Today is a happily historic day that I would like to bring your attention to. It is the franchise Star Trek's 45th birthday today and I would like to take this time to wish it a happy one and many more. I am a Treekie, I am not ashamed to admit it, in fact I am proud of it. I sadly was not born when the original came out but I sank my teeth and many family TV nights watching The Next Generation, Deep Space Nine and Voyager and they taught me many things: how to be a decent human being, how to handle tough decisions and live with the consequences and most of all how cool space could hopefully be.
Let us take a second to talk about the captains and explore the complex decisions they have made. Captain Jame Tiberius Kirk headed out when space exploration was relatively new and it was still this wide open and mysterious place. He encountered many hardships but always tried to peacefully deal with other races and establish a good relationship with them if possible. (the Trouble with Tribbles is still one of the best episodes IMO) Captain Jean-Luc Picard, Captain of the USS Enterprise NCC-1701-D (of which I have a model of) encountered the Borg for the first time and the attempt of a mass genocide on the Human species. Also confronted with many moral conflicts along the way about right and wrong, he spent his time trying to do what he thought was right. Captain Benjamin Sisko spent most of his time trying to protect his space station the the edge of the Gamma Quadrant and also uphold the law. In a place where rules were optional he spent his days trying to uphold some semblance of society and then the Dominion War struck and we found out what he was made of. Captain Janeway of the Starship Voyager who were jettisoned to the Delta quadrant via a wormhole and the series revolved around a long and arduous 75 year trip back home. She held her crew together through thick and thin and had to make many tough decisions along the way. We will not talk about Star Trek Enterprise because in my eyes that is a black spot on the history of the franchise.
Now that I am done gushing over all of the series we can get back to the important matter of how these series relate to this class. In a class about crisis informatics it sure would be handy to have some of the tools that those in the Trek universe had. Teleporters! Communicators! Brilliant! Lets run some simulations in the holodeck so we can make sure we are prepared for any scenario. Unfortunately these technologies do not yet exist although we are getting close on teleporting... The Future
What Star Trek can teach Humanity in general and Humanitarian Organizations is how to deal with an ever evolving and ever changing world. It can teach them to view change as an opportunity to grow and not something to be feared. That all people are equal which the Humanitarian organizations understand but I am not sure all people do and that we can never accomplish anything better than what we have without relying on and helping our fellow man. All of these captains went out of their way to help and try and understand all peoples and that is something I feel we don't do enough of this day in age. We live in a secretive world that is full of distrust and we need to get back to relying on our fellow man instead of so heavily on technology. Our reliance on technology is causing us to loose our humanity, people are interacting less on a face to face basis than ever before and this shows no signs of slowing up anytime soon with all of the "advances" we have been making.
Remember all life is precious and deserves our respect and help whenever they may need it. Live long and Prosper.
"Space, the final frontier. These are the voyages of the starship Enterprise. Its continuing mission: to explore strange new worlds, to seek out new life and new civilisations, to boldly go where no one has gone before." - Captain Jean-Luc Picard
We can't get anywhere without each other which is why it is so important that we all work together to help our fellow man. Thank you Star Trek for teaching me how to be a decent human being.
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