lands them in danger, but they know how to escape. They have sharp claws and teeth and they can fight when they have to. But they prefer to trick their enemies and turn their enemies’ weapons against them. Then they hide, and wait, and listen, and know.

Of course, imagining rabbits is nothing like owning and caring for a live one. When I was 10 or maybe 12 years old I had a pet rabbit, given to me by a family who I knew from my primary school. I named him Patrick because I got him on St Patrick’s Day. But this guy was quite wild: he used to bite me every time I cleaned out his cage or fed him. He never let me play with him. We built a run-space for him in the garage, when the winter came. I don’t really know what happened to him: and I think it’s likely that he escaped.

Then in September, some of my family came to my house to help me with some renovation work, and B stepped out of her car holding a young white doe, and carefully handed it to me. I think she was expecting that I would be full of bliss to have this new companion. Actually my first thought, after saying “thank you”, was “But I was going to get a dog!” But BrightEyes seemed comfortable with me right away. She licked my arms and face. She sat with me on the couch in the evenings while I was watching telly. I put her cage in the library, so that she could use the library as a run-space and I could close the door there so she wouldn’t escape to the rest of the house.

Then she ate some of my books, and chewed on the door-frames, and peed everywhere. I suppose I should have expected that.

Curiously, she went straight for the Margaret Murray books about mediaeval witchcraft. And ate them.

After a few days, the damage (and the smell of the urine) was getting too much for me. As was a bit of guilt at keeping her in her cage for 20 hours of the day. I built another run-space in the basement, enclosed by some old doors, and on a tile floor which she can pee on without damaging. She seemed a bit happier, but a bit lonelier.

Then, on the first Monday of October, I was cleaning out the litter in her cage, and saw a lump that was moving. There was a nest of little babies. They were each about the size of my thumb, and without hair, and their eyes were still closed. BrightEyes was a mama– and now, so to speak, I was a dad. Nobody, including my sister, knew that BrightEyes was pregnant.

It’s been a month now. It’s interesting to have them, I must admit. By day I work as a philosophy teacher at the college, and my head is full of the Platonic Forms. By evening, the immensities of life are played out as practical realities in the rabbit run. I like sitting among them as they eat, and I like the way they come up to me when I’m sitting there, sniffing around my feet and legs to see if I have more food. They have such simple and honest wants: to eat, to be safe, to be loved and cared for. They remind me of the poem by Walt Whitman:

I think I could turn and live with animals,
they are so placid and self-contain’d;
I stand and look at them long and long.
They do not sweat and whine about their condition;
They do not lie awake in the dark and weep for their sins;
They do not make me sick discussing their duty to God;
Not one is dissatisfied—not one is demented with the mania of owning things;
Not one kneels to another, nor to his kind that lived thousands of years ago;
Not one is respectable or industrious over the whole earth.

But my little family makes me sad, too. They don’t return affection the way cats and dogs do. They seem to live in a constant low-grade state of fear, all the time. They scatter to sheltered corners of the run-space if I make any sudden moves, and they cluster together in a little pile, perhaps feeling safer among their own kind than with me. They scatter off again if they think I’m about to pick them up. If I do catch one, their eyes bulge a little bit, and their limbs remain tense, and their ears stay flat down on their heads. After a few minutes they relax, and seem more comfortable with my petting them and even kissing them on the nose. But when I set them down on my knee, they hop off almost right away. The same seems to go for BrightEyes. Two days ago I found her sitting on my chair in the run space. When I moved to pet her, she jumped away and darted back to the litterbox and hid under the castle.

Here’s another poem that expresses this feeling: “To A Squirrel At Kyle-Na-No”, by WB Yeats:

Come play with me;
Why should you run
Through the shaking tree
As though I’d a gun
To strike you dead?
When all I would do
Is to scratch your head
And let you go.

