Next week, easier and shorter posts.
In under the line for Thorough Thursday, but today’s was a tough ending to a tough week of topics.
Here, I reflect on the wide range of emotional responses to war that are sometimes masked by appeals to “pragmatic”, “rational” thinking about the “cold, hard science” of conflict.
These too are stories we tell to cope with the spectacle of violence. We are all affected by it—whether we think we have a lock on its histories or not.
https://mlclark.substack.com/p/realpolitik-and-other-highly-emotional
Yes indeed. TOS was wonderful for addressing the psychology of warfare. DS9 did so in another way, but TOS episodes like this one were quite good at exploring specific facets of the problem, for an audience just getting used to watching war on TV.
Another "take" on this problem comes from Orson Scott Card (for all his own issues): in Ender's Game, Ender is trained to believe he's just undergoing a series of war games. At the end, he finds out what he's done by playing them at all.
@MLClark absolutely loved the Ender's Game series. DS9 dealt with war in a more detailed and nuanced way than TOS and TNG amidst all the brutal wars of the 90s. Babylon 5 also did a fantastic job exploring human emotions before, during, and after war.
It really is a shame we don't have a major scifi show addressing war the same way today. We've commercialized storytelling in a way that leads to fewer risks, and prioritizes "inner conflict"-driven plots over societal-scale ethical questions. The Expanse did a great job of holding POVs in balance, but we need much more of that.
@MLClark have you ever seen this episode of Star Trek? It's stuck with me all these years...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Taste_of_Armageddon#%3A%7E%3Atext%3DKirk%2C_First_Officer_Spock%2C_and_additional_security%2Cthat_the_Enterprise_has_been_%22destroyed%22_in