To Boldly Stay or Go?

There is a danger to using Star Trek as a metaphor of any kind in a blog, as Star Trek, as moral compass is so often over used in geekdom, but I just can’t help myself. I was worried about a spoiler when discussing the Episode from the Original Series  “The Paradise Syndrome”, but realized that anyone who is likely to watch this, has already watched it. New Trekkers are born everyday of course, so for those I am sorry. Anyway, just a quick synopsis: The away team beams onto a planet, which in 60 days will be destroyed by an asteroid on course to hit it, and Kirk and the rest are investigating the advancement of the society. What they find are two contradictory things, a futuristic obelisk, with some type of code on it, and an ancient people that resemble and act a lot like Navajos. So Kirk falls into the obelisk, and Spock et al, are forced to leave him behind for the 60 days while they try to deflect the asteroid. The captains memory is wiped clean and he emerges by being viewed as a god. He marries a beautiful woman and spends the 60 days in blissful paradise. He constantly says how happy he is, and that he has never been happier. Needless to say the Enterprise returns, rescues him, and he  goes back to the anxious life of a Star Fleet Commander without looking back.

I am leaving a lot out, so it is still worth a watch (or 2) but the point of the thing struck me, as being especially American, and actually a whole lot like me. American ambition is so apparent in Star Trek, and it is honorable from that vantage point. Kirk would certainly sacrifice simple happiness to seek out new worlds for adventurous missions of peace, even if it is dangerous and quit possibly one of the more stressful jobs in the galaxy (if you don’t count the occupation of the unknown ensign who is killed in many episodes needing to be forever replaced). Our ambitions, and anxieties are not so mentally dissimilar. I had lunch with a colleague and friend who pointed out, and I agreed, that he is proud that America was the country to invent Twitter, as we all watched Twitter revolutions throughout the Arab Spring. Indeed new worlds and going where no one had gone before. Yet the sad truth is that most of us spend our lives not creating a Twitter, or curing cancer, or fighting dictators, or discovering and saving species, but rather spend that equal amount of anxiety on a grind, lost in worry without the thrill of the success. So does the ambition of an entire country justify the successes of a few of its citizens? Would a life of happiness be a worthwhile trade-off? 

My father and Nanotronics (our company) Chief Programmer Jeff Archer have a similar philosophy about this, both expressed to me at different times. Dad said that it is the goal that your vocation and your avocation are one in the same. I took from this that it would mean that you would indeed achieve happiness in your work. I spoke to Jeff about this in a more direct way. He had been working 14 hour days for weeks, and I told him that not only did I feel guilty that he was doing this, but that he should rest and do something he likes. He said something to the extent that programming, if it is an exciting project, is what he does like, and that is why he was spending so much time at it. If this is true, Jeff is certainly lucky as is Nanotronics! (despite these work hours, I am not exactly proud of considering that even Scrooge was reformed to give Cratchet Christmas day off). If this is possible, as we know it is for some, and not as we know it is for others, how do we justify our own choices, and the values of a society? I wish I could ask this of Gene Roddenberry himself, but instead we are stuck with politicians and CEOs making the decisions. Or maybe we can decide for ourselves to step into or out of danger and happiness as Kirk did for those 60 days.