Having no money is the incredibly stupid part, what goods the Federation trades with other interstellar civilizations is beside the point, we're told Federation citizens have no need to ever buy anything.
And then the writers stumble with this every time they want the characters to buy a drink at a third party bar or whatever. The DS9 crew spends a lot of time at Quark's but no one is paying them, leading us to believe they're all engaged in constant side hustles to make a buck.
Or you know, Star Fleet is intelligent enough to realize that their officers on DS9 need a way to interact with other people who DO use money, and provide them with a stipend as part of being posted in such a place. Sort of like my work does when I travel for them or get asked to work somewhere for an extended period of time that is "not home". But again, the "no money" thing is one of those things that I think is taken (written?) far too literally.
I think people have to look around their house and look at all the stuff that a federation Citizen can get for free because they have access to industrial replicators. No waiting for an Nividia 3070 or PS5 for the Fed. It makes a lot of what we spend our time acquiring relatively worthless and shifts your valuation of things. Everything that we can buy now, becomes worthless, because we can get it instantly for free. What does become valuable are things that have no value to anyone else.
Like I bought a set of three small pictures from Ikea, but I took them down and put up a hand-stitched pictures of Kittens that a now passed relative had stitched from one of those cheap patterns you can buy. Fiscally speaking, the pictures are more valuable(even if its mass produced Ikea art), but I know which one I want on my wall.
Now the thing is, you could probably replicate both of them in vast quantities, but you can't replicate what makes the Kitten picture valuable to me and it wouldn't be valuable to anyone else.
That is what a post scarcity society would focus on.
The sky was full of stars, every star an exploding ship. One of ours.
Look if Sisko puts together his own side hustle extorting Quark and pays his officers a stipend in foreign currency that's great, but as per the episode where Jake needs to buy something, they explicitly say the Federation doesn't have a currency and doesn't use money.
Nog : It's not my fault your species decided to abandon currency-based economics in favor of some philosophy of self-enhancement.
Jake Sisko : Hey - watch it! There's nothing wrong with our philosophy. We work to better ourselves and the rest of Humanity.
Nog : What does that mean exactly?
Jake Sisko : It means... it means, we don't need money.
Honestly this aspect of the setting is ignored so often (Memory Alpha has tons of references of characters buying things at Risa or whatever) that I think it's clear most screenwriters at least roll their eyes, but it's an annoyingly dumb thing that's "official" and novel writers and internet forum posters will bend over backwards to defend (and I can't help pointing out how silly it is).
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JacobkoshGamble a stamp.I can show you how to be a real man!Moderatormod
edited March 2021
There are real societies in real life and history that don't use money and find other mediums of exchange, when exchange is necesssary. There are real societies in the real world that place a radically different value on things than we do. There were people working on Star Trek who were aware of this, or had read things by people who were aware of this, and others who weren't, so it's not always consistent over the 50 years of the show. But calling the idea "dumb" just becauses it falls outside the range of conceivable experiences for a guy with a calculator holster feels weird bruh.
Jacobkosh on
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HardtargetThere Are Four LightsVancouverRegistered Userregular
the federation not having money for internal goods has zero bearing on peoples in the federation using money to buy non federation goods, etc etc
There are real societies in real life and history that don't use money and find other mediums of exchange, when exchange is necesssary. There are real societies in the real world that place a radically different value on things than we do. There were people working on Star Trek who were aware of this, or had read things by people who were aware of this, and others who weren't, so it's not always consistent over the 50 years of the show. But calling the idea "dumb" just becauses it falls outside the range of conceivable experiences for a guy with a calculator holster feels weird bruh.
On the other hand, Star Trek doesn't actually treat this aspect of its setting seriously. It states that the Federation doesn't use money anymore, but is completely silent on how it does operate. Is this Communism Classic, but we have replicators now so it works? Is everyone in 24/7 holodeck simulations, except for the people who actually want real life? Do most people work 8 hours a week in order to get some extra definitely-not-money?
I think my real issue here is that Capitalism Is Bad, Actually, and being able to show a non-Capitalist economy would be a good way to show that Capitalism is not a universal law of the universe, even if it needs to be a bit handwavy on the edges. This is one of the few settings that could realistically support this kind of worldbuilding, and it's not even bothering to try.
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Ninja Snarl PMy helmet is my burden.Ninja Snarl: Gone, but not forgotten.Registered Userregular
edited March 2021
Ironically, Orville answers the question succinctly and quickly. It doesn't try to claim a society like that works without currency, just that the currency has shifted from money over to reputation and ability. You can ask for a starship, but you don't get one if you can't prove the the ability for some combination of commanding it, putting a crew together to run it, having a purpose for it, and that purpose serving society in general. You can command a science vessel, if you go prove to society to be capable of that command. If somebody has something of historic value, you can ask for it, even just as a gift, but whether or not you get it depends on whether the owner thinks you will handle and appreciate it properly as well as give it to a worthy recipient.
Inside the Federation, Jake could literally just have asked for the card if it was at a museum or something. He wouldn't be certain to get it but he wouldn't have to pay for it, just prove that it would be cared for and appreciated without subtracting from benefiting society.
Something like Sisko not being able to explain to Nog why the Federation doesn't use money? That makes a ton of sense given that Jake is from a society which has no use for money and Nog is from a society for the point of existence is money. They're also best friends, so of course Jake doesn't want launch into a diatribe about how the foundation of Ferengi culture is crap. So there are two different huge reasons why Jake wouldn't have a quick, short, easy answer as to why the Federation doesn't use money.
He's also a young teenaged boy who has grown up that way. Ask a kid of a similar age in the states why we don't eat insects. They won't really be able to come up with a good reason, it's mostly just that we don't (or it's gross). People are really overcomplicating this.
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JacobkoshGamble a stamp.I can show you how to be a real man!Moderatormod
Yeah, there are grown adults who can't even start to explain the underpinnings of our society to other people in it, much less if someone from totally outside it were to ask.
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MonwynApathy's a tragedy, and boredom is a crime.A little bit of everything, all of the time.Registered Userregular
There are real societies in real life and history that don't use money and find other mediums of exchange, when exchange is necesssary. There are real societies in the real world that place a radically different value on things than we do. There were people working on Star Trek who were aware of this, or had read things by people who were aware of this, and others who weren't, so it's not always consistent over the 50 years of the show. But calling the idea "dumb" just becauses it falls outside the range of conceivable experiences for a guy with a calculator holster feels weird bruh.
On the other hand, Star Trek doesn't actually treat this aspect of its setting seriously. It states that the Federation doesn't use money anymore, but is completely silent on how it does operate. Is this Communism Classic, but we have replicators now so it works? Is everyone in 24/7 holodeck simulations, except for the people who actually want real life? Do most people work 8 hours a week in order to get some extra definitely-not-money?
I think my real issue here is that Capitalism Is Bad, Actually, and being able to show a non-Capitalist economy would be a good way to show that Capitalism is not a universal law of the universe, even if it needs to be a bit handwavy on the edges. This is one of the few settings that could realistically support this kind of worldbuilding, and it's not even bothering to try.