So, it’s as if these rabbits are teaching me how to handle unrequited love– and the irony is not lost on me, as in my checkered past I was sometimes the one not returning the love bestowed on me by others. I suppose that is what karma looks like. (It is perhaps interesting that the eight babies together with the mama make nine– a number often taken as having Druidic significance. But I digress.)

Yesterday, BrightEyes was on my chair again. She let me pet her, and she even licked my nose in return. But I can’t always tell whether she likes it. I try not to make her feel trapped when I hold her, and I never reach into the litterbox when she’s in there, so that she won’t feel as if there’s nowhere safe. Still, these nine housemates are giving me quite the emotional ride. I will be both sad, and at the same time a little relieved, when they’re gone.

Yes, I said “when they’re gone”. Because I can’t keep them. The babies will be fertile around four months after their birth, which means that if I keep them there will eventually be thirty of them, and more on the way. So I’m also asking you if you would like to take one as a pet of your own. Two associates of mine have already agreed to take the little brown ones; the other six still need new homes. They’ll be fully weaned from their mama in early December, so that’s when I can give them away. I might not be able to keep the mama either, because its difficult for me to find someone who can come and look after her on the occasions when I need to be out of town for a few days at a time. I will have to give them to the local SPCA if I cannot find other homes for them.

If you can’t take one for yourself, you can still help by buying one of my books: because I will donate my November royalties for my self-published titles to an animal shelter. You can also share this blog post, or the above video, with anyone you think might be able to take one of my bunnies as a pet of their own. And if you’re local and don’t want to keep one but you might like to try holding one in your hand, come and visit. We rabbit people need to crowd close to each other, too.

Two days ago, a student told me that because I was born in 1974, therefore I am a member of something called “Generation X”. So yesterday I googled around for a while to find out what that means. In the process I discovered, somewhat to my surprise, that the music of my generation is not so bad.

So while cooking and cleaning up my house yesterday, I built a playlist of Oasis and Radiohead and Pearl Jam. Listening to all this great music, which I apparently missed, has made me wonder where I fit in the world. There are whole “generational” experiences associated with that era of music that I didn’t have.

What generation am I? According to one schema, popularised by Canadian novelist Douglas Coupland, Generation X is everyone born between 1961 and 1981, roughly the first round of children born to Baby Boomers. According to another, I’m from the “Baby Bust” generation, the period from 1967 to 1979 when birth rates tended to decline. Whatever the precise category, sociologists and newspaper columnists were saying we were slackers, “reluctant to grow up”, apathetic, cynical, disaffected, distrustful of authority, and generally ridiculous.

Another phrase I found to define my generation is “latch-key children”, that is, kids who carried their house keys on their persons because when they got home from school their parents were not yet home from work. My mom was always home so I was never one of those; but I shared with latch-key kids the experience of playing mostly outside, climbing trees or scaling the rockfaces of the Elora Gorge. We had games of Capture The Flag, riding around the village and the farm fields and parks outside the village, on our banana-seat bicycles, over a territory which measured something like three by nine kilometers. I might have been among the last “free range” kids, who could play outside with almost no supervision. But don’t misread me: I have very little nostalgia for that time. I was also the target of some very severe bullying from other kids back then, and the main reason I went on to my PhD was so that no one would ever push me around like that again.

One marker of generational membership is one’s age when certain society-changing technologies became available. I first got internet when I was an undergrad, and I got my first mobile phone during my PhD. (I organize the history of my life by what degree I was working on at the time.) But maybe a greater sign of your generation is the way in which you grapple with what your predecessors left you. I remember early in my Masters degree days having long conversations with my peers about how the baby-boomers in academia were refusing to retire “on time”, with the result that by the time we graduated there would be no academic jobs for us. As it turned out, when the boomers did eventually retire, the economy crashed and therefore universities hired us as adjuncts and sessionals instead of as real profs, and a lot of us dropped out of academia altogether.

