T.D.A.S.T.

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Fifty years ago today, the world woke up on The Day After Star Trek.

At first, it didn't seem different, but five decades on, the world has completely changed because of it.  There are few other pop culture phenomena that can claim such a profound effect on society, from the broadest to the finest stroke.

And yes, I am a TREKKIE, not a TREKKER.  Trekkers came later, but those of us who started with the original series during the original broadcasts were Trekkies.

It was purely coincidence that I happened to see the premier.  I was 5 years old and a huge fan of anything space.  At the time, the Gemini program was winding down and the Apollo series winding up.  The future was "out there" and anything having to do with space had captured the imaginations of kids like me.

My heroes were astronauts and I had a rather remarkable collection of autographed photos I had obtained through the NASA and Martin-Marietta PR departments.  Because of my dad's political position, I had met several of the Mercury Seven and even more of the Gemini/Apollo class, including Neil Armstrong himself.

On Saturday afternoons, after mowing the lawn and attending my chores, I would settle in front of the black-and-white console TeeVee with my cookies and milk for the Saturday sci-fi movie matinee.  Back then, all spaceships were pointy-nosed rockets with legs that left smoke trails in outer space.  The interiors looked sterile and the characters rarely interacted with any of the machinery.  It just worked.

Also popular at the time was a show called Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea.  It was a sci-fi thriller/drama set aboard a fantastic futuristic submarine.  It premiered in 1964, and if you watch it now, you will find the kernel, the primary elements of Star Trek.  Trek,though, was the first to combine these elements with outer space, and throw in the unlimited vistas of the Universe.  After all, the oceans could only take you in a circle.

On the Thursday night, fifty years ago, something magical happened.  My parents had gone out for some event and the babysitter was a dear old woman, nine years older than God.  She plunked us down in front of the tube with a bag of M&Ms and by amazing chance we were watching NBC at 7p, when it happened.

First, it was that narration that got my attention: "Space, the final frontier.  These are the voyages of the starship Enterprise, it's five-year mission to explore strange new worlds, to seek out new life and new civilizations. to boldly go where no man has gone before!"

I was instantly riveted.  Boldly going into the Universe was what all us kids were dreaming of in those days of the nascent manned space program.  But what really got me hooked was the ship.

That ship!  This wasn't the same old aerodynamic point cylinder with smoke and flame pouring out of the back.  It looked like someone had taken a submarine, stuck a huge radar dish on the front, added a flying saucer, then attached two strange-looking pods on the back.  And it moved like lightning!

Immediately, I set about building a model Enterprise out of cardboard, sticks and other items around the house.  I whizzed around the house at break-neck speeds, stopping to orbit the occasional planets and exploring my small corner of the Universe, which had just gotten a lot bigger.

Here was a crew of humans and aliens, working together.  One of them was even a dreaded Russian!  There was a black woman and an Asian, a miracle-working Scotsman, and an irascible country doctor who belonged in The Virginian, except he seemed to know so much about all these weird lifeforms and doubled as a psychiatrist.

And what about all that cool technology?

The doctor had an entire hospital in a box.  Phaser pistols that actually looked like they worked.  Handheld communicators.  Self-opening doors.  Wireless smart devices.  Warp speed.  Talking computers.  View screens with 2-way video.  And beaming.

It was all so cool and amazing and sparked so many fantasies of traveling the galaxy, making friends with some aliens, fighting others.  In fact, there was politics in outer space.  There were cities, and wars, and they dealt with all the same problems we were dealing with here at home.

Star Trek was, in fact, a revelation.  It made even the amazing Apollo technology and machinery seem ancient.  It made the future someplace we all wanted to get to quickly.  It all seemed so far away, out there in the 23rd century.

But then it started appearing in daily life.  Doors that opened when you approached them.  Handheld wireless phones, first just in the house, but then anywhere.  Bluetooth devices like the earpieces used by Spock and Uhura.  It was coming to life before my eyes.  We even have transparent aluminum!

