Re: Star Trek background (was... something else)

At 09:36 AM 9/8/97 GMT, David Brewer wrote:
>Fascists? Surely you mean communists. They seem to have abolished
>all money, get from people according to their ability, give to
>them according to their needs etc.. The Federation seems to be an 
>idealised version of what the Soviet Union used to pretend to be.
>(Have you ever read the old Soviet constitution?)

Hmm. Didn't think of it that way before. Of course, it's simply a
utopian
world view. That's what communism was striving for, except that it
didn't
take human nature into account. Neither does Star Trek.

Funny enough, the Federation is essentially the same as Iain Banks'
Culture.
Nobody works, there is no money, no one wants for anything, people live
a
long time, etc. The difference is that Banks has made the logical leap
that
the Culture itself--in order to maintain the utopia--must work on a
principal of enlightened self-interest. Check out _Player of Games_;
there's
no "non-interference prime directive" in the Culture...

You could also argue that Star Trek is the extreme extension of the
American
ideal of freedom, while the Culture is the extreme extension of the
British
ideal of freedom with an all encompassing social safety net, but that
would
be WAY off topic...

Allan Goodall:	agoodall@sympatico.ca 
"You'll want to hear about my new obsession.
 I'm riding high upon a deep depression. 
 I'm only happy when it rains."    - Garbage