"-In its vision of the future, Star Trek pushed the principles of equality a little further forward. In Star Trek equality is kinetic, quick, and real. It is not equal opportunity, but equal reality. It means that everyone’s stomach is full, not potentially full, and that everyone’s home is a decent place to live. It has a lot to do with the verb to be. Or as Gene remarked in several of his speeches, “We are on a journey to keep an appointment with whatever we are.”
Equality means, in Star Trek, that there is no equal pay for equal work – there is no pay for any work, because one works for the love of it and no other reason. Everyone’s real job, according to Star Trek, is to explore what it means to be human; to refuse to accept what we perceive as the limits of the human mind, to ignore them; to traverse every possible dimension of outer space and find out what’s out there; and to travel every possible level of intradimensional mind space and find out what’s in there.
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Yvonne Fern, “Gene Roddenberry The Last Conversation” page 15.
What an outstanding quote, summing up Star Trek so neatly in a couple of paragraphs. So many have tried to talk about Star Trek without acknowledging this, or with trying to shoehorn it into a different form, but if you try to square this circle then you diminish the Star Trek stories you tell as a result.
“It is not equal opportunity, but equal reality.”
Just think about the implications of that for a moment.
“IT IS NOT EQUAL OPPORTUNITY, BUT EQUAL REALITY.”
Mind blown yet?
(via trekrocks)