My read has always been (and the text pretty much supports) that the Federation is effectively post-scarcity communism. It's not explicit because the show was created a couple years after the Gulf of Tonkin and then revitalized in the waning days of the Reagan admin, and even today saying "oh yeah we're totally communist" would bring unto Paramount/CBS the unbridled rightwing fury of a class O star and the suits don't want to fuck with it.
Even with all that, Ron Moore all but said "exactly communism" throughout DS9, if you're looking for it.
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Ninja Snarl PMy helmet is my burden.Ninja Snarl: Gone, but not forgotten.Registered Userregular
He's also a young teenaged boy who has grown up that way. Ask a kid of a similar age in the states why we don't eat insects. They won't really be able to come up with a good reason, it's mostly just that we don't (or it's gross). People are really overcomplicating this.
I do think the Federation would provide a far better education about its ideas than "that's how we do things", even for somebody Jake's age. Given that Jake is steering towards a writing career, he almost certainly keenly aware of the historical and philosophical details of why the Federation has done away with money, to a depth and breadth that he knows Nog's primitive, almost barbaric, education can't handle. And given that Nog's classic way to handle a situation like is to blow up and storm away, Jake is just avoiding a fight that won't fix anything anyway.
There are real societies in real life and history that don't use money and find other mediums of exchange, when exchange is necesssary. There are real societies in the real world that place a radically different value on things than we do. There were people working on Star Trek who were aware of this, or had read things by people who were aware of this, and others who weren't, so it's not always consistent over the 50 years of the show. But calling the idea "dumb" just becauses it falls outside the range of conceivable experiences for a guy with a calculator holster feels weird bruh.
Primitive tribesmen and rural hippie communes aren't real societies. Every civilization in history has addressed this issue and if your premise is a science fiction civilization that's done away with it then I'm super interested, but a cop out is going to annoy me. The Orville idea mentioned sounds interesting, and I'd be interested to see how exactly reputation is measured and earned, as it sounds wildly abusable and/or tyrannous at face value.
By the way, what feels most weird, "bruh", is the ridiculous 1980s schoolyard nerd shaming insult in a fucking Star Trek thread.
I think this hackneyed and completely underdeveloped idea is very dumb and if you disagree, change my mind.
Primitive tribesmen and rural hippie communes aren't real societies.
It's actually weirder to see someone use the rhetoric that justified genocide in the Star Trek thread. Proving correct the joke about someone who never goes outside not understanding things outside their experience!
I mean it's true the writers aren't as interested as Iain M. Banks in describing anarcho-communism and how it's totally feasible with enough technology and automation
But I don't think American audiences would have largely been receptive to Jake breaking down why private property is bad, it's only just now starting to be not shocking in mainstream American political discourse to even breath that kind of thing
Granted, I would love it if Star Trek did this, and I do kind of hate that NuTrek is largely uninterested in exploring this optimistic future where capitalism is a dragon we slew long ago. Shit could you imagine if enterprise or discovery were more smartly written and actually showed us Earth casting off the last vestiges of capitalism, and the unavoidable temporary unrest that would have caused?
Terra Nova showing the last gasp of Humanity First/Fascism as a centralized, organised movement was really cool, so something like that!
Great, so I'm a nerd, a nazi, not well traveled and you still don't have an argument.
If you really think there's a good real life barter or communal living example for how the people of 150 worlds would stay organized please, expand on that idea. To even try to take that complexity seriously I think we need to cut things off at the "civilizations build cities" threshold.
I mean it's true the writers aren't as interested as Iain M. Banks in describing anarcho-communism and how it's totally feasible with enough technology and automation
But I don't think American audiences would have largely been receptive to Jake breaking down why private property is bad, it's only just now starting to be not shocking in mainstream American political discourse to even breath that kind of thing
Granted, I would love it if Star Trek did this, and I do kind of hate that NuTrek is largely uninterested in exploring this optimistic future where capitalism is a dragon we slew long ago. Shit could you imagine if enterprise or discovery were more smartly written and actually showed us Earth casting off the last vestiges of capitalism, and the unavoidable temporary unrest that would have caused?
Terra Nova showing the last gasp of Humanity First/Fascism as a centralized, organised movement was really cool, so something like that!
A post scarcity society progresses naturally from capitalism, there's no dragon to slay. Everything becomes more and more efficient until the basic necessities are "too cheap to meter" and thus free.
Getting rid of private property still sounds crazy and as far as I can tell Star Trek has done no such thing, but yea sure I agree any kind of "life in the Federation" angles like this would be neat to explore.
I mean it's true the writers aren't as interested as Iain M. Banks in describing anarcho-communism and how it's totally feasible with enough technology and automation
But I don't think American audiences would have largely been receptive to Jake breaking down why private property is bad, it's only just now starting to be not shocking in mainstream American political discourse to even breath that kind of thing
Granted, I would love it if Star Trek did this, and I do kind of hate that NuTrek is largely uninterested in exploring this optimistic future where capitalism is a dragon we slew long ago. Shit could you imagine if enterprise or discovery were more smartly written and actually showed us Earth casting off the last vestiges of capitalism, and the unavoidable temporary unrest that would have caused?
Terra Nova showing the last gasp of Humanity First/Fascism as a centralized, organised movement was really cool, so something like that!
A post scarcity society progresses naturally from capitalism, there's no dragon to slay. Everything becomes more and more efficient until the basic necessities are "too cheap to meter" and thus free.
Getting rid of private property still sounds crazy and as far as I can tell Star Trek has done no such thing, but yea sure I agree any kind of "life in the Federation" angles like this would be neat to explore.
Whaaaat? How?
Capitalism's natural conclusion is a handful of entities owning literally everything and doling out the barest minimum they can so that their workers can buy cheap mass produced goods. As an example I'll point to Amazon's fight against worker unionization or the mere fact that we could end homelessness practically overnight if we wanted to, for less money than Jeff Bezos is worth
at some point there would have to be a massive populist movement to decide that "Private property is bad", capitalism isn't going to decide that Landlords as a concept are evil for example
Edit: "Getting rid of private property sounds crazy"? I mean in our current climate, sure does, what sense does it make in Star Trek? I will clarify that Private Property refers to ownership of property that you as an individual are unable to make use of
Private Property would not be the Hansons owning a spaceship, it would be Beverly Crusher owning The Enterprise. Your home is still your home, but you don't get to own 32000 homes in a metropolitan area and start a corporation that collects passive value from people because you have a regional monopoly on one of the basic needs of human beings
Almost assuredly, property other than personal property is collectively owned by the community in Federation "core worlds" and if, say, you want to open a restaurant, you'd probably have to prove to a board or committee or whatever that you were serious about it for them to grant you one of the few limited resources left: prime real estate
Many people disagree with you that a post scarcity society progresses naturally from capitalism, that's the whole point. Insulin is nearly too cheap to meter to manufacture, and yet check out the price of insulin in the US. Wow it's increasing every year because there's nothing stopping them and people have to pay to live.
And yes it is fair to talk about the applicability of the organization of small communities to interplanetary concerns, but holy shit be more careful with your wording. You're taking umbrage at being called a nerd, but whatever your experiences are that are causing you to be so defensive, they pale in comparison to the events your words are invoking https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Indian_boarding_schools
“Wait, people pay money at Quark’s? I thought money had been abolished in Star Trek”
Me: “uh, well, err, uh. Look it’s best not to think about these things too much.”
