Yesterday, the Sci-Fi Channel featured a Star Trek marathon for Memorial Day as it typically runs marathons during holidays. One of my favorite episodes is Mirror, Mirror. It is the episode in which Spock sported a beard. The Enterprise landing party is involved in a transporter accident in which they cross over into a parallel universe. In this universe the Federation is substituted by the Empire, and rather than an orderly USS Enterprise governed by higher principles such as the Prime Directive, the ISS Enterprise is run like a pirate ship plundering the galaxy. So while Kirk, Bones, Scotty and Uhura are desperately trying to get back to their universe, we get to see a glimpse of a different culture and philosophy at work. It's interesting, and kind of like a Twilight Zone episode.
And of course, on some holidays, a Twilight Zone marathon is featured. My favorite episode here is The Obsolete Man. It's about a future fascist state that is run to maximize efficiency. Libraries are no longer necessary in a future where literature is deemed inefficient. Therefore librarians are obsolete. It is thus that the episode begins by condemning a man to death because he serves no useful purpose and is "obsolete".
Now we need not peer into the future to witness this cold management style. In a dog eat dog, cut throat business world, the bottom line, the almighty buck can demand that efficiency be maximized in much the same way. This is not a screed against capitalism, but there is more to life than worshiping Mammon and behaving like Ebenezer Scrooge before the visitation of the three ghosts. A free market is the best way to get food and goods into homes throughout the land, but an eye should always be kept toward the Permanent Things, the First Things. Western civilization is much more than just the free market.
No government, no entity, nobody can determine one to be obsolete, or even to be of lesser worth than others. The Declaration of Independence states, "All men are created equal." Now some rail against this as an extreme egalitarian statement. They will say that we moderns read too much into the Declaration, which was merely written to divorce America from Great Britain. But no one has forgotten that the people who wrote the Declaration were the elite. It does not claim that there cannot be leaders and followers, but it claims that all men have a right to a certain dignity.
It is worthwhile to remind ourselves that we cannot be obsolete. In the show, the obsolete man opens the Bible before sentence is carried out. He finds comfort in it. In a homily, Father Raymond Suriani shows the proof of the worth of all men by referencing the twelfth chapter of St. Paul's first letter to Corinthians. (And I recommend that all read Father Ray's homily, for I am only lightly touching on the topic in which he gives the greater exposition.)
Saint Paul explains to the Corinthians that we are all members of the body of Christ; "For by one Spirit we were all baptized into one body, whether Jews or Greeks, whether slaves or free, and we were all made to drink of one Spirit." (1Cor12:13) We can not deem ourselves to be less than others because of function; "If the foot says, 'Because I am not a hand, I am not a part of the body,' it is not for this reason any the less a part of the body." (1Cor12:15) Nor can anyone else make that determination; "And the eye cannot say to the hand, 'I have no need of you'; or again the head to the feet, 'I have no need of you.'" (1Cor12:21)
It is at times the lessons of life hit so forcefully and painfully that we cannot forget the Truth that we are all connected. It is the experience of life that proves these meanings: "And if one member suffers, all the members suffer with it." (1Cor12:26) Father Ray tells us, "You can't even make yourself obsolete. God says you're worth something, even if you feel like you're worth nothing."
Father Ray was kind enough to repeat Rod Sterling's moral of this story (which I repeat in turn):
The chancellor -- the late chancellor -- was only partly correct. He was obsolete. But so was the state, the entity he worshipped. Any state, any entity, any ideology that fails to recognize the worth, the dignity, the rights of man, that state is obsolete. A case to be filed under "M" for mankind . . . in the Twilight Zone.Now Star Trek did not have this sort of morallizing, but at least in the Federation's universe the dignity of man is still recognized. Before Kirk returns to that universe, Kirk tries to convince the Empire's Spock of the illogic of empire. Spock demurs, "One man cannot summon the future."
Kirk presses, "But one man can change the present." He asks Spock, "What will it be? Past or future? Tyranny or freedom? It's up to you."
And just before leaving, Kirk flourishes, "In every revolution, there's one man with a vision."
In one man, we were shown that God so loved the world.
Blows against the Empire
- GIGO-Soapbox
Posted by Bob at May 27, 2003 06:42 PM