Gene Rodenberry

C/O Heaven or eternity

And somewhere in orbit

 

Dear Gene,

I hope this letter finds you well , wherever your soul has chosen to rest. Whatever ethereal plane you are on I hope you are enjoying the future you so eagerly thought of and sought for all of us. Alas, only small parts of your genius have come to pass and I fear we shall never experience the utopia you dreamt for all of us.

You were so wise so long ago. You created a time and place of such wonders. You created a time scale, yet bound it to no specific calendar on earth. You discussed how money was no longer a driving force yet you mentioned no currency. You had a chapel on the Enterprise, but you mentioned no religion. You created so many different aliens, that we earthlings became one race, regardless of origin. It was well ahead of its time as good science fiction should be.

I am afraid to tell you that we have advanced so little since you created this possible utopia for us. Sure we have come up with cell phones that look like your communicators and Bluetooth ear pieces that mimic Uhura’s and other feats of technology such as the space shuttle and interstellar probes, but as far as we ourselves go, I fear we are lacking meaningful improvement.

Gene, you weren’t perfect, neither are we. We have all done things we regret, but you at least strove to create a vision that we could all aspire to. You created missions of exploration and wonder. Your characters sought truth and learning as a focus of their journeys. Yet they learned as much among themselves as they did from the others they encountered along their path. In your world problems always had solutions as long as the effort was put forth to find them and mistakes or failure were never punished as long as they were learned from.

In some cases the best course of action was not to get involved. The Prime Directive forbid changing the course of less evolved species to give them time to grow. When intervention was necessary, not every situation was rosy. Some were violent and I am sure that what you saw of war was the reason your characters attempted to avoid violence as much as possible. (When violence was necessary, it was usually the last resort and almost always in defense of others.) The cooperation and peace your characters achieved will indeed be difficult to match here as we are too intent on our own segregation.

We humans segregate ourselves in every way possible. Race, class, religion, politics, learning, labor, even in something as simple as gender, we seek to subdivide and alienate. Economics, philosophy, industry, education, everything is arguable and divisible in infinite degrees. In schools, orphanages, even inmates in prison segregate themselves by these descriptors of what they see in and of themselves and others. People respond to each other daily with fear, anger, intolerance, impatience and derision.

Our leaders and tycoons have over and over made the decision that money and power are more important than human lives. Our human lives. They have scarred and polluted not only this planet, this oasis in space, but all of us as well. The amount of damage to our living quarters and our bodies is incalculable and the true extent of the damage may never be known. They deny the knowledge of this, even when it is eventually disclosed. They deny people the truth and every redress possible. We are all paying the exorbitant price of all of this with our very lives. We elect officials to act at our behest for the common good, yet they continue only to advance their own hidden agendas.

I hope that someday we may reach the future that you imagined, or at least some parts of it. War, famine, disease, hatred, greed, entitlement, drug use, crime, murder and more must all someday be dealt with, yet so far they are ignored. It seems the more time that goes by the less things improve. It’s as if everyone is intentionally trying to make things worse. I forsee a long frightening downward spiral.

I am sorry this report card has not been as favorable as you had hoped. I am sorry that I have to be the one to break the bad news. I don’t know what the future will bring us, but if things don’t change it surly won’t be one as intelligent, peaceful or as amazing as the one you sought for all of us. I hope someday your teachings are valued for the wisdom they contained.

Take care wherever you are, and thank you for all the memories of a future that may never be…