Anyway considering “we’ve evolved past the need for money” is such a big part of the Star Trek mythos, and considering Quark’s is such a big part of DS9, I feel like maybe the pilot should’ve had a couple lines of explanatory dialogue about this
“Welcome to Deep Space Nine. You’ll be paid five hundred credits a week, good at any of the shops on the station.”
“Credits? You mean *money*, sir? I knew we’d be roughing it out here, but didn’t the Federation outlaw money over 200 years ago?”
“Sometimes you have to bend the rules a little out on the frontier.”
Or whatever
(Then you could have some fun fish-out-of-water comedy where a crew member awkwardly uses money for the first time, etc)
Earth got rid of money, evidence is a little flimsier for the Federation as a whole, individual member worlds have a fair amount of autonomy, up to and including getting to tell Starfleet to go piss up a rope when they turn up to help. DS9 is Bajoran, which isn't a Federation member and isn't post-scarcity during DS9, as late as season 3 (and its intersection with Voyager episode 1) at least one of the Bajoran colonies in the system was still using the Cardassian Lek for some reason.
Watched "The Inner Light" for the first time last night and damn
That episode brought up some feelings for sure. I teared up a bit when that flute came out at the end. I've been having a lot of climate change anxiety and that hit real damn hard.
I do find it curious that something like that doesn't get Picard removed from duty. He just spent 5 decades as another person, it's so strange that they just let him go back to being a captain no worries right after. In most shows something like that would be a multi episode arc at least about them recovering from the experience. TNG just rolls with those massive traumatic events and keeps on trucking.
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AuralynxDarkness is a perspectiveWatching the ego workRegistered Userregular
Watched "The Inner Light" for the first time last night and damn
That episode brought up some feelings for sure. I teared up a bit when that flute came out at the end. I've been having a lot of climate change anxiety and that hit real damn hard.
I do find it curious that something like that doesn't get Picard removed from duty. He just spent 5 decades as another person, it's so strange that they just let him go back to being a captain no worries right after. In most shows something like that would be a multi episode arc at least about them recovering from the experience. TNG just rolls with those massive traumatic events and keeps on trucking.
The Federation seems to have a "you good, man?" policy for returning to work after basically anything. I'd like to believe it's more about the fact that you can't exactly go home if you're posted to a starship than the requirements of a TV show, but it's probably fair to say any explanation is just a rationalization.
E: In the real world, Picard never works again after being de-Locutus'd, if we're being honest.
I think "That's not the story the writers want to tell" is a pretty broad defense that handwaves any criticism one could have with any work of fiction.
Take anything widely considered bad or ridiculed, say the ending of Dexter, or How I Met Your Mother, or Rise of Skywalker - why aren't they better works? "That's just not the point."
This feels like "Well, man, that's like your opinion." Yes, technically true, but still unsatisfying. I get that most people don't care about Star Trek's economy but it would only be a better work if it actually made sense, especially given the focus on Ferengi in DS9.
Nah. It's a specific point about what kind of story you are trying to tell.
Does the world of John Wick make any goddamn sense? Would all this shit be happening literally just beneath the notice of the wider world? It doesn't matter because it's irrelevant to the type of story it's trying to tell.
Does Omelas make sense? Does it need to make sense? It's besides the point of the story.
Something like Rise of Skywalker is not shit because it's worldbuilding doesn't make sense. Star Wars has never made much sense in that respect. It's shit because it's got bad writing that abandons established plotlines and character arcs and has shitty pacing and randomly absolutely shuts down built up romantic stories because a multi-billion dollar franchise can't risk the blowback of interracial hookups and so on down the road. I have no idea how you think these are comparable.
I would argue that the world building of John Wick 1 makes sense but that John Wick 2 and 3 are completely ridiculous, and that the first John Wick is by far the best one as a result. You can tell me that's not the point, but I really feel like the first movie is a better action film as a result.
Basically, I feel this defense is the standard "Just turn your brain off" reply to dumb action movie stuff, and I'm sorry but I can't, and as a result I love Die Hard 1 but hate Die Hard 5, love Fury Road, etc. etc.
I definitely feel this criticism of not fully thinking through their settings and doing the background storytelling applies to Discovery and Picard as well, the Red Letter Media guys tear into these details pretty viciously.
Nah. This isn't about turning your brain off. Some of it's about the suspension of disbelief. About the way we all accept the premises of the things we watch or read or whatever even though we know there are limitations to them because they are created rather then real. Because no work achieves completeness. At some point you hit, as one author I talked to described it, bedrock. Things are that way because that's the way they need to be for the story to work.
And you are doing the same right in this post. The world-building of John Wick 1 is fun and great and extremely well-executed but it absolutely makes no sense. The movie even fucking lampshades this by having what I'm pretty sure is literally the only cop in the entire series show up at the start of the first movie and go "Well, don't worry about the cops because we're gonna have nothing to do with this entire affair. Go nuts!". It's a great scene and it's hilarious and it works but it's absolutely the movie winking at the audience about how absurd this is.
And again, this isn't just world-building with Star Trek. It's also part of how the core show is meant to be constructed (ie - characters relatable to the audience) and a core part of it's thematic elements (ie - self-improvement vs technological improvement). Which is to say that it's not just "turn off your brain so you can enjoy this show", it is in many ways the overall point of the entire endeavour.
Watched "The Inner Light" for the first time last night and damn
That episode brought up some feelings for sure. I teared up a bit when that flute came out at the end. I've been having a lot of climate change anxiety and that hit real damn hard.
I do find it curious that something like that doesn't get Picard removed from duty. He just spent 5 decades as another person, it's so strange that they just let him go back to being a captain no worries right after. In most shows something like that would be a multi episode arc at least about them recovering from the experience. TNG just rolls with those massive traumatic events and keeps on trucking.
The Federation seems to have a "you good, man?" policy for returning to work after basically anything. I'd like to believe it's more about the fact that you can't exactly go home if you're posted to a starship than the requirements of a TV show, but it's probably fair to say any explanation is just a rationalization.
E: In the real world, Picard never works again after being de-Locutus'd, if we're being honest.
This is so true, especially with regards to what we know of human psyche, but in trek they have actual counselors with empathic abilities(i.e. they can see your feelings with 100% accuracy). They are probably a bit further ahead in Psychiatric health care than we are. They could probably give him medication that actually works for his problems without side-effects.
My pet fanon theory is that the reason Shrinks in Star Trek are called counselors instead of Psychologists and Psychiatrists is for the same reason that physicists/Chemical Engineers are not called Alchemists; They want the world to know that they actually know what they are doing! I mean the advances made in Mental Health in the last 50 years, outstrip the last 5000. Who is to tell how far ahead it will get in the 250.
The sky was full of stars, every star an exploding ship. One of ours.
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AuralynxDarkness is a perspectiveWatching the ego workRegistered Userregular
Watched "The Inner Light" for the first time last night and damn
That episode brought up some feelings for sure. I teared up a bit when that flute came out at the end. I've been having a lot of climate change anxiety and that hit real damn hard.
I do find it curious that something like that doesn't get Picard removed from duty. He just spent 5 decades as another person, it's so strange that they just let him go back to being a captain no worries right after. In most shows something like that would be a multi episode arc at least about them recovering from the experience. TNG just rolls with those massive traumatic events and keeps on trucking.