To this day, I still feel as if a defining experience of my generation is of having been screwed by the Boomers. Boomers were in charge of the economy and the body-politic when the economy crashed, when global warming and climate change became more evident and nearly irreversible, when the the social-welfare safety nets that the Boomers themselves benefited from were gutted, when well-paying industrial jobs were exported overseas, and when we were put massively in debt by student loans. To this day the boomers refuse to let go of political power: it’s noteworthy, in my view, that both current candidates for the US presidency are boomers. And it’s the boomers telling the younger generations that their problems are their own fault because of “entitlement” or a supposed lack of individual initiative.

The end result of all this is that here in my early 40’s, I can’t help but feel out of place. And this is partly because of what happened to my demographic, and partly because of my own life decisions. I look back on my life and I see a certain pattern: a series of movements from one social world to another because of a feeling of non-belonging. As a kid I became a consumate recluse because I did not feel at home among the bullish and narcissistic asshole kids at my primary school. In my teens I made a point of not listening to most pop music, nor punk nor metal nor goth, because the kids who did listen to it were too cool to give me the time of day. I didn’t feel like one of them, so I didn’t listen to their music. After that, I entered the pagan world because I didn’t feel at home in Christianity: the doctrine of original sin seemed to me obviously wrong. I pursued higher education because I didn’t feel at home among the party-going upper-middle-class “preps” of my late teens and early 20s; nor did I feel at home in the factories and warehouses where I got my first real jobs. I entered left-wing activism, especially in labour unions, because I didn’t feel at home in capitalism: at the time, I felt that the local economy was a rigged game, designed to keep me out. I went to live in Newfoundland, then in my father’s country, Ireland, because I didn’t feel at home in Ontario. Then I went back to Ontario because I didn’t feel at home in Newfoundland or in Ireland– also because I couldn’t find jobs out there. I sometimes feel out of place when I am single, but when in a relationship I often feel like an imposter, as if I don’t really deserve to be loved; consequently I’ve never held a girlfriend for longer than about two years, and I’ve come to prefer living alone. I don’t feel fully at home in the pagan world anymore: I’m tired of the infighting, and the competition for attention, validation, and ideological purity. Finally, although I own a house here in west Quebec, and although I love my job and I love the Gatineau Hills National Park– still, whenever I go anywhere else in this city or in Ottawa, I still don’t feel fully at home. It’s partially the language barrier, but its also the culmination of all those movements in my life, where no matter what was going on around me, I felt as if I didn’t belong.

I’m not asking for counselling or “help”; I’m certainly not asking for commiseration or pity. I’m asking whether anyone else has a similar experience. I would like you to reason with me about these feelings. I’d like to know if it’s my generation, or if it’s just me. And I’d like to know where I fit in, if I fit anywhere at all.

I was six, maybe seven years old, and turning the knob on the old Panasonic 12-channel TV, when I saw a field of stars, and a curiously-shaped spacecraft passing among them. A “re-run” (a word I just learned) of a show called “Star Trek”. Well, I had been playing with a telescope in my back yard for years already, and building a whole universe of spacecraft out of Lego bricks. So, of course I sat down and watched. The crew of that ship “beamed” down to a planet, where they met three witches, towering in the skies above them. And I turned the TV off and ran up to my room. It was too scary.

Eight years old. Still scared of Star Trek. My dad took me to the cinema to see The Wrath of Khan anyway. That film, along with Roy Gallant’s book Our Universe, and (I must admit), two of the three Star Wars films released to that date, produced in me a lifelong love of science fiction, which I still enjoy to this day.

Over the last few days, in honour of the 50th anniversary of the franchise, I watched all six films made by the original cast. Here’s what I like about each of them.

By the way: spoilers.

Star Trek: The Motion Picture (1979)

I am very well aware that most scifi fans, and indeed most Trek fans, regard this film as the runt of the litter. To me, it’s one of the top ten scifi films ever made. I can’t recall exactly when I first saw it; I have a vague memory of seeing the transporter accident scene on TV in the late 70s or early 80s. In the 1990s a friend gave me the film on VHS tape and I watched it daily for a month.

