Wannabe Writer's Ink

Wannabe writer with hobby of art. Stay and you'll glimpse a small piece of my heart.

Star Trek: Picard - Resources

So, in my last Ted Talk, I discussed why tearing down heroes is a decision full of sad and I objected that having a woman take a man down a peg or two for no good reason does not, in turn, elevate women (aka a major reason why I also despised the Captain Marvel movie). Time to tackle the next burr on my socks.

Season two of the show pulls out a machine gun and mows the audience down. Time travel has occurred in the Star Trek universe plenty of times, and it isn't like social commentary is new to the show either. The future has come back and judged the past several times, but somehow past shows managed to do it with more tact and less arrogance.

Picard returns to 2024 where a divergence in the timeline has occurred and finds a very old and dear friend, Guinan, long before he first met her. She is permanently closing down her bar, and gives him an earful about why she's ready to wash her hands of the planet. Most of what I want to address can be heard from 2:00-2:35.

That's a rapid-fire dump of issues, but I'm going to tackle the one that leapt out to me most: "A few folks have enough resources to fix all the problems for the rest but they won't... because their greatest fear is having less."

Who are "A few folks"? Is it the US? Is it "The Rich"? Is it "The West"? And by all the problems, do you mean global warming, malaria, world hunger, war, homelessness, murder, riots, abuse, tuberculosis, slavery, illiteracy, cancer, mental illness, natural disasters, covid, species extinction, governmental oppression, corruption, pollution, depletion of the ozone layer, inter-racial and inter-religious tensions (which will be wildly different depending on a given country's specific history), genocide, poverty...?

It's a beautiful and poetic sentence, but it throws a net so wide as to encompass every ill and pin it on a select few for what is, frankly, a reason that is deeply assumptive and ill thought out. I do not find this sentence stands up well.

This is probably the third time I have heard a statement along these lines this month. One variation I heard was more specific and went approximately like this: The US has so much food that it's population is obese and its food waste is high, while other nations are starving. We have a food distribution problem.

Issue: When Their Government Sucks

“The fact that the market is not doing what we wish it would do is no reason to automatically assume that the government would do better.”
--Thomas Sowell.

Since this second statement about resources is more specific and only covers one particular subset of "all the problems" I'll start there. The claim is that there is a food distribution problem, with the implied idea that we simply need to shift excess food from here to there. Let's assume, for the moment, that said food is gathered from the US and sent off.

  • Does the recipient country have the infrastructure (decent roads, planes, ships, trucks, navigable waterways, organizers) to receive and distribute food to ALL the places it needs to go in a timely manner, before disease and starvation set in? Or before the food rots?
  • What is the corruption level in the country that needs food? If it is high, at any stage, the food may be gladly taken and diverted to the black market where the wealthy will purchase it and any middleman it goes through gets to pocket large amounts of money. Whether that middleman is the governing body or just who happens to be the receiver at the port or the closest gang may depend on the country.
  • Is there a war going on? Supplies may be seized by the enemy, or by the defending military and never see the starving citizenry.
  • Does the government of the country that needs food admit to needing food, or are they more interested in saving face for themselves? Is the government actively attempting to starve portions of the population? Does the government of the receiving country even permit foreign aid to enter?

These are some of the issues that might face someone attempting to fix the very simple "food distribution problem."

Issue: When Our Government Sucks

But that begs the next question about the word "distribution" as in "distribute." In fact, there are two questions that rise from that word, for me.

  • By "distribute" do you mean purchase the food that farms and slaughterhouses, large and small, produce to sell? Or do you mean seizing anything deemed to be a surplus and shipping it off? Or seizing all of it and distributing it at home and abroad as determined by the new bureaucracy that would need to be formed around this monumental task? I think the best case scenario would be a combination of purchasing it and the farmers, perhaps, donating a portion of the food out of the goodness of their hearts or in response to tax incentives. However, making sure things are distributed according to where it "seems obvious" the food needs to go--without the consent of the people involved in making it--has dark potential woven into its foundation, according to history.
  • By "distribute" do you mean quickly and reliably getting the food where it needs to go? I've asked if the recipient country has the infrastructure for this, but the next question is, do we? Can we pull something like that off at a moment's notice anymore?
In 1862, the Pacific Railroad Act chartered the Central Pacific and the Union Pacific Railroad Companies, tasking them with building a transcontinental railroad that would link the United States from east to west. Over the next seven years, the two companies would race toward each other from Sacramento, California on the one side to Omaha, Nebraska on the other, struggling against great risks before they met at Promontory, Utah, on May 10, 1869. --History.com
The Empire State Building formally opened on May 1, 1931. Construction of the immense skyscraper took less time than anyone could have anticipated, concluding after only 410 days. --Brittanica.com

What do we have today?

Despite 14 years of work and about $5bn spent, the 2008 promise of quick transport {a bullet train} between Los Angeles and San Francisco has not materialized. --The Guardian

When one goes to the website for this project, the first link is for the "2023 Project Update Report." An update, not a finish line. Side note, we also haven't been to the moon in fifty years.

