Reading For Treasure: Hope from Star Trek and Science Fiction

Reading for Treasure is my list of articles that are worth your attention. Click here for an introduction!

There is a new science fiction sub-genre called hopepunk. According to Wikipedia, hopepunk stories “are about characters fighting for positive change, radical kindness, and communal responses to challenges.” Coined by author Alexandra Rowland as the opposite of grimdark, “The aesthetic of hopepunk is generally agreed to incorporate a mood of gentleness or softness and a sense of self-awareness of weaponized optimism, with a worldview that fighting for positive social systems is a worthwhile fight. There is an emphasis on cooperation as opposed to conflict. There is an awareness within hopepunk works that happy endings are not guaranteed and that nothing is permanent.” Here is the Vox article from which that quotes come: “Hopepunk, the latest storytelling trend, is all about weaponized optimism.” 

Some Star Trek stories could certainly be hopepunk. Emmet Asher-Perrin writing on Tor.com explores the way that the latest incarnation of this franchise, Strange New Worlds, takes the Hero’s Journey and turns it into something far more important and optimistic than the way it shows up in superhero and other traditionally portrayals: “How Star Trek: Strange New Worlds Reimagines the “Hero’s Journey” for the Better.” Be aware there are spoilers in this article. 

CNN also recognized the power of Star Trek’s hopeful outlook: “The New ‘Star Trek' series couldn’t come at a better time.” This article does not have spoilers and is safe for those who have not yet watched Strange New Worlds – and you should! 

Star Trek has improved the real world in many ways: one of the most powerful and hopeful is the work of Nichelle Nichols, who played Lieutenant Uhura in the original series. The article, “From Star Trek to the White House, The World Remembers Nichelle Nichols” from TrekMovie.com is much more than a list of tributes from important voices. It also includes several wonderful video tributes, so scroll to the end. The documentary about Ms. Nichol’s work on the space program, Woman in Motion, it is also well worth viewing. Like all of Star Trek, it is on Paramount+. 

During the worst of the early pandemic and the years that preceded it, I found solace and hope in a quirky half-hour situation comedy called The Good Place. This lovely expert from a book by its creator,  Michael Schur, explores some of the powerful and optimistic philosophic questions that made the series such a delight. The Literary Hub published the excerpt, “Good Place Creator Michael Schur Wonders: What Makes Someone Good or Bad?” If you haven’t seen this series, it is worth a watch! 

Star Trek and several other on-screen science fiction franchises have been working hard to be inclusive. The first of the “Nu Trek” series, Star Trek: Discovery,  features a Black woman in the leading role (and now, finally, as a captain) and all five of the new series have gone where no science fiction show has gone before with representation. Nonetheless, there are fans that were shocked to see that Star Trek (and some other famous series) are so left-leaning. I don’t how they missed the message in earlier incarnations of Trek. So we’ll finish with a little laughter at their expense from Carolos Greaves in McSweeny’s, “This Fictional Universe is Getting Way Too Diverse.” 

I am currently reading A Master of Djinn by P. Djèlí Clark. 

Thank Goodness for Teachers!

The school year is starting. Some of us welcome the “back to school” sales, while others see them as the death knell of summer’s freedom. And even though they are not paid during the summer, schoolteachers have spent an unfair and disproportionate part of it getting ready to receive our children. 

Professors, teachers, and especially public school faculty have become political punching bags recently. Not only is it disgusting and unfair, but it is also sharper than a serpent’s tooth! Public schoolteachers are the masons of success and, as we continue to learn from the pandemic, the foundation of our economy. When the schools stopped, the great machinery of business and industry stalled and sputtered. 

So let us give thanks for those wonderful souls who teach our children. Let us give thanks to those who have earned enough education to join the upwardly mobile and the moneyed upper middle classes, but eschew just earning a living and instead choose a vocation of giving. 

Let’s face it; those who teach could have been bankers, lawyers, doctors, scientists, artists, and all manner of professionals. Instead, they chose service to the children and our communities. They deserve our gratitude – and support! 

Get off their backs! If you don’t like the book, read your child another one. If you don’t like the ideas, discuss your beliefs with your children. While what happens in school certainly shapes children, it pales compared to what happens at home. If what you, as parents, are teaching your children can be so easily washed away by school lessons or activities, that speaks to what is going on at home far more than what is happening in the classroom. 

Consider this: teachers receive and welcome your children, even on the days when things have not gone well, even on the days when your kids were upset with you or you with them, even when you thought that maybe this whole parenting thing was a big mistake, even on the days when your children wondered if you still loved them. To whom did they turn? Their teachers. And their teachers reassured and supported them. You’re welcome. 

