Loads of people go on about how “awe shucks, we’re in the Mad Max future, instead of the Star Trek future” completely unaware that Star Trek’s utopia was built on top of the ruins of a Mad Max distopia that came first.
In canon, Star Trek’s utopia only happened after Earth had a nuclear WWIII followed by the Eugenics War (and several related genocides) before first contact with the Vulcans. In fact, without those wars, we might not have gotten the tech for warp drive. In further lore, after the wars of the 21st century and before first contact, there was a concerted “never again” kind of movement globally eventually resulting in the United Earth government being founded. It then took more than a century of technological and societal progress to get to the matter replicator driven post-scarcity economy.
So we could be on track for Star Trek future… but none of us will be alive to see it.
The book “Dawn of Everything” by David Graeber and David Wengrow makes a strong case that our current way of structuring society and exploiting eachother is actually an aberration from the norm based on archeological evidence, where it appears we were far more egalitarian and collective.
I don’t know in fairness an actual all-out nuclear war would probably do it. Mostly people are alright, the problem is governments and corporations which presumably wouldn’t survive a nuclear war.
The mirror Star Trek happened when Zephram Cochrane shot and killed the Vulcans arriving to greet them instead of shaking their hand. The nearby people stormed the ship and raided the weapons, using them to conquer the rest of Earth.
And further more the Vulcans did not manage this rapid transition away from armed conflict and instead had thousand years of war. They were impressed and scared but the humans adapting this quickly breeding doubts in their restraints from violence.
Loads of people go on about how “awe shucks, we’re in the Mad Max future, instead of the Star Trek future” completely unaware that Star Trek’s utopia was built on top of the ruins of a Mad Max distopia that came first.
In canon, Star Trek’s utopia only happened after Earth had a nuclear WWIII followed by the Eugenics War (and several related genocides) before first contact with the Vulcans. In fact, without those wars, we might not have gotten the tech for warp drive. In further lore, after the wars of the 21st century and before first contact, there was a concerted “never again” kind of movement globally eventually resulting in the United Earth government being founded. It then took more than a century of technological and societal progress to get to the matter replicator driven post-scarcity economy.
So we could be on track for Star Trek future… but none of us will be alive to see it.
Star Trek canon is that humans suddenly acted completely differently than they had throughout their entire history. I don’t think that’s gonna happen.
The book “Dawn of Everything” by David Graeber and David Wengrow makes a strong case that our current way of structuring society and exploiting eachother is actually an aberration from the norm based on archeological evidence, where it appears we were far more egalitarian and collective.
Here’s a summary from Wengrow himself in video form: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=8SJi0sHrEI4
So the Star Trek future may in fact be a return to our previous state.
I don’t know in fairness an actual all-out nuclear war would probably do it. Mostly people are alright, the problem is governments and corporations which presumably wouldn’t survive a nuclear war.
I think it’s reasonable that post-scarcity can be self-reinforcing
The mirror Star Trek happened when Zephram Cochrane shot and killed the Vulcans arriving to greet them instead of shaking their hand. The nearby people stormed the ship and raided the weapons, using them to conquer the rest of Earth.
And further more the Vulcans did not manage this rapid transition away from armed conflict and instead had thousand years of war. They were impressed and scared but the humans adapting this quickly breeding doubts in their restraints from violence.
I know, I know, I was just hoping that we could skip the foreplay? Damn it all.
Montana looked like a safe place to survive
And apparently San Francisco survived, even though you would have thought it would have been a target, and Paris, and London.
Really it seems to have been an incredibly restrained war. Nothing of any actual value appears to have been destroyed.