Star Trek as Imperialist Literature

I've watched and read and thought about Star Trek a lot more than is probably healthy, but here's something that only very recently occurred to me, at least in an explicit form.

Star Trek, of course, has its origins in the art and literature of Imperialism, in the first place from the naval and colonial literature of the British Empire ("a tall ship and a star to steer her by"), in the second place from Westerns and other literature of the Age of Westward Expansion and Manifest Destiny, and in the third place from Cold War, Kennedy-era art about superpowers and proxy wars. Yet I hadn't noticed that even in in-universe terms, there are literally NO non-Imperialist powers, and virtually no non-Imperialist entities, in the Star Trek universe. That is, there are no governmental entities that are not aimed essentially at unlimited expansion, or could not expand without limit.

The majority of both the villains and the allies of the Star Trek universe are single-species Empires whose raison d'etre is unlimited colonization and conquest by this single species over vast swathes of space and other species: hence the Klingon Empire, the Romulan Empire, the Cardassian Union, etc. This much is obvious.

What is less so is that the Federation is also a specifically Imperialist state, only one based on equality and liberal democracy and the extension of these principles. As the various series make clear, the Federation is constantly engaged in expansion, through exploration, colonization, and the frequent induction of new member planets. "First contact" with other species is carried out with the intention of eventually making them part of the Federation; and in many episodes we see new planets in the process of being absorbed into the Federation, with Bajor in Deep Space Nine only the most prominent example. The Prime Directive and the general Federation refusal to engage in wars of conquest is, at least in theory, a limitation on this--but in practice, it hardly seems to prevent or even slow down Federation expansion. A number of wars in the Star Trek universe, for instance, seem to have originated in the encroachment of new Federation colonies on the borders of other powers.

The United Federation of Planets is, in design, a version of the United States of America (down to the "Federation Constitution" with its "Guarantees" a la the Bill of Rights and its strict egalitarian policies banning caste systems and other non-egalitarian social structures in member worlds)--but it is a vision of the USA during its period of Manifest Destiny, that is, as a constantly expanding Imperialist entity aimed at a constantly-expanding "frontier." There is no inherent limitation to this expansion at all (such as a Galactic UN or any kind of necessary tie to a particular territory or culture), and no larger whole that the Federation considers itself subject to; in the long run, there is no reason besides force of arms and diplomatic policy why it would not absorb the Klingons, the Romulans, and every one of its rivals. In fact, if there's an underlying progressive arc to be discerned in the history of the Star Trek universe, its telos would seem to be the entire Galaxy (and beyond) as part of the Federation.

In the long run, as all the Star Trek shows make clear, the Federation, with its egalitarian policies and purported policy of non-interference, is simply far more effective and successful at Imperialism than any of its rivals. The Klingons, after all, no matter how much territory they may conquer, are still all finally bound to their sacred homeworld of Qu'on'os and the particular traditions and culture and religion of their species--and all these things are, in the end, limitations to the indefinite extension of their political power. The Federation, though, has no such equivalents.

There are apparently independent planets in the Galaxy, to be sure, though they get relatively little attention. Most of them are clear targets of the Federation's expansion, future member worlds to be enticed with economic and cultural and military benefits. A few are "neutral worlds" that exist on the margins of larger powers and generally are portrayed as havens for crime and the like. But even most of the "independent nations" we see are also expansionist Empires of various sorts. DS9's Dominion is a multi-species Imperialist federation with unlimited expansion as its goal. The Ferengi are an example of economic Imperialism, their goal unlimited business expansion and exploitation of resources. The Orion Syndicate is an expansionist organized crime group founded by a single species but incorporating many and operating within the network of Imperialist powers that dominate the Galaxy. The Borg, of course, are the ultimate "absorbers" and "assimilators" of species and people. And so on and so forth.