I have been concerned about using the term love here because it has been dirtied and maligned by those who cheat on their spouses, swindle their customers, lie to their constituents, and then tell you that you can’t trust teachers. It has been sexualized by those who pay hush money to sex workers and similarly would silence teachers who want to help our children make this a safer and saner society –for our kids and all of us. 

Because, like good parents, teachers love our children. They sacrifice for our children. They are not perfect. Like parents, they range from stellar to so-so. Like politicians, they make mistakes, even in service of larger goals. Yet, like good shepherds, they lead our children to find nourishment, comfort, community, and enlightenment. 

Stop beating up teachers and start extolling and exalting them. They hold our country together. They love our children even when we falter. 

And frankly, some of your children have questions they are afraid to ask you. Some of your children are curious about the books you have stolen from the library and destroyed. They want to talk to you about the concepts you want teachers to hide from them. Banning these ideas from the classroom will not prevent this exploration. It will not stop kids from thinking. It will change their view of their parents.  

Do you want your children to realize that, sometimes, their teachers have their best interests at heart even when their parents are silent and afraid? Thank goodness their teachers are there even when their parents want to shut down the conversation. In the age of the internet, banning books and forbidding discussion will never stop the ideas. Teachers know this. Some folks fear this. There is no stopping it. 

Teachers are the support structure and safety net of our society. As we send our children back to the classrooms, let us be grateful. 

Impossible Doublethink Before Breakfast

In Alice’s Adventures In Wonderland, the Red Queen believed at least six impossible things before breakfast. George Orwell’s 1984 gave us the concept of doublethink: being able to believe two completely contradictory ideas, acknowledge that they are incompatible with each other, yet fully endorse both of them. Doublethink was the critical component in maintaining 1984’s totalitarian state. Although there are more literary examples, recent events move these concepts from fiction to frightening reality. 

I don’t understand how someone can fervently support the police, believe that “blue lives matter” and yet want unlimited and open access to guns. Likewise, if one wants to be “tough on crime,” how does one accomplish this if guns are more accessible than cigarettes or allergy medication? And the police in Uvalde? 

How can one condemn violence after Black people are killed by police, but then condone violence against our own elected lawmakers who are certifying an election? How can people threaten and intimidate local election officials when they disagree with the results of an election? If violence is bad, shouldn’t it be bad no matter who commits it? 

How can someone claim that the 2020 election was riddled with fraud when it comes to the election of the president, but make no objections to all the Republican candidates who won on the very same “rigged” ballots? If there were issues with one race on the ballot, wouldn’t there be problems with the other races, too? And where is the evidence of all these irregularities? If there were so many, wouldn’t some have led to criminal charges, successful lawsuits, or altered election results? The only verified instances of election fraud I could find were people voting for the former president! 

Some people say they want to honor the past and thus preserve confederate statues, monuments, or symbols, but when discussing historical aspects of the civil war that deal with enslaved people and systemic racism, their discomfort trumps honoring and remembering other shameful aspects of the past. Could this perhaps maybe possibly be about race? 

Many of these same people are eager to protect the unborn, but do not give any protection to already-born children sitting in schools. Some of these folks also refused to protect anyone by wearing a mask or getting the COVID vaccine. Is life only worth protecting when it is not yet here? Do children have to protect themselves – from guns and illness? Is it only embryos who deserve protection? Why? 

If people don’t want teachers discussing the racism of our past and present, the diversity of gender identities, or any subject that might make some (white) kids (and/or their parents) uncomfortable, who decides what is or isn’t included? Wouldn’t the exclusion of this content make other students uncomfortable? Wouldn’t its inclusion eventually create understanding and thus bring more comfort? How are people evaluating this harm? How is repressing some people’s ideas and history not just another form of bullying and bigotry? 

Some of these folks claim to be religious people acting on precepts from scripture. However, they worship people who are adulterers and bullies whose behavior is the opposite of the religious figures they claim to revere. They take minor biblical passages out of context and hold them as more important than the Ten Commandments and key statements from Jesus, Moses, and other key figures. Whatever happened to “love thy neighbor as thyself” and “thou shalt not murder?” 

The slogans of the state in 1984 were: “War is peace, freedom is slavery, and ignorance is strength. Today, many people are holding a complementary set of commandments: 

Morality is Indecency

Honesty is Deception

Bigotry is Equality

Freedom is Selfishness

Cruelty is Compassion

Rage is Virtue

Hypocrisy is Integrity

I don’t see how we can move beyond our current political impasse without civil discourse, common ground, a shared sense of right and wrong, and a moral commitment to improving the conditions for everyone (not just a few).  Instead, so many are practicing deadly doublethink before, during, and after breakfast – and it is not only unhealthy for them, as Orwell predicted, it is poisoning all of us.