There has been a lot of sci-fi produced over the past century that deals with humans coming into contact with aliens. Whether it's us discovering them or vice-versa, all first contact science fiction has one thing in common; conflict. I have always preferred Trek to Wars, and originally that was because I loved Roddenberry's vision of human empathy, but I'm starting to truly believe that we are actually heading in that direction. For real.
Here on Earth things are very fucked up. I won't argue that. I will however, argue that mankind has been growing more tolerant and progressive over time. We have become less scared of those who are different, and more understanding of cultures separate from our own. What has accelerated our empathetic enlightenment is technology, giving us newfound unlimited access to information. Chris Christie stands on his load bearing stage and paints a beautiful account of his innocence, while the facts that contradict him scroll along the bottom of the screen. Being evil is harder now, and while the bad will always happen, we now have the ability to make the entire globe focus their attention on the corrupt, using the larger liberal-leaning hive mind to shame the bigots and bad guys.
This gives me more than just hope for our cosmic future, it gives me confidence. We are slowly coming together as a global community, and by the time we meet another alien race, I am sure that we will be less Death Star planet cannon, and more Starfleet diplomacy. Will we really respond to a different intelligent race with terror and confusion? 1000 years from now? I can't imagine that being the case. Despite what conservatives say, violence, heterosexuality, and race loyalty have nothing to do with human nature. In actuality, human nature consists of only two things, evolution, and adaptability.
When I watch A New Hope, and see the thuggery in the Mos Eisley Cantina, or the libertarian fantasyland that is Jabba's Tattoine empire, I dismiss those political climates because I think we have already evolved beyond that. Could Darth Vader really get away will planet annihilation with the video and crew interviews plastered all over CNN? If Rand Paul can't get away with minor plagiarism today, or if Paul Ryan's comment that inner city "urban" people have no work ethic that was spoken in front of just a few dozen gets leaked to Dateline, then what chance does Palpatine have of masking his secret starvation of Naboo? No, the true future of mankind feels like it is leaning more towards the Enterprise's way of doing things. We should all be grateful for that.
Star Wars is action-packed, exciting, and well worth all of the time that all of us nerds have spent memorizing it's layered universe. It's just not who we are, and definitely not who we will be. Kirk, Picard, Riker, combed the universe and offered all new species and societies a respectable place in our United Federation of Planets. Of course, some people just can't be reasoned with, and since America will most certainly be the driving force behind our space-utopia's emergency-only military, then I certainly fear no Klingon. Trek is better than Wars because its optimistic, not cynical. Trek reflects who we really are, and who we are growing to be, and Wars reflects what we think we will revert to. So don't listen to Darth Vader, resistance isn't futile, in fact, our resistance to the dark side is already paying off.
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