Politics of Trek: “This Side of Paradise”

Some claim Star Trek presents a communist utopian view of the world. That is true of the Next Generation, where they pretend to have fundamentally changed human nature to the point of eliminating greed, jealousy, and the other human vices. But it’s certainly not true of the original series. To the contrary, Episode 24: “This Side of Paradise” is a fundamental repudiation of the idea of the communist utopia.

The Plot

As our episode begins, the Enterprise makes orbit around Omicron Ceti Three. They are on a grim mission: to collect the remains of a 150 federation colonists who built a colony here before they realized the planet was exposed to Berthold rays, a newly-discovered deadly form of radiation which destroys living tissue. But as the crew beams down, they discover that the colonists are very much alive. The colonists have been given immunity from the radiation by spores from a seemingly harmless flower. The spores also give anyone they infect perfect health and happiness. But in exchange, people lose their own ambitions and become part of the collective community. Soon, the Enterprise crew is infected and Kirk must save them from paradise.

Why It’s Conservative

There are several ways you can look at this episode. The most obvious would be as a repudiation of hippy drug culture. The hippies saw hallucinogenic drugs as a way to escape reality and find utopia. This episode rejects that. Spock even refers to the spores as “a happy pill.” But there’s something more interesting going on in this episode.

This episode makes a fundamental point about human nature, and in the process, it rejects communism. To understand this, let’s examine the choice Kirk faces. The spores promise absolute health and a leisurely life where all of Kirk’s needs will be met. They even promise a deep sense of happiness. That sounds pretty good. But there’s a catch. The spores cause you to lose your own personal ambition and become part of the collective. Indeed, when Spock becomes infected, his new girlfriend Leila says, “Now, you belong to all of us and we to you.” This is collectivist dogma, the elimination of private property and the idea that the individual exists only as part of the collective. And later on, colonist leader Elias Sandoval tells McCoy that he’s been “thinking about what sort of work I could assign you to.” Notice that McCoy is not being offered a choice, he will do what the collective deems best. Again, this is a command economy.

Kirk rejects this paradise for the world he knows, a world where people must earn what they desire. His world cannot guarantee happiness or remove sadness, as the spores can, but Kirk believes it offers the one thing human nature requires: ambition (translation: individual achievement). Here’s the key dialog explaining this choice, as Sandoval and an infected Mr. Spock try to sell Kirk on the idea of joining them:

SANDOVAL: In return, [the spores] give you complete health and peace of mind.
KIRK: That’s paradise?
SANDOVAL: We have no need or want, Captain.
SPOCK: It's a true Eden, Jim. There's belonging and love.
KIRK: No wants. No needs. We weren't meant for that. None of us. Man stagnates if he has no ambition, no desire to be more than he is.
SANDOVAL: We have what we need.
KIRK: Except a challenge.

Notice that the spores promise the humans will no longer have needs or wants, and they promise a sense of belonging, love and contentment -- all things humans claim to want. But Kirk rejects this, claiming that “we weren’t meant for that.” In other words, that’s not real paradise. Why not? Because “man stagnates if he has no ambition.” This is the truly inspired point. Kirk is getting to the heart of human nature and the meaning of life: man has wants and desires because he is meant to strive to achieve those, he is not meant to merely exist. In fact, Kirk will go further at the end of the episode and actually reject the idea of paradise itself:

MCCOY: Well, that’s the second time man’s been thrown out of paradise.
KIRK: No, no, Bones. This time we walked out on our own. Maybe we weren’t meant for paradise. Maybe we were meant to fight our way through. Struggle, claw our way up, scratch for every inch of the way. Maybe we can't stroll to the music of the lute. We must march to the sound of drums.

Kirk believes that humans can only achieve true happiness by striving to overcome challenges. It is in the struggle itself where humans find happiness. This is the conservative understanding of human nature and it’s similar to the Ancient Greek view that you cannot pursue happiness directly, but can only find happiness as a by-product of some other pursuit. This is the opposite of the liberal view. Liberals believe the struggle to satisfy wants generates unhappiness, and they believe that if you could give people everything they need, then they will be happy.

Now consider this in economic terms. Kirk advocates a world where people work to achieve their individual desires (“ambition”) rather than just satisfying the needs of the collective. That’s capitalism. And in his mind, a world where people only satisfy their needs and then turn to leisure is not a paradise but is instead a dystopia where the human spirit stagnates. But that’s exactly what the spores are offering. The Sandoval/spore position is the people will be satisfied once their basic needs are met and they can turn to leisure. This is Marxism: “from each according to his ability, to each according to his needs.” Marxism does not recognize wants because those are considered consumerist and generate unhappiness because they inspire disparity. Even non-Marxist liberals actively disdain individual wants and try to stifle attempts to satisfy those wants through high taxation of success and regulation to bar things of which the collective does not approve.

Kirk rejects this communist paradise in favor of capitalism. And he does so not because he thinks communism won’t work -- it absolutely will work in this unique case as has been shown by Sandoval’s group -- he rejects it because he believes it is fundamentally at odds with the human spirit. In other words, Kirk believe capitalism is necessary for the human spirit to find happiness. That’s a ringing endorsement.

Naturally, the show agrees with Kirk. Once the colonists are freed of the spores’ influence and can make up their own minds, they immediately realize that their drug-induced happiness was fake, i.e. that the human spirit needs more than an illusion of contentment. Says Elias with a great deal of dismay: “We've done nothing here. No accomplishments, no progress. Three years wasted. We wanted to make this planet a garden.”

And therein lies the conservative message, that the socialist/anti-consumerist doctrine of fulfilling needs and then living in leisure may seem appealing at first glance, but it is destructive to the human spirit. Man is not meant for a world in which he only works to satisfy his needs and not his wants. Man must strive to fulfill his individual dreams.

Finally, it should be noted that this episode is Brave New World distilled down. In Brave New World, a world government controls people by offering them so much pleasure that they abandon their personal ambitions and become satisfied with what they are given. In exchange, the government gets to continue its existence. That is what the seeds are doing here. These seeds can only live inside a human host and they are offering happiness in exchange for their existence, but the cost is a fundamental loss of humanity. Kirk, like Huxley, grasps that a gilded cage is still a prison because it destroys the human spirit. Liberal don’t get that.

Indeed, one of the more disturbing moments in the Next Generation series involves every time questions come up like what humans do now that they no longer need money, i.e. now that all their needs are met. Picard and crew always mumble something about “self-improvement.” But they define this narrowly as essentially having “the freedom” to pursue hobbies. They live in Huxley’s Brave New World and they don’t even realize it. It’s no wonder they ALL keep volunteering for suicide missions.