The Federation seems to have a "you good, man?" policy for returning to work after basically anything. I'd like to believe it's more about the fact that you can't exactly go home if you're posted to a starship than the requirements of a TV show, but it's probably fair to say any explanation is just a rationalization.
E: In the real world, Picard never works again after being de-Locutus'd, if we're being honest.
This is so true, especially with regards to what we know of human psyche, but in trek they have actual counselors with empathic abilities(i.e. they can see your feelings with 100% accuracy). They are probably a bit further ahead in Psychiatric health care than we are. They could probably give him medication that actually works for his problems without side-effects.
My pet fanon theory is that the reason Shrinks in Star Trek are called counselors instead of Psychologists and Psychiatrists is for the same reason that physicists/Chemical Engineers are not called Alchemists; They want the world to know that they actually know what they are doing! I mean the advances made in Mental Health in the last 50 years, outstrip the last 5000. Who is to tell how far ahead it will get in the 250.
I mean, I agree with the general sentiment expressed, but there doesn't appear to be a full-time counselor on DS9, and O'Brien has just as much reason as Picard to need one. It still comes across as a rationalization, if an interesting one with implications - and one they're happy to discard in First Contact so Picard can flip out and throw tantrums repeatedly.
Watched "The Inner Light" for the first time last night and damn
That episode brought up some feelings for sure. I teared up a bit when that flute came out at the end. I've been having a lot of climate change anxiety and that hit real damn hard.
I do find it curious that something like that doesn't get Picard removed from duty. He just spent 5 decades as another person, it's so strange that they just let him go back to being a captain no worries right after. In most shows something like that would be a multi episode arc at least about them recovering from the experience. TNG just rolls with those massive traumatic events and keeps on trucking.
The Federation seems to have a "you good, man?" policy for returning to work after basically anything. I'd like to believe it's more about the fact that you can't exactly go home if you're posted to a starship than the requirements of a TV show, but it's probably fair to say any explanation is just a rationalization.
E: In the real world, Picard never works again after being de-Locutus'd, if we're being honest.
My take is that mental health care is really good to begin with, people are well cared for and well adjusted and minor mental stresses are dealt with abundantly. People in general are better equipped for their mental health and have better access to outside help without societal judgement. Serious situations as they arise are less of a shock when you treat every minor situation seriously.
This isn't to say everyone's that good - Barclay was all kinds of messed up, but also had to be ordered to see the counselor. One must think that if he'd done that to begin with instead of fleeing into holodeck fantasies he might not have been such a whackadoodle by the time he drew attention to his addiction.
By modern knowledge, stress and trauma don't work this way, but to be fair modern knowledge has never been able to deal with a society where the stigma of counseling isn't just dispelled, but counseling is considered an activity for normal times and not just extraordinary ones, even the countries in the world that don't have mental health nightmare hellscapes still aren't that progressive about it.
Watched "The Inner Light" for the first time last night and damn
That episode brought up some feelings for sure. I teared up a bit when that flute came out at the end. I've been having a lot of climate change anxiety and that hit real damn hard.
I do find it curious that something like that doesn't get Picard removed from duty. He just spent 5 decades as another person, it's so strange that they just let him go back to being a captain no worries right after. In most shows something like that would be a multi episode arc at least about them recovering from the experience. TNG just rolls with those massive traumatic events and keeps on trucking.
The Federation seems to have a "you good, man?" policy for returning to work after basically anything. I'd like to believe it's more about the fact that you can't exactly go home if you're posted to a starship than the requirements of a TV show, but it's probably fair to say any explanation is just a rationalization.
E: In the real world, Picard never works again after being de-Locutus'd, if we're being honest.
This is so true, especially with regards to what we know of human psyche, but in trek they have actual counselors with empathic abilities(i.e. they can see your feelings with 100% accuracy). They are probably a bit further ahead in Psychiatric health care than we are. They could probably give him medication that actually works for his problems without side-effects.
My pet fanon theory is that the reason Shrinks in Star Trek are called counselors instead of Psychologists and Psychiatrists is for the same reason that physicists/Chemical Engineers are not called Alchemists; They want the world to know that they actually know what they are doing! I mean the advances made in Mental Health in the last 50 years, outstrip the last 5000. Who is to tell how far ahead it will get in the 250.
I mean, I agree with the general sentiment expressed, but there doesn't appear to be a full-time counselor on DS9, and O'Brien has just as much reason as Picard to need one. It still comes across as a rationalization, if an interesting one with implications - and one they're happy to discard in First Contact so Picard can flip out and throw tantrums repeatedly.
The thing about First Contact, and I've had this fight probably thirty times this thread: That was the first time he actually faced The Borg after Best of Both Worlds. In I, Borg and Descent, he faced drones disconnected from the collective with individuality and even names. People, not an inexorable force of consumption. He tried very hard to see the face of his nightmares in Hugh's, but even Guinan could see that it wasn't there.
And he still took quite a bit of provocation from Lily before he actually flipped out.
DS9 talked about its counselor, we just didn't see one as part of the regular cast until after they traded their science officer for one. Voyager had one, but they died in Caretaker and the best they had at the time was a holographic doctor who didn't really grasp the idea of informed consent and whose bedside manner involved manhandling patients who didn't want to be examined. Or Neelix. Take your pick. I, for one, am not wholly surprised the crew chose the slow descent into madness over Neelix's "coffee."
Hevach on
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AuralynxDarkness is a perspectiveWatching the ego workRegistered Userregular
Watched "The Inner Light" for the first time last night and damn
That episode brought up some feelings for sure. I teared up a bit when that flute came out at the end. I've been having a lot of climate change anxiety and that hit real damn hard.
I do find it curious that something like that doesn't get Picard removed from duty. He just spent 5 decades as another person, it's so strange that they just let him go back to being a captain no worries right after. In most shows something like that would be a multi episode arc at least about them recovering from the experience. TNG just rolls with those massive traumatic events and keeps on trucking.
The Federation seems to have a "you good, man?" policy for returning to work after basically anything. I'd like to believe it's more about the fact that you can't exactly go home if you're posted to a starship than the requirements of a TV show, but it's probably fair to say any explanation is just a rationalization.
E: In the real world, Picard never works again after being de-Locutus'd, if we're being honest.
This is so true, especially with regards to what we know of human psyche, but in trek they have actual counselors with empathic abilities(i.e. they can see your feelings with 100% accuracy). They are probably a bit further ahead in Psychiatric health care than we are. They could probably give him medication that actually works for his problems without side-effects.
My pet fanon theory is that the reason Shrinks in Star Trek are called counselors instead of Psychologists and Psychiatrists is for the same reason that physicists/Chemical Engineers are not called Alchemists; They want the world to know that they actually know what they are doing! I mean the advances made in Mental Health in the last 50 years, outstrip the last 5000. Who is to tell how far ahead it will get in the 250.
I mean, I agree with the general sentiment expressed, but there doesn't appear to be a full-time counselor on DS9, and O'Brien has just as much reason as Picard to need one. It still comes across as a rationalization, if an interesting one with implications - and one they're happy to discard in First Contact so Picard can flip out and throw tantrums repeatedly.
