How Dystopian Fiction Shapes Political Attitudes

Ironically, this happens in the utopian case with Star Trek, which gets invoked as an example of a valid and functioning "post scarcity" society based on fabrication and automation, despite the technology in that series being essentially magic.

I remember an article, whose title essentially summed up my view on this space - "Star Trek: The Next Generation Was the Last Sci-Fi Show Hopeful About the Future"[0]. I grew up on ST:TNG, and I sorely miss the ideas communicated there. That people can organize for common good. That such organizations, even large and bureaucratic, can be very competent and effective. That individuals can strive to better themselves, both morally and in terms of competence. That the default assumption about your colleagues/teammates is that they're competent in what they do. That we can all cooperate, instead of defect.

Speaking of competence, I wish another cliché would die too. That the world is filled with idiots. It's also very popular, and I also destructive to the fabric of society. But I'll leave elaborating on it to David Brin[1].

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[0] - https://www.esquire.com/entertainment/tv/a31206/star-trek-th...

[1] - http://www.davidbrin.com/nonfiction/idiotplot.html

The original series wasn't much at all, it was basically the US Navy in space. It does have a lot of moralizing and positivity, but the future depicted is also very much a product of its time. I wouldn't describe it as Utopian because the Federation as depicted is still clearly not intended to be seen as ideal.

TNG was a constant struggle between Gene Roddenberry to showcase his Utopian ideals and the writers to actually have some human drama (which he forbade, because humans were supposed to have evolved beyond that,) so it's the most optimistic of the series, most of the time, sometimes (IMHO) to its own detriment. One of the most hated characters in Star Trek, Wesley Crusher, was Gene Roddenberry's vision of the Ubermensch, but he came across as an insufferably perfect Gary Stu.

Further series deviate from the Utopian vision with... mixed results. I personally think DS9 is the best of them because, being an arc-driven series, it gets to flesh out its characters and cultures to a degree other series couldn't. However it's also a series about how a self-described Utopian society can abandon its ideals and morals when faced with a brutal adversary.

I think it's best to approach Star Trek as sci-fi (light on science more often than not) drama first and morality play second.

The contrast is live in the US in deaf communities. Deaf community leaders have a strong and unconflicted opinion on surgery to restore the hearing of deaf children: it's bad, it's a denial of the inherent worth of deaf people, and you should be ashamed for even thinking that a deaf child's hearing needs to be "fixed".

They think that way because they have a direct personal interest in the size of the deaf community: the larger the community is, the more power community leaders wield. But they have zero interest in the well-being of any specific child, and less in the well-being of a child who isn't even part of their community.

In contrast, the deaf parents of deaf children are often very conflicted. They know a child is better off being able to hear. But the child is unlikely to participate much in the deaf community (important to the parents) if its hearing is restored.

But still, I think it's hard to argue that it would be an example of disempowerment to exterminate sign language by restoring everyone's hearing so they can learn a spoken language and communicate with the people around them.

My anecdote:

I have enough people around me (literally several millions in my city) that speak my language. All books, movies and TV shows I ever wanted to see are available translated in very high quality. There is so much original content that a lot of people simply don't even crave foreign content, that includes any science you would think of (and our countrymen are the pioneers of many), programming guides etc. The sole purpose of learning English in my country as viewed by the government (that sets up schools) is to take advantage of foreign profit and then return back home with the money and participate in our society, and that view reflects the wishes of the majority of our society - we prefer to interact with our people because the people and especially the language "make sense" (Czech language is regarded for its internal consistency and hard rules combined with freeform sentences - that makes the language a form of wild art where you can completely change logical meaning of the whole 10-sentence block with a single tone pronounced differently, if you wish to do that).

This purpose ("to be worthy on the job market") is said to you numerous times (I heard it at least once a week the whole 12 years I had English class) your whole childhood by your parents (who truly believe that our culture is big enough and English is not for that purpose), youe teachers, your school principal and of course the government.