Autocracy and Star Trek

Like many youth of my generation, I watched the original Star Trek in reruns and Next Generation and Deep Space Nine in real time. I enjoyed the shows but can’t really claim to be a Trekkie. I was already in graduate school when Next Generation began so I could not help but to scrutinize the shows for scientific accuracy. I was impressed that the way they discovered life in a baby universe created in one episode was by detecting localized entropy reduction, which is quite sophisticated scientifically. I bristled each time the star ship was on the brink of total failure and about to explode but the artificial gravity system still didn’t fail. I celebrated the one episode that actually had an artificial gravity failure and people actually floated in space! I thought it was ridiculous that almost every single planet they visited was always at room temperature with a breathable atmosphere. That doesn’t even describe many parts of earth. I mostly let these inaccuracies slide in the interest of story but I could never let go of one thing that always left me feeling somewhat despondent about the human condition, which was that even in a supposed super advanced egalitarian democratic society where material shortages no longer existed, Star Fleet was still an absolute autocracy. Many of the episodes dealt with strictly obeying the chain of command and never disobeying direct orders. A world with a democratic federation of planets, transporters and faster than light travel still believed that autocracy was the most efficient way to run an organization.

For most people throughout history and including today, the difference between autocracy and democracy is mostly abstract. People go to jobs where a boss tells them what to do. Virtually no one questions that corporations should be run autocratically. Authoritarian CEO’s are celebrated. Religion is generally autocratic. It only makes sense that the military backs autocrats given that autocracy is already the governing principle of their enterprise. Julius Caesar crossed the Rubicon and became the Dictator of Rome (he was never actually made Emperor) because he had the biggest army and it was loyal to him, not the Roman Republic. The only real question is how democracies even persist. People may care about freedom but do they really care all that much about democracy?

My immune system

One outcome of the pandemic is that I have not had any illness (knock on wood), nary a cold nor sniffle, in a year and a half. On the other hand, my skin has fallen apart. I am constantly inflamed and itchy. I have no proof that the two are connected but my working hypothesis is that my immune system is hypersensitive right now because it has had little to do since the spring of 2020. It now overreacts to every mold spore, pollen grain, and speck of dust it runs into. The immune system is extremely complex, perhaps as complex as the brain. Its job is extremely difficult. It needs to recognize threats and eliminate them while not attacking itself. The brain and the immune system are intricately linked. How many people have gotten ill immediately after a final exam or deadline? The immune system was informed by the brain to delay action until the task was completed. The brain probably takes cues form the immune system too. One hypothesis for why asthma and allergies have been on the rise recently is that modern living has eliminated much contact with parasites and infectious agents, making the immune system hypersensitive. I for one, always welcome vaccinations because it gives my immune system something to do. In fact, I think it would be a good idea to get inoculations of all types regularly. I would take a vaccine for tape worm in a heartbeat. We are now slowly exiting from a global experiment in depriving the immune system of stimulation. We have no idea what the consequences will be. That is not to say that quarantine and isolation was not a good idea. Being itchy is clearly better than being infected by a novel virus (or being dead). There can be long term effects of infection too. Long covid is likely to be due to a miscalibrated immune system induced by the infection. Unfortunately, we shall likely never disentangle all the effects of COVID-19. We will not ever truly know what the long term consequences of infection, isolation, and vaccination will be. Most people will come out of this fine but a small fraction will not and we will not know why.