The biggest disappointment for that 5-year-old who grew up on Apollo and Star Trek has been that in the same 50 years, our space exploration has gone nowhere.  We send robots to have the adventures that the future once promised us humans.  We have government agencies that hide amazing information from us, rather than letting us share the adventure and discovery that we paid for.  We have not found a way to end war, but rather new and more lethal ways to wage it.  Almost as fast as my generation was seeded with the dream, it was snatched away from us, but for a few trinkets and gee-gaws.

I want the future I was promised as a child!

Star Trek was already in reruns by the time I first saw it in color.  I had just graduated high school when the first movie came out.  I was in university when The Next Generation premiered and us geeks gathered for drinking games while watching the show.  Star Trek has been a part of my entire life.  It has always been the dream factory for me, the subconscious background chatter of inspiration.

Yet, for all the iterations, variations and integrations, the original series has been there, never aging, while my body sags and creaks into middle age and beyond.  It is a piece of my personal history and the inspiration for a thousand wishes.  The world of Star Trek is where I have secretly wanted to live for as long as I could envision a future.

Hidupan, Alam Semesta dan Semuanya

One reason I write a blog is to exchange ideas with other minds out there, whether they see things the same as I do, or not. The mail I get is often inspirational and thanks to my blog, I have made new contacts in various parts of the world. A big note of tanks goes to George Ure, at UrbanSurvival, for giving me a wider audience!

Because of my eyesight (or lack thereof), I am a bit slow on reading and responding to email, but this morning I received an email that really inspired me, to whit:

"My daughter has enrolled her son and daughter in cyberschool. What a difference it makes. It gives them a lot of room for self expression. You are right about doing the same old thing over and over again.My daughter is an artist in mosaics, but when she was in school, if she dared to step out of the teachers way, she got into hot water, never allowed for self expression. It is a different mode now and if more parents did it, there would be more free thinkers. If the USA goes the way it looks like it is going, the schools won't be able to affort to run busses anyway.And I despise the fact that every school has a cop in it. What is wrong with these people. I always say it was created by the "puckerbutt Mamas" who had nothing better to do than go to PTA meetings and harp about a teacher touching their children. Lets face it "we have been had by the PTB and it is up to the free thinkers to change things."

In addition to giving me a wonderful new adjective, 'puckerbutt,' this letter also inspired me. I therefore replied in my usual brief and concise manner:

Please pardon my delay in replying, but WOW what a great letter to receive!

It's gratifying to hear that there are folks out there who are opting out of the system. Freedom of self begins with freedom of thought, and we can't think clearly nor freely if we are sent to cookie cutter schools.

I'm an artist, as well. I spent 40 years of my 50 total (so far) working in theater, film and TV. I had some brilliant, real teachers, beginning with my mother, who not only encouraged free-thinking, but demanded it.

Your letter reached me at an opportune time. I am currently developing a system for teaching English online so that it can reach students in Indonesia who are very remote and don't have access to the resourses available in Jakarta. You see, English is a way for people to move up here. They can use it to get good jobs and expand outside their villages and borders. They can access a much larger world of ideas by learning a single skill. However, when I teach English, I use ten different languages to do it. I show the students that language is simply a way to encode and decode information, just like math, computers and art. I come at the problem from a different angle than the standard rote memory curricula available on the market. Language is an organic, living thing and cannot be taught in a cold, rigid manner, just as plants cannot be raised without water and sunshine and exposure to the environment.

Anyway, I could wax philosophical for hours, as you can see from my blog. I am verygrateful to you for writing me. You inspired me with your ideas. Tha is one rreason I write, so that I can exchange ideas with a wider audience, and not only be inspired, but translate that into inspiration for the next generation.

I wish the best for you and yours. I am overjoyed that someone out there is seeking something different from the same ole same ole. We can win this Thing one mind at a time. It's daunting, but not impossible.