The thing about First Contact, and I've had this fight probably thirty times this thread: That was the first time he actually faced The Borg after Best of Both Worlds. In I, Borg and Descent, he faced drones disconnected from the collective with individuality and even names. People, not an inexorable force of consumption. He tried very hard to see the face of his nightmares in Hugh's, but even Guinan could see that it wasn't there.
And he still took quite a bit of provocation from Lily before he actually flipped out.
Yeah, my issues with First Contact are more about timing than characterization, but an otherwise-excellent captain who's 100% going to lose it in a very foreseeable circumstance is great cinema and very bad organizational mental health protocol, which is what I was getting at with the edit to the first post.
It's not that I think Picard should've been institutionalized or something after Wolf 359, it's that I can't imagine how - regardless of how humane we imagine the future to be - they wouldn't revoke his Federation equivalent of a security clearance and make him retire after something like that.
Watched "The Inner Light" for the first time last night and damn
That episode brought up some feelings for sure. I teared up a bit when that flute came out at the end. I've been having a lot of climate change anxiety and that hit real damn hard.
I do find it curious that something like that doesn't get Picard removed from duty. He just spent 5 decades as another person, it's so strange that they just let him go back to being a captain no worries right after. In most shows something like that would be a multi episode arc at least about them recovering from the experience. TNG just rolls with those massive traumatic events and keeps on trucking.
The Federation seems to have a "you good, man?" policy for returning to work after basically anything. I'd like to believe it's more about the fact that you can't exactly go home if you're posted to a starship than the requirements of a TV show, but it's probably fair to say any explanation is just a rationalization.
E: In the real world, Picard never works again after being de-Locutus'd, if we're being honest.
This is so true, especially with regards to what we know of human psyche, but in trek they have actual counselors with empathic abilities(i.e. they can see your feelings with 100% accuracy). They are probably a bit further ahead in Psychiatric health care than we are. They could probably give him medication that actually works for his problems without side-effects.
My pet fanon theory is that the reason Shrinks in Star Trek are called counselors instead of Psychologists and Psychiatrists is for the same reason that physicists/Chemical Engineers are not called Alchemists; They want the world to know that they actually know what they are doing! I mean the advances made in Mental Health in the last 50 years, outstrip the last 5000. Who is to tell how far ahead it will get in the 250.
I mean, I agree with the general sentiment expressed, but there doesn't appear to be a full-time counselor on DS9, and O'Brien has just as much reason as Picard to need one. It still comes across as a rationalization, if an interesting one with implications - and one they're happy to discard in First Contact so Picard can flip out and throw tantrums repeatedly.
That you can see. Its been established that there are crew that does not show up on screen. Ensign/LT Vilix'pran for example is referenced multiple times. They/Them bud new Hatchlings at least 3 times while stationed on DS9, having at least 8 hatchlings. Lower Decks shows a counselor that isn't a part of the regular command crew. Maybe Enterprise-D is unusual because its the flagship and does many diplomatic missions. Assignments where a psych eval would be a valuable assets.
Also Picard only throwing a tantrum 5 years after the event and only when faced with the Borg up close and personal is a pretty good treatment. Most modern treatments would have Picard in an institution doing Macaroni art and fingerpainting for the rest of his life.
The sky was full of stars, every star an exploding ship. One of ours.
One of the primary conceits of the setting is that over the centuries between the start of TOS (or, ugh, fine, Enterprise) and today, humans have become fundamentally better - not permanently, or magically, or without the need of effort and work to maintain, but better nonetheless. That’s handled more subtly in the text than the “we don’t have money anymore” beats, because how could it not be, but it is also important to this discussion because it’s where the hand waving happens, if you will.
How could you possibly posit a society that has cities and spaceships and all this stuff but doesn’t use money?
(Aside: if you’re up for a dense but enjoyable read that bears somewhat on this question, I recommend John C. Scott’s Seeing Like A State very highly for a bunch of riffs on the theme “assuming that something which doesn’t look like you’ve been trained to expect is simple or chaotic or useless is probably a mistake”. It’s an academic, nonfiction book that goes into several historical examples.)
Weeeeeeeell, first you gotta have people who can feel in-group empathy that isn’t scoped by Dunbar’s number. Also, those people need to be able to recognize, observe objectively, and process their own anxieties and hangups about social group status and just keep on keepin’ on even if they’re number two or number ten or number ten thousand instead of Number One. You can’t have any sociopaths, like, not any at all. Oh, and the ability to derive fulfillment from hard work that entirely benefits “the group” or “some abstract other person” instead of yourself or your kin group, that helps a lot. Without an entire population with most of these attributes, you’re gonna get hoarding, or group-based persecutions, or self-dealing, and your society is going to be too brittle to survive very long.
Now, how do you get a population with all those crazy attributes that are pretty much alien to the hyoo-mon of the early 21st? Shit man, I don’t know. Maybe all the terrible wars and disasters that nearly wiped the species out checks watch starting about twenty-five years ago exerted some selection pressure on the species. Maybe the Vulcan philosophy of reality-truth (“logic”) had some knock-on effects when humans were exposed to it. Maybe there’s whole new branches of psychotherapy. Maybe every kid who fails the two-marshmallows test on their sixth birthday is fired into the local star. The text doesn’t really tell us how it happened, any more than it explains in detail how a warp drive works.
Picard mentions when Troi temporarily loses her abilities that captains who have access to empathic or telepathic counselors value them greatly, but most captains don't have one and that's perfectly fine. Her place of prominence was because of those abilities over her job as counselor. The only non-empathic counselor we ever see on the bridge is Dax, and because she's also a qualified science officer and veteran combat commander there's no reason to think that she's there in her regular capacity - if you are on the bridge of Ben Sisko's Personal Avatar of Vengeance you've got to work for a living.
If the Enterprise had a human counselor they would have been in an office down on deck ten and we'd see them about four times in the series, one time played by a different actor and with their name spelled three different ways because they weren't even meant to be a repeated character.
I would point out that the ability sense when somebody is mentally sick(aka Telepathy) is such a huge step forward for the that we can't see it from here. Vulcan Telepathy is such a game changer vis a vis psychology that its not even funny. Combine that with tricorders that can scan exactly what is wrong with you biochemically at a wave in your direction, replicators that can make the exact medication you need without the trial and error we are stuck with, down to variation for metabolism, age and weight... its magic by our standards.
That's not even going into the ability to repair damage genes and fix biochemical birth defects causing schizophrenia/BPD. Autism would probably be extinct in the Trek universe, at least in its more extreme forms.
All this for a field of study that is less than 150 years old in our time and less than 50 years of actual scientific progress.
The sky was full of stars, every star an exploding ship. One of ours.
I would point out that the ability sense when somebody is mentally sick(aka Telepathy) is such a huge step forward for the that we can't see it from here. Vulcan Telepathy is such a game changer vis a vis psychology that its not even funny. Combine that with tricorders that can scan exactly what is wrong with you biochemically at a wave in your direction, replicators that can make the exact medication you need without the trial and error we are stuck with, down to variation for metabolism, age and weight... its magic by our standards.
That's not even going into the ability to repair damage genes and fix biochemical birth defects causing schizophrenia/BPD. Autism would probably be extinct in the Trek universe, at least in its more extreme forms.
All this for a field of study that is less than 150 years old in our time and less than 50 years of actual scientific progress.
