For a hopeful view of humanity’s future, I have turned to Star Trek: The Next Generation. In a particularly inspiring 1988 episode, three people who were cryogenically frozen during the 21st century find themselves rescued after floating in space for hundreds of years. They wake up in the year 2364 aboard an interstellar spaceship filled with new species, new technologies, and a vastly different worldview.
When one man grows alarmed because he cannot find any record of his former wealth and investments, the ship’s fiercely ethical leader, Captain Jean-Luc Picard, tells him that humanity successfully eliminated money on Earth years ago, along with hunger, war, and want. Indeed, the major conflicts in 2364 are between intergalactic species. Later in the episode, Captain Picard’s ship reencounters one of humanity’s most advanced enemies after a decades-long respite, causing him to lament: “I think our lives just became a lot more complicated.”
I have also been thinking about how our lives are a lot more complicated now than they were in the not-too-distant past. We have groups arguing for and against wearing masks, getting vaccines, and teaching unsavory aspects of U.S. history. In these debates, the lack of conviction by some—and the passionate intensity of others—is prompting these passages from the William Butler Yeats poem “The Second Coming” to run through my mind on repeat:
“And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born.”
Today’s debates also make me consider social psychological findings on conformity and obedience. Individuals “actively identify with their leaders and are motivated to display creative followership in working toward goals that they believe those leaders wish to see fulfilled” (Reicher, S. D., et al., 2012). In this time of acrimony and debate, how do we choose leaders who will inspire unity instead of division? This is not a question that I have an easy answer to. Luckily, it is only the 21st century, so we have some time to get to the utopia that Captain Picard describes.