Thank you kindly for your letter, I know that to inspire someone to write back, there must be some ideas in my writings that move and motivate, and that is gratifying. Best of luck to you all, and blessings on you and yours.

Best regards,
Bernard

Education.

That's the key. That's how we defeat the PTB. One mind at a time. It took generations of indoctrination to get to where we are as a civilization, and it will take the same to get out. We just have to have the same resolve to be truly free that the bastards have to enslave.

Great books, such as Fahrenheit 451 and Brave New World, show us where we are heading now. But books such as, Shang-gri La and Stranger In A Strange Land and 2001: A Space Odyssea, show us where we could go.

People such as Richard Hoagland and David Icke, even if they are wrong, show us that thinking bigger can free us of so many constraints. People such as the reader who wrote me above show us that something as simple as art can elevate us above the mundane and propel us to new thoughts, new heights and New Frontiers of Humanity.

And it all begins with Education.

I was a threat to the United States. They castigated me and persecuted me because I did such radical things as forbid vaccinations for my children, filtered their water of things like flouride and chlorine, and homeschooled. I refused to follow the proscribed path and for that, my wife was killed and my children were used as weapons by the State.

the danger of free thought is very real. Trust me.

Ask Galileo. Ask anyone who presents to true and credible challenge to the status quo. If you push against the GAP (Generally Accepted Paradigm), you will be punished severely. People don't like their apple carts upset, especially those who profit from building the carts and growing the apples. They only profit when the apples are neatly stacked in a controlled area. If the apples are rolling down the street, then anybody can pick them up.

It comes down to this: who controls the mids of our children?

I've had some great teachers in my life. They were not famous nor did they want to be. They had one goal, to make me think.

There's Mrs. James and Mrs. Speck. There's Mr. Z and Stan. There's Swilley and my trig tutor, whose name I don't even remember, but who taught me that math can be understood.

But, at the core of it all, after years of education that has yet to stop, there's my mother. She taught me language and art and the most important thing of all: to read.

It's all there in a book somewhere. The collected knowledge of the ages is written down and waiting for discovery. To read is to be free. Because of reading, my teachers include: Newton, Kepler, Galileo, Plato, Aristotle, Ovid, Pythagoras, Nietzsche, Thomas Aquinas, Augustine, Benedict, Lao Tsu, Sun Tsu, Gengis Khan, and scores of others.

Because I learned art, I was trained by Monet, van Gogh, Michaelangelo, da Vinci, Rodan, Orson Welles, and so many more it would take an encyclopaedia.

There were my language teachers for Spanish, Latin and German. There were the incredible cast of characters I have met traveling. There were monks at Christ in the Desert.

All the great thinkers, artisits, writers, and philosophers of all time came to me through one simple skill: reading. Thanks Mom!

So, if you want to teach your children to think, not parrot, you have one job, and only one job...get them to read. Open the doors to the Universe by turning off the TV and the video games, and turn on the books, essays, manifestos, and papers. Give them inspiration, and the rest follows. Stop trying to be you kid's best friend and start thinking for the long term, far beyond your lifetime.

What can you do now that will affect generations?

I don't teach to get rich or even to make a living. I teach because I have a burning desire to open the mind of fresh, young thinkers who can change the world I will never live in. And in the end, that's the thing that must change: what is it that benefits us? Is it what car we drive or what house we live in or the luxuries in our lives? Or is it the world we can build through our children and their children, and the faces we will never know and the world we will never inhabit?

To paraphrase another great thinker, 'Ask not what the world can do for you, but what you can do for the world.'

And for God's sake, stop being a consumer. The real economy is not what we buy, but what we offer. Change your mind and change the world is the simplistic slogan that came out in the 80s. Though the intention was to sign folks up to comsume something, it is never-the-less true.

The difference between freedom and slavery, between wealth and poverty, is nothing more than a point of view.

It's that simple.