That seems like an absolutely terrible idea, mind melds are a two way street. I mean yeah you effectively diagnosed a psychopath but 9 times out of 10 you then end up with two psychopaths running around the ship.
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I would point out that the ability sense when somebody is mentally sick(aka Telepathy) is such a huge step forward for the that we can't see it from here. Vulcan Telepathy is such a game changer vis a vis psychology that its not even funny. Combine that with tricorders that can scan exactly what is wrong with you biochemically at a wave in your direction, replicators that can make the exact medication you need without the trial and error we are stuck with, down to variation for metabolism, age and weight... its magic by our standards.
That's not even going into the ability to repair damage genes and fix biochemical birth defects causing schizophrenia/BPD. Autism would probably be extinct in the Trek universe, at least in its more extreme forms.
All this for a field of study that is less than 150 years old in our time and less than 50 years of actual scientific progress.
That seems like an absolutely terrible idea, mind melds are a two way street. I mean yeah you effectively diagnosed a psychopath but 9 times out of 10 you then end up with two psychopaths running around the ship.
... I really want to see an oughts-style Magical Autism Detective show but in the TOS era with a Vulcan protagonist now. Just nothing but batshit-crazy Mind Meld Problems / Sex Ghost / Energy Being stories solved by absurd logical rigor and / or the human partner with a heart of gold.
When I think of medical advances in Star Trek, my go-to is always the throwaway scene in IV where Bones runs across a woman waiting for a dialysis session, says “What!? Absolutely not.” and, reaching into his shoulder bag kit he’s carrying around in case they run into trouble, gives her a pill that makes her body grow a new, healthy kidney.
I would point out that the ability sense when somebody is mentally sick(aka Telepathy) is such a huge step forward for the that we can't see it from here. Vulcan Telepathy is such a game changer vis a vis psychology that its not even funny. Combine that with tricorders that can scan exactly what is wrong with you biochemically at a wave in your direction, replicators that can make the exact medication you need without the trial and error we are stuck with, down to variation for metabolism, age and weight... its magic by our standards.
That's not even going into the ability to repair damage genes and fix biochemical birth defects causing schizophrenia/BPD. Autism would probably be extinct in the Trek universe, at least in its more extreme forms.
All this for a field of study that is less than 150 years old in our time and less than 50 years of actual scientific progress.
That seems like an absolutely terrible idea, mind melds are a two way street. I mean yeah you effectively diagnosed a psychopath but 9 times out of 10 you then end up with two psychopaths running around the ship.
Pretty much, I mean Voyager has a few episodes where tuvok tried to treat or cure that crewman that was a sociopathic serial killer and that didn't work at all and almost drove tuvok insane in the process
Also I don't think they can cure genetic diseases yet or picard wouldn't still be running around with shalafts syndrome
I would point out that the ability sense when somebody is mentally sick(aka Telepathy) is such a huge step forward for the that we can't see it from here. Vulcan Telepathy is such a game changer vis a vis psychology that its not even funny. Combine that with tricorders that can scan exactly what is wrong with you biochemically at a wave in your direction, replicators that can make the exact medication you need without the trial and error we are stuck with, down to variation for metabolism, age and weight... its magic by our standards.
That's not even going into the ability to repair damage genes and fix biochemical birth defects causing schizophrenia/BPD. Autism would probably be extinct in the Trek universe, at least in its more extreme forms.
All this for a field of study that is less than 150 years old in our time and less than 50 years of actual scientific progress.
That seems like an absolutely terrible idea, mind melds are a two way street. I mean yeah you effectively diagnosed a psychopath but 9 times out of 10 you then end up with two psychopaths running around the ship.
Pretty much, I mean Voyager has a few episodes where tuvok tried to treat or cure that crewman that was a sociopathic serial killer and that didn't work at all and almost drove tuvok insane in the process
Also I don't think they can cure genetic diseases yet or picard wouldn't still be running around with shalafts syndrome
They have cured or treated some in the show. Basically all the ones we know now are settled science in Star Trek, so they have to make up new ones that can't be treated.
Kind of like how Rigellian Rectal Space Flu can ravage the whole crew and it's barely a B plot but mention influenza and everyone's like "influence what now?"
I would point out that the ability sense when somebody is mentally sick(aka Telepathy) is such a huge step forward for the that we can't see it from here. Vulcan Telepathy is such a game changer vis a vis psychology that its not even funny. Combine that with tricorders that can scan exactly what is wrong with you biochemically at a wave in your direction, replicators that can make the exact medication you need without the trial and error we are stuck with, down to variation for metabolism, age and weight... its magic by our standards.
That's not even going into the ability to repair damage genes and fix biochemical birth defects causing schizophrenia/BPD. Autism would probably be extinct in the Trek universe, at least in its more extreme forms.
All this for a field of study that is less than 150 years old in our time and less than 50 years of actual scientific progress.
That seems like an absolutely terrible idea, mind melds are a two way street. I mean yeah you effectively diagnosed a psychopath but 9 times out of 10 you then end up with two psychopaths running around the ship.
Pretty much, I mean Voyager has a few episodes where tuvok tried to treat or cure that crewman that was a sociopathic serial killer and that didn't work at all and almost drove tuvok insane in the process
Also I don't think they can cure genetic diseases yet or picard wouldn't still be running around with shalafts syndrome
Part of that is the deep taboo against genetic modification, thanks to WW3, and all the other general augment chaos since, I think. One of Earth’s particular bugbears, which may affect genetic cures (leaving aside the ethical dilemma around “curing” certain conditions)
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Or you know, Star Fleet is intelligent enough to realize that their officers on DS9 need a way to interact with other people who DO use money, and provide them with a stipend as part of being posted in such a place. Sort of like my work does when I travel for them or get asked to work somewhere for an extended period of time that is "not home". But again, the "no money" thing is one of those things that I think is taken (written?) far too literally.
Not entirely sure, Federation officers also have a Latinum allowance that they can use to buy food, gamble and what ever while on the station.
Like I bought a set of three small pictures from Ikea, but I took them down and put up a hand-stitched pictures of Kittens that a now passed relative had stitched from one of those cheap patterns you can buy. Fiscally speaking, the pictures are more valuable(even if its mass produced Ikea art), but I know which one I want on my wall.
Now the thing is, you could probably replicate both of them in vast quantities, but you can't replicate what makes the Kitten picture valuable to me and it wouldn't be valuable to anyone else.
That is what a post scarcity society would focus on.
Nog : It's not my fault your species decided to abandon currency-based economics in favor of some philosophy of self-enhancement.
Jake Sisko : Hey - watch it! There's nothing wrong with our philosophy. We work to better ourselves and the rest of Humanity.
Nog : What does that mean exactly?
Jake Sisko : It means... it means, we don't need money.
Honestly this aspect of the setting is ignored so often (Memory Alpha has tons of references of characters buying things at Risa or whatever) that I think it's clear most screenwriters at least roll their eyes, but it's an annoyingly dumb thing that's "official" and novel writers and internet forum posters will bend over backwards to defend (and I can't help pointing out how silly it is).