Of all the films featuring the original cast, this one seems to me the most philosophical. It is a film about knowledge: it’s a film about the philosophical question “Is this all that I am? Is there nothing more?” And that’s a very difficult theme around which to tell a story. It explores this theme in two ways: one on a “big picture”, represented by the existential threat posed by the V’Ger probe, and the other on the “small picture”, represented by Spock when he gives up his Kohlinar discipline; and by Kirk when he effectively commandeers the Enterprise from Decker, its new captain. V’Ger is introduced with a long and visually trippy descent into the cloud, to establish the weirdness and alienness and wonder of space exploration. V’Ger itself is the product of an alien society that loves knowledge so much it took an ordinary exploration probe and gave it godlike powers for the sole purpose of learning “all that is learnable, and transmit its knowledge to its creator”. The film ends with very possibly the best reveal in scifi: V’Ger is one of ours. Then, as if to place a quasi-religious glamour on the search for knowledge, V’Ger and Decker fuse with each other and become a new, maybe supernatural being. The message is: knowledge is transformation and enlightenment.

If you are a fan of Trek who doesn’t much like TMP, consider at least this much: the music. Glorious. Evocative. Bold. Inspirational. The overture, Ilia’s theme, played to a blank screen (in the cinematic release) or a receding starfield (in the remastered DVD) tells you from the beginning that this is going to be an introspective and personal film. Then the brass rise for the main theme, played over the opening credits, tells you that this is a film about courage and triumph. You know that theme: it was used for the opening credits for The Next Generation. I listened to the soundtrack for TMP while writing my own novels. The long exposition scenes that some critics hate are actually essential: they give you time to think about the big themes that Star Trek has always been about. The scene when we arrive at the Enterprise in its refitting dock was the first time anyone saw their beloved starship in over ten years. Fans needed that long, loving look. They deserved Goldsmith’s beautiful music score to pay homage to it.

On watching this film again last week, for the first time in perhaps ten years, I suddenly realised how many contemporary films and TV shows of every genre obsessively demand action, action, action. TMP is a slow burn. A science-fiction art film. A movie for thinking, not merely ‘riding’. A love song to the idea that we human beings can solve our problems and boldly go where no one has… you get the idea. We have far too few such films in the canon of Western pop culture. We’ll probably not get many such films again, in Trek or in any franchise. But I digress.

The Wrath of Khan (1982)

This film I also regard as one of the top ten scifi films ever made. Indeed I think this film, together with its predecessor, make for two distinct and complimentary faces for what Trek is about: TMP is thoughtful, questioning, and inspirational; Wrath of Khan is scrappy, adventurous, and heroic. We have clearly defined heroes and villains; they’re both tough, and they’re both smart. The Enterprise crew changed its friendly (but boring) uniforms from TMP for a sharper, more militaristic look. The opening musical theme also changed, emphasizing strings over brass and somehow evoking the romance of space travel and the danger of space warfare at the same time.

When I first saw this film I was too young to understand philosophical and political questions hinted at (though not emphasized) in the film: questions like what to do about getting old, and what to do about superpowerful new technologies, represented by the Genesis Device, and Khan’s own genetic engineered ‘superiority’. I did, at the time, understand that big technologies could be destructive; we had done a nuclear drill in my school that year. What I love now about this film is that it represents a society that loves exploration, science, experiment, and curiosity; that takes such things seriously and questions their ethics; and that is capable of fighting when it needs to. The final space battle between Kirk and Khan, in the nebula, reminded me of submarine war films: the tension was not so much in fighting the enemy, bit finding the enemy. Yet Kirk and Khan had been exchanging moves from the first moment that the Reliant fired on the Enterprise– the battle between them was more a battle of wits than of weapons. Any idiot with a working right hand can fire a gun; it takes Kirk and Khan to fight each other with information, deception, move and counter-move, leading to a surgically-precise final blow. This is how smart people fight each other.

