TenForward: Where Every Vulcan Knows Your Name

I actually really like this topic here in 10 Forward. It becomes more of what 10F really is anyway: a place to talk about stuff. Sometimes it’s comedy night (memes), sometimes it’s murder-mystery night, sometimes it’s slam-poetry night. It’s all good, let’s talk about all things Star Trek.

I will add my voice to the chorus, real life isn't a cartoon where good people are morally, ethically and physically in the right. Real people and real situations have layers, and are rooted in fundamentally human wants, needs and limitations.

I get that if you're a brand, and living only in a symbolic sense, you might want to distance yourself from symbols that don't align. But us humans, actually having experienced reality, should know that some or even most actions aren't perfectly informed, selflessly good from every perspective, for all of time.

And frankly, I think wanting and needing that unambiguity is dangerous as you're dehumanising people and disempowering yourself from reflecting upon behavior and setting proper boundaries. That, and/or a sign of considerable stress (compare with black & white thinking or catastrophic thinking).

People can be flawed and make awesome contributions. The theory of gravity is good, useful, and a significant discovery forming the basis of much of industrial and modern society, even though it was made possible only by colonialism and systematic oppression.

Socrates/Plato made astounding work contributing to the development of every field of knowledge, despite being weirdo homeless hermits before forming a cult.

Be inspired by the greatness in people, not the flaws.

Maybe the better approach is that we as audiences should understand that no real person is a saint and that whether or not it leaves a bad taste in our mouths, otherwise morally reprehensible people can still be responsible for profound achievements and progress.

Somebody else brought up Freud already, who many would call a deeply unethical man and whose conclusions are often debunked or thought better of in the modern era... Yet the impact of Freud, despite these shortcomings, remains basically inarguable.

I think the problem is that in the past 20 or so years we've started to read acknowledgement in media as endorsement by media, but those are two very separate things.