On the other hand, Star Trek doesn't actually treat this aspect of its setting seriously. It states that the Federation doesn't use money anymore, but is completely silent on how it does operate. Is this Communism Classic, but we have replicators now so it works? Is everyone in 24/7 holodeck simulations, except for the people who actually want real life? Do most people work 8 hours a week in order to get some extra definitely-not-money?
I think my real issue here is that Capitalism Is Bad, Actually, and being able to show a non-Capitalist economy would be a good way to show that Capitalism is not a universal law of the universe, even if it needs to be a bit handwavy on the edges. This is one of the few settings that could realistically support this kind of worldbuilding, and it's not even bothering to try.
Inside the Federation, Jake could literally just have asked for the card if it was at a museum or something. He wouldn't be certain to get it but he wouldn't have to pay for it, just prove that it would be cared for and appreciated without subtracting from benefiting society.
Something like Sisko not being able to explain to Nog why the Federation doesn't use money? That makes a ton of sense given that Jake is from a society which has no use for money and Nog is from a society for the point of existence is money. They're also best friends, so of course Jake doesn't want launch into a diatribe about how the foundation of Ferengi culture is crap. So there are two different huge reasons why Jake wouldn't have a quick, short, easy answer as to why the Federation doesn't use money.
My read has always been (and the text pretty much supports) that the Federation is effectively post-scarcity communism. It's not explicit because the show was created a couple years after the Gulf of Tonkin and then revitalized in the waning days of the Reagan admin, and even today saying "oh yeah we're totally communist" would bring unto Paramount/CBS the unbridled rightwing fury of a class O star and the suits don't want to fuck with it.
Even with all that, Ron Moore all but said "exactly communism" throughout DS9, if you're looking for it.
I do think the Federation would provide a far better education about its ideas than "that's how we do things", even for somebody Jake's age. Given that Jake is steering towards a writing career, he almost certainly keenly aware of the historical and philosophical details of why the Federation has done away with money, to a depth and breadth that he knows Nog's primitive, almost barbaric, education can't handle. And given that Nog's classic way to handle a situation like is to blow up and storm away, Jake is just avoiding a fight that won't fix anything anyway.
Primitive tribesmen and rural hippie communes aren't real societies. Every civilization in history has addressed this issue and if your premise is a science fiction civilization that's done away with it then I'm super interested, but a cop out is going to annoy me. The Orville idea mentioned sounds interesting, and I'd be interested to see how exactly reputation is measured and earned, as it sounds wildly abusable and/or tyrannous at face value.
By the way, what feels most weird, "bruh", is the ridiculous 1980s schoolyard nerd shaming insult in a fucking Star Trek thread.
I think this hackneyed and completely underdeveloped idea is very dumb and if you disagree, change my mind.
But I don't think American audiences would have largely been receptive to Jake breaking down why private property is bad, it's only just now starting to be not shocking in mainstream American political discourse to even breath that kind of thing
Granted, I would love it if Star Trek did this, and I do kind of hate that NuTrek is largely uninterested in exploring this optimistic future where capitalism is a dragon we slew long ago. Shit could you imagine if enterprise or discovery were more smartly written and actually showed us Earth casting off the last vestiges of capitalism, and the unavoidable temporary unrest that would have caused?
Terra Nova showing the last gasp of Humanity First/Fascism as a centralized, organised movement was really cool, so something like that!
If you really think there's a good real life barter or communal living example for how the people of 150 worlds would stay organized please, expand on that idea. To even try to take that complexity seriously I think we need to cut things off at the "civilizations build cities" threshold.
A post scarcity society progresses naturally from capitalism, there's no dragon to slay. Everything becomes more and more efficient until the basic necessities are "too cheap to meter" and thus free.
Getting rid of private property still sounds crazy and as far as I can tell Star Trek has done no such thing, but yea sure I agree any kind of "life in the Federation" angles like this would be neat to explore.
Whaaaat? How?
Capitalism's natural conclusion is a handful of entities owning literally everything and doling out the barest minimum they can so that their workers can buy cheap mass produced goods. As an example I'll point to Amazon's fight against worker unionization or the mere fact that we could end homelessness practically overnight if we wanted to, for less money than Jeff Bezos is worth
at some point there would have to be a massive populist movement to decide that "Private property is bad", capitalism isn't going to decide that Landlords as a concept are evil for example
Edit: "Getting rid of private property sounds crazy"? I mean in our current climate, sure does, what sense does it make in Star Trek? I will clarify that Private Property refers to ownership of property that you as an individual are unable to make use of
Private Property would not be the Hansons owning a spaceship, it would be Beverly Crusher owning The Enterprise. Your home is still your home, but you don't get to own 32000 homes in a metropolitan area and start a corporation that collects passive value from people because you have a regional monopoly on one of the basic needs of human beings
Almost assuredly, property other than personal property is collectively owned by the community in Federation "core worlds" and if, say, you want to open a restaurant, you'd probably have to prove to a board or committee or whatever that you were serious about it for them to grant you one of the few limited resources left: prime real estate
And yes it is fair to talk about the applicability of the organization of small communities to interplanetary concerns, but holy shit be more careful with your wording. You're taking umbrage at being called a nerd, but whatever your experiences are that are causing you to be so defensive, they pale in comparison to the events your words are invoking https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Indian_boarding_schools
“Wait, people pay money at Quark’s? I thought money had been abolished in Star Trek”
Me: “uh, well, err, uh. Look it’s best not to think about these things too much.”
Anyway considering “we’ve evolved past the need for money” is such a big part of the Star Trek mythos, and considering Quark’s is such a big part of DS9, I feel like maybe the pilot should’ve had a couple lines of explanatory dialogue about this
“Welcome to Deep Space Nine. You’ll be paid five hundred credits a week, good at any of the shops on the station.”
“Credits? You mean *money*, sir? I knew we’d be roughing it out here, but didn’t the Federation outlaw money over 200 years ago?”
“Sometimes you have to bend the rules a little out on the frontier.”
Or whatever
(Then you could have some fun fish-out-of-water comedy where a crew member awkwardly uses money for the first time, etc)
That episode brought up some feelings for sure. I teared up a bit when that flute came out at the end. I've been having a lot of climate change anxiety and that hit real damn hard.
I do find it curious that something like that doesn't get Picard removed from duty. He just spent 5 decades as another person, it's so strange that they just let him go back to being a captain no worries right after. In most shows something like that would be a multi episode arc at least about them recovering from the experience. TNG just rolls with those massive traumatic events and keeps on trucking.
The Federation seems to have a "you good, man?" policy for returning to work after basically anything. I'd like to believe it's more about the fact that you can't exactly go home if you're posted to a starship than the requirements of a TV show, but it's probably fair to say any explanation is just a rationalization.
E: In the real world, Picard never works again after being de-Locutus'd, if we're being honest.
Nah. This isn't about turning your brain off. Some of it's about the suspension of disbelief. About the way we all accept the premises of the things we watch or read or whatever even though we know there are limitations to them because they are created rather then real. Because no work achieves completeness. At some point you hit, as one author I talked to described it, bedrock. Things are that way because that's the way they need to be for the story to work.
And you are doing the same right in this post. The world-building of John Wick 1 is fun and great and extremely well-executed but it absolutely makes no sense. The movie even fucking lampshades this by having what I'm pretty sure is literally the only cop in the entire series show up at the start of the first movie and go "Well, don't worry about the cops because we're gonna have nothing to do with this entire affair. Go nuts!". It's a great scene and it's hilarious and it works but it's absolutely the movie winking at the audience about how absurd this is.