When writing the villain in my own novels, I had the voice of Ricardo Montalban in my head.

And then– Spock died! First time I saw the film, I never saw it coming. Spock’s death was perfect for the character: logically chosen, and heroically executed. The phrase “I am, and always shall be, your friend”, so simple and plain, and introduced early in the film where it was almost innocuous and casual, was elevated to a more noble meaning. It made for an interesting contrast against Khan’s parallel act of self-destruction: quoting Herman Melville (“To the last, I grapple with thee; From Hell’s heart, I stab at thee; For hate’s sake, I spit my last breath at thee”), Khan sacrifices himself in order to kill; Spock sacrifices himself in order to save.

It was wise of the filmmakers to give Spock the last lines in the film: the reading of the show’s manifesto: “Space, the final frontier…”. It told us that the film makers loved Spock as much as we fans did. And that Spock might not be entirely gone.

The Search for Spock (1984)

This film came out when I was ten. I don’t recall if I saw it in the cinema; but I do recall that Robin Curtis’ portrayal of Saavik was one of my first adolescent boyhood crushes. (Too much information, I know. Sorry about that.)

Including my re-viewing of this film last week, I’ve seen Search for Spock perhaps only three times. I find it a strange film: it tries to be thoughtful like TMP, and adventurous like Wrath of Khan, at the same time, and I’m not sure it succeeds at either. The central theme of the film is friendship: it is about the Enterprise crew coming together to effectively bring Spock back from the dead. It’s interesting that the crew of the Enterprise, who we have long admired for being upright and moral people, commit several serious crimes: stealing the Enterprise, sabotaging the Excelsior, disobeying orders, all of which would likely earn them the death penalty in a real-word navy service. Yet the ethics of these crimes is never doubted: the value of friendship overrules them all. We see this in the great personal cost that the crew, and Kirk especially, must bear: the destruction of the ship, the death of Kirk’s only son. But I think the heart of the film appears at the end, when Kirk discusses these costs with Sarek. Sarek expresses regret that if Kirk hadn’t gone after Spock, he would not have lost his son. Kirk replies: “If I hadn’t tried [to save Spock], I would have lost my soul”. Kirk’s friendship with Spock and the crew is his soul; and in a clever reversal of Spock’s utilitarian reasoning that led to his self-sacrifice, that friendship is the “one” which can outweigh the needs of the “many”.

It’s interesting that the film makers had to invoke the idea of a soul to reverse the “needs of the many” argument that concluded Wrath of Khan. This soul is a psycho-spiritual “package”, so to speak, that McCoy can carry around in his head; it’s also a relationship between people, a non-supernatural phenomena. Trek has explored the ethics of individualism over socialism many times; I think that this film is Trek’s best exploration of that theme.

As a follow-up to my comment about the demand for fast-paced film making: Search for Spock doesn’t give us enough time to feel Kirk’s grief. But it does give us just the right amount of time to appreciate Spock’s return. Shot with almost no distracting visuals in the background, and no music, it gave Spock fans the reunion they were waiting for.

The Voyage Home (1986)

This is one of the most popular films in the series but I have mixed feelings about it. I like the environmentalist message, for instance, but I also think the message was delivered a bit heavy-handed. Trek’s best morality plays are the ones where the viewer is shown an ethical or social possibility that she might not have thought of before but still lets the viewer make up her own mind about it. Here the message is “Save the whales, save the world!” Ya. It’s a bit much.