The Star Trek Galaxy, then, is dominated by dueling Imperialist expansionist powers, and everyone else has to find their place in the margins. Independence is, seemingly, scarcely an option--in Deep Space Nine, Bajor really has little choice but to join up with the Federation, since independence (as many episodes make clear) would immediately lead to annexation by a far less attractive Imperialist power (the Cardassian Empire). The Federation would not (and did not before) protect an independent Bajor--the price of safety is assimilation. The formation of any larger institution or whole over and beyond the Federation and its rivals is never even contemplated.

This is a dynamic that, to its credit, Deep Space Nine seems to get, and plays with a lot. The best example is in the speech I've posted here (which is a slight spoiler), as well as in the various non-Federation characters we see.

The normal critique of the Federation you tend to see is that it is economically Communist or really deep down violent and repressive (a la DS9's Section 31) or even just human-dominated and speciesist (a la Star Trek VI). I don't think any of these things are necessarily true--the Federation as portrayed in the various series and movies is clearly very committed to its egalitarian principles and codes of individual rights and principles of tolerance and multi-species cooperation and its very liberal-contractual theory of non-interference. But is the Federation intrinsically and by definition Imperialist? Yes, yes, yes, yes, and yes. There's really no question.

Dependency

Whether we like it or not, we all affect each other, we all depend on one another, we all make claims on each other. By the very fact of our existence, we are in relation, one to another; and these relationships necessarily demand our attention, our energy, our love. Whether we like it or not, we all exist--and this fact has many profound and necessary consequences.

Individualism, in contrast, is an illusion that can only be maintained by homicide; whether this homicide is direct and deliberate or more indirect. If we uphold autonomy as the chief good, violence is the only possible means to that end. Still, no amount of violence can change reality. We have the power to harm or even destroy each other and ourselves; but we do not have the power to make it as though we never were.

Knowledge vs Relation

Thought that came to me tonight while driving in my car: the conflict between Neoplatonism & Christianity (and more broadly between Christianity & a lot of ancient philosophy) can be boiled down to the question of whether we attain union with God, ultimately, through knowledge or relation.

Expanded a little, the question is whether we attain union with God through the conscious operations of our natural intellect, or through a supernatural relation that transcends the intellect (i.e. the Incarnation).

I don't think I'll ever get over just how intelligent the Late Antique Neo-Platonist pagan religious-philosophical consensus was. A vast, hierarchical universe with innumerable powers, but the absolutely transcendent One as the source and summit of it all--a vast, hierarchical human society where people are constantly reincarnated in higher or lower positions based on their merit. At the bottom of the hierarchy, you worship daimons, lesser entities, through blood sacrifice, because they have power over your physical life and must be propitiated. A little higher up in the social ladder, you worship gods, slightly higher, more intelligent entities that exemplify beauty and courage and social virtues. At the very peak, philosophers learn about and contemplate the One directly, setting aside all creation, and achieve true union with him.

As a system, it's brilliant, an almost perfect, symphonic summing up of ancient pagan philosophy as a whole: philosophy subsumes pagan religion into itself, monotheism triumphs over polytheism, yet absolutely nothing is disturbed. To just about everyone, it makes sense. If you're an ordinary pagan, an illiterate peasant or an urban worker or slave, you can agree that yes, you worship capricious gods with sacrifice because they are very close to you and have power over you, over whether you are healthy or sick, whether your crops grow and you eat or they fail and you starve, whether your master frees you or crucifies you. Maybe there's a One God out there, but he has little to do with you and the physical and social world you know, and you're quite satisfied with that so long as things work out for you in the here and now. If you're a philosopher, sheltered from all this harsh world by your social status, you can feel very good about the fact that you alone, who dedicate your life to understanding the difficult arguments to prove the existence of the One transcending all things, to contemplating the nature and attributes of the One God, will attain union with him through these efforts. Everyone, too, gets what they immediately want. The peasant gets rituals to ensure his crops grow and protect him from evil spirits, the Emperor gets social rituals to ensure his citizens obey him, the philosopher gets true knowledge, virtue, and union with Being itself. And, of course, if you do a good job as a peasant, you might one day end up reincarnated as a philosopher, with a shot at the Big Time. Nothing is lost, everything is conserved, and absolutely everyone is made to be content with their lot in life.

