Both preachy and nerdy? I have a gift.

The other day I watched an old episode of Doctor Who called “The Mark of the Rani”. In it, the sixth incarnation of the Doctor (the one with the blonde afro and the Amazing Technicolor Dream Coat) traveled back to the dawn of the Industrial Revolution and discovered that the fanatical Luddite movement was caused by alien brain-tampering. It’s a fun thing to think about – those paranoid, small-minded people were only standing in the way of a fantastic social advancement because of some supernatural interference. They weren’t bad people. They were only misguided.

The inherent optimism in science-fiction used to encourage me, but lately it has just become depressing. It is difficult to reconcile a positive view of mankind with the world around us. With every day’s news updates, it becomes harder and harder to imagine everything straightening out once the Vulcans arrive for First Contact.

In Star Trek canon, Earth was even more war-torn and divided by this point in history. (This is mostly due to the Eugenics Wars of the 1990s, but we can ignore that bit.) Things are just about as bad as they can be… and then the aliens show up. A logical, helpful race of extraterrestrials land and everything gets better. Almost overnight, humanity sets aside wars and conflict to focus on science and equality and world peace.

This is the best possible outcome for our future, and it is completely impossible. And not just because of the alien stuff. If Americans can’t let Mexicans into our country without assuming they’re part of a drug cartel who’ll steal their jobs, I doubt we’d let the Vulcans give us advice. Then again, the Vulcans do look more Caucasian…

It would be nice to have a peaceful, intellectual future in store for us that doesn’t require alien intervention. I’ve heard the theory that things will get better once all the terrified, middle-aged white people die off, so the current generation can dance on their graves by legalizing gay marriage. I like this theory. But still, it’s much more fun to imagine that nobody is ever really bad. Just brainwashed.