Ten years have passed since the death of Leonard Nimoy, who is best known for his role as Spock in the epic series Star Trek. William Shatner, who served as captain in the series, celebrated his 94th birthday earlier this year and remains committed to hosting documentaries like Unexplained that spur wonder in ways similar to the marvelous timeless mythology of the show that gave him fame. As an environmental planner interested in better ways of governing natural resources, Star Trek‘s fabled future and specially Spock’s role provides me surprising inspiration.
The creator of Star Trek, Gene Roddenberry, suggested that in the distant future humanity will be able to have adequate governance structures that transcend financial and political constraints. A Star Trek future for Earth would be essentially devoid of scarcity, and our most prized medium of exchange, money, would be entirely absent from planetary life. The only fictional civilization to use money in Star Trek are the primitive Ferengis who are universally despised for their lack of material ethics. Whether or not such a universe will remain a figment of fiction remains to be seen in the very distant future. However, what we clearly need to do in this moment in our temporal continuum is to seek paths of channelizing our quest for material gain more constructively and find better ways of sharing our collective treasures.
In this regard, the model of planetary governance that was envisaged by Roddenberry where no countries existed could only be realized when there was a perceived external planetary threat. The unification of Planet Earth in Star Trek occurred when Spock’s paternal civilization, the Vulcans, had First Contact with humanity following a Third World War. The Vulcans made humanity realize that they were only part of a much larger story of existence, replete with many friends and foes, and therefore planetary unity was in their best interest. This was presented in the Next Generation of Star Trek in the film Star Trek: First Contact. The specter of borderless governance of the Earth seems so remote in our current world of terrorism-defined border security and visas. Yet, the possibility of an external threat, whether an asteroid impact or contact with extraterrestrial life, or some other broader planetary challenge that is beyond our individual national controls, has the potential to lead to some modicum of cooperation.
Spock’s hybrid persona as half-Vulcan / half-human, also immortalized the tension between logical reasoning and emotional response. Our current global challenge of absolutist ideologies battling against rational adaptive discourse, often framed as a struggle between science and religion, could perhaps learn from how Spock negotiated such matters with his comrades aboard the Enterprise. In Spock’s own words uttered during Star Trek VI: “Logic is the beginning of wisdom; not the end.”
The world on April 5, 2063 – when First Contact between Vulcans and Humans occurs in the Star Trek mythology — might be closer to the fictional representation in Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner , or maybe even reminiscent of Disney’s Wall-E. Regardless of the trajectory, the quest for planetary unity that Star Trek presented, and which Leonard Nimoy represented with such poise in his life, must endure even in these times. We should be reminded of the importance of planetary governance also as the United Nations celebrates its eightieth anniversary this year and considers ways to remain relevant in the age of populism. Even though the kind of solid international governance that Star Trek implied may seem so distant, Roddenberry’s mythology notes that unity happened after numerous violent conflicts (including World War 3) and ecological decline. Perhaps that inflection point awaits us too as we seek pathways out of current conflict and consider alternate, more united futures ahead.