The strength of this film is the camraderie of the team. For the first time in the films, the story is not just about Kirk / Spock / McCoy / Everyone Else. It’s about everyone, nearly equally, bringing their own unique skills to the task. Characters like Uhura, Sulu, and Chekov had almost nothing to do in the previous films; here they have essential jobs to do, and more recognizably distinct personalities. And excellent comic timing! Watching this film felt like hanging out with friends. We had an important job to do; but we’re having fun doing it. The saving of the day was a kind of foregone conclusion. What mattered was that the world of Trek was still around, its heroes were still heroes, and its sense of optimism for a better future was still deeply felt. Job done. But for all that, the film didn’t seem to have much re-playability. I couldn’t watch it again and again like I could watch Wrath of Khan. It felt more like an episode of a TV series than a movie. I also felt stuck on the sheer cheapness of the final set, the Federation council chamber. So, on the night last week when I re-watched this one, I watched the next one afterwards, right away.

The Final Frontier (1989)

I know that most fans regard this film as the very worst of the series. And yes, there’s a lot about this film that really, really sucks, and I don’t want to sound like an apologist. The film is funny in all the wrong places; the ‘ascent of man’ symbol as Kirk climbs a mountain just doesn’t work, and neither does its counterpart ascent in the Enterprise turbolift shaft. An end scene, where Kirk says maybe God is “here” and then he points at himself, just makes me want to gag. All that said: here’s a few points about it which I think are worth praising.

First, as with The Voyage Home, the Enterprise team are working as a team. They’re distinct individuals with unique and necessary skills, and their ability to work together is what wins them their victory. It was also nice to see McCoy standing up for Spock more often.

Second, a reaffirmation of classic Trek humanism. I had a VHS tape of this film when I was a teenager that I watched repeatedly. In retrospect this is surprising, since I was growing up in a deeply religious Catholic household and the film was a deeply anti-religious film. The slowly unfolding premise is a search for God. But the big reveal at the end is that “God” is a fake. In fact Spock, at the gunner station on board a Klingon ship, fires on him and kills him. Logic defeating superstition. Not even for the first time in Trek history. How did I get away with watching that film so often back then?

Third, its villain, Sybok, is a smart and charismatic person, and as you’ve gathered by now, I like a smart and charismatic villain. He’s on a kind of spirital quest, to locate the planet of Shaka-Ri, a kind of mythical Eden which might be the home planet of God. A sound, solid motivation, and it’s easy to share it. That Sybok gets there by effectively mind-controlling people is what makes him an interesting and frightening villain. Also his one tiny moment of self doubt: when told he is mad, he says “Am I? We’ll see!” Actor Laurence Luckinbill played that moment perfectly.

As a villain, Sybok has class.

The scene in the officer’s mess where Sybok compels Spock and McCoy to reveal their pain seemed to me very effective. We got to see more of these men’s characters than we normally see. Spock’s pain is one we’ve known since the original series in the 60’s; McCoy’s struck me as new, and very emotionally powerful. Kirk’s speech about how we need our pain also worked: well, sort of. For one thing, we already know that Kirk’s pain is his grief for the death of his son; for another, it’s a strategic rather than principled argument, designed to keep Sybok out of his head. But a central moment in the film, for me, happened right after that speech. Even after Sybok “released” Spock and McCoy from their pain, they chose to remain with Kirk, and not join Sybok’s army of fanatics. That showed the strength of will and the sense of self, which makes those characters the heroes that they are.

We see this strength in Kirk a little later on, when the ship arrives at Shaka-Ri, and Sybok relinquishes command, like the honourable man he thinks himself to be. “What makes you think I wont’ turn us around?” asks Kirk. “Because you, too, must know.” Yes, and so must we. Very effective.

More effective still, is when Kirk asks, “What does God need with a starship?” Pure Pyrrhonic skepticism: Kirk still must know, and remains in doubt about everything so that he can get closer to the truth. His superpower is his ability to keep on questioning; Sybok’s weakness is that he can’t. Until Kirk shows him that he can. Then I think that Sybok became a kind of hero, in his own way: maybe an unwilling hero since all his deepest beliefs had just been exposed as illusions, but he died an admirable death nonetheless.

