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[QUOTE]Originally posted by Shik: [QB] I've been having some perosnal problems lately...for my whole life, actually but more advanced for the past 5 years or so. While walking that road of self exploration, I wrote a small essay & posted it to my LJ. I rather think I'd like to share it here as well. <center>*****************</center> Everything is interconnected. Let me show you how. I love [i]Star Trek[/i]. Most people know this. I watched it in syndicated reruns as a kid with my dad. When you're a young boy, you get interested in mechanical things. I loved cars. Planes. Boats. Not so much on trains or bikes. I cut my teeth on [i]Star Wars[/i] & Transformers & the like. So of course I liked the ships & the stuff. And then one day, my dad gave me his old copy of Franz Joseph's <U>Star Fleet Technical Manual</U>--the old original copy, with the binder & the like. I still have it, although it's been split apart into 2 sections by age & the binder is lost to the sands of time. And there was a transformative element. There were more ship designs in there than just the venerable [i]Constitution[/i]-class that [i]Enetrprise[/i] herself was part of . And all these ships had NAMES. You don't understand what that DID to me. NAMES. I looked more into a couple books about navies I could find, & all THOSE ships had names. I cannot emphasize what that meant. With a car or a plane or a train, they don't have names. Sometimes they do, but not like ships. I still can't explain it. It drew me in. It still does, as evidenced by my 2-decade naming project. As I watched more of the shows & the movies, got more reference material. I learned not just about [i]Enterprise[/i] but Starfleet. Not just Starfleet but the Federation. Not just the Federation, but the Klingons, Romulans, Tholians, Orions. I learned about all the races that made up the Federation, all the non-aligned races. I knew & understood the message of the show, but it was sort of incidental. The older I got (by now in middle & high school) I understood the nature of how the Federation worked & the ideals behind it. Although I didn't know it at the time, I've never really been into sci-fi. I would try stuff then & find I didn't like it & wondered what the matter was. Wasn't I supposed to like sci-fi? A lot of authors bored me, a lot of shows & movies didn't hold anything for me. Later on, [i]Babylon 5[/i] & its associated elements, & [i]Firefly[/i] would gladly be accepted. But I would try & read some of the things my father (the sci-fi & fantasy fan) had & in general didn't much like them (there were always exceptions--Arthur C. Clarke & the like). My mother, however, read mysteries, true crime novels, Stephen King. I learned to like those more, dropping King many years later & never really liking the true crime stuff. What I liked about the mysteries & such were the puzzles & figure people out. Many years later, I was in my early twenties, about 7 or 8 years ago. I was at the Danbury Public Library checking out...I don't know, probably the new Cussler novel. I happened to look over & saw something on a shelf. It was big. It was thick. It was the new hardcover copy of the uncut version of Robert Heinlein's <U>Stranger In A Strange Land</U>. I knew who Heinlein was, remembered noting to someone at camp that he'd died a few month earlier when I was 13. I'd never read anything of his before; the closest I'd come to was finding my father's hardcover copy of <u>The Cat Who Walked Through Walls</U> & being intrigued enough by the cover illustration & the back blurb to try & read it. I didn't get far, though, because it made mention of all these names that I was obviously supposed to know & I tossed it aside. (Many years later, I would buy it & enjoy it immensely, as I now knew who 95% of the characters were.) At any rate, I don't know what made me decided to check out that book. But I did. And it changed my life. I checked it out for something like 3 months straight, reading & re-reading every bit of it. Eventually, I just went out & bought my own trade paper copy & I started looking into everything Heinlein had read. This was also when I picked up 2 other books that stuck with me: Martin Cruz Smith's <U>Gorky Park</U> & Peter H�eg's <U>Smilla's Sense Of Snow</U>. All of these books & authors had something in common...