And again, this isn't just world-building with Star Trek. It's also part of how the core show is meant to be constructed (ie - characters relatable to the audience) and a core part of it's thematic elements (ie - self-improvement vs technological improvement). Which is to say that it's not just "turn off your brain so you can enjoy this show", it is in many ways the overall point of the entire endeavour.
This is so true, especially with regards to what we know of human psyche, but in trek they have actual counselors with empathic abilities(i.e. they can see your feelings with 100% accuracy). They are probably a bit further ahead in Psychiatric health care than we are. They could probably give him medication that actually works for his problems without side-effects.
My pet fanon theory is that the reason Shrinks in Star Trek are called counselors instead of Psychologists and Psychiatrists is for the same reason that physicists/Chemical Engineers are not called Alchemists; They want the world to know that they actually know what they are doing! I mean the advances made in Mental Health in the last 50 years, outstrip the last 5000. Who is to tell how far ahead it will get in the 250.
I mean, I agree with the general sentiment expressed, but there doesn't appear to be a full-time counselor on DS9, and O'Brien has just as much reason as Picard to need one. It still comes across as a rationalization, if an interesting one with implications - and one they're happy to discard in First Contact so Picard can flip out and throw tantrums repeatedly.
My take is that mental health care is really good to begin with, people are well cared for and well adjusted and minor mental stresses are dealt with abundantly. People in general are better equipped for their mental health and have better access to outside help without societal judgement. Serious situations as they arise are less of a shock when you treat every minor situation seriously.
This isn't to say everyone's that good - Barclay was all kinds of messed up, but also had to be ordered to see the counselor. One must think that if he'd done that to begin with instead of fleeing into holodeck fantasies he might not have been such a whackadoodle by the time he drew attention to his addiction.
By modern knowledge, stress and trauma don't work this way, but to be fair modern knowledge has never been able to deal with a society where the stigma of counseling isn't just dispelled, but counseling is considered an activity for normal times and not just extraordinary ones, even the countries in the world that don't have mental health nightmare hellscapes still aren't that progressive about it.
The thing about First Contact, and I've had this fight probably thirty times this thread: That was the first time he actually faced The Borg after Best of Both Worlds. In I, Borg and Descent, he faced drones disconnected from the collective with individuality and even names. People, not an inexorable force of consumption. He tried very hard to see the face of his nightmares in Hugh's, but even Guinan could see that it wasn't there.
And he still took quite a bit of provocation from Lily before he actually flipped out.
DS9 talked about its counselor, we just didn't see one as part of the regular cast until after they traded their science officer for one. Voyager had one, but they died in Caretaker and the best they had at the time was a holographic doctor who didn't really grasp the idea of informed consent and whose bedside manner involved manhandling patients who didn't want to be examined. Or Neelix. Take your pick. I, for one, am not wholly surprised the crew chose the slow descent into madness over Neelix's "coffee."
Yeah, my issues with First Contact are more about timing than characterization, but an otherwise-excellent captain who's 100% going to lose it in a very foreseeable circumstance is great cinema and very bad organizational mental health protocol, which is what I was getting at with the edit to the first post.
It's not that I think Picard should've been institutionalized or something after Wolf 359, it's that I can't imagine how - regardless of how humane we imagine the future to be - they wouldn't revoke his Federation equivalent of a security clearance and make him retire after something like that.
That you can see. Its been established that there are crew that does not show up on screen. Ensign/LT Vilix'pran for example is referenced multiple times. They/Them bud new Hatchlings at least 3 times while stationed on DS9, having at least 8 hatchlings. Lower Decks shows a counselor that isn't a part of the regular command crew. Maybe Enterprise-D is unusual because its the flagship and does many diplomatic missions. Assignments where a psych eval would be a valuable assets.
Also Picard only throwing a tantrum 5 years after the event and only when faced with the Borg up close and personal is a pretty good treatment. Most modern treatments would have Picard in an institution doing Macaroni art and fingerpainting for the rest of his life.
How could you possibly posit a society that has cities and spaceships and all this stuff but doesn’t use money?
(Aside: if you’re up for a dense but enjoyable read that bears somewhat on this question, I recommend John C. Scott’s Seeing Like A State very highly for a bunch of riffs on the theme “assuming that something which doesn’t look like you’ve been trained to expect is simple or chaotic or useless is probably a mistake”. It’s an academic, nonfiction book that goes into several historical examples.)
Weeeeeeeell, first you gotta have people who can feel in-group empathy that isn’t scoped by Dunbar’s number. Also, those people need to be able to recognize, observe objectively, and process their own anxieties and hangups about social group status and just keep on keepin’ on even if they’re number two or number ten or number ten thousand instead of Number One. You can’t have any sociopaths, like, not any at all. Oh, and the ability to derive fulfillment from hard work that entirely benefits “the group” or “some abstract other person” instead of yourself or your kin group, that helps a lot. Without an entire population with most of these attributes, you’re gonna get hoarding, or group-based persecutions, or self-dealing, and your society is going to be too brittle to survive very long.
Now, how do you get a population with all those crazy attributes that are pretty much alien to the hyoo-mon of the early 21st? Shit man, I don’t know. Maybe all the terrible wars and disasters that nearly wiped the species out checks watch starting about twenty-five years ago exerted some selection pressure on the species. Maybe the Vulcan philosophy of reality-truth (“logic”) had some knock-on effects when humans were exposed to it. Maybe there’s whole new branches of psychotherapy. Maybe every kid who fails the two-marshmallows test on their sixth birthday is fired into the local star. The text doesn’t really tell us how it happened, any more than it explains in detail how a warp drive works.
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If the Enterprise had a human counselor they would have been in an office down on deck ten and we'd see them about four times in the series, one time played by a different actor and with their name spelled three different ways because they weren't even meant to be a repeated character.
That's not even going into the ability to repair damage genes and fix biochemical birth defects causing schizophrenia/BPD. Autism would probably be extinct in the Trek universe, at least in its more extreme forms.
All this for a field of study that is less than 150 years old in our time and less than 50 years of actual scientific progress.
... I really want to see an oughts-style Magical Autism Detective show but in the TOS era with a Vulcan protagonist now. Just nothing but batshit-crazy Mind Meld Problems / Sex Ghost / Energy Being stories solved by absurd logical rigor and / or the human partner with a heart of gold.
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Pretty much, I mean Voyager has a few episodes where tuvok tried to treat or cure that crewman that was a sociopathic serial killer and that didn't work at all and almost drove tuvok insane in the process
Also I don't think they can cure genetic diseases yet or picard wouldn't still be running around with shalafts syndrome
They have cured or treated some in the show. Basically all the ones we know now are settled science in Star Trek, so they have to make up new ones that can't be treated.
Kind of like how Rigellian Rectal Space Flu can ravage the whole crew and it's barely a B plot but mention influenza and everyone's like "influence what now?"
Part of that is the deep taboo against genetic modification, thanks to WW3, and all the other general augment chaos since, I think. One of Earth’s particular bugbears, which may affect genetic cures (leaving aside the ethical dilemma around “curing” certain conditions)
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