It’s hard to see these good moments behind the mess of bad effects, bad pacing, misplaced comic moments, and pretentiousness. Thank the gods (well, you know what I mean) that the franchise didn’t end here.

The Undiscovered Country (1991)

My re-viewing last week was the first time I had seen The Undiscovered Country since its cinematic release, and it’s growing on me. Though I called the first and second films two of the top ten best sci-fi films of all time, this one may well be the most perfectly Trek film of them all. It’s a film about how our biggest social and political problems are best solved by negotiation and discussion, and not by violence. But it also asks what is to become of those who know nothing but violence, and who might feel they have no place in a world defined by peace. So it is also a kind of ‘whodunnit’ detective story, about smart characters solving a difficult problem together. There’s an investigation into the assassination of an important Klingon politician and the saboteurs of a peace conference. Then there’s also a jail break, a space battle, Sulu in command of his own ship, Spock very nearly losing his temper, some well placed moments of comic relief. And there’s a promise at the end that our heroes are still out there somewhere, sailing into the sunset, and boldly going where no one has gone before. Star Trek optimism and adventurism at its best. Indeed if this wasn’t a Trek film I think it would still stand up as a great sci fi classic. A timely one, too: the Berlin Wall had just come down; America was no longer fighting a cold war with the Russians. So it was with the end of the Klingon Empire. Old cold-war warriors like Kirk and Valeris and Chang have to cool off, but they don’t know how.

For some reason I also began to notice something in this film which hadn’t caught my attention in the other films: the colour palatte. The film makes tableaus with high contrasting elements in the frame: computer lights and dark backgrounds; star fields and starships, red serge uniforms and black metal floorboards. A white hallway and a black armoured Klingon waking down it. Lt. Valeris’ ghost-white skin and night-black hair. The darkness of the mine shaft and the sharp red laser-rays of the mining tools. A red ticking digital clock over the black viewscreen. The bright flags, sashes, and colours of the conference hall. Films three through five had the “look and feel” of a television episode; this one had the look of a big screen movie. Although I think Shatner and Nimoy’s direction in films III, IV, and V got good results from the cast, Meyer got the best results from the camera.

One big problem, which I think no one saw back in 1991, because the sexual politics was different. Near the end of the film, Spock has to probe Valeris’ mind to get the identities of the conspirators. Valeris keeps her Vulcan cool, but it’s clear the mind meld is unwanted. Did Spock psychically assault her? Is Kirk guilty too, for ordering Spock to do it? I invite discussion in the comments.

So there you have it.

Science fiction which is optimistic about humanity’s future isn’t very fashionable anymore. The future we expect is more like the one depicted in films like Blade Runner, The Matrix, or Serenity. Or, people might look forward to a future in which we join the Rebellion and fight the Empire. But the tragedy of that future is that the war, while mythic and romantic, never ends. That is why, although I would like to study at the Jedi Temple some day, I would much rather live in the Federation.

Off to binge on The Next Generation now. And DS9. And Voyager. I’m also 14,000 words into writing my own scifi novel. The human adventure is just beginning.

In May of this year I began work on what will be my ninth philosophy book, and seventeenth book overall. I thought you might like to see Chapter One. As you read it, remember that this is an early draft. But do let me know what you think of it. –Bren.

First meditation: Why should I return to the city?

I’ve cycled seven kilometers through the forested hills which begin near my front door and continue northwards for what looks like forever. The story in my tourist’s map says my destination is a lookout platform above Pink Lake, in Gatineau Hills national park: a lake with no oxygen in its lowest depths, and therefore home to an unique and fragile ecosystem. The story in my mind, however, says that my destination is the climax of a hero’s quest: a tower in the midst of a deep dark wood, near a magical lake, full of stars on the surface, and monsters far below. The treasure I hope to find at the end of this quest is the answer to a question: why, if at all, should I go back to the city?

