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The five stages of Gene Roddenberry
Or: How to accept humankind’s butt-headedness
Kootenay Crust
By Ian Cobb
Denial
When I was a youngster I believed the future would be like Star Trek.
There would be no need for money, sparing me the embarrassment of never making any; all would live as equals; the infinity of the universe stretching before us, now at our grasp. The endless human trait of expansion and growth, like the cancer cells we are to Mother Earth, will lead us to new worlds and greater things. The world would finally be viewed as it should be – by everyone – as a preciously fragile home; a perfectly aligned machine to sustain life.
Ah the delicious wonderment of those years; the naivety; the denial of universal truths and inability to read the signs away from hard lessons. The scars that lead to intelligence.
Anger
Rolling into my 20s I still believed in the greater good; all for one and one for all. The only way the world could achieve harmonious balance would be through Gene Roddenberry’s once cancelled brainchild.
Except thanks to being a slave to rock n roll and having grown up under the shadow of nuclear annihilation, and a tendency to treat the ole temple like a shithouse, I began to believe the future would be more medieval than starship merry. A splintering of all structure would lead to another rise of tribalism, the establishment of new states and territories and endless horrible war, I could now see. Ronald Zap Reagan – that doddery puppet of the meat-munching machine – was in power in the USA and fiery death from above was imminent. Worse, we had to start using the metric freaking system. Imagine all yee today if we had to all suddenly start using the Cobbric System (a system of weights and measures based around rock n roll; for example, one Lemmy would equal one million tonnes), and dumped metric. Pissed me off.
Bargaining
Stick handling wildly on a rink slanted in a bizarre new direction, I entered my 30s as a new parent.
I now realized the need for self-preservation on a familial scale over a global one. Taken in context of the globe and the many millions of families living upon it, achieving an idealistic Roddenberryesque future now seemed – ridiculous. In fact, it irked me that I thought thusly and got into numerous arguments with myself. Making money is good, I shouted. Money isn’t everything, I shouted back. How about just making some more money, then? I suggested. Okay, I suppose that makes sense. But I’d have to sell my soul and be a corporate whore, I pointed out. Like you aren’t already! I shot back laughing. That wasn’t being a whore! That was being practical! I fired back at myself as my right hand grabbed a beer.
On and on I went and before you could shout “bugger off Chretien!” a decade of Sisyphus pushing the rock had transpired.
Depression
Harumphing and grumbling into my 40s, I thought Gene Roddenberry should shut the frig up, fanciful git. The yoke had rubbed me raw and that pain cleared my eyes, rather than blur them.
Thanks to the palaver in all forms of media, growing exponentially, of the change in millennium, the future now seemed dystopian in the most Orwellian way, with heavy swatches of Huxley, Burgess, Vonnegut, Dick (yes, and more startlingly, the sheep dream about electric grass) and a bunch of other depressing, moody bastards wailing wordily away.
It was fitting though. I’d spent most of my life preparing for the apocalypse. Being that we live in a nice, safe, wildlife surrounded mountain stronghold, I thought, “bring it on!” I hoped Y2K would happen. Stocked up for months with canned and dried goods, meat, gas, ammo, you name it. Made a pact with a buddy to meet up in Kootenay National Park if the shithouse was going to go up in flames (strength in numbers) and prepared for the coming end times with gumption and guile. Sigh.
Acceptance
Like they always do, the clouds parted one day and the sun shone down.
As I transformed into my 50s I started reading about ancient history, geology, sociology, anthropology yada and kept myself deprived as much as possible of the ‘great cacophony’ that is the main stream of humanity.
Walks in the woods became walks in the woods where as they were once rages in the woods, or evil being stalks anything that might dare try and fuck with him in the woods.
Looking back on the great disappointment that is humankind as-a-whole, I see no Gene Roddenberry in the near future. Maybe in a few hundred years, after such landmark events as: The North American IQ War (2019-2022); The Global War of Ascension (2044 – 2049); The Giant Cankerworm Scourge (2066); The Terrible Miscalculation of 2071 and Pacific Ocean landing of of 2016 EF195, which causes the worst tsunami in recorded history, killing millions; that leads to the Great Yellowstone Eruption of 2072, quickly followed by the Cascadia Earthquake of 2073; all leading to the arrival of extraterrestrial neighbours, coincidently only searching for answers as to who won the 2006 America’s Got Talent because, “damn it, a solar flare fritzed our signal for a bilginiligigging (roughly means ‘farking’) week” (to become the first words humans understood that were spoken by aliens).
Seriously, I do see medieval times. In fact, we are just entering a new age, where the same old same old will come to a quick end and just as quickly re-emerge, renewed and hungry and just as prone to be a complete selfish asshole as ever before, ruled and regulated by Charles Montgomery Burns.
And the cycle will continue. It is the human way, just as perseverance, personal sacrifice, devotion, love and laughter are great human traits.
We’re all in on the same ride. How we accept its course is how human history is derived. Oh bloody hell, get out of here Roddenberry!
With thanks to Elisabeth Kubler-Ross.