Our major cities are wrapped in red tape. Smaller, start-up companies that might try to fill niches are hindered by regulations which larger, monopoly-eyed companies lobby for because they can bear legal costs better. Corruption in our country is up, with tax money for projects like the above mentioned seeming to vanish into thin air. We seem to have lost the ability to build and do great things, much less regularly keep up our roads, bridges, or buses.

These are just some of the questions and issues I have with the casual assertion that we have a "food distribution problem," whose underlying tone is expressed by Guinan when she says, "they won't... because their greatest fear is having less."

This is just tackling ONE of the issues the world is facing.

Issue: Current Perceptions of The Rich

So, let's return to Guinan's statement. Given the general tropes in current US media and the background of the rest of this episode (wherein you see much homelessness), I'm going to assume that the "few folks" she mentions having all the resources to fix this are the millionaires and billionaires whom we will call "The Rich."

For 2023, the US government has collected $2.6 trillion in revenue and has spent $3.61 trillion. The previous year, it was $2.99 trillion in and $3.35 trillion out. Forbes magazine says the richest person in the US, Elon Musk, is currently worth $180 billion. Over in France, Bernard Arnault & family are the richest in the world at $211 billion. Note that the US government takes in more revenue than any of The Rich.

Crash course in net worth as it applies to The Rich: net worth is not an amount in a bank account that you can withdraw. Net worth includes all your investments, including shares you own in a company. If you are one of twenty people who own 1/20th of a company and you decide you want to sell all you have and give to the poor, first you have to persuade someone to buy your shares (whether inside the company or outside). They don't have to buy those shares, nor do they have to pay the price you were hoping to get. If nobody buys, you will never actually see that money you supposedly have. And if all twenty shareholders try to sell at once, two things will likely happen: the price of the shares will drop drastically, reducing the amount they sell for, and then suddenly you have a new group of twenty "The Rich" in place of the old. Rinse & repeat. Let's not forget that if you own a substantial percentage of a large, publicly traded company and decide to sell it all at once, the price would go into freefall. By the time you're done selling you will turn out to be a lot less wealthy than you thought you were.

But let's dig into an individual's efforts toward alleviating some of the world's issues. Since I'm in the US, let's take Elon Musk. Now, I'm not going to stand here and say, "What an angel!" but I am going to say that the man

  • Co-founded Paypal, which made online transactions a step easier for all involved.
  • Is attempting to bring about the electric car revolution everyone seems to want so badly, and his car company–Tesla–has developed lower cost models over the years. Electric cars were once a luxury of The Rich, but thanks in part to Musk's efforts, that is rapidly changing.
  • Is convinced that we need to be a multi-planet species if we want to survive, so Musk is investing heavily in space research including re-usable starships,
  • Has launched hundreds of satellites in an attempt to give even the most rural and remote dwelling-places internet access--the simplest way to spread the collective knowledge of the human race in existence.

Too commercial an example? Too self-interested? Okay. Personal experience time. I had the absolute honor of working for a company called Brandstorm for three years as their order processor. It is better known by its face-name brand, Natierra. In that time, the CEO--Thierry Ollivier--visited Haiti in its devastation. He conceived of the Buy One Bag Feed One Child program, where each bag of Natierra snack food purchased will provide a meal for a child in Haiti at a school where they will receive an education, in the hopes that they will grow to become the leaders able to lift Haiti out of a lengthy cycle of poverty. Behind the scenes, Brandstorm employees were offered many philanthropic opportunities such as the chance to sponsor a year's worth of medical care for a whole family through the Kausay-Wasi clinic in Peru. Thierry took care of everyone in the company as long as they gave their best, including giving each employee a frozen turkey on Thanksgiving. While building a business, he was working to make a few corners of the world better.

Too small-time? Okay. Bill Gates, no longer the richest person in the US, most known for Microsoft and Windows. Aside from the fact that his computers are the least expensive and most widely used ones to date--dispersing powerful creative and organizational tools widely throughout the population at nearly every level and thereby raising the standard of living all over the world--there is the Gates Foundation. I would encourage you to click the link and scroll through because the list of things they're involved in trying to address is rather lengthy.

What are my points, here?

  • There are many complicating factors to each and every crisis facing us that needs to be addressed, and brushing over them to make a blanket accusation is arrogant and ignorant.
  • Many of the world's rich are already neck-deep in trying to make some corner of the world a better place.
  • The State Governments and Federal Government, that claim to be trying to help, funnel several billion and trillion dollars into many projects that do not seem to be solving our problems, yet "more funding" and "higher taxes on The Rich" always seems to be the answer.

I don't think the problem is that "their greatest fear is having less." I think open hands already abound, but the greatest fear is that the help will not go where it is needed. Trust is one of the scarcest--and therefore most valuable--resources on the planet, and with damn good reason. Before I extend my hand to help, I want to know that it is actually helping to alleviate a problem and that my efforts are not being misused or even used to abuse and deprive. And if a recipient can't process the help for one reason or another, then what good am I doing trying to force it into hands that can't hold it?