Lookout platform over Pink Lake, Gatineau Park. My own photo, August 2012.

Let me attempt to convey why I think this question is important. Behind me on this bicycle path is the route back to the city. Were I to return there, I could take up again my share of the gains of civilization. There’s clean water in my kitchen and washroom. Electricity in the walls to power my computer and other machines. Libraries and museums to enrich my mind. Food that is safe and healthy to eat. Telephones and computer networks to keep me in touch with the rest of the human world. Hospitals to care for me if I am ill or injured. Police to protect me from criminals, armies to protect me from other armies. Every few years there’s an invitation to vote for the people who will take charge of all these things. With these gains come debts and responsibilities. I must find a job, and pay my bills, and respect the law. Outstanding among these responsibilities is the unwritten requirement to ignore, or sometimes to participate in, something I know to be entirely absurd. For instance, when I vote, I might find that all the candidates are incompetent or corrupt: their talents lie– so to speak– in their ability to hide their true selves. The laws I’m bound to obey might prevent me from doing something that harms no one, or they might oblige me to do something that harms myself and others. It might punish people who don’t deserve punishment, or reward people who didn’t earn their reward. The books I read or the films I watch might stupefy me, instead of enlighten me. When I spend money, I might be indirectly helping to exploit or enslave the worker who made what I just bought. Or, my money might help to destroy an irreplaceable natural environment, from which the raw materials came. I might find that other people whom I depend on, be they salesmen, school teachers, religious leaders, or even my friends and lovers, regularly deceive and manipulate me, in order to protect their reputations or assert their influence. In the course of professing commitment to religion or politics, I might attack people who profess different religions or different politics, and I might call that violence my demonstration of piety, loyalty, and integrity.

I arrived at the lookout platform. I lock my bike to a fence post and search for a quiet place to breathe. Suddenly I discover I’m sitting on the threshold of three immensities: the city behind me, the uncovered water before me, the starry sky above me. Here in this liminal place, the question why should I go back to the city?, becomes the question of why, if at all, I should put up with these absurdities. Why, if at all, I should turn back and rejoin civilization?

The Charles Bridge, Prague. An icon of urban high civilization. My own photo, July 2015.

Civilization! A word like no other, in any language. It announces every society’s highest and deepest values: it’s the name we give for the most enduring and most glorious of humanity’s creations. It speaks of that which a nation may share in common with other nations. Yet it also speaks of the conquests, colonizations, and oppressions which make that enduring glory possible. It lifts up one society by putting down another; it demands the capture and taming of wild lands and animals; it summons flag-waving believers to war. This book is a quest for the essence of civilization. As we shall soon see, the quest shall take us not only through the usual trails of economics and politics, but also to some of the muddiest fields of ecology, the deepest caves of human nature, and the highest hills of the meaning of life. I find such metaphysics questions inherently interesting, and for me that’s reason enough to ask them. But the absurdities may lead me to some dark conclusions. What if civilization is only “a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing”? What if civilization is nothing but a machine for crushing people? What if it’s a machine that must inevitably break down? To consider these things is to consider the metaphysical perils to human life. At their extremes, it’s not only the destruction of individual people’s lives at stake, but also of the destruction of art, literature, architecture, knowledge, the whole inheritance of history, everything we point to as proof of our greatness, and the very possibility of a legacy for the future: the surrogate immortality of apotheosis. So this book is about the despair that may dwell in civilization’s heart: despair for its essence, and for its future. It’s also about what, if anything, can be done about it. The question, Why should I go back to the city?, is also the question, Why, if at all, should I have hope for the future of humanity?

The ‘small picture’ of civilization: members of my family, fishing from the dock. September 2015.

Postscript, September 2016: This piece was revised and included as chapter one of “Reclaiming Civilization”, soon to be published by Moon Books. Click Here for more info.