“You know Commander, having seen a little bit of the 21st century, there is one thing I don’t understand, how could they have let things get so bad.” Dr. Bashir.
“It is a good question…I wish I had answer”. Commander Sisko
Star Trek Deep Space Nine Season 3: “Past Tense: Part 2: Ep. 12.”
On the extensive essay in Wikipedia on “Star Trek”, it is said in the introduction: “The protagonists have altruistic values, and must apply these ideals to difficult dilemmas.” And further:
“Issues depicted in the various series include war and peace, the value of personal loyalty, authoritarianism, imperialism, class warfare, economics, racism, religion, human rights, sexism, feminism, and the role of technology.”
Stanley Cavell (1979) stated:
I spoke of as “the immediate and tremendous burden” on one’s capacity for critical description in accounting for one’s experience of film. Such description must allow the medium of film as such and the events of a given film at each moment to be understood in terms of one another. Because the value of such an ambition is tied to its usefulness in reading films as a whole, and because in the present pieces I for the most part read only fragments, (vix)… I interpret as an inability to tolerate our own fantasies, let alone those of others—an attitude that equally I can-not share. I feel I am present at a cult whose members have nothing in common but their presence in the same place. Matters are otherwise—not necessarily pleasanter—if the film is al-ready part of history and is itself something around which a transient cult has formed. I suppose that the old casualness harbored the value of illicitness that from the beginning was part of moviegoing. (11)… It is often said, perhaps in response to the continuities I have noted about films (between high and low audiences, and be-tween their high and low instances), that film is the modern art, the one to which modern man naturally responds. Beyond what I have said already, there are two immediate reasons for distrusting that idea: (i) It assumes that the other arts are not capable of eliciting the old values of art. That may be true; but it may also be that someone who claims it is true is not in a position to recognize the live article when he sees it. And it shows a poor view of what is “natural,” for if there is anything seriously to be called “the modern man,” one fact about him is that what is natural to him is not natural, that naturalness for him has become a stupendous achievement. (ii) If film is seriously to be thought of as an art at all, then it needs to be explained how it can have avoided the fate of modernism, which in practice means how it can have maintained its continuities of audiences and genres, how it can have been taken seriously without having assumed the burden of seriousness. (14-15)… My feeling is rather that we have forgotten how mysterious these things are, and in general how different different things are from one another, as though we had forgotten how to value them. This is in fact something movies teach us. (19)
George Gonzale (2022) takes the same approach with Star Trek:
This decisive shift away from a personalized social order toward a liberal (legalistic) one began with the American Revolution – “All Men are Created Equal”. With this Hegel reasoned that political ideas, norms collectively shifted (the totality). Such shifts are proof positive of the Whole or the Absolute (where normative values inhere). Hegel further pointed to the fact that major (collective) shifts in human political values (revolutions) had occurred in the past (genesis) – leading to the endpoint of constitutional monarchy (praxis). (8) The overriding need to pursue humane politics/ values is made clear in “Past Tense”. Sisko inadvertently prevents the Bell Uprising. (26)…
AND…
I outline in The Absolute and Star Trek that the franchise posits that people must possess the correct attitudes in order to bring about an ideal socialist society: (1) a commitment to social justice; (2) an unyielding commitment to the truth; and (3) a similar commitment to scientific, intellectual discovery. The embracing of these outlooks (frames of thought) is the only way that people can “see” the absolute and bring it fully to fruition. (10).
We must see values and attitudes of Star Trek film in the same light.
The discussions of values becomes social attitudes.
REFERENCES AS INFERENCES
Arcus, M. E. (1980). Value Reasoning: An Approach to Values Education. Family Relations, 29(2), 163–171. https://doi.org/10.2307/584067
Buch, Neville (2007). The Value of the Secular, Quadrant, 51 (1), March.
Cavell, Stanley (1979). The World Viewed: Reflections on the Ontology of Film, Harvard University Press.
Dryzek, J., & Braithwaite, V. (2000). On the Prospects for Democratic Deliberation: Values Analysis Applied to Australian Politics. Political Psychology, 21(2), 241-266. Retrieved April 29, 2020, from www.jstor.org/stable/3791789
Frow, John (2013). The Value of Practice of Value: Essays on Literature in Cultural Studies, UWA Publishing
Gonzalez, George (2022). Star Trek and Star Wars; The Enlightenment versus the Anti-Enlightenment, Peter Lang Prompt.
Hepburn, R. (1998). Nature Humanised: Nature Respected. Environmental Values, 7(3), 267-279. Retrieved May 7, 2020, from www.jstor.org/stable/30301642
Heuer, Ulrike and Gerald Lang (eds., 2012). Luck, Value and Commitment: Themes from the Ethics of Bernard Williams, Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Hoopes, J. (2011). Managing by Values. In Corporate Dreams: Big Business in American Democracy from the Great Depression to the Great Recession (pp. 145-151). New Brunswick; New Jersey; London: Rutgers University Press. Retrieved May 7, 2020, from www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt5hjgkf.25
Jaocby, W. G. (2014). Is There a Culture War? Conflicting Value Structures in American Public Opinion. The American Political Science Review, 108(4), 754–771. http://www.jstor.org/stable/44154191
Joad, C. (1927). Emergence to Value. Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, 28, new series, 71-96. Retrieved May 7, 2020, from www.jstor.org/stable/4544131
Kenny, Robert (2015). Book Review: Inside Australian Culture: Legacies of Enlightenment Values, Australian Historical Studies, 46:3, 485-486, DOI: 10.1080/1031461X.2015.1078938
Koepping, K. (1983). The Limitations of Network Analysis for the Study of Value Systems: The Case of an Aboriginal Community in Queensland. Sociologus, 33(2), neue folge / new series, 97-130. Retrieved April 29, 2020, from www.jstor.org/stable/43645176
Lesh, James (2023). Values in Cities: Urban Heritage in Twentieth-Century Australia, Routledge
Liebenson, Donald (2021). Brent Spiner, of ‘Star Trek’ fame, has plenty of stories about his co-stars. But are they true? The Washington Post, 13 October 2021.
Mazzone, Derek (2017; 2020). The Pursuit of Value: A Philosophy of Loss and Equanimity, Sea Press, Singapore, SG.
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Nelson, Clay (2017). Heresy: A Spiritual Value. Sermon Recorded at Auckland Unitarian Church 25th June 2017, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EXAdhfHayg4
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Postman, Neil ((1996). The End of Education. Redefining the Value of School, Vintage Books.
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Weiss, J. (2015). Weber’s limits: Value and Meaning, Rationality and Individualism. Max Weber Studies, 15(2), 214-231. Retrieved May 7, 2020, from www.jstor.org/stable/24579907
Wirt, F., Mitchell, D., & Marshall, C. (1988). Culture and Education Policy: Analyzing Values in State Policy Systems. Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis, 10(4), 271–284. https://doi.org/10.2307/1164170
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Neville Buch
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