When I was on Tumblr, I would see cracks about The Rich and what they were like and what should be done with them all the time. Based on Tumblrvision, The Rich (with the exception of one or two angels) should be shot and their funds confiscated and distributed to buy every homeless person in the country a mansion. Casual comments like, "Come on, we have a list of who they are and where they live, assassins don't cost that much," were frequent. Jeff Bezos was the devil, despite the fact that he's probably the main reason most people didn't have to leave their homes in 2020 when they were too scared to go to the supermarket.

Issue: Clean Your Damn Room

I've covered why I think that other governments and the US government throw complicating factors into what initially seems like a simple problem with a simple solution, and I've covered how many people with resources up the wazoo are already pouring millions and billions into the gaping needs they see. Philanthropy does not an angel make, and I am not saying it excuses any ills they have done, but oftentimes they are already doing something about major world issues. Whether you agree with the direction of those philanthropic funds or not is moot, because they are taking action to fill a need they see.

So the next question is, what are you doing with your corner of the world?

I hear immediate rebuttals in my head, mostly swimming up from the time I was living paycheck to paycheck in shared housing or apartments. With what money? With what energy? I'm barely getting by on the money and energy I have, and you want me to fix a world problem? Drop a billion in my lap and THEN watch me wipe one thing on the list out.

But that isn't how it works. Would that I could reach back and teach myself things I'm finally learning, as I put my life together. I could have started sooner.

I would have told myself that it starts with my room. My room, which I let slide into absolute chaos because I felt I had no energy leftover to re-order it. The depression and exhaustion inside me was made manifest in my dwelling, wherever I moved. Occasionally someone would help me, would put everything away and clean for me, and I was grateful. Within three days everything reverted. I told myself I did not care. The external state then perpetuated my internal state, but I just averted my eyes.

What could I have done back in my minimal-resource days that wouldn't have cost me a dime? Abandoned coffee entirely, for its effect on my exhaustion and anxiety cycle was more severe than I understood. Developed some sort of daily schedule, so I could get at least a few chores and some cleaning done before unwinding with creative tasks. Gotten off of social media sooner, to free up time and emotional energy.

Maybe the effects of that would have been enough for me to gather internal resources and face some of my demons, like budgeting tiny payments into my student debt, allowing myself to write snippets of imperfect original fiction, or discern the fatality of some relationships I was in. Maybe I could have started putting my life in order sooner, having spare energy leftover for cooking more wholesome meals or exercising, so that I could have more energy in the long run.

All that is a pile of could-have-been. In the last several years, I have had to put more effort into keeping my surroundings clean, and it has changed the way I see things. Problem spots jump out at me, and even if I don't deal with them right away, they shout at me every time I pass them. My creative spaces have a "maximum chaos limit" before I sweep in and re-organize everything. I avert my eyes much less, now, noticing and noting down what needs work. Learning structure is enabling me to tackle obstacles I have repeatedly failed to address in my life. Who I am is changing, in part because I've been cleaning my room and putting my life together. It taught me how to see and how to solve problems that are within my grasp to solve, and then next-level problems became surmountable.

My next-level problems turned out to be stewarding group spending to head up the renovation of the group house, a house that had been neglected for about forty years. After four years of assembling furniture, painting walls, replacing toilet seats, and then poking and prodding contractors to do what I could not, the house is a pleasant place to live and not a barely-tolerable wreck. The current next-level problem turns out to be facing my demons about writing and publishing original fiction, which is harder and scarier than heading up home repairs.

What is the upper limit of an individual who puts their life together enough to tackle a major problem they see? We don't know. Dr. Ruiz Tiben has dedicated most of his life to destroying a really terrible parasite called the guinea worm, and has come very close to wiping it off the face of the planet. The efforts have recently suffered a setback, but there is serious hope that guinea worms will be the second human disease in history to be completely eradicated.

Okay, but he had the backing of the president, if not the WHO. Arunachalam Muruganantham had none of that. He was just a man so obsessed with easing his wife's suffering during menstruation, he spent years developing the most inexpensive, functional pad that he could. In spite of the taboos surrounding menstruation in Indian culture, he worked for years on this project, speaking openly about periods and asking women to give him feedback on the latest pads he'd developed. He was ostracized and humiliated because of this, but he continued his pursuit. Due to his efforts, a large proportion of women in India can now continue to earn income while on their periods.

The path to fixing a major problem is different for everyone. Maybe the path doesn't start at your room, maybe it starts at the local homeless shelter. Maybe it starts with the elderly neighbor who you know has no one else to talk to. Maybe it starts with your family. Maybe it starts in the office of a good counselor. Wherever it starts, it's a humbler beginning than announcing you know the fix for a problem that whole nations have difficulty wrestling with. If you haven't put yourself together, stop flinging mud at people who are already digging for solutions you wanted found yesterday.

"A few folks have enough resources to fix all the problems for the rest but they won't... because their greatest fear is having less."

I counter with Jordan Peterson's lecture on why he thinks it's important to start fixing the world by cleaning your room, which leads to cleaning up your family, which leads to cleaning up your community... your city... your nation... your world.

I do not expect Hollywood-in-general to stop yelling at us about this topic anytime soon. Whether they really believe what they say, or whether it's attempting to score points and draw cash and views, I can't judge anymore. All I can do is clean up my room... and focus on writing a different sort of story.