& I couldn't piece it together. It wasn't until Kim Podowlski (from the AOL music chats, the same place I met many others including Lindsey) mentioned the name of a novel to me that she though I might like. It was <U>Ishmael</U> by Daniel Quinn. So off I went to the library & got their copy, got home & started reading. I returned it the next day & went out to by my own copy; I knew this was a novel that I NEEDED to own. I bought it along with <U>The Story Of B</U> & <U>My Ishmael</U> all at once. As I read it, I realized 3 things: [*]That this book spoke to everything I had felt my entire life; [*]That it showed me the common element in my authors; [*]That there was a specific interest I had that I had not ever known. What I found was that all my favorite authors, the ones I went truly nuts for, all wrote about the human condition. They explored not just the psyche but the nature of relations, of sociologies, or philosophies. That was something that had always fascinated me yet I'd never had a name for it or concrete example . Now I did. And something else happened: I'd begun to form [i]a philosophy.[/i] Let me say it again, because it bears repeating. I began to form...a philosophy. Most people think they have one, but they really dont. You ask any random person, "what is your philosophy?" & what you get is a string of disconnected beliefs, absorbed statements, & contradictory terms. That's not a philosophy, that's a hodge-podge mess. That sort of mess is the crayon scribbles of a toddler; a philosophy is art. It might be Manet, it might be Malevich, Vermeer, Schiele, Pollock, Warhol, Whistler, or Raphael, but it's art nonetheless. A philosopy tells. A philosophy grows and builds, it inspires. By now you're wondering the relations. Fret not. I'm about to connect the two. A castoff line in <U>Ishmael</U> referenced [i]Star Trek[/i]. It's a nothing element, not even a plot point, but when you know as much as I do about the show & its universe, you can't ignore it. The line stated that on [i]Star Trek[/i], every planet has a single culture. And it's true. There's no differences. Klingons are run by honor & conquest; they all speak Klingon. Vulcans are run by logic; they all speak Vulcan. Cardassians are run by devotion to the state above all; they all speak Cardassian. Bajorans are all guided by the belief in the Prophets; they all speak Bajoran. There are no (or if there are, extremely few & rare) dissenting elements. There are no dialect differences. Yet humans have thousands of languages &....? Well. What [i]Ishmael[/i] taught me about single unified cultures shocked me. And I began to look at the Federation. The ideal is "strength through diversity, unity out of many." It's the literal vision of [i]e pluribus, unum[/i]. And yet...ther were few differences once you got past the other races. Indeed, <A href="http://memory-alpha.org/en/wiki/Attached">one S7 TNG episode</A> touched on that issue, with a planet of 2 cultures; one occupied 75% of the planet & asked for Federation associate membership, while the other 25% were xenophobic & preferred to be left alone. But other than that, there was the assumption & even the necessary requirement for admission that all Federation members had to have a unified world government. For the past 2 years or so, I've been thinking about this. Lately, I've started figuring it out, that Earth stopped the single-culture destruction that is discussed in Quinn's books & so many cultures were able to flourish. The unified world government came about, but it didn't override any of the cultural laws or elements. There's actually precedent for this among the Native Americans, specifically <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hodenosaunee">the Hodenosaunee League</A>, what we know as the Iroquois Confederacy. Each tribe had different laws & customs (or else they wouldn't be different) but they worked together & for the better of their peoples. But each people was understood to have their own ways. I think Earth & the Federation both have to work on that level or else everything would clash far too much. This has become part of my philosophy, & it lies at the heart of all my recent problems & troubles. I don't want to get "better" or think I can because whose standards would I be "better" be? Certainly not mine. This slow decline I've been having has precedent as well, in the Plains Indians, in the Inuit, in the Inca, in any place where any culture has been wiped out by this one. If they're not destroyed outright, they're slowly co-opted & the people become listless, uncaring, & begin to pray for death. Eventually the members are either fully absorbed & become Takers or they're killed off by despair. And that's what's happening to me. I'm dying. That's why I believe in [i]Star Trek[/i] now, because it gives me a hope that things CAN be different. Not BETTER, but DIFFERENT. That there can be that diversity that is necessary for life to survive. [/QB][/QUOTE]
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