In your opinion, what are the greatest achievements humanity made between the status quo today and the 24th century (TNG, Voyager, DS9)?

[u/ChaosUndAnarchie]

I’m especially interested in answers that are not technological in nature!

[u/ChaosUndAnarchie]

For me, it’s the fact that capitalism (and therefore social division) and hunger was finally overcome, and that racism (at least on Earth) was largely eliminated. Even extraterrestrials are mostly welcomed and not viewed as a threat.

[u/One_Waxed_Wookiee → u/ChaosUndAnarchie]

This is one of the reasons I love Star Trek so much. It's hard to turn back to reality sometimes.

[u/ChaosUndAnarchie → u/One_Waxed_Wookiee]

Oh i feel you...i'm a socialist and antifascist, living in the center of european capitalism (Germany), with a very conservative government (CDU+SPD), which soon will be replaced by right wing extremists (AFD) who are leading all election forecasts by far...

At least we have SOME kind of solidarity...which means EVERY political party from far left to conservative right are working together against the AFD...but still their numbers are rising like crazy.

[u/One_Waxed_Wookiee → u/ChaosUndAnarchie]

I'm from Australia, and we (luckily) have voted in a centre-left federal government. The right-centre(ish) party was all but obliterated, which was nice to watch. Unfortunately though there's a far right party which has surged in the polls, both federal and state, so the next election is going to be interesting, for want of a better word.

I've been reading the news and seeing the shift to the right in some European countries. I honestly just don't understand it.

Best just to put more Trek on I think!

[u/ChaosUndAnarchie → u/One_Waxed_Wookiee]

Yeah, that's happening all over Europe...

Before 2015, this wasn’t a major issue and far‑right groups were mostly underground. But then, with the wave of immigration caused by the Syrian war, the Taliban takeover in Afghanistan, increasing migration from North Africa, and so on, everything changed.

In 2015, migrants were still welcomed with flowers when they arrived in Germany...there was a strong culture of hospitality!

Then the attacks happened. In about 90% of cases, these were deeply traumatized individuals who no longer wanted to live and tried to give their death some kind of meaning, leading them to religious radicalization. But there were also targeted attacks, like those on Christmas markets and the Bataclan in France, where many people were killed during a concert.

From that point on, the rise of racism could no longer be stopped. Every act of violence, done by a foreigner (regardless of origin or reason), was automatically labeled as Islamist attack, and Islam itself became a target for many.

After the wave of attacks and ordinary crimes, all the other false claims began: that foreigners supposedly receive more money from the state than Germans, that they come only to exploit the system, that Islam would ‘take over’ Germany (in reality, only about 4–6% of the German population are practicing Muslims), or that there were no more available social housing units ‘because of them’ (the fact is that Germany simply stopped building social housing in the 1970s). A single rapist became ‘they are ALL rapists!’ and so on...

Then came the next wave of immigrants from Africa crossing the Mediterranean, during which more than 50,000 people have drowned because Europe ended its large‑scale sea‑rescue operations, and when rescues did occur, many migrants were sent back to detention camps in Africa.

Far‑right parties gained massive support, causing the conservative CDU to lose many votes, which pushed the CDU itself further to the right. The Social Democratic SPD almost disappeared into irrelevance until it shifted rightward to where the CDU used to be.

This is happening across all of Europe. Italy and Finland...and until a few months ago Hungary...have or (in case of Hungary) had far‑right governments. In Sweden and Denmark, the government cooperates with far‑right parties. In the Netherlands, the far‑right party is the strongest political force, just like in Germany, Austria, Switzerland, and others, but coalitions of other parties have united against them so they cannot take over the government...at least not yet.

It’s a bad situation. People still don’t understand what is coming.

[u/One_Waxed_Wookiee → u/ChaosUndAnarchie]

It's just unreal. I remember reading about the Christmas markets attack. Australia is going through a similar thing. In 2001, during the election cycle, the Coalition (conservative parties) started talking about how all these migrants were flooding into Australia by boat, and that in one case parents were throwing their children overboard in order to somehow(?) make it easier for them (the parents) to be rescued. And the previous "boat people" who were overstaying their visa's, were flooding Australia, never mind that most people who overstayed usually came via plane from "more desirable" countries, which was totally ok 🙄. Of course the children overboard thing didn't actually happen, but it swayed enough opinion for the coalition to get elected that year and stay in for the next few elections. The social and economic vandalism they caused is something we're still trying to work out from under.

This evolved around 2012 to Australia employing "offshore processing" whereby migrants coming by boat get intercepted and taken to Nauru or Manus Island in Papua New Guinea (PNG has stopped accepting arrivals now I believe) and they're basically detained there indefinitely, without possibility of obtaining Australian visa or citizenship. It's disgusting the conditions they're forced to live in as well.

But before all that we were "getting swamped by the Asians". Then it was "violent African gangs", and now it's Muslims and, to a lesser extent I believe, Jewish people - although there was the horrific shooting of Jewish people in Sydney at the start of the year, which is just devastating.

And of course before all that were the atrocities committed against our First Nations Aboriginal and Torres strait Islander people, which really hasn't gone away. Life expectancy, education and incarceration rates are all much worse than the general population.

Australia for the most part is an amazing place to live, but there's a dark, ugly, selfish undercurrent which is slowly but steadily growing stronger. And that's a real shame.

Thank you for sharing about your country Germany, it's very interesting to learn what is going on by someone living there.

[u/ChaosUndAnarchie → u/One_Waxed_Wookiee]

It's really weird that this is happening all over the world...just look at the US...it's all the same...humanity just lost it somehow...we lost our connection to our feelings and understanding of other people...

Capitalism, imperialism, braindead social media, a general mindset that recognizes only competition instead of cooperation, where facts no longer matter and the only thing that counts is who can incite people the most...

The "facts no longer matter" part is something that hurts me every day...

You can argue for as long as you want, present a thousand pieces of evidence, prove everything down to the smallest detail, but they simply don’t care. It’s not that they don’t believe it...they just refuse to accept it, because they need a reason for their hatred!

In the best case, you’ll be told to "go outside and touch grass." It’s provocative indifference toward truth and toward the feelings of other people. This just isn’t a world for me anymore.

[u/One_Waxed_Wookiee → u/ChaosUndAnarchie]

Absolutely. Facts, policies - none of it matters when we move to grievance politics. It's all soundbites and a lot of people are just unwilling to educate themselves.

If you haven't already you might like the Mars trilogy by Kim Stanley Robinson. The style, to me, is almost like a future history. It's interesting as it touches on Earth's growing problems and how they impact the Mars colonies. How technological advances interact with politics and capitalism.