Against this, Christianity's stubborn insistence that people of all social classes and levels of intellectual sophistication were immediately called to true and transcendent union with the One God couldn't help but seem both revolutionary and a little absurd. Why should an illiterate slave get the same union with the One as a philosopher? Why would he even want it, and how could he possibly get it even if he did? The slave understands nothing about what the philosopher means by the One; it is not something he knows about, and so not something he can even coherently desire, let alone attain. Christian philosophers certainly understood this problem--but, to a man, they only insisted on it even more the more it was challenged by their pagan colleagues. The slave would get the same thing as the philosopher--indeed, he would get something denied to the pagan philosopher altogether. No one had any business with daimons or lesser gods, since they were all directly and immediately called to union with the One God. The slave would desire God, he would live a life of supernatural virtue far beyond the efforts of philosophers, and attain to an eternal and supernatural union with the One surpassing all the philosophers' desires.

Their answer to how this was possible was, of course, the Incarnation: the coming of the Logos, of the Divine Reason itself, into the physical cosmos, his becoming a human being. God had not left the cosmos or human society as it was--he had come down into it and was now engaged in a death struggle with the rebellious daimons and lesser gods and Emperors who were trying to oppose his reign. Because of this state of affairs, all Christians possessed a relation to God that went far beyond simple natural knowledge. The slave might not understand precisely what the philosopher (even the Christian philosopher) meant by the One, but he stood in relation with that One nonetheless, and could confess the simple creed of Christ's Incarnation, Death, and Resurrection, be baptized in his name, and so be brought into a direct and intimate relation with him, incorporated as part of the body of God himself. By virtue of this, even if the Christian were entirely ignorant, even if he were an eight-day-old infant newly baptized without even the benefit of language, he had, really and truly, attained the highest end of philosophy: the real, actual possession of the Divine Logos.

Against this, philosophers quite naturally protested. Such "faith," the simple assent of the will to a series of nonsensical propositions about the life, death, and supposed divinity of a Galileean carpenter, and participation in a nonsensical set of rituals focusing on that life and death, were no substitute for careful, reasoned apprehension of the philosophical arguments and meditations on the Divine Nature. Christians were ignorant slaves and women who, in an outrageous display of sheer arrogance, dared to claim themselves superior to philosophers who spent their lives studying the divine and contemplating it. They were not true philosophers at all, but madmen, the very lowest of social malcontents.

This was a bitter controversy indeed in its heyday, and both sides certainly drew blood. It can, though, again, be boiled down very simply to the binary of relation or knowledge. For the Neo-Platonist, the natural intellect, working in its own laborious way, with plenty of time and intelligence and social status to work with, was the only possible way to get knowledge of God, and this knowledge was the only possible way to be united with him. For the Christian, all this laborious natural effort, in time and space, could hardly include the vast majority of humanity, naturally fell into all kinds of error, and even where perfectly accurate could not possibly attain its goal, actual union with God. Only a supernatural effort by God himself could establish an actual relation and true union between creature and creator--and once that was established, the operations of the natural, unaided intellect were hardly the only or even the most important thing in the picture. Faith included the intellect, certainly, it could not possibly oppose it (which is why many Christians eagerly did philosophy and laboriously worked through all those arguments anyway)--but it also went far beyond it. Christian faith was a real supernatural relation between human being and God, and that relation included illiterate Christians and infants just as much as Christian philosophers.

I could go on and on and on on this topic, which represents a rather fundamental break both in philosophy and world history, with massive implications for society and culture and art and everything else--I could expand on it with some analysis of the relation this controversy has, in my opinion, to the later controversies of the Protestant Reformation--but I think I will stop there and go to bed instead. Goodnight.